“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Even though I said yes, at first break I checked the dictionary definition for oversoul, just in case it might lead me to ask Seth for more clarification. The dictionary discussed the oversoul as the spirit infusing all living things, resulting in the perfect realization of an ideal nature. This is a concept in the nineteenth-century transcendentalist philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson⁵ and others.)

YOUR LIFE AS YOUR MOST INTIMATE WORK OF ART, AND THE NATURE OF CREATIVITY AS IT APPLIES TO YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

THE NATURE OF SPONTANEOUS ILLUMINATION, AND THE NATURE OF ENFORCED ILLUMINATION. THE SOUL IN CHEMICAL CLOTHES

“The Nature of Spontaneous Illumination, and the Nature of Enforced Illumination. The Soul in Chemical Clothes.”

Many have come to me, or written after “bad trips”; the young especially, always great searchers after truth, and very tempted to look to the chemical, LSD now,¹ as the latest method of finding it. I am not speaking of marijuana at all, which is a different thing altogether and is a natural product of the earth. I am talking about a chemical that is a result of your technological knowledge.

(10:14.) These natural states activate within your cells “past” memory having to do with joyful cellular response, brought about by particular events in your lifetime whether you are aware of them or not.

Naturally, left alone, you will at various times spontaneously experience such states of grace or illumination, though you may not use those terms. You will feel at peace with yourself and your world, or you will surpass yourself, suddenly feeling a part of events and phenomena usually considered not yourself. But to one extent or another such experiences are natural and a part of your heritage.

Your conscious mind, again, is a part of your inner self, and ever-changing. In terms of species consciousness it is a development of great significance. It draws strength from such sources of vitality and rejuvenation. They come naturally up to consciousness. Psychologists usually see people who are already in difficulty. The happy man has no need for such a visit. Few studies have been done to discover why the happy man is happy, yet his answers would be highly pertinent.

The new ego is quite aware of the conditions of its birth. It knows it was born out of the death of its predecessor, and for all its feelings of transcendent joy, natural enough at its birth, it fears that annihilation from which it sprang.

The natural creature-integrity is not the same. The physical world will never be trusted in quite the same way. The alliance with it is not as secure. (Still very positively:) The “self” that was born into the body, and grew with it, has gone, and another “self” has risen from that previous organization.

Now: Such self-changes happen naturally as life progresses, and when the self modulates at any given time, it is different from what it was. When this occurs “all by itself” it is an innate reflection of the psyche’s creativity and happens with its own rhythm — connected to seasons of the mind and blood and consciousness and cells in ways that you do not as yet understand. But the whole structure and its subsidiary relationships change together, and the conscious mind is able to assimilate what is happening.

(11:38.) Assaults upon your consciousness in such a manner challenge the stability of your species, and insult the integrity of your creaturehood. You may say that such chemicals are natural because they exist within the reality that you know, but the body is equipped to deal with ingredients that come from the earth. Great doses of such “artificial” drugs are not easily assimilated, and bring about biological confusion.

Within their native framework, some American Indians use peyote in their own way — but not as gluttons, stunning and annihilating their systems. They accept it as a natural ingredient belonging to their earthly structure. They do not try to blast themselves out of existence. They use it to increase the innate perceptions that they have.