“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] (Eyes narrowed and dark.) They are not as nicely nor as neatly packaged out, one to a body, as your psychologists believe. [...] They use the physical body fully, or they partially depart according to their own inner needs and development.

[...] He, in the old-man body, enjoys the solitude that he always wanted. Your mother was originally the spark that made him relate at all to physical reality, and that is why he resented her, why he fought her, and why she could not respect him. [...]

There will be a joyous gathering together of his identity when the body dies. [...] The gestalt, the conditions, have in the past been beneficial for us all.

[...] Consciousness can never fully express itself in physical terms, as you know. Through various reincarnations the entity attempts to express itself more and more competently within the framework of physical reality.

It goes without saying then that the soul does not require a physical body for purposes of perception; that perception is not dependent upon physical senses; that experience continues whether or not you are in this life or another; and also that the soul’s basic methods of perception are also operating within you now even as you read this book. It also follows that your experience within the physical system is dependent upon a physical form and physical senses — again, because these interpret reality and translate it into physical data. It also follows that some hints of the soul’s direct experience can be gained by momentarily switching the physical senses off — by refusing to use them as perceptors, and falling back upon other methods. Now you do this to some extent in the dream state, but even then in many dreams you still tend to translate experience into hallucinatory physical terms. [...]

Now your physical body is a field of energy with a certain form, however, and when someone asks you your name, your lips speak it — and yet the name does not belong to the atoms and molecules in the lips that utter the syllables. [...] Within your body you cannot put your finger upon your own identity. If you could travel within your body, you could not find where your identity resides, yet you say, “This is my body,” and, “This is my name.”

The soul, however, does not need to follow the laws and principles that are a part of the physical reality, and it does not depend upon physical perception. The soul’s perceptions are of acts and events that are mental, that lie, so to speak, beneath physical events as you know them. The soul’s perceptions are not dependent upon time, because time is a physical camouflage and does not apply to nonphysical reality.

(10:14.) If you cannot be found, even by yourself, within your body, then where is this identity of yours that claims to hold the cells and organs as its own? Your identity obviously has some connection with your body, since you have no trouble distinguishing your body from someone else’s, and you certainly have no trouble distinguishing between your body and the chair, say, upon which you may sit.

The gestalt patterns of which I have spoken is the basis here, and yet all members within such gestalts are themselves independent, possessing identity and separation even while they cooperate in a complicated pattern. [...] But your divisions do not affect the nature of these gestalts, as my discussion speaks of separate universes without affecting the nature of any universe one whit.

[...] I now had at least one answer: Her body jumped in her chair, and her eyes popped open as though from shock. [...]

Many sessions ago I used the analogy of air within your physical field, comparing it with the vitality of the universe, in that you are not as a rule conscious of air. [...]

[...] And everything that is, is also self-conscious, in degree according to its abilities; and everything that is therefore contains identity and separation, even while it is part of a large and complicated gestalt.

Physically speaking, and generally, your body is composed of grasses and ants and rocks and beasts and birds, for in one way or another all biological matter is related.⁹ In certain terms, through your experience, birds and rocks speak alphabets — and certain portions of your own being fly or creep as birds or insects,¹⁰ forming the great gestalt of physical experience. [...] But in deeper terms, physically and biologically, the animals are born from the body of the earth, which is composed of the corpses of men and women as much as it is of other matter. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) Your body does not feel as if you invade it. Your consciousness and its consciousness are merged; yet it is composed of the multitudinous individual consciousnesses that form the tiniest physical particles within it. Those particles come and go, yet your body remains itself. What was physically a part of you last year is not today. Physically, you are a different person. Put simply, the stuff of the body is constantly returned to the earth,* where it forms again into physical actualization — but always differently.

[...] That sense of permanence rides upon endless changes — it is actually dependent upon those physical, spiritual, and psychic changes. In your terms, for example, if they did not occur constantly your body would die. [...] That [kind of] consciousness unites all physical matter.

The constant interchange that exists biologically means that the same physical stuff that composes a man or a woman may be dispersed, and later form a toad, a starfish, a dog or a flower. [...] Reminiscent within each form is the consciousness of all the other combinations, all of the other alliances, as identity continually forms new creative endeavors and gestalts of relatedness. [...]

It is not simply that some weak electrical force exists within the physical body, but that a portion of the physical body has its actual existence within a strong force field; that the whole physical body has counterparts, so to speak, within this force field, and that so far man has discovered only the comparatively weak electrical charges of one particular kind in general, that most obviously protrudes into the physical universe.

