“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now and then I brooded about the Malba Bronson episode. Had this been a valid contact within the interior universe or unconscious playacting? At this point, the Seth sessions themselves had only been going on for a month and a half. We had had no instances of clairvoyance or any evidential material except for that provided in the early séance, and we had both decided that we weren’t ready to try anything like that again for some time.

Had I been using Seth’s “inner senses” in the Bronson experience? If we tried to renew the contact, could we get her to give us some checkable dates? I decided to try once more. On January 25th, Rob and I sat in the living room with this in mind. After a short time, I began to speak as Malba. I mentioned this experience briefly in How To Develop Your ESP Power, but here I’m including Rob’s notes which provide a fuller version of the event and our attitude toward it at the time.

“But what’s the point of it, providing it was legitimate, just for the sake of argument?” I said. “I guess I’ll ‘specialize’ with Seth. I can’t see just trying to pull people in, if that’s an apt phrase, for nothing.”

But I still couldn’t quite believe in personal life after death. I preferred to think of our psychic experiences as emphasizing, instead, the unknown abilities of our present consciousness. “The Seth material could be coming from some deep inner source, an intuitive bank of inner knowledge available to everyone if they only look for it,” I said. “And just maybe, with the Malba episode, I picked up knowledge of her life from the same source.”

“But you’re sure that Seth is … an individual. I admit he seems to be.”

“Both ideas could be part of the whole solution,” Rob said. “Hopefully, as Seth explains more about the inner senses, we’ll understand more about what’s actually going on and learn some methods that will help us.”

(And in the next (nineteenth) session on January 17, 1964, Seth did carry his discussion on the inner sense further, and he gave us additional clues as to how we could use them. As you’ll see, we were shortly to put his methods to work. The session was a long one, and he began by emphasizing the fact that all physical sense data was camouflage.)

Seth said,

Rob laughed, and Seth said,

Seth went on to explain that the more camouflage (physical dimensions) an art object had, the less its validity to the inner senses.

It is not a matter of inventing new instruments any longer, but of using the ‘invisible’ ones you have. These may be known and examined. This material itself is evidence. It is like the branch that moves, so that you know the wind by its effects; and a windbag like me by the billowing gale of my monologues.

Scientists realize that the atmosphere of the earth has a distorting effect upon their instruments. What they do not understand is that their instruments themselves are bound to be distortive. Any material instrument will have built-in distortive effects. The one instrument which is more important than any other is the mind (not the brain) … the meeting place of the inner and outer senses.

The subconscious is a property of mind and is, to a large degree, independent of camouflage. While part of the subconscious must deal with camouflage, for example, the deeper portions are in direct contact with the basic vitality of the universe. When you or Ruburt wonder if this material comes from your subconscious, you take it for granted that the subconscious is personal, dealing exclusively with matters of your past. You are sometimes willing to concede that perhaps some element of racial memory might enter in.

The subconscious, however, also contains the undistorted material of the mind, which is uncamouflaged and which operates between planes, knowing no boundaries.

And gain before the next session, I had that odd stage fright, a feeling of apprehension and wonder. My afternoon at the gallery had been very busy. It seemed I had to rush through dinner and the dishes and my normal chores in order to get through by session time. I didn’t have an idea in my own head about anything. In a half hour or so how would I suddenly find myself delivering such off-beat material in a voice that didn’t seem to be my own?

I was really quite tired, yet after the session, I was astonished to discover that Seth had dictated an excellent exposition on the physical senses and had begun a description of the inner ones. According to Rob, he behaved in a most energetic fashion, pacing the room as usual, stopping to joke with Rob, or pausing for a moment to look out the window. Whatever energy was being used, I decided, it was certainly more than I expected myself capable of that night. This was the twentieth session, January 29th. The session began as usual at 9:00 P.M. and ended at 11:40. Again, only excerpts are being given. Seth began by speaking about the physical senses.

The inner senses have an immediate, constant knowledge of the body in a way that the outer senses do not. The material is delivered to the body from the inner world through the inner senses. This inner data is received by the mind. The mind, being uncamouflaged, then, is the receiving station for the data brought to it by the inner senses. What you have here … are inner nervous and communication systems, closely resembling the outer systems with which you are familiar.

“Seth, what about time?” Rob asked.

Then Seth told Rob to imagine a man looking at a tree in the near distance on an ordinary street, with intervening houses and sidewalks.

This session impressed me quite a bit, since after it I felt much less tired than I had earlier. Where had the extra energy come from … after three hours of dictation as Seth? I wondered. Besides this, both of us began to experiment with the first inner sense on the basis of the information we received that night. As you will see, the resulting experiences began to add another dimension to our lives.