“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now, in your experiences this evening you have been dealing with symbols and you bring them to life. This is exactly what you are doing every day of your life in your normal hours of activity but you do not recognize the symbols. You simply perceive the objects that come from the symbols. When you are working with your consciousness, as you did this evening, you become aware of the inner symbols in your own mind. Now, there are symbols that are personal but there are also symbols that are, in your terms, universal and you build with these.

It was not Cato but the information, portions of the information, were once given by Cato and the man is a follower of some, though not all, of Cato’s works. Now the works will make you think, so read them.

This evening it was but in a different guise. Besides the person of whom you are aware, there are also other guises taken by the same personality, and he has appeared in your dreams before you were aware of him objectively. And like our class member the Dean, you will begin to follow your own way. Do not be impatient, however.

I want all of you to become aware of this inner mobility of consciousness. Use it. Now, none of you clearly left your bodies, with one exception; but mentally you detached yourselves to various degrees. You are taking first steps well, but the subjective knowledge must come from within each of you. I cannot give it to you.

Now, so-called occult knowledge dealt with secret knowledge, and it is secret to the extent that every man must discover it for himself and that is the end of the secrecy. But, in one manner of speaking, it cannot be told for you must have your own experience and recognize it. Very briefly this evening some of you dealt with the reality of symbols, and this is extremely important for the physical body that you know is a materialization of symbols that you have created. You do not know the symbols for yourselves but you can discover what they are, and I will expect you all to do so.

Now, what do you suppose Christmas means? The birth of the inner self. Each of you must be reborn, not once, but endless times even in this existence, in this existence as you know it. You break out of yourselves. When you are joyful you break out of yourselves.

Now, I suggest that you all take your break. I wanted you to know that I was here, but I also wanted you to know that I am keeping an eye out for your experiments in class and when you are not in class sometimes.

The Bible is a language that you no longer understand. Words used told a story, yet certain words had a different meaning than the literal interpretation of the word. Certain key words in other words, if you will forgive me, were highly symbolic, and if you read the Bible along one surface line then you read a story highly ambiguous, called by many, but if you understood the meaning of the Word, as divorced from the literal interpretation of the Word, then you read an allegory and the allegory was highly important.

And so, if you are very innocent and a child, and you read our story, you have a pageant of characters. But if you look beneath you see that there is much more and that the story is merely the coating. It gives you suspense and Ruburt would say it gives you a great story line and while you are reading the story, however, you are automatically taking in the inner truths that are within it whether or not you are consciously aware of what you are doing. Now, this is only a partial, very partial, explanation for something that you are.

You have bird eyes. I will tell you, however, but not now. When you are ready for me to really tell you, I will tell you. I am on to your other question, however, because it is more pertinent.

Now, you also have the memory of your future existences, for time does not exist as it seems to you now, and a portion of you is aware of your future as it is aware of your past. And so also, in your terms of time, as this sifts through to the physical being you had a great dream of grandeurs achieved, and yet you look around and see them unachieved in the morning. When your species squatted in the cliff caves and when they ran in terror across the face of the earth pursued by wolves and imagined that demons lurked in the shadows, when with ghost memories were great contrast to the world that they saw and know, and so they weaved a story from their memories. And so your legends are not only made of your past but they are also weaved from your future, in your terms, and all of these are interwoven even with your flesh. So that if all physical knowledge were taken from you, all the knowledge that you have learned since birth in this life, and that is impossible, but if it were possible still within you would always be the inner knowledge not only of your own private past and future, but of the private past and future of your kind and of your species.

You are, indeed, correct. There is nothing to fear. The knowledge is symbolic in terms that you do not yet intellectually understand. Automatically in daily life you translate symbols into what you call reality. The information is at your fingertips, you have simply gotten away from it. You form appearances from symbols but you are so lost in the world of appearances that you forget the symbols upon which you have formed the reality.

Oh, now we want a time element and some (words missing). It will, indeed, disintegrate in the manner in which it is now known by that time. It will be disbanded in large terms, but there will be vital groups throughout the world who will join with other groups.

Now listen. Imagine an onion, and if there is someone here who does not like onions, imagine anything you please. An onion comes up from the earth and the growth principle is within it; and imagine our poor onion in the earth. You see, I am not using a flower, and the onion comes up and it insists that it must know who God is and where He is that makes him grow. And so our onion, with the full vitality within it to grow from the inside out, as all things grow, instead looks at the fine carrot next to him, and such a lovely hue, and examines the carrot in his mind to see if this is God. And then he looks up to the asparagus and to the vines and to the tree. And the tree is much larger so surely, the tree must be God. Aha, but the tree does not look like an onion so, therefore, the tree could not be God. God instead must be a giant onion, a beautiful giant onion, and so our poor and stupid little onion spends all its life waiting for this giant perfection of an onion to come by and save it. He may even hallucinate such a giant onion but all the time the principle of vitality and power and growth is All That Is, and all of it that you can understand at this point, is within the onion. The principle within it that gives it its existence. Now, if ever I find a church of onions, I will let you know.

It will be imposed but from within.

([Joel:] “But I am a young man.”)

When you know what it is, you will be on your own. You will be working with two segments of people though you only think you will be working with one segment. You see yourself with young people, but you will also be working with very old people. And that is all I will say to you about it right now. It will be your own and in your own way.

While you are taking your break there is one remark that I would like to make. Now, I have mentioned this before, but because our Lady of Florence has been so maligned, then I will make this point again. You have our Lady of Florence to thank that there are classes here, for Ruburt would not think of them in the beginning, and it was our friend, who you think is too intellectual and not intuitional, who suggested the classes in the first place to Ruburt and opened his mind so that he would follow my suggestions.

But (to Ned) never look forward to listening to anyone above listening to your own inner self.