Seth on why a couple's child died young

 

Why would anyone choose a life of illness or poverty? And what about children who die young, or servicemen killed in war? All of these questions came into our minds when Seth began speaking about reincarnation. 

Why do some children die young—particularly gifted children with devoted parents? I don't believe that there can be any single answer or blanket explanation, but we have had two readings involving such children, and I can give you the explanations offered in these specific instances.

The first episode involved a couple I will call Jim and Ann Linden. Ann, a complete stranger, called me on the phone one morning.... She told me that her son, Peter, had died a few months ago at the age of three. She and her husband were distraught...

Jim and Ann arrived about 10 P.M. Rob and I liked them at once. They were in their late twenties, intelligent, and, like us, informal. Over wine they told us about their son. "He was exceptionally bright," Jim said. "He was fantastic, and I'm not just saying that because he was our child. From the start he was way above average, quick in his reactions, so much so that we were almost frightened in a way. And then, overnight, he died of aplastic anemia. No one even knows what causes it."

 

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What can you say in a situation like that? I wanted to help. I felt their terrific need, but I also realized that it was wellnigh impossible to prove life after death. Suppose I contacted the boy, or thought I had? How would this help? Instead of making them face the facts of his separation, couldn't such an incident simply makethings worse? And my own doubts rose: if subconscious playacting were involved . . .

 

Rob must have read my thoughts. "Relax, hon," he said. I told the Lindens my attitude, and Ann smiled. "Ray said you were one of the most objective mediums he knew."

 

"Too objective, I'm afraid. Sometimes it holds me back from using my abilities fully."

 

That's the last thing I remember saying as myself. The next moment Seth's deep booming voice came rushing through me: "The boy was briefly with you for his own reasons. He was to enlighten you, and so he did. You have known him in past lives. At one time, he was his present father's uncle.

 

"He did not mean to stay within physical reality. He only came to show you what was possible, and to bring you both to an understanding of inner reality. He chose his illness. It was not thrust upon him. He did not manufacture sufficient blood, for he did not want to be physical beyond the time he had allotted.

 

"He wanted to give you an impetus, and his effect was far stronger than had he lived, and he knew this. He had a horror of living to young malehood for he did not want to meet a young woman, become attracted, and continue with another physical life.

 

"He was a light to you, and the light is not extinguished. It will lead you into knowledge that you would not have known otherwise, for you would not have sought it so vigorously.  He is well aware of this, and wanted you to begin the pilgrimage; but the pilgrimage is within yourselves."

 

Now Seth was staring out through my open eyes.

 

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My gestures were his. He looked Jim right in the face as he talked. Ann and Rob both took notes. Phil just sat, listening.

 

"He was involved in scientific endeavors both in Atlantis and Egypt, but he had no desire to continue those pursuits now. He had gone quite beyond them. You [Jim] were also involved with him in two past lives in the same relationship, and as priests you both were interested in the inner workings of the universe."

 

Seth went on to say that Jim had fallen by the wayside in some respects, forgetting what he had learned in the past. "He [Peter] could not force you to remember, but he could give you a nudge and a push, and in this existence he did so.

 

"It is not time for you to run willynilly, looking for truth in any treetop. The truth is inside yourself. Your son is not a threeyearold any longer. He is an entity older than you, and he has tried to point out the way to you.... He was not a child taken before his promise was achieved, but a personality who left you when his own reincarnations were finished.  He will not return, but go on now to another reality in which his abilities can be used to more advantage."

 

According to Seth, Peter's own reincarnations had really been completed before he was born this time. He'd returned to die young so that Jim and Ann would be forced to ask the questions they were now asking.

 

At one point Seth smiled broadly and said, "Now, I have lived and died many times, and you can sense my vitality. And I tell you that the boy's vitality exists in as vital terms. It would have been almost a penance for him to have stayed longer. You helped him 'save his soul' at one time [in a past life] and he was returning the favor. At one time he was tempted to use his abilities to gain power, and to use the priesthood for gain. On that occasion you stopped him."

 

Seth went on to give an analysis of Jim's present

 

personality as it was connected with events from past lives, and to give him some advice about the future. Jim told us that he had been a disc jockey. Now Seth said, "No one can tell you what road to follow. You have the answers within you.  Beware of those who give you ready answers.  I am speaking in terms of probabilities, for the future is plastic."

 

He suggested that Jim stay out of the acting field, because in his case it led to a confusion as to the nature of his own identity. Seth advised him to stay with communications, saying that if he continued in radio there would be another radio job, and then an emergence into another line of work.

 

Seth gave more information concerning the past lives of all involved, then added, "I am giving you what I believe is the most important information, whether you can check it out or not.... Your inner selves digest what I have said, and this is more important than ten pages of notes and dates that you cannot check, since these lives were so long ago."

 

He said more about the symbolism of Peter's illness, spoke about Jim's past relationships with Ann, and said that Jim had mathematical abilities he was not using. "They result from your two priestly existences where you were both highly involved with calculations having to do with movement of the planets."

 

He ended in this manner: "It is natural that you come to others for help in your situation, and in my way I hope I have helped you. There is a difference between being told things and knowing them, however. And knowing comes from within. When you know, you do not need to be told, and you can have that kind of knowing.  I will be glad to help you find it, but no one can find it for you."

 

During a break we sat nibbling at crackers and sipping wine. Suddenly impressions came into my own mind. Many of these checked out at once, on the spot. I told Ann, for instance, that her brother used several names and wore a toupee, and this was correct, along

 

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with many other statements. At the same time I kept getting impressions about the boy's symptoms.

 

When this sort of thing happens, I just relax and say whatever comes to mind. "There was an episode with toenails and shoes too small," I said. "This put pressure on the right big toe which affected an artery up the right leg.  A bruise that damages function always occurs in such a case, though the bruise may be small."

 

There was more, much of it verified on the spot. Though they hadn't anything to do with reincarnation, these impressions did have a lot to do with demonstrating to Jim and Ann that we do have the ability to receive knowledge other than through the physical senses. The events that I "picked up" were often emotionally significant to the Lindens, though trivial in other respects.

 

These impressions also included some statements concerning the origin of the disease that killed Peter.  Its cause is unknown, and there is no reason to go into my explanation here. But the characteristic symptoms of the disease I gave also described Peter's condition accurately. The Lindens had not discussed these with us—perhaps they found the subject too painful. Since this information was correct, there is no reason to suppose that the impressions concerning the disease's causes were wrong, though they are unknown.  By the same token, there is no reason to suppose the reincarnational material was any less correct, though we can't check it because of the long time periods involved. (Some reincarnational data is much more recent and can be checked to some extent if the people involved have the time and want to make the effort. So far we have run across very few priests, and no one else who lived in Atlantis.)

 

Seth devoted the very last part of the session to Phil, and it was well past one in the morning before we were finished. Jim and Ann went away convinced that their son's life and death had a meaning, that there was sense and purpose in their lives, and that

 

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even this seeming tragedy operated for a greater good. I felt pretty humble when the whole thing was over. Jim and Ann were almost transformed, and before the session, I had been so dubious that I hesitated. (The thing is, when I consciously think in such a limited fashion, my intuitive inner self rises up and shows me that much more is involved than the ego. Actually I think that these abilities flow through us as the wind flows through the branches.) Ann wrote me a letter shortly after, telling me that she and Jim no longer felt the tremendous sorrow that had burdened them earlier.

 

More and more I have seen how reincarnation makes sense out of such apparently senseless tragedies, and provides an inner structure to situations that would otherwise seem chaotic and unjust. I was so pleased to be able to help Ann and Jim; and that session and others like it have helped me also by showing me the value of ideas that originally I could not accept. The same thing applies to Seth: I am literally amazed at his capacity to help others, at his psychological understanding, at all the abilities he draws upon and focuses in our sessions.

 

Another similar case, involving the death of a child, concerned a woman who attended a few of my classes. Her fifteenyearold adopted son had drowned a few months earlier. Seth said in a session that the boy had been a sailor in several past lives and still regarded death by water as preferable to dying on land. The boy had been related to his foster mother in another life, and also returned to help her gain needed inner development. He died early so that his death would make her question, and search for answers.  She had been running from medium to medium, trying to contact the boy.  In no uncertain terms, Seth told her to stop this practice and to work for inner development instead.

 

According to Seth, we choose our illnesses and the circumstances of our birth and death....

'Another similar case, involving the death of a child, concerned a woman who attended a few of my classes. Her fifteen-yea-rold adopted son had drowned a few months earlier. Seth said in a session that the boy had been a sailor in several past lives and still regarded death by water as preferable to dying on land. The boy had been related to his foster mother in another life, and also returned to help her gain needed inner development. He died early so that his death would make her question, and search for answers.  She had been running from medium to medium, trying to contact the boy.  In no uncertain terms, Seth told her to stop this practice and to work for inner development instead.'

from The Seth Material