“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In the next session the following night, Seth launched into the nature of my last trance experience and used it as a stepping stone for his first real discussion of the nature of human personality. As the session shows, Seth apparently decided that it was time to take me in hand. From here on, he would continue to comment on my trance experiments and teach me to regulate them.

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 …

Actually, the dominant personality, in your terms, can be compared to the dominant entity. Please understand that I am using an analogy here. As the personality on your plane actually changes, expands and grows to its potentialities, as it presents at various times varied images to the world (such as — if you’ll forgive me for using cliches — a smiling face, a sorrowful face), but is still basically the same personality, so on another level does the entity present at various times a varied appearance and speak in a different voice. As the smiling and sorrowful faces also express and expand the personality, so, too, do the various reincarnated personalities express and expand the entity as a whole.

Joseph, when your hands grow tired of taking notes, I do wish you would volunteer to take a break and relieve me of an ever-growing compassionate concern for your physical condition. Surely after our pleasant chat the other evening, you should know that nothing of this sort would offend me. I would much prefer more broken-up sessions if they are necessary, than sessions in which I see myself as a torture master.

And please do not think of yourself as some sort of a male stenographer. Through means I cannot explain at this date, I could not speak through Ruburt without you, and a kink in your present personality would quite prevent me from communicating with you 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.

“I really felt that someone else was here, that Seth was looking out the window,” Rob said, when the session was over. “It was … nostalgic.” He told me what had happened.

“Does it?” Rob asked, turning the remark around at me, as he often does. He seemed so sure of himself and of the material; I envied him.

Part of Rob’s confidence came from observation. He could see the change that came over me while I was speaking for Seth, and Seth inspires confidence. Rob liked Seth immediately. The two of them set up an excellent rapport. Through me, Seth related to Rob. Almost from the beginning he was an objectified personality to Rob; a visitor regardless of the unconventional situation; someone in whose ideas Rob was tremendously interested. On the other hand, I only knew what had been said when the trance (or the fun) was over. It was a terrific change for me to suddenly have to rely on someone else — even Rob — to tell me what “I” had been saying for a period of two or three hours.

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.

Rob grinned. “Credit my subconscious then. I didn’t sit down and figure it out. The thought just came to me this morning. There was something I wanted to ask you, though. Why do Jane’s eyes appear to be darker and more luminous when she’s delivering your messages? Our cat’s eyes had that same look in the last session.”

If you’ll forgive me, Joseph, I would like to repeat: Mental enzymes allow the solidified vitality to change form. Your ‘light is a mental enzyme’ tipped me off that you were ready for this discussion. Needless to say, mental enzymes and solidified vitality are dependent upon each other in many ways. The enzyme part of our little equation permits vitality to operate successfully under diverse mental and physical situations and forms the basis for each particular system of existence.

We didn’t realize it at the time, but in these early sessions, Seth was gently leading us down the “garden path” — it became more difficult to think of the world in the usual terms, for example. Even though I had come to no conclusions as to what Seth was or wasn’t, the Seth material itself fascinated me. Its source in Seth made it only too clear that other channels of information and experience were open to us beside those we had known earlier.