When I was introduced to metaphysics around the age of 20, the "bible" for metaphysical thought in concern to understanding the nature of reality was a book by Jane Roberts called The Nature of Personal Reality: Specific, Practical Techniques for Solving Everyday Problems and Enriching the Life You Know
The premise of this book is the simple but powerful idea that we create our realities from our beliefs. This puts the responsibility upon us as individuals to become conscious of our beliefs so that we can decide to change them if needed to ones less limiting that might be causing problems in all areas of our lives.
I quote Seth in The Oracle of the Phoenix with some of the material coming from his introductory book Seth Speaks.
Below are audio excerpts from this book that will shed light on this controversial idea of channeled material and provide context around these revolutionary teachings. The volumes of work produced by Seth and Jane Roberts can be found in the Yale Library.
Seth also has a lot to say about Paul in this book who he described as the "third portion of the Christ entity". Here is an excerpt:
"The third historical personage, already born in your terms, and a portion of the entire Christ personality, took upon himself the role of a zealot.
This person had superior energy and power and great organizing abilities, but it was the errors that he made unwittingly that perpetuated some dangerous distortions. The records of that historical period are scattered and contradictory.
The man, historically now, was Paul or Saul. It was given to him to set up a framework. But it was to be a framework of ideas, not of regulations; of men, not of groups. Here he fell down, and he will return as the third personality, just mentioned, in your future.
In that respect, however, there are not four personalities.
Now Saul went to great lengths to set himself as a separate identity. His characteristics, for example, were seemingly quite different from those of the historical Christ. He was "converted" in an intense personal experience - a fact that was meant to impress upon him the personal and not organizational aspects. Yet some exploits of his in his earlier life have been attributed to Christ - not as a young man, but earlier.
All personalities have free will and work out their own challenges. The same applied to Saul. The organizational "distortions," however, were also necessary within the framework of history as events are understood. Saul's tendencies were known, therefore, at another level. They served a purpose. It is for this reason, however, that he will emerge once again, this time to destroy those distortions.
Now he did not create them on his own, and thrust them upon historical reality. He created them in so far as he found himself forced to admit certain facts: In that world at that time, earthly power was needed to hold Christian ideas apart from numberless other theories and religions, to maintain them in the middle of warring factions. It was his job to form a physical framework; and even then he was afraid that the framework would strangle the ideas, but he saw no other way.
When the third personality reemerges historically, however, he will not be called the old Paul, but will carry within him the characteristics of all the three personalities.
Paul tried to deny knowing who he was, until his experience with conversion. Allegorically, he represented a warring faction of the self that fights against his own knowledge and is oriented in a highly physical manner. It seemed he went from one extreme to another, being against Christ and then for him. But the inner vehemence was always present, the inner fire, and the recognition that he tried for so long to hide.
His was the portion that was to deal with physical reality and manipulation, and so these qualities were strong in him. To some extent they overruled him. When the historical Christ "died," Paul was to implement the spiritual ideas in physical terms, to carry on. In so doing, however, he grew the seeds of an organization that would smother the ideas. He lingered after Christ, [just] as John the Baptist came before. Together the three spanned some time period, you see.
John and the historical Christ each performed their roles and were satisfied that they had done so. Paul alone was left at the end unsatisfied, and so it is about his personality that the future Christ will form.
The entity of which these personalities are part, that entity which you may call the Christ entity, was aware of these issues. The earthly personalities were not aware of them, although in periods of trance and exaltation much was made known to them.
Paul also represented the militant nature of man, that had to be taken into consideration in line with man's development at the time. That militant quality in man will completely change its nature, and be dispensed with as you know it, when the next Christ personality emerges. It is therefore appropriate that Paul be present.
In the next century, the inner nature of man, with these developments, will free itself from many constraints that have bound it. A new era will indeed begin - not, now, a heaven on earth, but a far more sane and just world, in which man is far more aware of his relationship with his planet and of his freedom within time.