“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I am not saying that words cannot be used to describe the psyche, but they cannot define it. It is futile to question: “What is the difference between my psyche and my soul, my entity and my greater being?” for all of these are terms used in an effort to express the greater portions of your own experience that you sense within yourself. Your use of language may make you impatient for definitions, however. Hopefully this book will allow you some intimate awareness, some definite experience, that will acquaint you with the nature of your own psyche, and then you will see that its reality escapes all definitions, defies all categorizing, and shoves aside with exuberant creativity all attempts to wrap it up in a neat package.

(Long pause.) Let us try another analogy: You are an artist in the throes of inspiration. There is before you a canvas, and you are working in all areas of it at once. In your terms each part of the canvas could be a time period — say, a given century. You are trying to keep some kind of overall balance and purpose in mind, so when you make one brushstroke in any particular portion of this canvas, all the relationships within the entire area can change. No brushstroke is ever really wiped out, however, in this mysterious canvas of our analogy, but remains, further altering all the relationships at its particular level.

These magical brushstrokes, however, are not simple representations on a flat surface, but alive, carrying within themselves all of the artist’s intent, but focused through the characteristics of each individual stroke.

If the artist paints a doorway, all of the sensed perspectives within it open, and add further dimensions of reality. Since this is our analogy, we can stretch it as far as we like — far further than any artist could stretch his canvas (leaning forward humorously). Therefore, there is no need to limit ourselves. The canvas itself can change size and shape as the artist works. The people in the artist’s painting are not simple representations either — to stare back at him with forever-fixed glassy eyes, or ostentatious smiles (again humorously), dressed in their best Sunday clothes. Instead, they can confront the artist and talk back. They can turn sideways in the painting and look at their companions, observe their environment, and even look out of the dimensions of the painting itself and question the artist.

Now the psyche in our analogy is both the painting and the artist, for the artist finds that all of the elements within the painting are portions of himself. More, as he looks about, our artist discovers that he is literally surrounded by other paintings that he is also producing. As he looks closer, he discovers that there is a still-greater masterpiece in which he appears as an artist creating the very same paintings that he begins to recognize.

Our artist then realizes that all of the people he painted are also painting their own pictures, and moving about in their own realities in a way that even he cannot perceive.

(10:20.) So Ruburt’s subjective perspective opens up because of his desire and interest, and discloses my own. He opens up a door in himself that leads to other levels of his being, but a being that cannot be completely expressed in your world. That existence is mine, expressed in my experience at another level of reality, so I must write my books through Ruburt. Doors in the psyche are different from simple openings that lead from one room to another, so my books only show a glimpse of my own existence. You all have such psychological doors, however, that lead into dimensionally greater areas of the psyche, so to some extent or another I speak for those other aspects of yourselves that do not appear in your daily context.

(“All right.”)

In the same way, each of my readers has a connection with the same level of psychic reality. In greater terms, all of this is happening at once. Ruburt is contributing and forming a certain portion of my experience, even as I am contributing to his. Your identities are not something already completed. Your most minute action, thought, and dream adds to the reality of your psyche, no matter how grand or austere the psyche may appear to you when you think of it as a hypothetical term.

(“I’m all right for another half hour or so,” I said.)

You all have physical reality to deal with. This applies equally to Ruburt and Joseph (Seth’s entity name for me). Thus far, my books have included Joseph’s extended notes. They have set the scene, so to speak. My books have gone beyond those boundaries, however. In your terms, only so much can be done in time. Joseph is even now involved in typing my previous manuscript (The “Unknown” Reality). It was written in such a way that it tied the personal experience of Ruburt and Joseph in with a greater theoretical framework, so that one could not be separated from the other.

You have hypnotized yourselves so that it seems to you that there are great divisions between your waking and your sleeping experience. Yet each of you will fall sleep tonight, and you will have experiences that you forget only because you have been told that you cannot remember them. Many of the other dimensions of your own reality appear clearly when you are sleeping, however. When you sleep, you forget all definitions that you have placed upon yourself and your own existence through training. In sleep you use images and languages in their pure form.