“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“Seth,” Rob asked. “Why this method of communication? Why not, say, automatic writing on Jane’s part?”

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.

It is true that Joseph receives much more data through inner visions. In the past, he has more or less translated this data automatically, without realizing it, into paintings, with no memory of any vision at all. You can learn to use the other inner senses as well, Joseph, and I will tell you more about them.

Because Ruburt deals in words, it is easy for me to communicate in this way. He automatically translates inner data given by me into coherent, valid and faithful camouflage patterns. The data that I give is not actually sound on my part. Its transference is automatic and instantaneous on Ruburt’s part, and is performed through the inner workings of the mind, the inner senses and the brain.

If man does not know who breathes within him, and if man does not know who dreams within him, it is not because there is one self who acts in the physical universe and another who dreams and breathes. It is because he has buried the part of himself which breathes and dreams. If these functions seem so automatic as to be performed by someone completely divorced from himself, it is because he has done the divorcing.

As breathing is carried on in a manner that seems automatic to the conscious mind, so the important function of transforming the vitality of the universe into pattern units seems to be carried on automatically. But this transformation is not as apparent to the one part of yourself that you are pleased to recognize, and so it seems as if this transformation is carried on by someone even more distant than your breathing and dreaming selves.