“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

For that matter, [the same is true of] environment, as it is usually understood. Your cultural beliefs predispose you to interpret experience in terms of heredity and environment, however, so that you focus primarily upon them as prime causes of behavior. This in turn results in much more structured experience than necessary. You do not concentrate upon the exceptions — the children who do not seem to fit the patterns of their families or environments, so of course no attempts are made to view those kinds of unofficial behavior.

The human personality is far more open to all kinds of stimuli than is supposed. If information is thought to come to the self only through physical means, then of course heredity and environment must be seen behind human motivation. When you realize that the personality can and does have access to other kinds of information than physical, then you must begin to wonder what effects those data have on the formation of character and individual growth. Children do already possess character at birth, and the entire probable intent of their lives exists then as surely as does the probable plan for the adult body they will later possess.

Give us a moment… Some readers have brothers or sisters, or both. Others are only children. Your ideas of individuality hamper you to a large extent. To one extent or another, again, each portion of consciousness, while itself, contains [the] potentials of all consciousnesses. Your private information about the world is not nearly as private as you suppose, therefore, for behind the experience of any one event, each of you possesses information pertaining to other dimensions of that same event that you do not ordinarily perceive.

1. Speaking of books: Even with all of the help Jane has given me lately on Psyche and Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality (see the opening notes for sessions 821 and 823, respectively), I’m still only too conscious of the work I have to do to finish the notes and other material for both books, and put together their manuscripts for the publisher. I often discover the overall commitment, or plan, lingering in my mind on a distant conscious level — a pressure toward accomplishment that seems bound to accompany these long-range projects. At times this feeling can beset me, and I may find myself trying to estimate the number of weeks it’ll take me to finish Volume 2 first, then Psyche.

But naturally, I told Jane recently — again — I chose to become involved with the whole Seth phenomenon in the most intimate ways. I did so because I knew from its very beginning (in late 1963) that this process of discovery with Seth was more than worth it. I still think so. I added that I’d certainly choose to do the same thing again, and that I hoped to stay involved with the Seth books indefinitely. Granted that Seth’s material may “only” be bringing into our conscious awareness knowledge we already possess and use on other levels, still it’s a fine thing that his material makes us aware of that inner comprehension — and so new dimensions of consciousness become available to us. I “drew” a rough analogy with painting (to make a pun): The artist may start working on a blank canvas, yet each physical brush stroke he or she delineates is built upon inner knowledge and experience; in the painting these qualities are objectified in new combinations, which in turn add further to the artist’s conscious comprehension. And when the painting is finished, the artist contemplates a new reality of his or her own creation.

“Ruburt is, as you know, highly creative. What most artists do not realize is that the self is the first creation. They do not think of themselves as products of their own creativity. Because of Ruburt’s energy and creativity, he has always perfectly mirrored and even somewhat exaggerated the condition of the inner self, its activities and inner postures.”