“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now: I have spent some time emphasizing the fact that each of us forms our own environment, because I want you to realize that the responsibility for your life and your environment is your own.

As you read this book, now and then look about you at the room in which you sit. Chairs and tables, the ceilings and the floors, may seem very real and solid — quite permanent — while you by contrast may feel yourself to be highly vulnerable, caught in a moment between birth and extinction. You may even feel jealous when you think of it, imagining that the physical universe will continue to exist long after you are gone. By the end of our book, however, I hope you will realize the eternal validity of your own consciousness, and the impermanence of those physical aspects of your environment, and of your universe, that now seem so secure. Do you have that?

Now in the same way, I am telling you that objects are also symbols that stand for a reality whose meaning the objects, like the letters, transmit. The true information is not in the objects any more than the thought is in the letters or in words. Words are methods of expression. So are physical objects in a different kind of medium. You are used to the idea that you express yourselves directly through words. You can hear yourself speak them. You can feel the muscles in your throat move, and if you are aware, you can perceive multitudinous reactions within your own body — actions that all accompany your speech.

It is only from this viewpoint that the true nature of physical matter can be understood. It is only by comprehending the nature of this constant translation of thoughts and desires — not into words now, but into physical objects — that you can realize your true independence from circumstance, time, and environment.

Now you may take a break. (Smile, at 10:36.) A note: I am very pleased….

(Jane had a “memory,” now, of giving part of Seth’s data from the bookcase area, of seeing the living room from a different viewpoint. She didn’t remember going out of her body. “It came back like a dream,” she said. Nor could she remember any more about the episode. She didn’t remember seeing herself in her chair, for instance, nor did she see me as I sat on the couch taking notes. She was much intrigued by the idea of being out-of-body, and able to watch herself give material for Seth.

Now, it is easy to see that you translate feelings into words or bodily expressions and gestures, but not quite as easy to realize that you form your physical body as effortlessly and unselfconsciously as you translate feelings into symbols that become words.