“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.

Different countries follow different kinds of constitutions, and even within any geographical area there may be various local laws followed by the populace. For example, if you are driving a car you may discover to your chagrin that the local speed limit in one small town is miles slower than in another. In the same manner, different portions of the psyche exist with their own local “laws,” their different kinds of “government.” They each possess their own characteristic geography.

(9:34.) As you approached the boundaries of certain psychic lands, the wristwatch would run backwards. As you entered other kingdoms of the psyche, your watch would go faster or slower. Now, if time suddenly ran backward you would notice it. If it ran faster or slower enough, you would also notice the differences. If time ran backward very slowly, and according to the conditions, you might not be aware of the difference, because it would take so much “time” to get from the present moment to the one “before” it that you might be struck, instead, simply with the feeling that something was familiar, as if it had happened before.

(Long pause, one of many.) We will have to use some of your terms, however, particularly in the beginning. Other terms with which you are familiar, we will squeeze out of all recognition. The reality of your own being cannot be defined by anyone but you, and then your own definition must be understood as a reference point at best. The psychologist, the priest, the physicist, the philosopher or the guru, can explain your own psyche to you only insofar as those specialists can forget that they are specialists, and deal directly with the private psyche from which all specializations come.

(10:21. Jane’s trance had lasted for just one hour. “He’s really going to town — I can tell,” she said. I suggested that she devote the rest of the session to some personal questions she wanted to ask Seth. She agreed, so this break marked the end of book dictation for the evening.)