“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(As we sat speaking with Mark, Jane finally told me that Seth wanted to have a session since we had missed last night’s regular one. Seth also wanted Mark to stay. But tonight, since it was getting late and I had doubts about being able to keep up with the dictation, I thought it better that we pass up the chance. I also thought Jane would be too tired, after the exhausting time she’d had last night. Mark offered to leave after I explained as best I could what was happening, but I said that we’d rather wait for the next regular scheduled session night.)

This evening was different. You were polite to your guest, and I recognize his presence. You were not, however, as polite with me. Ruburt was dubious about a session with company present but willing to go along. You know that I have no objections to your friend’s presence. For that matter, I welcome a witness, and it is time you had one for your own edification, not mine, and it should do our nervous pigeon, Ruburt, some good.

Mark sat there, considerably startled. I was in trance, of course, but, knowing him, I can well imagine how he must have stared at me as I strode back and forth speaking in that deep Seth voice and talking to Rob in such a manner. When Rob explained briefly about Seth before the session, he’d asked Mark questions he’d like answered. Mark said that he was interested in the connection between consciousness and evolution. Now, almost immediately, Seth said:

Self-consciousness entered in very shortly after but not what you are pleased to call human self-consciousness. I do not like to wound your egos in this manner, and I can hear you yell ‘foul,’ but there is no actual differentiation between the various kinds of consciousness.

While there was no specific entry point as far as human consciousness was concerned, there was a point (in your terms) where it did not seem to exist. The consciousness of being human was fully developed in the caveman, of course, but the human conception was alive in the fish.

“Seth answered each question I had the minute it came to mind,” he said. “Rob gave me a piece of paper. I intended to write questions down as I thought of them, but I never got the chance to do it. He answered them in order.” He shook his head. “Seth did. Or you did. Somebody did. I’ve never heard or seen anything like this!”

“It would be the simplest explanation, and I’d be a lot less bewildered if I could think that was it,” Mark said. “But the answers were just too specific, too on time, too direct. I’ll tell you, I’ll make out a statement to that effect.”

Was Mark right? I wondered. “I’m quite willing to admit that telepathy might exist,” I said. “But if I have any part in it, I’d like to know what’s going on and how Seth did it — or how I did it.”

I delight in astounding the present personalities of old acquaintances by letting them know we have known each other before. It is a failing of mine, but I enjoy it. … There are many times that our paths have crossed, and that is why I wanted you here and why you happened onto the art gallery where Ruburt is employed. Not that free will is not involved, because it is. Only that old friends have a way of meeting. And I was not joking when I spoke earlier of your having a predisposition to gout; for you have also been lecherous in your way.

But that night, Mark insisted that Seth had read his mind and listened spellbound as Seth told him about the inner senses. None of us suspected that Seth would give Mark detailed information about the inner organization for which he worked, or help him understand personal problems, or delight in telling him what had gone on at sales conferences that Mark had already attended — or with a great rush of humor tell him the exact amount of a new raise he had just been given. All of that was in the future.

There is no way of measuring inner experience, or the psychological experience, rather, of someone who has lost a friend in death, but you do not deny that such an experience happens. Yet, if two people see the same ‘apparition,’ then instantly twice the evidence is required.

It was midnight before the session ended. After it was over, and our salesman friend left for his motel in a nearby town, Seth came through with a few personal remarks for Rob. We had already gone into the bedroom when I felt drawn to go out into the front room to my desk. Standing there, silently, I felt Seth near. My mind was a whirl. I knew that I felt that Seth was near, but, intellectually, I was full of questions. Had Seth really read Mark’s mind, or had Mark just wanted that to happen and convinced himself that it had? Did I feel Seth, or was I indulging in fantasies of a highly dangerous nature?

My dear Joseph, one word only. I would not leave you with the impression that I was truly displeased or that I judge you unjustly. I do not want to hurt Ruburt’s feelings, and I have avoided making this statement thus far, but I have been emotionally more involved with you in past existences [than with Ruburt]. I know your capabilities so well that when I seem severe, it is only because I wish so for your happiness and success.

