“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now personality, even as you know it, constantly changes, and not always in ways that are anticipated — most often, in fact, in unpredictable ways. You insist upon focusing your attention upon the similarities that are woven through your own behavior; and upon these you build a theory that the self follows a pattern that you, instead, have transposed upon it. And the transposed pattern prevents you from seeing the self as it really is. Therefore, you also project this distorted viewpoint upon your conception of the reality of the soul. You think of the soul, therefore, in the light of erroneous conceptions that you hold regarding even the nature of your mortal selves.

(9:25.) Even the mortal self, you see, is far more miraculous and wondrous than you perceive, and possesses far more abilities than you ascribe to it. You do not understand as yet the true nature of perception, even as far as the mortal self is concerned, and therefore you can hardly understand the perceptions of the soul. For the soul, above all, perceives and creates. Remember again that you are a soul now. The soul within you, therefore, is now perceiving. Its methods of perception are the same now as they were before your physical birth, and as they will be after your physical death. So basically the inner portion of you, the soul-stuff, will not suddenly change its methods of perception nor its characteristics after physical death.

(9:42.) Your soul therefore — the soul that you are — the soul that you are part of — that soul is a far more creative and miraculous phenomenon than you previously supposed. And when this is not clearly understood, and when the concept is watered down for simplicity’s sake, as mentioned earlier, then the intense vitality of the soul can never be understood. Your soul, therefore, possesses the wisdom, information, and knowledge that is part of the experience of all these other personalities; and you have within yourselves access to this information, but only if you realize the true nature of your reality. Let me emphasize again that these personalities exist independently within and are a part of the soul, and each of them are free to create and develop.

(9:50.) Now, there are no closed systems in reality. In your physical system the nature of your perceptions limits your idea of reality to some extent, because you purposely decide to focus within a given “locale.” But basically speaking, consciousness can never be a closed system, and all barriers of such a nature are illusion. Therefore the soul itself is not a closed system. When you consider the soul, however, you usually think of it in such a light — unchanging, a psychic or spiritual citadel. But citadels not only keep out invaders, they also prevent expansion and development.

I tell you this, and at the same time remind you that your present personality is never lost. Now another word for the soul is entity. You see it is not a simple matter of giving you a definition of a soul or entity, for even to have a glimpse in logical terms you would have to understand it in spiritual, psychic, and electromagnetic terms, and understand the basic nature of consciousness and action as well. But you can intuitively discover the nature of the soul or entity, and in many ways intuitive knowledge is superior to any other kind.

Now I do not mean this to be merely a symbolic exercise, for though it may begin with imagination, it is based upon fact, and emanations from your consciousness and the creativity of your soul do indeed reach outward in that manner. The exercise will give you some idea of the true nature, creativity, and vitality of the soul from which you can draw your own energy and of which you are an individual and unique portion.

Now it is nearly impossible to separate a discussion of the nature of the soul from a discussion of the nature of perception. Very briefly let us review a few points: You form physical matter and the physical world that you know. The physical senses actually can be said to create the physical world, in that they force you to perceive an available field of energy in physical terms, and impose a highly specialized pattern upon this field of reality. Using the physical senses, you can perceive reality in no other way.

(Pause at 10:53.) As it does, so its own ideas of its own nature will automatically change and expand, for you will have removed limitations to its growth. Now any act of perception changes the perceiver, and so the soul, considered as a perceiver, must also change. There are no real divisions between the perceiver and the thing seemingly perceived. In many ways the thing perceived is an extension of the perceiver. This may seem strange, but all acts are mental, or if you prefer, psychic acts. This is an extremely simple explanation; but the thought creates the reality. Then the creator of the thought perceives the object, and he does not understand the connection between him and this seemingly separate thing.

This characteristic of materializing thoughts and emotions into physical realities is an attribute of the soul. Now in your reality, these thoughts are made physical. In other realities, they may be “constructed” in an entirely different fashion. So your soul, that which you are, constructs your physical daily reality for you from the nature of your thoughts and expectations.

You can readily see, therefore, how important your subjective feelings really are. This knowledge — that your universe is idea construction — can immediately give you clues that enable you to change your environment and circumstances beneficially. When you do not understand the nature of the soul, and do not realize that your thoughts and feelings form physical reality, then you feel powerless to change it. In later chapters of this book, I hope to give you some practical information that will enable you to alter practically the very nature and structure of daily life.