“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

The midplane contains a conglomeration of fragments … who have not attained sufficient knowledge or manipulability to progress further at this point. They may be at various stages of development, but, usually, they have attained only a fair level of achievement. They have not excelled, neither have they ‘failed.’ They are working out problems of their own. They are not as yet committed to the next plane of their advancement.

The ego is the tool by which the hidden self manipulates in the physical universe. In your case, it enables you to focus your artistic ability along lines necessary to make it effective on your plane. However, when the ego becomes involved with fears, it ceases to be an effective tool and becomes instead a hammer hitting you incessantly over the head. …

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.

The viruses and infections were, of course, present. They always are. They are themselves fragments, struggling small fragments, without intention of harm. You have general immunity, believe it or not, to all such viruses. Ideally, you can inhabit a plane with them without fear. It is only when you give tacit agreement that harm is inflicted. To some degree, household pets are dependent upon your psychic strength. They have their own, it is true, but, unknowingly, you reinforce their energy and health.

Now, in a deep trance the subject, though fully aware of what is happening in the trance, may remember nothing of it afterward. The awareness of plant life is also somewhat like that of the subject in deep trance. Except for the suggestion and stimulus received by regular natural forces on your plane, the plant life does not bestir itself in other directions. But like the trance subject, our plant is aware. Its other abilities lie unused for the time, and latent, but they are present.

When man’s ego turns instead into a shell — when instead of interpreting outside conditions, it reacts too violently against them, then it hardens and becomes an imprisoning form that begins to snuff out important data and to keep enlarging information from the inner self. The ego’s purpose is protective. The ego is also a device to enable the inner self to inhabit the physical plane.