I suppose we judge those we love most in a harsher manner, but I should know better, and for once you have my apology. I think very much of you. I did not mean to push you too hard, and I certainly do not mean to make you feel inadequate in any manner.

“It’s easy enough for you to talk,” I retorted. “I don’t particularly mind a mischievous subconscious, but a deceptive one is something else again.”

“No. But even though I think telepathy is possible … I can’t quite believe that in a trance state, through me, another personality read someone else’s mind — that’s it!” I said. “I’ve put my finger on it. Besides, I didn’t like Seth taking you to task in front of Mark. And that made me question if I was really far more disturbed than I think I was because you didn’t help with Miss Cunningham the other night. What a beautiful and sneaky thing to do! Have a secondary personality give you the dickens over it — and in front of company — with me supposedly in the clear, taking no responsibility for it at all.”

“But then, you’d hide it all from yourself,” Rob objected. “You’d never suspect.”

“Yes. Yes,” I said, near tears. “But maybe I’m just too smart for my own good.”

I looked up. “I don’t know. But if it’s true, then we’re really involved in something with fantastic potential … highly unique in a way … and that sounds too egotistical. …

There are many things I want to tell you tonight. For one thing, you may dispense with the board. It was important in the beginning, but after this it served to upset Ruburt. It was in the way, and he kept waiting for the most favorable moment to dispense with it and begin speaking for me, so that he became anxious. Do not let it go, however. That is, do not return it. It has sentimental value.

And as for advancements as of now — these have to do with the ‘flashes’ that Ruburt has received between sessions. He has achieved a state in which he can receive inner data from me more readily. But beyond that, he is now able in some small way to contact me. That is, I have contacted you in the past, and now he is gaining the ability to contact me.

In my operations in your plane, I must use the materials at hand, but despite any ideas to the contrary, this involves a give and take … Ruburt’s “Idea Construction” was rather amazing under the circumstances. The inner senses provided him with much, but the manuscript itself [as written up] also represented an achievement of the conscious mind. I was drawn by this to realize that you were ready for me.

You are so consciously aware of your own needs for privacy, Joseph, that Ruburt’s strong but mostly unconscious needs in these directions sometimes go unsatisfied, since he is not aware of them. … You are both very much alike beneath the obvious differences, but Ruburt’s largely unrecognized needs along these lines are important. … He holds and collects his psychic energy, and without knowing it, he does not like it to ‘bleed’ outward. The illusion of an entryway — an inner hall — would serve these ends. This is merely a suggestion.

[Ruburt] is unpredictable in that he is temperamentally good-natured, but you never know when the rocks will fly, and neither does he. Added to this is his strong domestic feelings now as a woman — and this, my dear Joseph, explains the incredible amount of furniture movings in which you have been involved.

Your own working room should not be disturbed — that is, you should continue to have it. This is very important for you. Ruburt will benefit from the same kind of arrangement whenever it is possible, but he will get along well in the large room with the suggestions offered.

But we spent the weekend rearranging furniture. Rob stacked some bookcases, bought vertical dowels for the top, and arranged the whole affair in front of the door so that we had an inside entry hall. We used the bookcases for the books on psychic phenomena that we were beginning to collect and started some potted philodendron vines between the dowels. The minute the bookcase was in place, I felt more at ease. We’ve changed its location several times but never removed it. Today the vines go to the ceiling. I know now that if it hadn’t been for this divider, we would have moved long ago. Just the same, with the attitude I had at the time, I’m glad I didn’t know about the letter that was to arrive the next day.

About three weeks previously, Rob had written to a psychologist interested in reincarnation. He enclosed some session copies, mostly dealing with reincarnational material. Two days after the twenty-seventh session, we received a letter from him. He told us that the very fluency of the material suggested that it might come from my subconscious, though it was impossible to tell. (He mentioned the Patience Worth case, with which we were now familiar, as a notable exception.) But he also cautioned that in some circumstances, amateur mediumship could lead to mental problems.

