“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane has been taking something of a rest for the last month or so. She’s had but two regular sessions — one for friends, and a personal one for us — and only one for her weekly ESP class. [Class sessions aren’t numbered.] Occasionally Jane has wondered what effect, if any, the break would have on Seth’s book. However, after giving me some very astute data about my painting, Seth resumed book dictation very smoothly at 9:33 — just as though there hadn’t been any time lapse from February 11 to March 18.

(Pause at 9:49.) The power of our thoughts has been made clear to us, through trial and error in other existences. We have discovered that no one can escape the vast creativity of the mental image, or of emotion. This does not mean that we are not spontaneous, or that we must deliberate between one thought or another, in anxious concern that one might be negative or destructive. That, in your terms, is behind us.

We will be quite aware that we are ourselves, however — the multidimensional personalities who shared a more or less common environment at one level of our existence. As you will see, this analogy is a rather simple one that will do only for now, because past, present, and future do not really exist in those terms.

(10:11.) When one has been born and has died many times, expecting extinction with each death, and when this experience is followed by the realization that existence still continues, then a sense of the divine comedy enters in.

I communicate with your dimension, for example, not by willing myself to your level of reality, but by imagining myself there. All of my deaths would have been adventures had I realized what I know now. On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough.

We enjoy a sense of play that is highly spontaneous, and yet I suppose you would call it responsible play. Certainly it is creative play. We play, for example, with the mobility of our consciousness, seeing how “far” one can send it. We are constantly surprised at the products of our own consciousness, of the dimensions of reality through which we can hopscotch. It might seem that we use our consciousness idly in such play, and yet again, the pathways we make continue to exist and can be used by others. We leave messages to any who come by, mental signposts.

Often the material I present will initially be given without any sign of my presence, seemingly as a startling revelation. For no matter how carefully I present the material, it is still bound to change past ideas that are strongly a part of the pupil’s personality. What I say is one thing, but the pupil of course is thrust into psychological and psychic behavior and experience that may seem quite alien to him on a conscious level.

The personality was never consciously aware of the initial meeting. She simply experienced sudden new thoughts, and since she is a poet, these appeared as poetic inspirations. At one time some years ago, at a writers’ conference, she became involved in circumstances that could have led to her psychic development before she was ready. The psychological climate at that time, of those involved, initiated the conditions, and without realizing what she was about our friend [Jane] went into a trance.

(Jane went into a trance one evening during a discussion. Out of this episode — which we did not understand was a trance for several years afterward — evolved a group of writers, Jane among them, who called themselves “The Five.” Long and involved letters were exchanged among the members of The Five by a round-robin technique. The four other writers in the group were much better known than Jane was.)

It was hardly an accidental performance, however. Quite without knowing it, the personality decided to try its wings, figuratively speaking. As a part of my work, therefore, I have been coaching the young woman in one way or another since her childhood — and all of this as a preliminary to the serious work that began with our sessions.