“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Rob spent the next Saturday afternoon in his studio, as usual, painting and doing other artwork. It was snowing slightly. I was in the front of the apartment doing the weekly housecleaning. Rob’s mind was on some innocuous chore, now forgotten; he may have been applying gesso ground to a series of panels to be used for paintings. With no transition or advance notice, a vision appeared to him. Although it was not exteriorized, it was clear in detail and very vivid. Like other experiences of this nature, it was intrusive, in that it seemed to have no connection with what he was doing or thinking at the time.

In the next session, Seth told Rob that he was doing well and should try the exercise often. The session, the twenty-second, was one of our first spontaneous sessions. (At times, I knew I could have a session, for example, but mentally refused. Two sessions a week were more than sufficient, I thought — I was afraid of going into trance at the drop of a hat.)

That day, I’d received a letter from the publisher-to-be of my first ESP book. While I was alone in the kitchen, doing the dishes, I found myself wondering if Seth might “come through” and comment on the letter. Then, beautifully clear, with rich humor, came the answering mental message: “Are you gluttons for punishment?”

I gently put down the dish I was washing. Was that Seth, or Jane-playing-Seth? How could I tell? I said, mentally, “I’m wondering how the book will do.”

This method suits me temperamentally. It seems to me that automatic writing could become like an institution. It is so one-sided. I enjoy the questions that you do manage to get in. Often they remind me of other things I would like to say … I have never trusted the written word half as much as I trust the spoken word, and on your plane it is difficult to trust either, but as I mentioned, I always enjoyed conversation, which is the liveliest of the arts.

Some part of the individual is aware of the most minute portions of breath; some part knows immediately of the most minute particle of oxygen and other components that enter the lungs. The thinking brain does not know. Your all-important ‘I’ does not know. In actuality, my dear friends, the all-important ‘I’ does know. You do not know the all-important ‘I’, and that is your difficulty.

He says, ‘I breathe, but who breathes, since consciously I cannot tell myself to breathe or not to breathe?’ He says, ‘I dream. But who dreams? I cannot tell myself to dream or not to dream.’ He cuts himself in half and then wonders why he is not whole. Man has admitted only those things he could see, smell, touch or hear; and in so doing, he could only appreciate half of himself. And when I say half, I exaggerate; he is aware of only a third of himself.

Because you know that you breathe, without being consciously aware of the mechanics involved, you are forced to admit that you do your own breathing. When you cross a room, you are forced to admit that you have caused yourself to do so, though consciously you have no idea of willing the muscles to move, or of stimulating one tendon or another. Yet even though you admit these things, you do not really believe them.

I cannot say this too often — you are far more than the conscious mind, and the self which you do not admit is the portion that not only insures your own physical survival in the physical universe which it has made, but which is also the connective between yourself and inner reality. … It is only through the recognition of the inner self that the race of man will ever use its potential.

Who do I share this image with?
What ghost haunts this house?
I smile and reach for a cup of tea
And motions beyond my will begin.
My fingers move smoothly out
And lift the curving spoon.
With just the proper touch
They pick the china saucer up.
Yet I have nothing to do with this.
Who moves the cup? Who moves?

And while I speak to you, my lungs
Rise and fall behind breastbones,
Fill their secret tissue mouths
With the air that swirls in this bright room.
They breathe for me the very breath
Upon which all I am depends,
Yet I do not know how this is done.
Who is this ghost,
This other one?
Who moves the lung? Who breathes?