“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

With the little background given so far, we can at least begin to discuss the subject of this book: The eternal validity of the soul. Even when we are exploring other issues, we will be trying to illustrate the multidimensional aspect of this inner self. There are many misconceptions connected with it, and first of all we shall try to dismiss these.

First of all, a soul is not something that you have. It is what you are. I usually use the term “entity” in preference to the term “soul,” simply because those particular misconceptions are not so connected with the word “entity,” and its connotations are less religious in an organizational sense.

The trouble is that you frequently consider the soul or entity as a finished, static “thing” that belongs to you but is not you. The soul or entity — in other words, your most intimate powerful inner identity — is and must be forever changing. It is not, therefore, something like a cherished heirloom. It is alive, responsive, curious. It forms the flesh and the world that you know, and it is in a state of becoming.

You do have access to the inner self, therefore. You are hardly cut off from your own soul or entity. The ego prefers to consider itself the captain at the helm, so to speak, since it is the ego who most directly deals with the sometimes tumultuous seas of physical reality, and it does not want to be distracted from this task.

Channels, psychological and psychic, always exist, sending communications back and forth through the various levels of the self, and the ego accepts necessary information and data from inner portions of the personality without question. Its position in fact depends in a large manner upon this unquestioning acceptance of inner data. The ego, in other words, the “exterior” self that you think of as your self — that portion of you maintains its safety and its seeming command precisely because inner layers of your own personality constantly uphold it, keep the physical body operating, and maintain communications with the multitudinous stimuli that come both from outside conditions and inside conditions. The soul or entity is not diminished but expanded through reincarnations, through existence and experience in probable realities — something that I will explain later.

(10:43.) Such an eternity would be dead indeed. In many ways the soul is an incipient god, and later in this book we will discuss the “god concept.” For now, however, we will simply be concerned with the entity or soul, the larger self that whispers even now in the hidden recesses of each reader’s experience. I hope in this book not only to assure you of the eternal validity of your soul or entity, but to help you sense its vital reality within yourself. First of all, however, you must have some idea of your own psychological and psychic structure. When you understand to some extent who and what you are, then I can explain more clearly who and what I am. I hope to acquaint you with those deeply creative aspects of your own being, so that you can use these to extend and expand your entire experience.

Now: Remember in your portrait the sense of play, and a light hand. Otherwise you lose your sparkling colors and end up with a murkiness that you do not intend. Remember that the soul is plain behind the facade that you see — that even the body is in a constant state of almost magical activity, even though as you paint it in its chair, it is physically motionless.