“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.

Now if you are looking for simple definitions to explain the psyche, I will be of no help. If you want to experience the splendid creativity of your own being, however, then I will use methods that will arouse your greatest adventuresomeness, your boldest faith in yourself, and I will paint pictures of your psyche that will lead you to experience even its broadest reaches, if you so desire. The psyche, then, is not a known land. It is not simply an alien land, to which or through which you can travel. It is not a completed or nearly complete subjective universe already there for you to explore. It is, instead, an ever-forming state of being, in which your present sense of existence resides. You create it and it creates you.

(9:30.) Earlier I mentioned some odd effects that might occur if you tried to take your watch or other timepiece into other levels of reality. Now, when you try to interpret your selfhood in other kinds of existence, the same surprises or distortions or alterations can seem to occur. When you attempt to understand your psyche, and define it in terms of time, then it seems that the idea of reincarnation makes sense. You think “Of course. My psyche lives many lives physically, one after the other. If my present experience is dictated by that in my childhood, then surely my current life is a result of earlier ones.” And so you try to define the psyche in terms of time, and in so doing you limit your understanding and even your experience of it.

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.