“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

On January 17th, Rob and I tried another experiment together. This time, we decided not to have any “format” or particular plans but to leave ourselves open to whatever might happen. Before long, I began to speak for a personality called Malba Bronson, who told Rob that she had died in South Dakota in 1946 at the age of forty-six. The session lasted for an hour and a half; my voice was halting, with many pauses. I sat there, in the darkened room, hearing the voice as if it came from a great distance, feeling a mild astonishment.

I’ll go along with your little joke about Malba Toast of the Midplane. Malba of the Midplane was your apt description. [Rob had made a remark to this effect earlier.] The midplane is indeed an excellent description of the semi-plane which she now inhabits. It is a waiting plane for personalities at certain stages of development.

Your own subconscious is the fountain of your individuality and personality; from it springs your talent. When the ego becomes too concerned with daily matters, with worry, then it becomes far less effective. The freely working subconscious — or the inner you — is completely capable of taking care of all practical considerations and will use the ego as a tool to do so.

My affection for you is strong. If I speak heavy-handedly, it is because I want you to have a light touch. Dissociation brings about a strong unity with the creative aspects of personality. It puts you back, or it puts your creative talents back, in the driver’s seat.

The largest segment of the session dealt with personal matters connected with Rob’s earlier illness. This led Rob to wonder what had caused our three animals to die shortly before the sessions began.

The particular atmosphere surrounding your personalities just prior to the animals’ deaths was short-circuited and filled with inner panics. I do not want to hurt your feelings. This is, I’m sorry to say, a natural occurence often on your plane. The fact is that the animals caught your emotional contagion and, according to their own abilities, translated it for themselves.

When your own personalities are more or less in balance, you have no trouble at all looking out for these creatures and actually reinforcing their existence with residues of your creative and sympathetic powers. In times of psychological stress — or in periods of crises — quite unwittingly you often withhold this strong reinforcement. …

The interior universe had its influence even as far as pets were concerned! The whole concept fascinated me. Seth showed us in the next session that not only animals but all living things had their primary existence in this inner world. He also carried on with his discussion of the ego and health, giving an excellent analysis of the ego’s relationship to the personality as a whole. I took what he said to heart and found myself opening up, becoming more free and creative. In this session, he also spoke about the consciousness of trees in such a way that I was never able to look at the trees outside of my window with the same old detachment. Through the sessions, the whole world seemed to come alive.

Following Seth’s suggestions, Rob began doing a few simple yoga exercises, and the night before the eighteenth session he used self-hypnosis to relax his muscles. The results were so immediate and excellent, and Rob was so limp when he finished, that both of us were amused. He looked so like a before-and-after advertisement. Before he began the exercises, he was very uptight, with sore muscles and a repressive body pose. Afterward, he was like some happy rag doll. Seth began to comment on this in the beginning of the next session. As usual, he used our personal experience as a basis for some excellent information with great general application.

Incidentally, while we are on the subject, often when you thought you were dealing with a matter or a person in a dissociated manner, you were instead exhibiting a cold, conscious detatchment. This is a pose of the ego and is not to be confused with the lithe subconscious detachment which is actually warm, flexible and expansive.

But when I read the session, I thought of Rob sitting there, listening to what I thought of as criticism, while his wife paced the room “telling him off” in another voice and supposedly for another, invisible personality. “I worry that it’s just a psychological trick,” I said. “I mean, suppose that’s really what I think, subconsciously — the idea that your ego is too rigid at times and closes you off. So I simply adopt another personality to tell you so. Then I wouldn’t be responsible and you couldn’t talk back.”

“Do you realize that the entire session contained more psychological insight into me and more hints into my behavior than I’ve ever received in any way whatsoever? And that Seth just used me as an example to make more general pertinent points about the personality?” Rob grinned. “If it didn’t bother me, I don’t know why it’s bothering you.”

And I was forced to smile back sheepishly. “As long as Seth talks about philosophical stuff, I don’t mind, I guess. But when he starts going into us, into personal habits and behavior, it gets kind of close.”

“Uh-huh. Not really.” I said. But in the beginning, at least, I wasn’t used to probing psychological analysis directed at Rob or myself from an invisible personality — or anyone else. Now we wonder how we managed to function effectively without all the knowledge about ourselves that we’ve received from Seth through the years.