“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

So-called human consciousness did not suddenly appear. Our poor maligned friend, the ape, did not suddenly beat his hairy chest in exultation and cry, ‘I am a man.’ The beginnings of human consciousness, on the other hand, began as soon as multi-cellular groupings began to form in field patterns of a certain complexity.

“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!”

Now it was Mark’s turn to laugh. Rob and I had never met his wife. Nor was he a close friend, merely a good acquaintance who lived out of town and visited Elmira only when his business required it, about once every six weeks.

The session continued. I had long forgotten that we had a visitor. My previous nervousness was like a dream. I was aware of nothing except of a great supporting energy and, someplace far off, the room in which my body walked. Mark sat there fascinated, Rob told me later, his salesman’s smile replaced by bewilderment and determination. He was to attend many other sessions. Whether or not he and Seth were friends in a past life, they became good friends in this one. Some excellent evidential material was to be obtained through sessions with Mark several years later. He was to recall Seth’s warning to cut down on drinking because of his predisposition to gout; he came down with gouty arthritis.

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.

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?

Indeed. One reason for the success of our communications is the peculiar abilities in both of you and the interaction between them — and the use you let me make of them. Ruburt’s intellect had to be of high quality. His subconscious and conscious mind had to be acquainted with certain ideas to begin with, in order for the complexity of this material to come through.

The session went on as Seth gave Rob some excellent psychological insights into his own behavior, and tied this is with early experience in this life, and with relationships with his present family in past life existences. The strong voice continued, and once during a break, Rob asked me how I felt. “Like a full sail, filled with energy, carried on, full blast,” I said.

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.

Arrangements you can think of that will satisfy some of these needs are worth it. If Ruburt had his way, something would shield you both from the door, also, when you are eating. He does not like to eat in view of others. (As when someone comes to the door at mealtime.) Any corner working place pleases him because it provides for the collection of psychic energy and serves as protection.

[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.

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. …

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.

To a lesser degree, you function along these lines in varying roles when you exist simultaneously as a member of a family, a community and a nation and as an artist or writer. As you attempt to use your abilities, so does the entity use its abilities, and he organizes his various personalities and, to some extent, directs their activities while still allowing them what you could call free will. …