“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Your own environment includes far more than you may have supposed. Earlier I referred to your environment in terms of the daily physical existence and surroundings with which you are currently connected. In actuality, you are aware of very little of your larger, more extensive environment. Consider your present self as an actor in a play; hardly a new analogy, but a suitable one. The scene is set in the twentieth century. You create the props, the settings, the themes; in fact you write, produce, and act in the entire production — you and every other individual who takes part.

Each of you are now involved in a much larger production, in which you all agree on certain basic assumptions that serve as a framework within which the play can occur. The assumptions are that time is a series of moments one after another; that an objective world exists quite independently of your own creation and perception of it; that you are bound within the physical bodies that you have donned; and that you are limited by time and space.

They all exist basically at one time. Those who are still involved in these highly complicated passion-play seminars called reincarnational existences, find it difficult to see beyond them. Some, resting between productions, as it were, try to communicate with those who are still taking part; but they themselves are merely in the wings, so to speak, and can only see so far.

Though I use the analogy here of a drama, these “plays” are highly spontaneous affairs in which the actors have full freedom within the play’s framework. And granting these assumptions that have been stated, there are no rehearsals. There are observers, as you will see later in our book. As in any good theatre production, there is an overall theme within each play. The great artists, for example, did not emerge out of a particular time simply because they were born into it, or (because) the conditions were favorable.

(10:39. Long pause.) He has other sources of information, therefore, than those strictly given within the confines of the production. Each actor knows this instinctively, and there are periods set and allowed for within the play itself in which each actor retires in order to refresh himself. In these he is informed through the inner senses of his other roles, and he realizes that he is far more than the self appearing in any given play.

In these periods he understands that he had his hand in the writing of the play, and he is freed from those assumptions that bind him while he is actively concerned with the drama’s activities. These periods, of course, coincide with your sleep states and dreaming conditions; but there are also other times when each actor sees quite clearly that he is surrounded by props, and when his vision suddenly pierces the seeming reality of the production.

(10:44.) This does not mean that the play is not real, or that it should not be taken seriously. It does mean playing a role — an important one. Each actor must of himself realize, however, the nature of the production and his part in it. He must actualize himself out of the three-dimensional confines of the play’s setting.

There is great cooperation behind such momentous productions, and in playing his role, each actor first actualizes himself within three-dimensional reality. The multidimensional self cannot act within three-dimensional reality until it materializes a portion of itself within it. Do you follow me?

Now: The meaning of the play is within you, therefore. It is only the conscious portion of you that acts so well, and that is focused so securely within the props of the production.

The purpose of any given life is available to you, the knowledge beneath the surface of the conscious self you know. All kinds of hints and clues are also available. You have the knowledge of your entire multidimensional personality at your fingertips. When you realize that you do, this knowledge allows you to solve the problems or meet the challenges you have set, quicker, in your terms; and also opens further areas of creativity by which the entire play or production can be enriched.

Now it seems to you, of course, that you are the only conscious part of yourself, for you are identifying with the actor in this particular production. The other portions of your multidimensional personality, in these other reincarnational plays, are also conscious, however. And because you are a multidimensional consciousness, “you” are also conscious in other realities beside these.

(11:24 P.M. Seth’s production of his book had come to be a natural part of the framework by now. He was also beginning to deviate somewhat from the outline he’d given in the 510th session on January 10, 1970, but we had expected this. Seth was on his own, Jane said. Many people knew about his book by now.