“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:15.) When in colonial times men and women traveled westward across the continent of North America, many of them took it on faith that the land did indeed continue beyond — for example — towering mountains. When you travel as pioneers through your own reality, you create each blade of grass, each inch of land, each sunset and sunrise, each oasis, friendly cabin or enemy encounter as you go along.

(Long pause.) It creates in physical terms that you recognize. On the other hand, you create physical time for your psyche, for without you there would be no experience of the seasons, their coming and their passing.

There would be no experience of what Ruburt (Seth’s “entity” name for Jane) calls “the dear privacy of the moment,” so if one portion of your being wants to rise above the solitary march of the moments, other parts of your psyche rush, delighted, into that particular time-focus that is your own. As you now desire to understand the timeless, infinite dimensions of your own greater existence, so “even now” multitudinous elements of that nonearthly identity just as eagerly explore the dimensions of earthbeing and creaturehood.

(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.

(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.

(9:55. Jane was really charged up from the day’s events: She’d received the first six copies of her poetry book Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time, which was just off the press at Prentice-Hall, and during break we discussed that book.

(Pause.) Again, rather than trying to define the psyche, I will try to incite your imagination so that you can leap beyond what you have been told you are, to some kind of direct experience. To some extent this book itself provides its own demonstration. I call Jane Roberts “Ruburt” (and, hence, “he” and “him”) simply because the name designates another portion of her reality, while she identifies herself as Jane. She writes her own books and carries on as each of you do in life’s ordinary context. She has her own unique likes and dislikes, characteristics and abilities; her own time and space slot as each of you do. She is one living portrait of the psyche, independent in her own context, and in the environment as given.

(10:39. Seth did continue with personal material for both of us. Ordinarily he’d have ended the session after that. This evening, however, Jane felt so much energy that Seth returned for some more book dictation — the first time a session has worked out that way as far as I can remember.

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.

In this new book, therefore, I will sometimes provide my own “scene setting.” The psyche’s production, in other words, has escaped practical, physical bounds, so that from my level of reality I can no longer expect Joseph to do more than record the sessions. I will ask you, my readers, to bear with me then. In my own way, I will try to provide suitable references so that you know what is going on physically in your time, as this book is written.

Largely, the writing of this book occurs in a “no-time, or out-of-time context.” Physically, however, Ruburt and Joseph take many hours in its production. They have moved to a new house. Ruburt, as usual, is smoking as I speak. His foot rests upon a coffee table, as he moves back and forth in his rocking chair. It is nearing midnight as I speak (at 11:42). Earlier, a great thunderstorm raged, its reverberations seeming to crack the sky. Now it is quiet, with only the drone of Ruburt’s new refrigerator sounding like the deep purr of some mechanical animal.