The Return of Persephone by Frederic Leighton – Public Domain
The following is from a National Geographic Traveler article about an atheistic writer’s experience with the potent Amazonian psychedelic brew Ayahuasca. Its name means “the vine of souls,” and its active ingredient is the extremely potent psychedelic compound DMT, which is also naturally produced and used by the human body. Here she describes meeting her reincarnational selves:
Now I’m traveling to a realm where I meet my various incarnations from past lives. We are connected to a large wheel; whenever fear energy leaves the top of my head in puffs of dark smoke, it leaves their heads at the same time. Our lives, I am made to understand, are interconnected and dependent. “Past life” is really a misnomer: Outside of linear time, all our lifetimes, all our many incarnations, occur simultaneously. “Other life” seems a more accurate way of describing it.
With some of the individuals, I can guess their historical period from their clothing. With others, I can’t place them at all. There is a balding, overweight, monk-looking guy. The big, muscular warrior with the pointed helmet (who, he says, gives me my present interest in sword fighting and martial arts). The black woman who is a slave in North Carolina. Interestingly, there are only about 15 or so individuals; a spirit tells me that many people average less than 30 total Earth incarnations and that their souls commonly skip centuries, reincarnating only in spirit realms.
And what of the two women who aren’t wearing historically identifiable clothing?
“We are your future incarnations,” one of them explains, lovingly.
I have no reason to believe this writer is familiar with the Seth Material, but these two sources have an identical view on reincarnation. Compare with these passages from the Seth Material
You are not any of those past selves, even though they are a part of the history of your being. They are themselves in their own space and time. You are as different from those reincarnational selves, therefore, as you are from your parents, though you share certain backgrounds and characteristics. So you can theoretically expand your consciousness to include the knowledge of your past lives, though those lives were yours and not yours. The next step is taken when identity is able to include within itself the intimate knowledge of all incarnations. Yet in this state, the independence of the various reincarnated selves is not diminished as each separate identity then seeks to know and experience its other portions, then All That Is learns who and What It Is. Action never ceases its exploration of itself.
When I tell you that you lived, for example, in 1836, I say this because it makes sense to you now. You live all of your reincarnations at once, but you find this difficult to understand.
Such an exercise is not some theoretical, esoteric, impractical method, but a very precise, volatile, and dynamic way of helping the present self by calming the fears of a past self. That past self is not hypothetical, either, but still exists, capable of being reached and of changing its reactions. You do not need a time machine to alter the past or the future.
Seth sees reincarnational lives as all existing at once, so there is constant give-and-take among them. A “future” life, then, can affect a “past” one, so karma as it is usually considered does not apply. -All quotes from Seth books or session notes.
It appears that the writer of the national geographic article lived Seth’s concepts first hand without any apparent prior knowledge of them, or any kind of belief in reincarnation. The parallels are nothing short of extraordinary. I was blown away when I read this article having been previously familiar with the Seth material. Vastly different sources from different times and authors make a satisfying clicking sound when they line up like this.
Process and Spirituality 