“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After supper Jane began to show signs of going into an altered state of consciousness. She started talking about her “silky” skin, and the luxurious feeling of her sweater against her back. She’d had similar feelings preceding the last session, too, although to a lesser degree; see the appropriate notes. Now, her already acute hearing began to magnify sounds — the rustle of cellophane as she opened a pack of cigarettes, the quality of my voice as I talked to our cat, Willy, the noise of my handling the newspaper. “But words are such poor things to describe the effects,” she said more than once. “They’re too trite….”

(Her situation reminded me of several transcendent states she’d achieved during the last year, so I suggested she go along with it. Jane said she preferred to hold the session. She went into the living room to read, and found the magazine she picked up “heavier” than it should be. Gradually her perception of the beauty in ordinary things became considerably heightened. She’d planned to turn her easy chair around so that she could look out at the street lights, but instead she found herself admiring the bookcase that the chair already faced. By now her voice had acquired a hard-to-define richer quality, joyous but subdued.

(We had a snack, then Jane moved to her rocker. While we waited for Seth to come through she stared wonderingly about the room, her eyes much darker than usual. “Everything looks so great: you, the room, Willy, but I think I can have a session. I want to….” Late in the session, Seth commented upon her state of expanded awareness.)

(Long pause.) The emotions connected with these bridge beliefs may indeed surprise you, but standing upon such unifying structures you are also free to let the emotional flow sweep past, feeling it, but aware for the first time, perhaps, of the origin of those feelings in your beliefs, and no longer afraid of being swept away by them.

It is impossible to tell you of the emotional reality of such an experience. You will have to discover it for yourself. Such bridge beliefs often allow you to perceive the “invisible” beliefs mentioned this evening, and these can then appear to you as a revelation. On second thought, however, you will realize that another belief blocked that one from your view, but that you were always aware of it; and that in a strange way it was also invisible because you took it for granted. You did not consider it a belief about reality but as reality itself, and never questioned it.

Now such concentration is excellent if the original concept continues to expand with your experience, and of itself is not limiting to a strong degree. You may see yourself primarily as a mother. Initially, that may simply involve taking care of your children at home. But if that idea of yourself remains limited then it may preclude, say, even being a wife to your husband, deny you many complementary interests, and prevent expansion of your personality in other areas.

With the initiation of psychic experience, he found himself wanting to write about what happened to him, and to use the material creatively. The previous beliefs in himself as a writer, however, clashed with these new urges because he did not consider anything but fiction as the work of a writer, except for poetry.

(11:12.) I gave him helpful information, but this could only be used by him as he felt it for himself and traveled through his own system of beliefs. When you understand the nature of reality and your part in forming it, then you can no longer look to others to solve your problems for you, and you realize that your own beliefs are the rich creative elements that you yourself must mix and match. If you think that certain foods will help you, then they will be effective in that system — because of your beliefs. If you believe in doctors, then they will help you.

If you believe in healers then they can help you, but all of those aids are only temporary at best. Ruburt was in a position where he realized that. He accepted the fact that he formed his own reality, and that there were physical aspects of it that disturbed him deeply. He also understood (long pause), that he could not use me as a crutch.

Dialogues (see the 639th session in Chapter Ten) is now a book, just completed, but it also represented a movement of the self through a question-and-answer format, through which Ruburt recognized and faced many diverse beliefs. Each reader can utilize the same method whether or not artistic achievement is also involved, through objectifying personal beliefs in a dialogue form. This also happens frequently in the dream state, when you allow your natural creativity so much freedom. Often there are dreams in which “you” are two separate people, either strangers or familiar, each asking questions of the other.

His core belief in himself as a writer, he saw, was really highly constrictive. He had not realized that before. At the same time he had consciously known it, but allowed it to remain invisible. He realized that the writing and psychic aspects each did want to write, and this was the bridge belief.

(Pause.) The original belief meant that he considered his reality in mental terms, generally identifying a writer with ideas, and using his body as a vehicle rather than thinking of it as the living organism through which creaturehood experience must come. So this evening the senses were allowed their freedom, but the experience was magnified by his psychic sensitivity.

If you consider yourself primarily physical then you may, in line with your beliefs, impede your spiritual or emotional aspects. In that case, working with your beliefs will lead you to greater experience along mental and spiritual paths. But all are interconnected, and you cannot ignore one except at the expense of others.

(11:37. Jane had been far out, she said, but she’d known Seth had been talking about her. During break her “ecstasy feelings” — she didn’t know what else to call them — continued. They surged through her. She was acutely conscious of the sensations of her clothing against her skin. “My body’s so alive that I almost can’t stand it at times —”

The same artificial need to vindicate being is present in many of my readers, and various core beliefs may be built up to hide this inner insecurity. You may “justify your life” by biological creativity, and then latch onto your children and never want to let them go. You may use your career instead. But in all cases you must come to grips with such unnecessary ideas, face the reality of your creaturehood, and see that you certainly have as much of a place in the universe as a squirrel, an ant or a leaf. You do not question their right to exist. Why question your own?