“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(To Derek.) And I have a comment to the young man in the mirror and it is this. I have lived many lives and I cannot prove, in your terms, my own existence. The fact that you are worrying about proving your own existence, however, proves that you exist. Now, I do not want to deflower your ego. However, a flower has better sense than to ask whether or not it exists. It accepts what comes to it. It takes joy in the vitality that belongs to it.

Now, in the winter time our poor idiotic flower seems, indeed, to be dead. The seed goes into the earth, however, and in the wintertime in any of your suburban gardens here beneath the snow are all these seeds. They are being nurtured, but do they in this darkness, therefore, look about them and say, “This is a time of death? There is nothing else for me and my existence is meaningless? How is it that I remember a time in which I blossomed? How is it I vaguely remember a summer in a time in which I was strong and spontaneous and free? What has happened to the summertime, and will it never come again for me?” That is what you are doing now. Our seed, however, who does not have this fine intellect that sits so nicely beneath your hair and within your skull, our seed without the intellect, rests joyfully within the earth knowing it is in the midst of creativity and that from within it, again, another flower will spring. And it does not deny the earth that gives it birth. It knows within itself, and it is this knowledge that you can find again. It is within you now.

Now, the seed cannot yell out to a scientist who happens to pass and say, “Hey, look at me, I exist. Take me home to your laboratory for within me is the kernel of life.” For the scientist, if he would heed the call and if he would take a spade and dig in the middle of February perhaps down into the earth to find our seed, would find simply a shell. He would not find the reality of the seed. And though you speak and exist and have your being, the emotions that you feel, that make you you, cannot be packaged in a laboratory, cannot be proven by any scientist, you exist. He can only weigh the body and the elements that compose you. He can tell you how much your brain weighs. He cannot tell you what you are feeling or thinking or touch the reality of your subjective experience and herein lies your reality and your proof and your existence and your feeling.

(To Derek.) You will find your own ways, but trust your own inner voice. If you do not trust what Ruburt would call the establishment, then trust the inner voice that is yourself and follow it. You do not need trust me, but you must, indeed, trust yourself. I have always trusted myself so I do not see why you would not trust me.

There are a series of projections on the part of your husband toward you and on the part of you toward your husband. You are using the same words in some of your conversations but the words mean different things to both of you, and so you are not communicating properly. Now, you can learn to communicate if you open up your mind. You earlier mentioned, you see I do not lose anything, semantics, and the confusion of words, and this is what you are involved within your relationship with your husband. And so it is why you noticed when this happened in class. So that you must get beneath words.

Now, I will tell you something else that you will not necessarily want to hear, but you must also learn to relate to outside physical reality. You need physical work to do. This will improve your painting, your creative life, and your psychic life, but you are turning inward too much without knowing what you are doing, at this time. You need to compensate by direct and aggressive physical action, either in a job that will relate you with others or in some aspect along those lines that will allow you to untangle the inner self and release your creative abilities.

Now, you are like a dog with a bone, at your problems, at them every moment, and you must get away from them. The sense of accomplishment involved in physical work will do wonders for you. It will take away the sense of unworthiness that you now have. You are quite competent to deal with physical reality. There is nothing you have to fear. This will automatically release your inner abilities. Allow your creative feelings to emerge into realistic work. You are running down alleys of despair and you need this doorway into physical reality of which I have told you. Now, how is that for a starter?

(To Brad.) Our orange shirt over there, you have progressed more than you realize that you have, and being away from class during this time has done you good. You stood on your own two feet, and yet you remembered what was told to you and put it into operation and used it in your own way.

(To Derek:) And be careful of those associates that you make if they have a strong feeling also of meaninglessness. You can come and each of you in this room have come or will come to a dark corner. And the dark corner will seem to you that only desolation exists, and you will look into the faces of your fellow men and find only emptiness. And you will look into the faces of your brother and your father and your mother and find no meaning. You will see that they see meaning, but you will not experience their meaning, and so their faces may seem empty to you, and you will look outward into the world and find no meaning in it, only desolation and cruelty. And you will see at the end of a life only death and annihilation and wonder what the life was for.

([Derek:] “Is that what my life is going to be, here and now?”)

Now this crisis has a meaning and a purpose. It does you no good to avoid this crisis through drugs, through tranquilizers, or through material possessions, for you must face certain facts, and the facts are these. The high and mighty intellect that deals with the world of sense is not all. The validity and the vitality of your existence is far more than this. And when you find your intellect, alone, cannot give you the answers, and that it cannot bring you joy and that it brings you no closer to the fountain of existence, then you begin asking the proper questions. Then you are like the flower who accepts the sunshine, and in accepting the sunshine knows far more about the reality of sun than any scientist who measures the spectrum of light without feeling. Your soul, your inner self, your reality, is experience. It is this upon which you must base your life.

(To Mack.) And in some of your dream states, also. You are far more alert, far more aware than you are in your waking state. You are using portions of your own reality that you ignore in daily life.

Now, I wanted you to know, as always, that there is a reality beyond the reality in which you are presently focused.

(To Derek.) Now, as far as proofs are concerned, any of you can measure. Any of you can measure the painting on the wall that is of me in a previous life. You can measure the dimensions. You can prove a painting exists on the wall. You cannot measure the psychological impact of the painting, however, nor the psychic reality that is within it. Nor can you measure the inner reality that you know is within yourself. And as I have said before, when you look into a mirror you do not see yourself. You see the physical form. You do not see your ego or your subconscious or your spirit or your unconscious. You see the molecules and atoms that spin about you. You cannot prove, therefore, that you exist, much less that I exist. Be thankful then that the atoms and molecules that compose your chairs seem as if they were solid.

Indeed. However, you may turn your consciousness in many directions and this is what I hope you are learning to do. Consciousness is like a searchlight that belongs to you. Usually, you direct it only into three-dimensional existence, but I hope that you are learning to direct it in many other areas. It is a method of perception.

In certain terms. I agree with what you have said so far, but you have not said enough. The soul uses consciousness. Consciousness is a characteristic of the soul. Consciousness is a method by which the soul understands what it is.

That is true, to some extent. You do travel to other realms of reality.

Now, you are taking advantage of what you are learning, whether or not you are consciously and egotistically aware of what you are doing. There is nothing wrong with the ego. If there is nothing wrong with a flower, why should ego be a dirty word?

Now, I remember clearly each ego that was my own. I have a long memory. But in the dream state each of you are acquainted with the other selves that you have known. You simply forget when you awaken in the morning. This sort of experience is direct cognition. I cannot tell you what it is. I can only hint to you that certain experiences can be expected. And when you receive them, then you know for yourself and you have your own proof, as our friend in the corner has her own proof.

And now, I do, indeed, bid you all a fond good evening and what blessings are mine to give, I give to you.