“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I do not approve of what has been said so far. And there are a few points I would like to make. You have not one, but many conscious selves. You have more than one conscious mind. What we want you to do is something quite different. We want you to change the channels of your awareness. We want you momentarily to stop using one of your conscious minds and learn how to tune into another one of your conscious minds.

In order to gain knowledge, in order to discover your reincarnation realities, you must not necessarily block out the conscious mind with which you are familiar and turn to sleep. Instead, you see, it is like turning off one channel and turning on another channel.

If you consider the conscious mind that you know as one door, this is the door through which you usually walk. You stand at the threshold of this door and look into physical reality. But there are other doors—you have other conscious selves. These conscious selves are like windows that belong to your entire identity. When you look from one window, you look out into physical reality. When you look out through other windows, you look into other realities.

You are not expected to become unconscious. There is no need for you to feel that when you block out one conscious mind, there is only blankness—for you have other conscious minds. There are other conscious portions of your own personality. We simply want you to look out other windows. The shades are pulled down now over these other windows (indicating the particular windows in the room). We simply want you to snap the shade open and look out. This can be a joyful and an alert experience. It does not need to have to do with sleep and relaxation as it has been spoken of in your recording. That recording, to some extent, maligns the subconscious and the inner self.

It is true that for a moment when you close one conscious door, the door with which you are familiar, there is an instant perhaps before you open another shade and use another portion of your conscious mind to look into other realities...and you may momentarily feel disorientation.

These other portions of your own consciousness are alert even in the sleep state. You may not have always been aware of these other conscious portions of yourself, but they are not vague. They are not vague. You may need to learn the methods by which you can perceive other realities ... simply because you are not used to manipulating these other conscious portions of yourself. But these portions are as critical and even as intellectual and as waking and as valid and as real as the consciousness with which you are ordinarily familiar.

It is true that some physical relaxation is of great benefit. It is true also that certain methods—and I have given some of these to you—are necessary to allow you to switch your focus of attention from physical reality to other realities. It is true, also, that it takes some training to use these other conscious portions of yourself. But remember that these other portions of your identity are portions of your identity—they are a part of you. Your perceptions can be vivid using them. There is no need for you to feel that any reincarnational information must come in a murky, shadowy way through vast areas of a self that you neither know nor understand. Memories of other childhoods can be fresh and bright. You can indeed feel a sense of recognition and familiarity.

You have ten fingers and you use them all. Yet, what you are saying is, “This finger is my conscious awareness and I will use it and I will not use these other nine—or if I use these other nine, I cannot use my conscious awareness.” Your fingers are all fingers and these other portions of yourself are all conscious. They may not be conscious of each other. They may not be conscious of each other, but they are conscious. They are all part of your own identity. They are all portions of your abilities and personalities...that you are meant to use.

Other portions of your consciousness may have as much difficulty seeing through the windows as you do. You will find yourself, for example, looking through many of these windows at the same time. And in these windows you may view other portions of yourself. These portions may seem objective—distant from you—and different. You may seem to be viewing strangers. The viewpoint is entirely different form the viewpoint of any other figures, however. Do you follow me?

When you turn off what you think of as your conscious mind, then another conscious mind clicks into focus. You have more than one conscious mind. You can experience them only one at a time, although they exist simultaneously. When you cease using the conscious mind that you know, there is another one that will take over—you do not sink into a limbo. You are used to thinking of hypnosis in this following manner: You seem to think, most of you, that the conscious mind is blocked out, and then what follows is a murky and a shadowy version of the normal conscious mind—that the subconscious, for example, deals with material that you cannot understand consciously.

The facts are that when you close off the conscious mind that you know, another more alert conscious mind takes over; a conscious mind that belongs to you that has far more vision than the one you usually use; a conscious mind that is aware of more than you are usually aware of.

I am talking in terms of the self within the self within the self...the self that watches the self... the conscious alert self of which your present conscious mind is but a shadow. And this has nothing to do with the ego, which is only a small portion of waking consciousness.

When your precious psychologists walk out of their bodies and tell me what is in California, then I will listen to their theories of personality and when your psychologists put on the type of personality performance that I can put on—then I will listen to them when they tell me about the ego and subconscious. When their theories are broad enough to explain telepathy and clairvoyance and out-of-body realities, then I will listen to them and to their theories. Their ego and their subconscious and their superego and their id leads them no further than a worm that wiggles in the grass and is dead forever tomorrow, and even the worm has more reality than they are willing to assign to one human consciousness.

