“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now: Dictation (on The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression): As the earth is composed of many environments, so is the psyche. As there are different continents, islands, mountains, seas, and peninsulas, so the psyche takes various shapes. If you live in one country, you often consider natives in other areas of the world as foreigners, while of course they see you in the same light. In those terms, the psyche contains many other levels of reality. From your point of view these might appear alien, and yet they are as much a part of your psyche as your motherland is a portion of the earth.

The psyche, however, while being earth-tuned in your experience, also has many other systems of reality “to contend with.” Each psyche, then, contains within it the potentials, abilities, and powers that are possible, or capable of actualization under any conditions.

Consciousness forms symbols. It is not the other way around. Symbols are great exuberant playthings. You can build with them as you can with children’s blocks. You can learn from them, as once you piled alphabet blocks together in a stack at school. Symbols are as natural to your minds as trees are to the earth. There is a difference, however, between a story told to children about forests, and a real child in a real woods. Both the story and the woods are “real.” But in your terms the child entering the real woods becomes involved in its life cycle, treads upon leaves that fell yesterday, rests beneath trees far older than his or her memory, and looks up at night to see a moon that will soon disappear. Looking at an illustration of the woods may give a child some excellent imaginative experiences, but they will be of a different kind, and the child knows the difference.