“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:39. Long pause.) He has other sources of information, therefore, than those strictly given within the confines of the production. Each actor knows this instinctively, and there are periods set and allowed for within the play itself in which each actor retires in order to refresh himself. In these he is informed through the inner senses of his other roles, and he realizes that he is far more than the self appearing in any given play.

Your own environment includes far more than you may have supposed. Earlier I referred to your environment in terms of the daily physical existence and surroundings with which you are currently connected. In actuality, you are aware of very little of your larger, more extensive environment. Consider your present self as an actor in a play; hardly a new analogy, but a suitable one. The scene is set in the twentieth century. You create the props, the settings, the themes; in fact you write, produce, and act in the entire production — you and every other individual who takes part.

Four o’clock in the afternoon is a very handy reference. You can say to a friend, “I will meet you at four o’clock at the corner,” or at a restaurant, for a drink or a chat or a meal, and your friend will know precisely where and when he will find you. This will happen despite the fact that four o’clock in the afternoon has no basic meaning, but is an agreed-upon designation — a gentlemen’s agreement, if you prefer. If you attend the theatre at nine o’clock in the evening, but the actions of the play take place within the morning hours, and the actors are shown eating breakfast, you accept the time as given within the theatre’s play. You also pretend that it is morning.

Now (humorously louder): in some plays, generally speaking, the actors are each working on a seemingly minute portion of a larger problem that the play itself is to resolve.

[...] He uses these inner senses constantly, though the actor part of himself is so intent upon the play that this escapes him. [...] You can tell the position of the other actors for example, or time by clock, but these physical senses will not tell you that time is itself a camouflage, or that consciousness forms the other actors, or that realities that you cannot see exist over and beyond the physical matter that is so apparent.

[...] They lead the actors to see beyond the selves and settings they have created. These personalities from other levels of existence oversee the play, so to speak, and appear among the actors. [...]

[...] The thoughts that you think, for example, in your actor’s roles, are still completely unique and lead to new creativity. [...]

[...] The three-dimensional self, the actor, has access to this information and to these potentials. [...]

[...] Shows must be done on time, actors assigned their roles. Our hypothetical director will know which actors are free, which actors prefer character roles, which ones are heroes or heroines, and which smiling Don Juan always gets the girl — and in general who plays the good guys and the bad guys.

Actors visit casting agencies so that they know what plays need their services. [...] If enough interest is shown, if enough actors apply, if enough resources are accumulated, the play will go on. [...] Following our analogy, the technicians, the actors, the writers all assemble — only in this case the result will be a live event rather than a televised one. [...]

[...] You follow certain scenes or actors. [...]

[...] The programming for Channel 9, for example, does not suddenly intrude on Channel 6. Even the actors themselves, taking part in such sagas, have but the remotest idea of events that are involved in order that their own images will appear on your television screen. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) Pretend that you are a fine actor, playing in a multidimensional theater, so that each role you take attains a vitality far surpassing the creative powers of any ordinary play.

[...] You are also involved in a kind of creative dilemma, since in a manner of speaking you confuse yourself as the actor with the character you play so convincingly that you are fooled.

You say: “I must maintain my individuality after death,” as if after the play the actor playing Hamlet stayed in that role, refused to study other parts or go on in his career, and said: “I am Hamlet, forever bound to follow the dilemmas and the challenges of my way. [...]

In the dream state the actors become aware to some extent of the parts they play, and sense the true personal identity that is behind the artist’s craft. [...]

[...] In a reincarnational sense, the personality for a while takes the role of a sick person, as an actor would, and is completely immersed in it. Obviously again, more dimensions are involved here than in an actor’s role. The actor would merely try to imagine how it would be like to be in such a position. [...]

[...] An actor throwing himself or herself into a role, even momentarily lost in the part, is still alive and functioning as himself or herself in a context that is larger than the play. The character in the play is seemingly alive (creatively) for the play’s duration, perception being limited to that framework, yet to play that role the actor draws upon the experience of his own life. He brings to bear his own understanding, compassion, artistry, and if he is a good actor, or if she is, then when the play is over the actor is a better person for having played the role.

[...] The events may be used in any way the individual chooses; altered, played back the way they happened for contrast; the way, perhaps, an actor would play an old movie in which he appeared over again in order to study it. Only in this case, of course, the actor can change his approach or the ending. [...]

The other actors, however, are thought-forms, unless a few contemporaries join in the affair together.

[...] They are not cardboard actors for him to simply push around at will. [...]

Now: Actors playing parts are obviously alive, as actors, but in a fictional play, for example, the characters portrayed by the actors are not alive, in your terms, in the same fashion that the actors are. In the psyche, however, and in its greater reality, the characters have their own lives — quite as real as those of the actors.

[...] The actors may “return,” time and time again, in different roles. In any given historic religious drama, therefore, the actors may have already appeared on the historic scene in your past, the prophet of today being the traitor of the past drama.

(9:10.) Behind the actors in the dramas, there are more powerful entities who are quite beyond role-playing. [...]

These beliefs are centered around artists, writers, poets, musicians, actors and actresses, or others who seem unusually gifted in the arts or in various other methods of self-expression. [...]

[...] In it the actors and actresses will take the parts of beliefs — of fleshed beliefs — and the morality play, so to speak, will deal with the nature of beliefs and how they are enacted through the centuries as well as through the hours. [...]

[...] The whole construction however is like an educational play in which you are the producers as well as the actors. [...]

[...] The yelling and screaming will have absolutely no effect upon the program’s actors, and will alter the drama not one whit. [...]

[...] The point of course being that once the play begins the actors are so completely immersed in their roles that they forget that they themselves wrote the play, constructed the sets, or are even acting. [...]

[...] This way you have your actors taking the situation as it seems to be, but looking about in some amazement now and then to wonder how they got where they are, who constructed the stage and so forth. [...]

[...] The point is that once the play begins, the actors are so completely engrossed in their roles that they forget that they themselves wrote the play, constructed the sets or are even acting.

[...] This way, you have your actors taking the situation as it seems to be but looking about in amazement now and then to wonder how they got where they are, who constructed the sets and so forth. [...]

[...] There is an overall pattern to relationships within lives, and yet this does not mean that you travel through various existences with the same limited and familiar number of friends and acquaintances, merely altered like actors with a change of face or costume.

Had he been for example a great actor, he would have met the same kind of problem in different form.

[...] He is not a performer, however, in the same way that an actor is, whose art requires for its best execution the lively responsive immediately present audience. [...]

[...] Now these characters exist more vividly in the minds of television viewers than the actors do who play those roles. The actors know themselves as apart from the roles. [...]

The analogy is perhaps an old one, but the fragment is like an actor playing a character role, partially lost within it, perhaps disliking the character he plays, and yet through the part learning lessons that he will use in his own private life with its greater dimensions. [...]