“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.

Human self-consciousness existed in psychological time, and in inner ‘time’ long before you, as a species, constructed it. For your friend’s sake, I will say this as simply as possible: Human consciousness was inherent and latent from the beginning of your physical universe. I suggest a brief break, and do not crack up into pieces. I give you this slight evidence of my humor, Joseph, simply to show you that I am not, after all, one to carry grudges.

Indeed like you, my dear Joseph, Seth said. In your case, as I have told you, you overcompensate now for past fleshiness by a most unnecessary self-punishing attitude. Phillip, on the other hand, is performing no such compensations, except for one instance of choosing a good-looking wife and therefore permitting himself to treat her kindly.

He was in a different position when he was a woman, Seth said with obvious humor. And if I may give away some secrets, he was beaten by one pigheaded husband who had a snout to match!

“When did this happen?” Rob asked. He was trying to lead Seth on again. Mark just looked from one of us to the other.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

That ability is also growing on your part, Joseph, and with you, it will involve visionary data, as you call it. And another word about our material; Ruburt’s mind is an excellent one and well given to serve our ends at this time. There is a reciprocal agreement here, a give and take, quite different from your friend’s idea of psychological invasion.

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.

Now people who believe strongly in your organized religions are used to thinking in terms of an inner world. For that reason, many of them have been recipients of inner data from others like myself. They are often endowed with a readiness to listen, for one thing … there are disadvantages involved, however, which I do not like to encounter.

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.

“Well, okay, ever onward,” I said, because despite it all, I felt it foolish to look a gift horse in the mouth. I also felt that in each of us there is a deep connection with “magical” elements of our nature—magical in that they rise like poetic inspiration, filling the mundane world with a special living, personal meaning. To refuse such “gifts” from the “gods” might be far more dangerous than accepting them. These thoughts were far beneath my conscious ones, though. Only now, writing this book, did I recall entertaining them.

In a dream, I have said, you can experience many days while no corresponding amount of physical time passes. It seems as if you travel very far in the flicker of an eyelash. Now, condensed time is the time felt by the entity, while any of its given personalities live on a plane of physical materialization. To go into this further, many have said that life was a dream. They were true to the facts in one regard, yet far afield as far as the main issue is concerned.

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 entity itself does not have to keep constant track of its personalities because each one possesses an inner self-conscious part that knows its origin. This part, for now, I will call the self-conscious beyond the subconscious. … I mentioned that some part of you knows exactly how much oxygen the lungs breathe, and this is the part of which I spoke. It also receives all inner data.

It was in this session that Seth made the analogy of the “weird creature with two faces,” one turned to physical reality and one to inner reality, both conscious and aware, each representing one facet of our consciousness.

Now a small chat about your hilarious furniture changings and rechangings and rechangings. The bookcases should stay as they are, Ruburt. Enough is enough, and you have optimum benefit from them. The bedroom arrangement is fine, and if no one will blame Ruburt’s subconscious, then I would venture one further suggestion. It is not, however, to involve any more complicated arrangements on Ruburt’s part. Simply put: The addition of a small desk and chair to the bedroom as a more or less permanent fixture for a small private place, accessible when he wants it, for our so-sensitive and sometimes pig-headed Ruburt. …

Rob laughed about all this after the session. “A terrific lot of new material, really startling, on dream reality and some suggestions about your furniture, all in one night!”

I had to grin. “I’ve always moved furniture, even as a kid,” I said. “I used to move from a side bedroom to a front one whenever the mood hit me. The front room was my work-mood room, with all my poetry books predominating and no curtains, very spare. The other room was my play-it-safe-be-like-everybody-else-mood-curtains and conventional paraphernalia.”