“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane first mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Seth, her trance personality, would start another book of his own soon. The idea had just “come” to her after supper one night. We hadn’t taken it very seriously, since we’d finished proofreading Seth’s first book, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul,¹ only last month; certainly we weren’t prepared for the fact that he was quite capable of launching another such project so quickly. Nor did Jane have any conscious thoughts about subject matter, or a title, for any projected Seth book.

Experience is the product of the mind, the spirit, conscious thoughts and feelings, and unconscious thoughts and feelings. These together form the reality that you know. You are hardly at the mercy of a reality, therefore, that exists apart from yourself, or is thrust upon you. You are so intimately connected with the physical events composing your life experience that often you cannot distinguish between the seemingly material occurrences and the thoughts, expectations and desires that gave them birth.

If there are strongly negative characteristics present in your most intimate thoughts, if these actually form bars between you and a more full life, still you often look through the bars, not seeing them. Until they are recognized they are impediments. Even obstacles have a reason for being. If they are your own, then it is up to you to recognize them and discover the circumstances behind their existence.

Your conscious thoughts can be great clues in uncovering such obstructions. You are not nearly as familiar with your own thoughts as you may imagine. They can escape from you like water through your fingers, carrying with them vital nutrients that spread across the landscape of your psyche — and all too often carrying sludge and mud that clog up the channels of experience and creativity.

An examination of your conscious thoughts will tell you much about the state of your inner mind, your intentions and expectations, and will often lead you to a direct confrontation with challenges and problems. Your thoughts, studied, will let you see where you are going. They point clearly to the nature of physical events. What exists physically exists first in thought and feeling. There is no other rule.

(9:40.) You have the conscious mind for a good reason. You are not at the mercy of unconscious drives unless you consciously acquiesce to them. Your present feelings and expectations can always be used to check your progress. If you do not like your experience, then you must change the nature of your conscious thoughts and expectations. You must alter the kind of messages that you are sending through your thoughts to your own body, to friends and associates.

Sometimes you blame others, your own background, or a previous life — if you accept reincarnation. You may hold God or the devil responsible, or you may simply say, “That is life,” and accept the negative experience as a necessary portion of your lot.

All consciousness has within it the deep abiding impetus to use its abilities fully, to expand its capacities, to venture joyfully beyond the seeming barriers of its own experience. The very consciousnesses within the smallest molecules cry out against any ideas of limitation. They yearn toward new forms and experiences. Even atoms, then, constantly seek to join in new organizations of structure and meaning. They do this “instinctively.”

Man has been endowed, and has endowed himself, with a conscious mind to direct the nature, shape and form of his creations. All deep aspirations and unconscious motivations, all unspoken drives, rise up for the approval or disapproval of the conscious mind, and await its direction.

Only when it abdicates its functions does it allow itself to become swayed by “negative” experience. Only when it refuses responsibility does it finally find itself at the seeming mercy of events over which it appears to have no control.

Now: Books on positive thinking alone, while sometimes beneficial, usually do not take into consideration the habitual nature of negative feelings, aggressions, or repressions. Often these are merely swept under the rug.

The existence of so-called negative thoughts and feelings will not be glossed over, but neither will your ability to handle these. Period. For they are quite under your control. There are methods of using these as springboards for creativity. At no time will you be told to repress them, to ignore them. You will be shown how to recognize those within your experience, to discover which of them has been allowed to run away with you, and how to manage those that seem to be beyond your control.

The methods that I will outline demand concentration and effort. They will also challenge you, and bring into your life expansion and alterations of consciousness of a most rewarding nature.

I am not a physical personality. Basically, however, neither are you. Your experience now is physical. You are a creator translating your expectations into physical form. The world is meant to serve as a reference point. The exterior appearance is a replica of inner desire. You can change your personal world. You do change it without knowing it. You have only to use your ability consciously, to examine the nature of your thoughts and feelings and project those with which you basically agree.

The point will be made that all healings are the result of the acceptance of one basic fact: That matter is formed by those inner qualities that give it vitality, that structure follows expectation, that matter at any time can be completely changed by the activation of the creative faculties inherent in all consciousness.

(A few notes, added later: Six months were to pass before we learned the rest of the title for Seth’s book. While Jane was resting before supper on October 25, 1972, the full name popped into her conscious mind: The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book. We held the 623rd session, bridging Chapters Four and Five, that evening.