The physical body, in other words, exists as an electrical body that is not material, that has a peculiar mass but no weight, whose characteristics are apparent in terms of not varying shapes, but varying intensities and concentrations of electric force. [...] The mind, which is not physically represented in the material body, does exist electrically. The brain, which exists physically, is a part of the mind in the electric structure. [...] The skin does not exist within this electric counterpart, although the physical skin does contain electric force.

[...] If you could see the body as it exists within the electric field, you would certainly not recognize it, for its shape would bear no resemblance to the physical shape as you know it. The electric counterpart to the physical body exists, then, as an identity formed by various electrical systems operating more or less as one. [...]

The thought, as an electrical reality, is not subject to the physical laws that bind the physical body. [...] This electric charge can propel the thought, as an electrical action, through the apparent dimensions of your physical time in such a manner that it can exist simultaneously within your past and your present. [...]

Trees and rocks possess their own consciousness, and also share a gestalt consciousness, even as the living portions of your body. The cells and organs have their own awarenesses, and a gestalt one. So the race of man also has individual consciousness and a gestalt or mass consciousness, of which you individually are hardly aware.

Your flesh springs about you in response to these inner chords of your being, and the trees, rocks, seas and mountains spring up as the body of the earth from the deep inner chords within the atoms and molecules, which are also living. Because of the creative cooperation that exists, the miracle of physical materialization is performed so smoothly and automatically that consciously you are not aware of your part in it.

[...] You are confined only to the extent that you have chosen physical reality, and so placed yourself within its context of experience. While physical, you follow physical laws, or assumptions. [...]

Your experience in the world of physical matter flows outward from the center of your inner psyche. [...] Altering the state of the psyche automatically alters the physical circumstances.

In certain basic and vital ways, your own consciousness is a portion of that divine gestalt. In the terms of your earthly experience, it is a metaphysical, a scientific, and a creative error to separate matter from consciousness, for consciousness materializes itself as matter in physical life.

(Long pause.) Your consciousness will survive your body’s death, but it will also take on another kind of form—a form that is itself composed of “units of consciousness.” [...] The divine gestalt, however, is expressed in such a way that its quality (pause) is undiluted. [...]

The physical senses are the extensions of inner senses ³ that are, in one way or another, a part of each physical species regardless of its degree. [...]

[...] In your terms the magnetic fields themselves fluctuated—but all of the species were there at the beginning, though in the same fashion, for as the dream world broke through into physical reality there was all of the tumultuous excitement and confusion with which a mass creative event is achieved. [...] The species and environment together formed themselves in concert, in glorious combination, so that each fulfilled the requirements of its own existence while adding to the fulfillment of all other portions of physical reality (all very intently, and with many gestures).

[...] Return to the body that is so secure and willing. Return gladly to the physical form that is a vehicle for your expression in this time and this place. Return to the time and the place gladly, the way someone returns to home, but knowing in the back of your mind that there are many homes and many places and many times, but for now return your focuses, settling back gladly into the body. [...]

Consciousness has a feel the same way that a body does. [...] It’s free outside of the body, sometimes freer than it is inside the body. [...]

[...]  Unfocus your attention in the usual physical environment in which your’re involved. [...]

[...] All I know, that within and beyond and through the world that we know, there are other levels of reality, other dimensions of activity, other psychological gestalts that we can explore. [...]

[...] Each individual has his part to play in projecting these EE units into physical actuality. Therefore physical matter can be legitimately described as an extension of the self, as much as the physical body is a projection of the inner self. [...]

[...] They appear fairly permanent to the physical senses. They are actually oscillating, ever-moving, highly charged gestalts of EE units (pause), organized and maintained by collective efforts on the part of inner selves. They are solidified emotions, solidified subjective states, given physical materialization. [...]

[...] It constantly translates the components of its gestalt into reality, either physical reality through the EE units I have mentioned, or into other realities equally as valid.

These then form physical objects, physical matter. [...] Your dreams, emotions, feelings, thoughts, are (underlined) transformed into physical matter purposefully by this inner self. [...]

[...] My reality includes, then, not only reincarnational identities but also other gestalts of being that do not necessarily have any physical connections.

[...] There are kinds of consciousness that cannot be deciphered in physical terms. [...]

[...] In your terms, he is more alien, since he cannot relate to your physical existence as well as I do because of my background in it.

[...] Yet in that existence, physical life had a contrast, a sharpness greater than any I had known. [...]

Using an analogy again, the brain is quite capable of operating on innumerable “frequencies,” each presenting its own picture of reality to the individual, each playing upon the physical senses in a certain manner, organizing available data in its own specialized way, and each dealing somewhat differently with the body itself and with the contents of the mind.

