“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There’s little I can say that will offer comfort to you about your mother’s death. On the other hand, I can say everything — for her life encompassed the world, the universe, just as much as yours does, or mine, or Laurel’s. She lives then, as I’m sure you know. From my own experience I can say that she’ll surely communicate with you, expressing new and unfathomable facets and attitudes of the universe — always brilliant, perhaps inexpressible in ordinary terms, yet reaching you and touching in unexpected ways. I think I know my own parents better now than I did when they were ‘living.’ I understand so much more about them now, and with compassion see and feel their strivings and hopes, loves and successes and failures in ways I was not consciously aware of before. I think this kind of heightened knowledge and awareness always comes to those still ‘living’ — but also, that those who have ‘died’ are more alive and adventurous than ever, and at least sometimes in ways we just cannot comprehend. I know this is the case with Jane. So, I think, it will be with you and your mother and father. My love to you and your son.

I couldn’t believe it when I realized that my wife had been dead for a week. As I lived and worked in it, our house looked the same as it ever had. In spite of my sorrow, I presented a cheerful face to the world; I talked and joked, and did everything I was supposed to do. I also discovered what must be a very common phenomenon: Those who knew of Jane’s passing became instantly self-conscious when we met. I felt their embarrassment at their damned-up sympathies, and their fear of the same thing happening to them. They didn’t want to hurt me further. Amazingly, I found myself offering comfort to them, to help them surmount such barriers so that we could talk. My visitors reminded me anew of how private an event Jane’s death is for me, yet how universal it is. How many uncounted quadrillions of times has that transference from “life” to “nonlife” taken place just on our planet alone? And I don’t believe that anyone has tried to cope with questions of life and death any more valiantly than Jane did.

Without taking into account here the essences of other life forms, do I think the human personality survives physical death? Considering the loving, passionate “work” that Jane and I engaged in for more than twenty years, of course I do. No other answer makes intuitive or consciously reasonable sense to me. I think it quite psychologically and psychically limiting to believe otherwise, for such beliefs can only impede or postpone our further conscious understanding of the individual and mass realities — the overall “nature” — we’re creating. I think that all of us seek answers, and that our searches are expressed in our very lives.

October 13, 1984. Jane has been dead for thirty-eight days. It has finally come to me that the dark tunnels of those streets I run on, with their mysterious implications of the unknown, and the fear of the dark that such streets can generate, are physically oriented metaphors for the transition Jane has made to another reality. In our terms, the tunnel shapes lead to an unfathomable new reality that is supposedly filled with the light of the universe. That light is symbolized by the streetlights shining through the tunnels every so often, and hinting at that great brilliant reality beyond. This metaphor is particularly apropos at this time, with the trees still carrying their thick growth of leaves — yet later in the fall it may become even more applicable as the leaves drop and the streetlights, poor as they may be in comparison to the light of the universe, can shine through a little more brilliantly.

This sense would permit our man to feel the basic sensations felt by the tree, so that instead of looking at it, his consciousness would expand to contain the experience of what it is to be a tree. [...] He would in no way lose consciousness of who he was, and he would perceive these experiences again, somewhat in the same manner that you perceive heat and cold. [...]

[...] Had this been a valid contact within the interior universe or unconscious playacting? [...]

[...] I preferred to think of our psychic experiences as emphasizing, instead, the unknown abilities of our present consciousness. [...]

Your scientists are correct in supposing that the universe is composed of the same elements that can be found in your plane. [...]

Human self-consciousness existed in psychological time, and in inner ‘time’ long before you, as a species, constructed it. For your friend’s sake, I will say this as simply as possible: Human consciousness was inherent and latent from the beginning of your physical universe. [...]

[...] … When he asked it, he was referring to the point at which self-consciousness entered into so-called inert form. You know, now, that all form has consciousness, and so there was no point at which self-consciousness entered with the sound of trumpets, so to speak. Consciousness was inherent in the first materialization upon your plane.

Self-consciousness entered in very shortly after but not what you are pleased to call human self-consciousness. I do not like to wound your egos in this manner, and I can hear you yell ‘foul,’ but there is no actual differentiation between the various kinds of consciousness.

You are either conscious of self or you are not. A tree is conscious of itself as a tree. [...] What I am trying to point out here is this supreme egotistical presumption that self-consciousness must of necessity involve humanity per se. [...]

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. [...]

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. [...]

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. [...]

He says, ‘I breathe, but who breathes, since consciously I cannot tell myself to breathe or not to breathe?’ He says, ‘I dream. [...]

During all of this time, Rob and I were having our first experiences with mobility of consciousness. What else could consciousness do? [...]

Further Steps into the Interior Universe

Because of the Miss Cunningham dream and the “Idea Construction” experience, Rob suggested that I try some experiments in ESP and expansion of consciousness and do a book on the results — negative or positive. [...]

[...] I have quoted parts of it in other books, yet the analogy Seth gave us is such an excellent introduction to the interior universe and to his ideas that it is almost indispensable. [...]

The interior universe had its influence even as far as pets were concerned! [...] In this session, he also spoke about the consciousness of trees in such a way that I was never able to look at the trees outside of my window with the same old detachment. [...]

As to Jane’s feeling about the tree having a certain consciousness, of course this is the case. [...] In some ways, its living forces and consciousness are kept to a minimum. [...]

[...] Without the conscious mind of man it nevertheless retains this inner consciousness of all its parts, above and below the ground, and manipulates them constantly.

Animals and Trees in the Interior Universe
Excerpts from Sessions 17 and 18

[...] The mental enzymes act upon the vitality, which is, as I told you, the structure of the universe itself. [...] The mental enzymes are the tools, and the vitality is the actual material that forms the universe as a whole, the apparent divisions within it, the apparent boundaries between the systems and the diverse materials within each division. [...]

Introduction to the Interior
Universe

This is the first of several key sessions included in this portion of the book as introductions to the interior universe. [...]

Consciously, you didn’t know what you were up to; unconsciously, you knew very well. [...]

[...] Yet consciously, she was ignorant of her own inner decision.

Of course, the conscious mind cannot be aware of such critical inner decisions. [...]

[...] Every time I passed it, I wondered again: Was she transferring her consciousness to another level of reality? [...]

[...] Was their consciousness born anew, and was it really something quite independent of the images they wore?