“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(That statement, in fact, plus her desire for material from Seth on a question of her own, made her wonder whether we’d even receive any book dictation tonight. Then, no sooner had we sat for the session than Jane asked me to write down what she was about to say, since she had the material available whether or not Seth got to it: “A new part, or chapter heading: ‘People Who Are Afraid of Themselves. Controlled Environments, and Positive and Negative Mass Behavior.’” I told her I thought Seth would not only have plenty of time to cover our respective questions, but would come through with some book work too, and this was the case.

I try to strongly state the pristine uniqueness of the individual. I also say that there are no limitations to the self. The two statements can appear to be contradictory. When you are a child, your sense of identity does not include old age in usual experience. When you are an old person, you do not identify yourself as a child. Your sense of identity, then, changes physically through the years. In a way it seems that you add on to yourself through experience, becoming “more than you were before.” You move in and out of probable selfhoods, while at the same time — usually with the greatest of ease — you maintain an identity of yourself. The mosaics of consciousness are brilliant to behold.

It is as if you shared, say, a psychological planet, populated by people who had the same roots, the same ground of being — as if you shared the same continents, mountains, and oceans. Instead you share certain patterns of development, images, memories, and desires. These are reflected in your physical life, and in one way or another elements of your life are shared in the same fashion.

Your painting was meant to bring out from the recesses of your being the accumulation of your knowledge in the form of images — not of people you might meet now on the street, but portraits of the residents of the mind. The residents of the mind are very real. In a certain fashion, they are your parents more than your parents were, and when you express their realities, they are also expressing yours. All time is simultaneous. Only the illusion of time on each of your parts keeps you from greeting each other. To some extent, when you paint such portraits you are forming psychic bridges between yourself and those other selves: Your own identity as yourself grows.

(“Well, I think I felt that way last week, when I was working on my latest head. That’s why I wrote those notes — but I didn’t take the time to discuss them with Jane.”)

(9:29.) Give us a moment… By all means encourage the dream activity, and there will be a correspondence between your dreams, your painting and your writing.² Each one encourages the others. Your writing gains vitality from your painting, your painting from your writing — and the dreaming self at one time or another is in contact with all other Aspects — capital “A” — of your reality.

If you do not trust your private self, you will be afraid of power, for you will fear that you are bound to misuse it. You may then purposefully (leaning forward, quietly emphatic but with some amusement) put yourself in a position of weakness, while all of the time claiming that you seek influence. Not understanding yourself, you will be in a quandary, and the mechanics of experience will appear mysterious and capricious.

1. In Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality Seth began developing his theory of counterparts — that the larger psychological self, or entity, of each of us manifests not just one physical life in any given century, say, but several, so as to gain that much more experience in a variety of roles involving different ages, nationalities and languages, sexual orientations, family roles, and so forth. As I understand the counterparts thesis, the individual may or may not meet at least some of his or her counterparts, scattered as they can be among earth’s different countries and cultures. Jane and I have encountered a few of our respective counterparts, however, principally through her now-defunct ESP class.