“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

At the precise time of Ruburt’s dream, Miss Cunningham was deciding to leave this plane of reality. Ruburt received the message directly. The unwillingness on Miss Cunningham’s part represented her present personality’s protest against the change that a deeper part of herself deemed necessary and proper.

She did not remember him … as she taught his children. He admired her very much as his children, one in particular, found her an excellent teacher. Frank Withers considered her a friend, attaching more importance than she did to her influence upon his children. But beyond this, Miss Cunningham’s present personality has been gently disentangling itself from this plane of reality — and she simply did not remember him.

Of course, the conscious mind cannot be aware of such critical inner decisions. … The disentanglement of her personality has been gentle and gradual. She is focusing less and less in this plane of reality, and again, gradually, she will begin to focus in another. There is a period of adjustment after leaving any plane, although yours involves the most difficulty since your camouflage pattern is unusually rigid.

The shock of birth is worse. The new personality is not entirely focused, and it must make immediate critical adjustments of the strongest nature. Death in your terms is a termination but does not involve such immediately critical manipulations. There is ‘time’ to catch up, so to speak. Already Miss Cunningham’s vital core of awareness is appearing on another plane, and she appears there as a wondering, but not frightened, young girl.

Yes. This is the case in her particular type of withdrawal. In a sudden death, however, this can be more upsetting to the personality involved, and since the new materialization is simultaneous, it can lead to confusion. …

So the first spring of the sessions came, a cold bright March. Miss Cunningham’s apartment door became a stimulus to my constant questions. Every time I passed it, I wondered again: Was she transferring her consciousness to another level of reality? Would she survive death when it came, in meaningful terms? And behind all these questions there was the big one: Was Seth really a personality who had survived death? And would I really ever know?

The inner senses operate on all planes and under all circumstances. The outer senses vary according to plane and circumstance. The outer senses are dependable only in terms of the definite system of reality for which they were constructed. Their purpose, of course, is to enable the conscious personality to recognize as valid, camouflage patterns that are only valid under certain conditions. …

All kinds of thoughts flooded to my mind. Consciousness was independent of the body — Seth was right — and if that was true, then there was no reason why he couldn’t be what he said he was: an independent personality, out of the flesh. But why hadn’t I caught on sooner? And why hadn’t I run up to see if the house mailbox had a name on it? I couldn’t wait till Rob came home so I could tell him what happened.