“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It is your loss. Now, there is a way—when you are involved in physical activity, and even intense mental work—to change the inner focus so that you are aware of two realities at once and can manipulate quite easily in the physical reality as you must. Now, you ask your Bega—for I have told him the message and I have told him to tell you. We shall see how good he is. And I want to know what he tells you for I want to see how he is delivering my suggestions.

Now your friend has been here this evening as a student, but not exactly the same kind of a student as you are—he is a practice teacher.

Now, I will let my friend—(laugh from Ned)—you, as Ruburt would say, you are looking for it! And those who look for it in this room, get it. The portrait is a portrait of Ruburt as a woman in one of the past lives mentioned—and in that particular instance, as a grandmother of twelve children. Strongly gifted psychically—given to hovering in dark forests—and a midwife. Now, he does not know this, so I will give you the honor of telling him. I will now let our friend take a rest. And you may rest if you are up to it.

That is because it is the portrait of Bega. But you did not pick it out as your first choice. Now, Bega has been here as I have been here and he was calling you to look toward the corner of the room—and you were too intellectually smug to do so as Ruburt is often too intellectually smug to do what I ask him to do. And your own intellectual ideas prevented you from first picking out your intuitive choice, as far as the portraits were concerned.

Now, you see what you are willing to see, and it is stupidity to consider suggestion as the result or the cause of what you see. It is stupidity in class to worry that suggestion would cause a given result—for suggestion causes whatever you see. You form your physical reality through suggestion and expectation. You experience what you expect to experience at a subconscious and a conscious level. And therefore, as Ruburt is very careful that suggestion is not involved, so he has also had you be overly cautious, and there have been many opportunities in class that you have missed for this reason—and these are the bets that I have spoken about earlier this evening. You have the ability to see more than you saw and you have the ability. You enjoyed your passivity (to Ned) to the point of an enjoyous giving-up; and instead, you see, there is a point within passivity where you are passively alert. And you went beyond the point and lost what you might have seen. As our friend here went beyond the point (referring to Theodore), looked at the portraits and consciously—for you did not make an original, intuitive, judgment—but consciously looked at these portraits in terms of nationality, age and all the requirements that you thought of.

Now, Ruburt’s abilities were so strong since childhood that he feared using them. And so I am quite used to that development. On the other hand, I wanted someone with a strong enough ego structure to contain what will amount to 40 years of mediumistic stability. I needed a personality who would be able to maintain psychological stability.

Now, there are two simple requests that I have made. One—I have been asking Ruburt to stop smoking cigarettes, a dirty habit, and smoke cigars—and he will not do so.

So I am the Seth that is beyond the Seth that you know. And in me the knowledge and vitality of that Seth still rings. In your terms, I am a future Seth. But the terms are meaningless to me, for he is what I was, in your terms.