“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

([Florence:] “I’m sorry, Seth. Wake me up next time.”

I do not wish to make that kind of impression upon young ladies. Now I am indeed a harmless gentleman. A gentleman without a body must be harmless, so why do I meet such fear as I always do in this class. I’m trying to make one basic point and the point is that energy and being are not sober, that the personality continues to exist, that those characteristics of mine which I considered mine, in your terms, at one time still continue to exist, and that your personality will also continue to exist. Now when I make such efforts to be jolly, then I do not understand how I can possibly frighten you. Young women always frighten me, but you do not see me quaking in terror. I hide my feeling.

(To Florence:) As a teacher you should be able to understand that this causes me the most difficulty.

Now as class members should know, our friend Ruburt is not possessed and no energy has taken him over. There is instead a corner within his personality that is open like a transparent window, a warp into other times and dimensions. He has abilities that he uses. He realizes that from me he gets information that he would not otherwise possess and he can be here in a moment.

I can imagine a lovely scene where bodiless individuals, spiritual psychologists and I, sit in a dark room all dressed in gowns at another level of reality, and they ask me what is wrong with me and I say—I am obsessed. I have it in my head that there is a physical reality somewhere where objects have shape and form—where there are things like trees and people and streetcars and a strange thing called progress. And where people believe in things like ghosts and demons all on the same line, seeing little difference between them and I imagine in my most schizoid (Doug—“that’s what I said”) moments that there is a woman called Jane Butts in a strange, funny little town in a completely fantastic place called Elmira, New York. And I have the delusion that I speak through this woman and look out through her eyes at the most fantastic creatures imaginable.

But they have no way to treat me. Because they are behind me, the scene is too good to miss and they have never seen a psychology like your own. For if my reality now seems strange to you—your reality seems very strange to me and do not forget that these now familiar characteristics by which you know me are only those that I use as teaching methods. The portion of myself that I show to make my point.

It would be easy for me to give you a set of rules. Some of you would be only too glad to follow them for you would not have to face your own responsibility and your own responsibility is to look within and to use your own abilities. For you, each of you, will develop in your own way through endless eons in your terms. You think that an atom is beneath you or a flower. You have 500 times as far to go. You will develop in ways you cannot now understand and you develop as you unfold, as you use your abilities. You will find your own road. You will even make your own truths. For you are expected to make new ones. Truths are not trees that you discover in the forest. They spring up ever new. All That Is is not static or it would be dead; it is ever changing as you are.

I am graded by someone else. You have not attended any classes so you do not have the background to understand this. Our friend over here will know who grades me.

([Gert:] “Just let me know which is which.”)

It is the idea behind the Catholic conception of guardian angels. Now why these personalities should be envisioned as overgrown birds is beyond me for everyone knows what birds do on rooftops.

([Gert:] “Are you saying by this that perhaps someone who might be assigned to me might be of another occupation?”)

Do not tempt me. I will bring Ruburt back and let him face that one. —any of my nature.

There are many gradations and distinctions, however, you see. Now since all of you are white, when you see a black man you think of a black man and forget his individual characteristics. So when you think of spirits, in your terms, you think of spirits without the individual characteristics and there are many that would be comparable in terms of an analogy only. Do you follow me?

([Gert:] “Seth, would you answer me? I am supposed to be a teacher and I have felt a conflict since I have read Ruburt’s book and I have delved into Christian Science.”)

Now far be it from me to keep you all from a well-earned sleep. So I will bid you all a good evening and I give you those blessings that are mine to give.