But the letter made me cautious, too. Quite unknowingly, I set one side of myself — the intellectual — as a watchdog against the intuitive portions of the self. The tendency had always been present, but now I determined to go ahead — often by double-checking my every step. Later, I would have to learn to relax with myself again.

There is no danger of dissociation grabbing ahold of Ruburt like some black vague and furry monster, carrying him away to the netherlands of hysteria, schizophrenia or insanity. I have consistently advised contacts with the world at large and advised you both to use your abilities to meet outside challenges. Withdrawal into dissociation as a hiding place from the world could, of course, have dire consequences. Certain personalities could and have fallen prey here, but with you this is not the case. …

Also, Ruburt has experienced and used dissociation in his work, though to a lesser degree, before our communications and knows how to handle it… Our relationship will enable you both to deal more adequately with the outside world. … The development of the inner senses will not blot out physical reality but allow you to see it more clearly for what it is, and, therefore, you will be able to manipulate camouflage patterns better. …

Still, I didn’t know what to make of the material Seth gave us on dreams and the personality that night. Was it symbolically true or practically true or both? When it was typed, we both read it over several times. We were to discover that the dream universe was far more valid than we had ever supposed, but what Seth said then sounded like nothing we had ever read or heard before.

The life of any given individual could be legitimately compared to the dream of an entity. While the individual suffers and enjoys his given number of years, these years are but a flash to the entity. The entity is concerned with them in the same way that you are concerned with your dreams. As you give inner purpose and organization to your dreams, and as you obtain insight and satisfaction from them, though they involve only a portion of your life, so the entity to some extent directs and gives purpose and organization to his personalities. So does the entity obtain insights and satisfactions from its existing personalities, although no one of them takes up all of its attention.

The dream world has its own reality, its own ‘time’ and its own inner organization. As the entity is only partially concerned with its personalities after setting them into motion, so you are unconcerned with this dream world after you have set it into motion. But it exists.

To a different degree, it is filled with conscious semi-personalities. They are not [as a rule] as developed as you are, as you are not as developed as your entity is. That dream world experiences its own continuity. It is not aware of any break, for example, when you are waking. It does not know if you sleep or wake. It merely exists to a fairly vivid degree while you dream or sleep, and it sleeps but does not ‘die’ when you waken. …

This portion of the personality translates inner data and sifts it through the subconscious, which is a barrier and also a threshold to the present personality. I told you also that the topmost layers of the subconscious contain personal memories and beneath — racial memory. The personality is not actually layered, of course, but continuing with the necessary analogy, beneath the racial memories you look out upon another dimension of reality with the face of this other self-conscious part of you.

This portion is ‘turned toward’ the entity. When such abilities as telepathy are used, this function is carried on continually by this other self-conscious part of you. But as a rule, you act upon such data without the knowledge of the ordinary conscious self.

There is also a corresponding, but ‘lesser’ self-consciousness that connects your present personalities with the dream world, which is aware of its origin and communicates data from you to dream reality. …

I was going to mention the furniture arrangements that we embarked upon during this time but find that a few excerpts from this same session give a pretty fair picture. They are pertinent for several reasons. Seth seemed to know how we could best utilize our surroundings to serve conscious and unconscious needs. We’d been in the apartment three years when the sessions began, yet in a few session comments Seth managed to clear up several points that we had had never settled.

“And now … the objects represent inner things we don’t recognize, and when we move them around, we rearrange the inner feelings too; or vice versa. But suppose Seth starts really telling us how to arrange stuff. I mean, whenever he wants to. …

“I knew you’d think of that,” Rob said. But I had nothing to worry about. After “settling us down,” making the few changes that seemed to be of such great help, Seth left all housekeeping problems to me.