For that matter, the body is naturally well-equipped to handle “projection of consciousness,” or out-of-body travel, whatever you prefer to call it. Your biological makeup includes mechanisms that allow a certain portion of your consciousness to leave your body and return. [...] The body is equipped to perceive many other kinds of experiences that are not officially recognized as native to human experience. [...]

[...] The set criteria of reality, therefore, operate as organizing, psychic, and physical frameworks. [...] You still try to carry your own cultural versions of reality into the dream state, for example, but the natural heritage of both body and mind escapes such repression — and despite yourselves, in your dreams you come in touch with a greater picture of reality that will not be shunted aside.

[...] The body naturally heals itself, for example. [...] In actuality, however, most of you believe — and experience — a far different picture, in which the body must be protected at all costs from a natural leaning toward disease and poor health. [...]

[...] Changes do occur within the body. When consciousness alters its direction it automatically alters the physical system. When it is ready to return the physical system is automatically prepared to receive it.

[...] Signals from the body reach it constantly. It is in immediate contact with the body on certain levels: survival levels. [...]

[...] It is true that you focus within the physical system mainly, yet the inner self is highly mobile and embarks simultaneously upon a variety of projections. [...]

[...] Given certain unusual circumstances, you could leapfrog, so to speak, and end up within an energy gestalt from which you could not return. [...]

Seth, from the 154th session for May 12, 1965: “Basically, the physical body has the potential for perceiving stimuli on a generalized basis. By this I mean that although the eyes are for seeing, the ears for hearing, and so forth, the potentials of the physical body include the capacity to hear, for example, through any given portion of the bodily expanse … Sound, then, can be felt as well as heard, although in such cases you may say that the sound is heard in the depths of the tissues; this, however, being an analogy … Ruburt, in feeling sound, merely experienced it from a different perspective.

[...] In Volume 1, Seth devoted much of the 681st session to a discussion of probabilities, or, in sum, All That Is, and interwound Jane’s psychic and physical experiences with that material: “The cellular consciousness experiences itself as eternal … Part of Ruburt’s feeling of massiveness² comes from the mass [life-to-death] experience of the body, existing all at once. Therefore to him the body feels larger.” [...]

(Unlike Seth, Seth Two has never been physical in our terms, and only partially comprehends our reality even while helping to form it. Very quickly, and perhaps simplifying too much, here’s Seth Two from the 407th session, speaking in Jane’s high, distant, deliberate and asexual interpretation of what such an energy gestalt’s “voice” might sound like:)

[...] She also considered Seth Two in various other parts of Adventures. In Chapter 2, for instance, the Seth Two quotations are cast in the editorial “we,” the guise in which that energy gestalt often comes through: “We are trying to appreciate the nature of your present existence … For you there may seem to be an unbearable loneliness, because you are so used to relating to the warm victory of the flesh, and [here] there is no physical being … Yet beyond and within that isolation is a point of light that is consciousness. [...]

[...] We have said that to some degree even atoms and molecules have consciousness, and each one of those minute consciousnesses forms its own dreams, even as on the other hand each one forms its own physical image. Now, as in the physical field individual atoms combine for their own benefit into more complicated structure gestalts, so do they also combine to form such gestalts, though of a somewhat different nature, in the dream world.

[...] Most of his material is deleted here, but I can write that her situation was tied in to her work with the challenges presented by her physical symptoms [as described in Note 8 for the 679th session, in Section 1]. As she comes to understand her own belief systems more and more, Jane very gradually continues her physical improvement. [...] The [recent] dreams also provide additional assurance; and while dreaming, body states are altered — something physicians do not recognize.”

[...] For example, without the peculiar spark set off through the interrelationship existing between the inner self and the physical being, the dream world would not exist. But conversely, the dream world is a necessity for the continued existence of the physical individual.

[...] It is physically oriented, though not to the degree inherent in your ordinary universe. In the same manner that the physical image of an individual is built up, so is the dream image built up.

(Pause.) The body is composed of organs, physical parts, living matter—but the body is also composed of processes, relationships that exist on all levels between various portions of the body and between the body and its environment. [...]

(10:17.) There are certain interior physical events that can happen within Ruburt’s body to help him move more naturally, but he cannot possibly consciously comprehend each change that must occur, and when viewed in that light the entire exercise seems so complicated as to be almost impossible. To the body, however, this is the kind of natural action it is always involved in, as it constantly rebuilds itself, maintains life, and it involves the body in work that it is indeed highly equipped to perform. [...]

