“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Rob was intrigued not only by the material but by Seth himself as he began to manifest his own personality more clearly. My voice had been undergoing changes, becoming more similar to what we now call the Seth voice — deeper, lower, richer in tone than mine and more masculine. But on this particular night, Rob watched, amused, while Seth told him in no uncertain terms what he thought of my experiment — using my own lips to do it! (I’m also including Rob’s notes, as they apply.)

This is the first of several key sessions included in this portion of the book as introductions to the interior universe. The material is included because of its importance in understanding the later concepts on dream reality and the methods of perceiving inner data.

I’m not going into so-called weather on my plane tonight. I came in halfway on an interesting little experiment that Ruburt tried on his own, and you can thank me that he came out of it so well. Really, Ruburt, I’m surprised at you. In your past life [in Boston] you would have known better.

Ruburt, you should cease smoking. For one thing, it is harmful, and I will go into the reasons at another date. For another, I refuse to sound like a hoarse horse. It is not good for my morale. Your voice is too sensitive this evening for me to attempt any transformation of it into the more ‘melodious’ accents of my own. I suggest — only to give Ruburt’s much maligned vocal cords a rest — that you take a break for a few minutes.

(With a laugh, Rob told me that as Seth, I’d been pacing up and down the room, giving “myself” the dickens about the trance experiment, then switching to the humorous comparison of his voice and mine. I still haven’t stopped smoking, incidentally. Back in those days, I wasn’t about to have a trance personality order me about, even for my own good. Now the habit still lingers, partially as a sign of my independence from Seth and partially as a sign of my dependence upon tobacco …

(In an earlier session, Seth said that while on vacation in Maine, we both unwittingly created two images — versions of ourselves — and then reacted to them. See The Seth Material.)

In your York Beach experience, had you not been able to form those images outside of yourselves, and so endow them with some physical reality, you might very well have turned yourself into schizophrenic personalities instead.

Many people are unable to endow fragments with such physical reality, and thus shove them more or less harmlessly away at arm’s length, as you did. Instead, the dissociated part of the personality dons another personality and battles with the dominant one for control. Many cases of so-called ‘possession’ can be laid to this alone.

And as far as assimilating our old Frank Withers, don’t let me lead you too far astray. The entity never dominates a previous personality. Sometimes these personalities also travel divergent ways for their own benefit and with the entity’s full consent.

As Seth continued to explain the inner sense and the unseen reality beneath the objective world that all of us know, I began to understand a little of my situation. And, of course, Rob and I both began to experiment with the inner senses. These experiments gave us first-hand information that was invaluable — especially to me. The next session cleared up several points I had been wondering about and gave us several clues as to how the inner senses could be used. It also includes a brief mention of flying saucers that I didn’t delete because of its obvious general interest. Again, Rob’s notes are inserted whenever they help explain the text.

(This morning at breakfast I announced suddenly, to Jane’s surprise and my own, that light was a mental enzyme … We started tonight’s session sitting at the board as usual, without asking questions.)

As far as light being a mental enzyme, this is true. I’m pleased that you came forward with this yourself. Mental enzymes create senses on the physical plane in order that they may be recognized and appreciated by the physical being. The mental enzymes are the same, basically, throughout the universe, but their materializations on any particular plane are determined by the properties inherent in the plane itself.

Because mental enzymes seem to give the same effects most of the time in your system, your scientists blithely label these as laws of nature; that is, the apparent laws of cause and effect. If you’ll forgive a pun, because a certain cause will usually give a certain effect in your physical universe, you may be justified in saying that the apparent results are laws that operate within your system. But stay in your own back yard.

As I mentioned, they carry their own particular camouflage with them. You recognize it as not your own. Taking off at right angles involves another of your natural laws which are not actual laws but only seem to be from where you are. … When science progresses on various planes, then such visitations become less accidental and more planned. However, since the inhabitants of each plane are bound by the particular materialized patterns of their ‘home,’ they bring this pattern of camouflaged vitality with them. Certain kinds of science cannot operate without it.

What happens is this: When the ‘flying saucer’ starts out toward its destination, the atoms and molecules that compose it (and which are themselves formed by vitality) are more or less aligned according to the pattern inflicted upon it by its own territory. As it enters your plane, a distortion occurs. The actual structure of the craft is caught in a dilemma of form.

“In other words, people from other systems of reality do appear in ours?” Rob asked.

This sort of experience involves a sudden psychic awareness that all boundaries are for practical purposes only … There are many kinds of science, however, besides your own. There are many, for example, just dealing with locomotion. Had the human race gone into certain mental disciplines as thoroughly as it has explored technology, then its practical transportation system would be vastly different and far more efficient.

As a result of the following sessions, for instance, we began “testing” physical reality for its subjective yields. We no longer took for granted the normal day with its succession of moments. Instead, we tried looking at time itself in a new way, practically speaking. We tried to experience it differently, particularly after the nineteenth session and an experiment in self-hypnosis that Rob tried on his own.