“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.

Consciously, you didn’t know what you were up to; unconsciously, you knew very well. This sort of dissociated state can be dangerous, particularly when induced haphazardly, as was certainly the case with you. If I had not happened to look in, you would have been in a great state for the rest of the evening. Or should I say morning?

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.

While I am with you, I am, in a way that I will later explain, attached to Jane, in that I can see what she sees, and so forth. I can dissociate myself [from her], but the effort involved is really not worth it. It is like putting on one sort of diving equipment, removing it for another and then redonning the first. Costumes are not always physical attire. They may also serve as a sort of vehicle … in the manner of diving equipment.

Now, there are various types of dreams and dream fragments. I will follow this through later on, since in these beginning sessions I am giving you what may be considered as a broad outline to be filled in. These dissociated states often occur in sleep, when the ego is quieted. At such times it is very possible for your present personalities to be visited by others such as myself, but only on the bidding of the entity.

“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.

“Wow, and this stuff …” I was reading Rob’s notes. “ ‘A fragment personality can become an entity.’ What’s the soul, then?”

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.

What I am trying to say, is that there are apparent rules of cause and effect, but the same causes do not always give the same effects. … There is much more I want to say along these lines. Please consider again our wires and mazes. I have said, if you’ll forgive the brief reminder, that these are composed of solidified vitality.

What these wires are, then, that seem to divide our planes and appear so differently in one plane than they do in another, is solidified vitality, whose camouflaging action is determined by mental enzymes. Now, perhaps, you will understand why I said earlier that sound can be seen and color can be heard. There are many diverse examples along this line.

So strong is this tendency for vitality to change from one apparent form to another, that what you have here in your flying saucers is something that is actually not of your plane nor of the plane of its origin.

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.

It is caught between transforming itself completely into earth’s particular camouflage pattern, and retaining its original pattern. The earthly viewer attempts to correlate what he sees with what he supposedly knows or imagines possible, in the little he understands of the universe.

What he sees is something between a horse and a dog and resembles neither. The craft retains what it can of its original structure and changes what it must. This accounts for much of the conflicting reports as to shape, size and color. The few times that the craft shoots off at right angles, it has managed to retain functions ordinary to it in its particular habitat.

What they do is take quick glimpses of your plane — and hold in mind that the saucer or cigar shape seen within your system is a bastard form having little relation to the structure at it is at home base. …

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

“Would you mind telling us exactly what a plane is?” Rob asked. He expected a fairly brief answer. Instead he got the following:

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.

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.