[...] The body is in that regard a highly energized gestalt of intelligent processes. [...]

In a fashion, as I have said before, you are highly uneducated about the activity of your own bodies, and taught to suspect your own bodily sensations. Patterns and pathways of energy are being reopened and reactivated in Ruburt’s body. This applies throughout the body, and is also responsible for the sensations in the legs and hips. [...]

(9:21.) This body prediction is then assessed, and on more levels than it is possible for me to explain. [...] This arena is not a place, of course, but an inner state of gestalt consciousness. The state is brought about through certain interactions that occur deep within the body. [...] They are created on a physical level through certain activations of the nerves in which the normal patterns are jumped, so to speak, and images are formed. [...] These are all assembled and used to form the larger picture of the body’s condition.

These are not images as you think of them but highly coded information, electromagnetically imprinted, that would not appear as images to the physical eye. In any case they cannot be perceived except by the body. But this procedure is so far superior to anything that you know that the body, therefore, actually takes precognitive pictures of its future condition — as if the body situation at the time were projected into the future.

[...] Think of them now as living electromagnetic cells, differing from the physical cells in your body only in the nature of their materialization. Your thoughts direct the overall functioning of your body’s cells, even though you do not consciously know how those cells operate. [...]

Each physical cell is in its way a miniature brain, with memory of all of its personal experiences and of its relationship with other cells, and with the body as a whole. In your terms this means that each cell operates with an innate picture of the body’s entire history — past, present, and future.

[...] There is clairvoyance within the organs of the physical body itself, because the organs of the body are not, quote, “just” matter, but energy which has composed itself into matter. [...]

[...] I cannot stress too strongly the fact that in practical actuality the body exists within many fields, and it cannot be explained or understood when it is considered a product of one field only. Nor can it be much aided in times of physical difficulties, for the basic causes of the problems is not known, and treatment at best is haphazard.

[...] Energy may not be properly directed toward releasing from the physical field of the body excess chemicals into other fields. [...]

[...] Before we take a break, let me tell you that hormones within the physical body have not only a chemical but an electric, rather electromagnetic, basis and reality, and that these also are connectors with other fields of existence.

[...] Neither is it aware of the manner in which the inner self creates physical matter. Neither, therefore, is it aware of those distortions that cause it to construct faults within physical matter, for in all cases the physical matter of the human body will be subconsciously created in line with inner conditions.

The following basic subjects are necessary for an understanding of what we are trying to say, particularly for any practical application: the construction of physical matter; the psychological and electrical gestalt that results in the formation of a self; the nature of the dream universe; the electrical system, as it is related to both the physical universe and the inner psychic gestalt; the nature of action; mental enclosures; mental genes; and again, all of these subjects in relationship to their reality as action.

[...] Nevertheless, you are a gestalt of electrical actions. Within the physical matter of your chromosomes there are electrically coded systems. [...] The chromosomes are the physical materialization of the inner electrical data.

[...] Nor is the self limited physically. Again, this idea is the result of your own habit of perception, for chemicals and air and nutrients that you consider not your self, enter the self constantly from the physical environment; and that which you consider yourself, leaves through the pores of the body.

Those units of consciousness are the building blocks for the physical material of your body, for the trees and rocks, the oceans, the continents, and the very manifestation of space itself as you understand it.

[...] Metaphysically, they can be thought of as the point at which All That Is acts to form [your] world—the immediate contact of a never-ending creative inspiration, coming into mental focus, the metamorphosis of certainly divine origin that brings the physical world into existence from the greater reality of divine fact. [...] Ethically, the CU’s represent the spectacular foundations of the world in value fulfillment, for each unit of consciousness is related to each other, a part of the other, each participating in the entire gestalt of mortal experience. [...]

(Long pause.) In your terms of time, however, we will speak of a beginning, and in that beginning it was early man’s dreams that allowed him to cope with physical reality. [...] That is, his dreaming allowed him to clairvoyantly view the body of land. [...]

[...] As physical creatures, they focused upon what you think of as physical identities: separate, individual differences, endowing each physical consciousness with its own original variations and creative potentials, its own opportunity for completely original experience, and a viewpoint or platform from which to participate in reality—one that at that level could not be experienced in the same way by any other individual (all very intently). This is [the] privileged, always new, private and immediate, direct experience of any individual of any species, or of any degree, as it encounters the objective universe.

Within your system expectation indeed forms your own physical environment. [...]

[...] The assumption is only a convenient one within your physical system. [...]

[...] In succession you entered many things and finally returned to your body. [...]

[...] The physical brain cannot contain the idea of infinity.