Jane Roberts, Seth and the matrix
Who are we — really?
I have recently been reading the work of Jane Roberts, who channelled the Seth books. I’ve been especially engrossed in her non-channelled writing. In Adventures in Consciousness she recounts what happened to her after the first two Seth books were published, and how uncomfortable she felt about the enthusiastic public embrace of Seth, and the “Seth phenomenon” that followed.
Jane Roberts discovered that most of her readers were convinced Seth was an independent spirit. They thought he had a human personality like us, he just didn’t have a body. Accordingly, the feedback Jane received from the public was that Seth was a spirit identity, separate and independent of her, who spoke through her.
Jane Roberts’ uncertainty
Jane was uncomfortable with this interpretation. She wasn’t convinced Seth was a spirit at all, at least not in this simple sense. But when she said this to her readers many were offended — it suggested to them that Jane didn’t “believe” in Seth the way they did.
Actually, she didn’t. Yet neither did she have a clear alternative concept of who or what Seth might be.
Jane’s open approach resonates with me. She resisted offering easy explanations for whatever appeared to be speaking through her. She also refused to accept others’ simple explanations, mainly because she thought they closed down deeper thinking. She preferred to leave the explanation for whatever was involved in the “Seth phenomenon” open rather than closed.
One of Jane’s most interesting observations was that, at least in the early days, her husband Rob’s presence was required for channelling to occur. From this she concluded that it was their combined energetic presence that initiated and sustained communication. So contrary to the public view — that the “Seth phenomenon” involved just Jane and Seth — she concluded it involved a Jane-Seth-Robert triumvirate working in coordination.
Normally, we think of identity in local terms, that our “I” is here in our body, looking out at the world through our head. So if another identity (like Seth) spoke through Jane, her readers’ explanation was that it must be a non-local identity entering Jane’s local “I”, and communicating through her. In this model, Jane and Seth are conceived of as discretely existing identities.
Yet there is another model that could explain what was happening. This is the model of a matrix.
Identity as a matrix
In mathematics, a matrix is an array of quantities, usually listed in rows and columns, that are manipulted by specific rules. As a result the array is perceived as a co-joint whole. Socially, a matrix consists of multiple chains of relation, order or command that run through a single individual. A large business may also be thought of as a matrix, which is formed from many individuals bound together by a range of interlinked tasks, imperatives and chains of responsibility.
Applying these notions of a matrix to personal identity offers a model of identity as a complex form. It is easy to see that ordinarily we accept that a range of independent elements, acting in unison, make us who we are. To our body’s biology and its inherited genetic make-up, we add psychological elements, such as our position in the national social hierarchy, our place in our local community, the nature of our sexual identity and how we express it, and our personal self-image. Then there are all the assumptions about who we are that others project onto us. If we are spiritual, an element of atman, soul, spirit or Buddha nature may be added. If we are a reincarnationist, past life identities may be added to the mix.
All these elements — and, potentially, many more besides — co-join in a complex matrix that shapes who we are as a human identity. What are the rules that hold the matrix’s various elements together? Presumably, to answer that we need to understand what consciousness is, and how it “glues” together all these elements to form the “I” we consider ourselves to be.
“Strange attractor” is a mathematical term that refers to whatever forces or coordinates that draw disparate elements into a single, unfied system. Metaphorically, we could say a unique “strange attractor” sits at the center of our matrix identity, holding all our disparate experiences and attitudes together, providing the “glue” that holds them in place, and so making us who we are.
The matrix model, then, offers a way to consider identity as a more diverse and multiple entity than the traditional notion of a single soul or spirit, or the non-spiritual “me-in-a-body” allows. Jane Roberts, while not specifically referring a matrix, certainly consider the relationship between herself, Seth and her husband Robert to involve much more than three discrete identities talking to one another.
At this point, I am taking this discussion in another direction. For some time I have been channelling the thoughts of a formerly human identity. It says it is constituted of many human individuals, each of whom have completed their cycle of incarnations on Earth. They have now blended into a single identity, in which form they offer perspectives on human existence, combining somewhere close to a million human lifetimes of experience with their current non-embodied view of human activity.
