“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.)

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.

You are either conscious of self or you are not. A tree is conscious of itself as a tree. It does not consider itself as a rock. A dog knows it is not a cat. What I am trying to point out here is this supreme egotistical presumption that self-consciousness must of necessity involve humanity per se. It does not.

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.”

“What will I call, uh, Seth, in my statement?” Mark asked and Seth interrupted,

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.

That night, Seth emphasized only the importance of inner reality and the validity of the inner senses that made nonphysical knowledge available whenever we were ready to admit it. Once Seth smiled broadly and said,

“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.”

In the beginning particularly, there is always a distortion of such material by the person who receives it. So a person whose personal prejudices are at a minimum is excellent. Ruburt’s prejudices happen to lie along lines which do not contradict what I know to be true — so much the better — and there is less resistance.

“Well it does have humorous aspects,” Rob said. “I could hardly keep a straight face, hearing Seth make the suggestions and knowing ahead of time what you’d say. He knew too — it was funny.”

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.

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. …

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.

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.

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. …

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.

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!”