“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

As he began the interview, Jack Cole told the unseen audience that I was a medium who spoke for a personality called Seth. He emphasized that my presence on the show didn’t necessarily mean that he or Sonja accepted Seth’s independent existence. I smiled, somewhat ruefully. Many people feel duty-bound to express skepticism as if it were an automatic badge of honor and intellectual superiority. I’d done the same thing in the past, so I could understand the attitude.

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.

Seth’s presence is felt instantly, not esoterically, but in the way we perceive a magnetic personality of power and ability. Though the objective effects of this phenomenon largely escape me, I’m trying to learn all I can about the subjective aspects involved, for surely no one is in a better position to do so. Because of the emergence of Seth, I’ve become increasingly aware of many other states of consciousness besides the normal daily state that all of us know.

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.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that in dream life I’m writing a book about waking consciousness just as, with my waking consciousness, I’m writing about the reality of dreams. It wouldn’t astonish me either to learn that Seth in an entirely different dimension speaks for a personality called Jane. In fact, I sometimes amuse myself by imagining a situation in which Seth wonders if Jane is a secondary personality with an obsessive belief in some improbable physical reality. Seth, however, is far more knowledgeable than I am, so if he were speaking for me, then I’m afraid he would get the lesser end of the bargain.

I have been speaking for Seth in twice-weekly sessions since late 1963. At the very least, this has given me personal experience with altered states of consciousness and glimpses into subjective areas largely unexplored. Certainly, it was because of Seth that I found myself studying the dream reality that comes into focus while the body sleeps.

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.

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.

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.