"Oh, if I could only leave you the proof that I continue. Yet another attempt to run the blockade - to strive to get a message through. How can I make your hand docile enough - how can I convince them? I am trying, amid unspeakable difficulties. It is impossible for me to know how much of what I send reaches you. I feel as if I had presented my credentials - reiterated the proofs of my identity in a wearisomely repetitive manner. The nearest simile I can find to express the difficulty of sending a message is that I appear to be standing behind a sheet of frosted glass, which blurs sight and deadens sound, dicatating feebly to a reluctant and somewhat obtuse secretary. A feeling of terrible impotence burdens me. Oh it is a dark road."
Myers, for all the grand scope of his interests, was a very modest man. And he was also a very systematic one. These two qualities perfectly explained the style and timing of his after-death communications. He had first to prove to his friends that he still lived and he devoted thirty years to that. But what was of even greater interest, once that was established, was his description of what it was like to be dead. Myers, always the scholar, was not about to run hastily into a discussion about such a momentous subject. He was very systematic and cautious about that too. He had been dead for nearly twenty-three years before, at last, he started to communicate on that most mysterious of all geographies - the world of the dead. I died a mineral and became a plant; I died a plant and rose an animal; I died an animal and I was a man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? Yet once more I shall die as a man, to soar With blessed angels; even from angelhood I must pass on ... When I have sacrificed my angel soul, I shall become that which no mind conceived.
Seven hundred years later we find the remarkable psychic Joan Grant reaffirming exactly those ideas, which she derived from her own paranormal experiences: "I acquired sufficient empirical experience to see the broad outlines of the progress of an individual during the initial four phases of his evolution. He starts with only enough ability to organize a single molecule. As his experience increases, and his consciousness begins to expand, he requires more complex forms through which to express that consciousness. When he can no longer be contained by the mineral phase of existence, he enters the plant kingdom, then graduates by a series of incarnations as various species of animal, to his first incarnation as a member of the human race."
5. Seth Speaks
Myers states that human beings reincarnate from the plane of illusion, but that once they have learned enough from periodic existences in the confines of this physical reality, they pass beyond these planes and need be embodied no longer.
An identical claim is made by 'Seth,' a discarnate teacher who communicates through the medium Jane Roberts. According to Seth, each individual consciousness - or spark of God-consciousness - must undergo a long period of training and learning through repeated physical embodiments. Being human is simply one 'stage' in this process of development, and when, through repeated incarnations, this stage is complete, one passes onward to further planes of existence which offer more exalted opportunities for development and creative expression of the God-like qualities of love, life and truth. The most crucial lesson to be learned is karmic or ethical. Through repeated embodiments, the undeveloped individual - through ignorant selfishness - treats others with cruelty and hatred, and, in accordance with natural process, is subjected to cruelty and hatred in return. When one treats others with unconditional and selfless love and kindness, one is likewise rewarded.
The ultimate result of these lessons is spiritual development and a passage beyond physical embodiment, giving access to God-like creative powers once the entity is highly enough evolved to use these in an ethically responsible way. While he is still unevolved and would use these powers to injure, control, exploit or destroy others, he does not have access to them.
In a series of trance communications, Seth had given Jane Roberts and her husband Rob a series of 'lectures' on the nature of reality as he perceived it from a plane higher than the human. With all Seth had told them about man's potentials, they wondered why the race isn't more developed morally and spiritually. They were pretty upset about the state of the world in general. That evening, Seth came through in his usual distinct, clear voice. Among other things, Seth said:
"The human race is a stage through which various forms of consciousness travel. Before you can enter into systems of reality that are more open and extensive, you must first learn through physical life. As a child forms mud pies from dirt, so you form your civilizations. When you leave the physical system after reincarnations, you have learned the lessons - and you are literally no longer a member of the human race for you elect to leave it. In more advanced systems, thoughts and emotions are automatically and immediately translated into whatever approximation of matter that exists. Therefore, the lessons must be taught and learned well. "The responsibility for creation must be clearly understood. In physical life on earth, you are in a soundproof and isolated room. Hate creates destruction in that room, and until the lessons are learned, destruction follows destruction ... the agonies are sorely felt. You must be taught to create responsibly. Earth life is a training system for emerging consciousness. If the sorrows and agonies of your system were not felt as real, the lessons would not be learned. It is like an educational play."
In other words, in these realms beyond the human, thought and emotion can immediately create - through the causative attribute of consciousness that is the power of intention - a concrete, objectively real environment. Entities - being essentially 'of God' - do not allow themselves to enter these realms until they are highly developed enough to create 'responsibly.'
http://www.trans4mind.com/spiritual/myers1.html