Now. Theoretically, you can be aware of more than one consciousness at once. Practically speaking, you must close one door before you can open another. Then you can learn to have both open at the same time. What I objected to in your recording was the implication that once the conscious mind as you know it was quieted there was no other conscious mind to take over, and that the ordinary conscious mind was the only conscious mind that you have.

In comparison, you see, to the other conscious portions of your own personality, you are asleep. I tell you to awaken. This is not as Ruburt would say, to knock the ordinary conscious mind. It is merely to tell you that it has been adapted for one specific purpose in physical reality.

Now, you are an identity. Pretend that you hold a flashlight. The flashlight is your own consciousness. Now. You can turn this flashlight in an infinite number of directions. These directions are always available to you. But instead, you get the habit of directing your flashlight in one particular direction. You hold it in this direction constantly and you have forgotten, you see, that there are any other directions.

Pretend, pretend that yourself...your whole identity, is a tape, such as being used here, but in stereophonic. Now, pretend that you have eight channels on this fantastic machine. Now, the whole self is composed, to use this analogy, of the entire eight channels. Usually, however, you can only play one channel at a time. The whole self, however, is aware of the entire eight channels and is able to keep track of them. The conscious mind as you know it is only one note on the first channel, not even the entire channel. You can learn methods that will enable you to tune in on these other channels. These other channels are all conscious portions of your own entire identity. They may or may not be aware of you as one small note on the first channel. They must learn to tune in, but many of them have already learned this knowledge and it is part of their own training.

([Class Member:] “Would we necessarily, in looking out of all these windows, see a visualization of another channel? Are we limited in our ordinary consciousness by what we think we might see and this would... ?”)

([Class Member:] “Are there any overlappings of these personalities? Our main focus is our conscious personality... these others of which we are unaware consciously, do they become absorbed into us in time or are they always there but... ?”)

I am not sure whether or not I correctly interpret your question. However, you only seem to be the main conscious part of your identity. Other portions of yourself may consider their selves as the main origin of personality. They would therefore look at you and at your ego, you see, as a fringe self. The ego seems to think that all other portions of the personality circle about it. This is hardly the case.

I have said this to you often, as a group; I say it [to] you again as a group, and I say it to you personally: you form the physical reality that you know. You form your daily life and your work situation. You make it, you choose it! Now, when you truly understand this, you can change it for the better, but until you really understand the truth behind my words, then you will look for excuses. Now you may partially be taken in by the excuses—Ruburt may be partially taken in by the excuses, but I am not taken in by the excuses! And an inner part of your own consciousness is not taken in by the excuses either!

I appear to you—and I show myself to you—in certain ways—in familiar ways—so that you can sense the bonds between us that do exist. And yet, there are freedoms that have nothing to do with human consciousness as you understand it. There are roads that you will follow and you will look back on the selves that you know now as the first bare glimmerings of your birth.

[Seth II:] Let the human characteristics by which you know me, fade into their proper perspective. Seth as you know him, is distant in my own past, a reality that I scarcely remember. He is a portion of my reality and as such he continually exists. He does now exist in his own reality. Yet to me, all that is past. I am not only what he will one day become in your terms I am far more—and in me your Seth, while remaining a developing identity on his own, is a distant memory in my consciousness. We sent him to you in your terms in some indescribably distant past. He entered your universe in a reality I find difficult to remember. He gave guidance to your kind for eons of your time. I do not sufficiently understand the experience in which you are presently involved, in your terms.

We are involved in forming creations, realities, consciousness—worlds beyond your comprehension. Within these, Seth as you know him is a shadow within my awareness. Yet he is a part of what I was. There seems to be a dim connection between him and the Ruburt that you know.

Now. You know Ruburt as Jane Butts. You have been given a demonstration of the steps through which consciousness may travel. You have been given a demonstration as to the directions in which you can flash your flashlight of consciousness and of the distant paths that this light can illuminate...

(Seth II.) Donot imagine that we are not individuals or that because we seem alien to you that we do not know joy or creativity. Our joy forms universes. It is only because we are unused to bodies that communication is difficult. Our joy forms the universes that you know and dances through your molecules. Our consciousness gives fuel to your own. We possess the energy that gives your sun light.

Now I wish you all a fond good evening, so youcan all relax and not worry about our friend or about me vanishing in the superior mind of our superior friend. I can assure you that I have gone my own way as he has gone his own way—and the universes that I have had a hand in, have a far more emotional basis and I personally prefer them.