“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I first heard from my unseen correspondent, Valerie Wood, not long after Jane had died thirteen months ago. I sent her one of the cards I’d had printed, giving a few details about Jane’s death and stating my determination to carry on with our work. Valerie responded with some poetry relative to Jane’s passing, and my reactions to her death, that I interpreted at once as being very evocative of Jane and me. At the time I didn’t know what to believe about the source of the material, even while I found it reinforcing my own contacts with Jane. Were Valerie’s messages from her own subconscious? From Jane’s world view? From Jane herself?

Valerie’s material raises as many questions as it gives answers for, of course. Are her messages really from Jane, or is she “only” telepathically picking up from me what I want to hear, and flashing it back to me from her trance states — as communications from Jane? An unbelieving scientist would say that Valerie is hardly in touch with a discarnate Jane, since science doesn’t accept survival of death. Nor would the idea of reaching Jane’s world view be considered, or telepathy from me, for both of those concepts are scientifically unacceptable. The most parsimonious view — the simplest, stingiest one — would be that through studying the Seth Material Valerie subconsciously divines the replies I want from my dead wife, and in all subjective innocence comes through with her trance messages for me, to fit my own stubborn belief in Jane’s survival.

“Rob,” Valerie wrote at the end of her material, “I hope this has meaning for you, and whether it is Jane’s, or my subconscious words, it is beautiful, wise and useful — best to you until next time.”

[...] And if Seth was a personification of my subconscious, then this would be an excellent example of subconscious fraud.

This portion of the personality translates inner data and sifts it through the subconscious, which is a barrier and also a threshold to the present personality. I told you also that the topmost layers of the subconscious contain personal memories and beneath — racial memory. [...]

[...] “I don’t particularly mind a mischievous subconscious, but a deceptive one is something else again.”

[...] His subconscious and conscious mind had to be acquainted with certain ideas to begin with, in order for the complexity of this material to come through.

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. [...]

The so-called subconscious is a connective between mind and brain, between the inner and outer senses. [...] The greater portions of it are concerned with the inner world, and as data reaches it from the inner world, so can these portions of the subconscious reach far into the inner world itself…

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

The entire session ran three hours, and most of it was devoted to the ego and the subconscious and to their relationship to health and illness. [...] We’d been in the habit of blaming difficulties on the subconscious.

These fears do not belong to what you think of as the subconscious. Then these materializations of panic and pain play about the physical body, projected by the ego, and steal the powers of the subconscious mind from their natural constructive tasks.… In other words, the ego becomes a tool to disrupt rather than to create.

Your own subconscious is the fountain of your individuality and personality; from it springs your talent. [...] 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.

[...] But the subconscious knows its own meat and its own sauce and the best means for its nourishment.

[...] Subconsciously, however, he knew that far more was involved. Part of the subconscious fantasy in the dream was valid, representing a watered-down version of the actual communication — for example, Miss Cunningham’s dark apparel.

[...] I could reconcile a mental voice as a valid and quite safe mechanism of the creative subconscious, as I liked to call it — but an image next to me in the kitchen while I did the dishes? [...]

It is fashionable in your time to consider man as the product of the brain and an isolated bit of the subconscious, with a few other odds and ends thrown in for good measure. [...]

[...] “Credit my subconscious then. [...]

[...] You get a subconscious focus different in many ways from conscious concentration. [...]

[...] He wants to know where the words are coming from and still wonders if I am a part of his subconscious; and I must admit that I find such an idea appalling. [...]