This complex identity, who I will simply call “the guides”, is certainly a matrix in the terms I have just been discussing. It now wishes to contribute to the disccusion. Accordingly, I’ll stand back and let the guides continue. The following is entirely their words, in words they have transferred into my head, and recorded by me in typing. The guides begin:
A non-embodied view
Regarding the “Seth phenomenon”, no straightforward interaction of one simple identity with two other simple identities was involved. Instead, it involved the interaction of three individual matrices that, on non-physical levels, were connected in complex ways.
Socially conditioned biological presence [i.e. Jane and Robert] was certainly the means via which the matrix identities expressed themselves. This led to discussions, group meetings, and the writing of books. But these physical outcomes were literally the tips of icebergs of their interactions, most of which were unperceived then, and inevitably still remain so.
In order to understand your own identity, what you need to do is delve into the matrix of who you are. Currently, the term multidimensional is popular for labelling the self. [The term seems to have been first used by “Seth”]. Yet this word does not, and intrinsically cannot, convey the complexity of what a matrix identity involves. For you to be incarnated in a human body, much, much more activity has taken place than you can observe.
In the Seth material, Seth makes reference to the fact that identities created the environment on Earth for themselves and others to incarnate and utilise for the evolution of their identity. This is the case. For you now, living in a body, everything you are working with is available because others before you — a long time before you — created the appropriate conditions.
Those conditions include the physical environment in which you live, the genetic code that drives your physical existence, and all the complex social and cultural opportunities that human embodiment provides. You can see this last easily enough, because other people have contributed to the development of business, politics, the arts, philosophy, medicine, and so on. What you don’t see is everything that was done more than millennia ago, in fact millions of years ago, so that today’s business, politics, arts, philosophy, medicine, and everything else — including human existence itself — might come to be at all.
Human existence involves matrices upon matrices upon matrices, enfolded into, over, across and through one another. Each one is essential for your life. Each makes it possible. And all of it is hidden from you.
However, what is so fascinating about this is the opportunity it provides you. When you lift the veil and peer into the parts of those matrices that directly impact on your life, because everything is connected, when you look into the matrix on one personalised angle, other parts of the matrix, and other related aspects of other matrices, are also available to be perceived by you. This is because these matrices are all interlaced: perceive one aspect, and that activity illuminates other adjacent aspects, previously unsuspected by you.
This being the case, the only thing that really stops you understanding the deep aspects of your own life, and the lives of others around you — what stops you delving into the matrix — is your own willingness to enquire. Your act of enquiring is the gate, the door, the entrance. If you don’t enquire, if you don’t attempt to lift the veil, you remain unseeing, and the deeper understanding which is available is not forthcoming.
An unfortunate corollary of this outcome for many is that they feel they are living in the middle of a mystery that no human being can ever penetrate. They may even feel a victim of the circumstances of their own life. This state then gives rise to statements such as, “Life’s so hard.” “People have been mean to me.” “It’s all too complicated to sort out.” “No one can really change anything.” “Human beings aren’t meant to delve too deep.” …
This is the sort of poppycock people indulge in — and it is indulgence, because a simple remedy exists to counter feelings of being lost, uncomprehending, depressed, and all the other maladies human hearts and minds are prone to fall to. The remedy is straightforward enquiry. Lift a corner of the veil, take a peek into the matrix of personal identity, and you begin a journey into understanding, into fulfilment, into an exploration of your matrix identity. But this depends on you first doing one thing, and sustaining it over an extended period of time. That one thing is enquiring.
We realise that where we have led this discussion is not exactly where it began. We certainly concur with our scribe’s comparison of identity to a matrix — it is a metaphor that resonates on many levels. However, our focus is not just on offering ways for today’s seekers to think about their identity, but to suggest ways each may enter into it, grapple with it, to explore their identity’s possibilities, and in the process transform it into something much greater than any human being currently perceives it as being.
To this end we agree it is useful to consider yourself to be a complex identity, constituted of multiple strands. Appreciating this will stimulate your understanding of the who, what, where, how and why of your existence. Then the “strange attractor” pulsing at the core of your being will cease being so strange after all.
A related comment on the matrix is offered in:
The guides offer further observations on the human condition in the books, How Did I End Up Here?, Where Do I Go When I Meditate?, and What Is Really Going On?, as well as comments on human psychospiritual makeup in Practical Spirituality and Psychological Spirituality. Each is (co-)authored by Keith Hill. Previews of these books are available at www.attarbooks.com, The books are for sale in all online bookstores.
