“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

During the interview Jack asked me if Seth would come through. I replied that it was up to Seth. Actually, since I hadn’t gone into trance on any other programs, I doubted I would now. Instead, Jack began to play a taped Seth session. As I heard those deep resonant tones of his, I knew that Seth was present.

Above all, it deepened my trust in Seth and in his psychological insight and impressed me once again with the remarkable abilities of the inner intuitive self, for it is this part of me that makes communication with Seth possible. For another thing, because of the program format the trance was cut short, and this gave me the opportunity to study the trance phenomenon from a different angle.

I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to see the television program, because I’ve never seen myself as Seth in trance except in a few photographs. Seth manifests through me, addressing himself to others who feel the impact of his personality, but I can’t see this as they do from the outside, objectively. To observers, Seth’s otherness from me is apparent in the way the open eyes are used, in the gestures and rearrangement of facial patterns. We simply use the body in a different way.

You could say, if you wanted to, that Seth intruded himself from some unconscious dimension into my conscious life, yet now he is such a part of my professional and personal experience that much of my time is spent studying and interpreting his theories. His appearance on television seems to represent a further step in his “objectification,” which is to me, an astonishing one.

And, as far as I know, Seth has no imprisoning body. He projects part of his consciousness, at least at times, into mine. Curious thought — I can also imagine some good-humored game of musical chairs in which I try to get out of my body, while Seth tries to get into it. While this presents a rather hilarious image, it is actually unfair. Seth doesn’t have any great interest in taking over my body for any length of time, while I have an insatiable curiosity about the experience of getting out of mine.

The relationship between Seth and myself snaps into focus by prearranged appointments, as suggested by him in the early day’s of the sessions. Each Monday and Wednesday at 9:00 P.M., I sit in my favorite rocker. Rob sits across from me on the couch with his note pad and pen, ready to take notes. Normal lights are lit. I may feel very unpsychic, or even cross. I may feel tired, or really want to go dancing. Yet at nine, the session begins, and Seth “comes alive.”

I don’t “become” Seth. Instead, I seem to bask in what he is, or in his presence, if you prefer. Sometimes I am distantly aware that my facial muscles are being rearranged as they mirror Seth’s emotions rather than mine. But then, for me, the reality of the room vanishes. Though my eyes are wide open, it is Seth who looks out and smiles at Rob; Seth who speaks through my lips, discussing the nature of reality and existence from the viewpoint of someone not confined to the three-dimensional world.

On Tuesday nights I hold an ESP class, and often Seth addresses the students, explaining his ideas in terms of every-day life, relating them to personal conduct. Often he speaks to individual students, encouraging them to use their own abilities and solve their own problems. His psychological understanding is excellent. He seems to be a personality enjoying the full richness of experience and potential.

For this reason alone, I would like to believe that his abilities were mine, that in the trance state, my own latent talents were operating without obstruction, freed from the normal hang-ups and distractions that annoy us all and hamper our development. I would like to think that for a few short hours a week, at least, I was operating at optimum capacity — that Seth’s energy and knowledge were really mine. Lovely thought, and possibly true to some extent.

Fortunately or unfortunately, however, I suspect that our relationship is far more complex. One thing I know: Seth does not have his present basic existence in the three-dimensional world, and I do. He has given us instructions that allow Rob, my students and myself to take our own sometimes faltering steps out of our usual physical reality. He initiated our exploration into the universe of dreams, for example, and is therefore largely responsible for this book. But we must return to our normal daily dimension of actuality. And Seth returns to his.

Even without a physical form, Seth is highly effective in our world. Through me, he is producing the Seth Material, a continuing manuscript dealing with the nature of reality, consciousness and identity that now totals over fifty notebooks. He is also dictating his own book: Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. To date, we have held nearly six hundred sessions. In fact, he seems to operate more efficiently in his contacts with physical reality than I do in my journeys into dimensions more naturally considered his.

My out-of-body experiences are not nearly as well directed, deliberate or effective as Seth’s behavior is here, for example. Seth dictates one final draft of his own book, while I do at least three drafts of my own. (This present book is my third since the sessions began, so Seth is hardly “stealing” any of my creative energy.)

Seth calls himself an energy personality essence no longer focused in physical reality. Whoever or whatever he is, he is well equipped to discuss the nature of nonphysical existence and to serve as a guide through the other side of consciousness, for it is his natural environment. He comes as a visitor from levels of awareness beyond those with which we are usually acquainted.

In The Seth Material, I told the story of my psychic initiation and introduction to Seth as I understood it at that time, and gave a sampling of his ideas on a wide variety of subjects. I also emphasized the “evidential” material we had received — spontaneous clairvoyant demonstrations given in sessions and in the envelope tests that we conducted for over a year. Seth has given correct clairvoyant descriptions of people and events in other parts of this country and Puerto Rico.

Here I will stress subjective experience itself as it is turned toward the dreaming state in particular, and deal with Seth’s conceptions of the dream universe through excerpts from his continuing manuscript. This book will also serve as a journal of our own subjective excursions as first Rob and I, and then my students, used Seth’s ideas as maps into that strange inner landscape. We have become involved in the keenest of adventures in which ordinary obstructions do not exist while the usual suppositions of physical life do not apply.

While the main emphasis of this book will be on Seth’s dream concepts, the reader is invited to test them out for himself or herself. Seth told us early in the game that many dreams were precognitive, for example, but personal experience is a great convincer, and we discovered this ourselves as we followed his instructions — recalled, dated and recorded dreams and then checked them against events.

Many of Seth’s concepts, on probabilities or on, say, the nature of radio stars, cannot be checked out except by specialists. Most of the data on dreams, however, can be proven by anyone with enough curiosity, determination and sense of adventure to follow the guidelines that The Seth Material provides. In one of his early statements on dreams, Seth said: