“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The soul can be considered as an electromagnetic energy field, of which you are part. It is a field of concentrated action when you consider it in this light — a powerhouse of probabilities or probable actions, seeking to be expressed; a grouping of nonphysical consciousnesses that nevertheless knows itself as an identity. Look at it this way: The young woman through whom I speak once stated in a poem, and I quote: “These atoms speak, and call themselves my name.”

Now your physical body is a field of energy with a certain form, however, and when someone asks you your name, your lips speak it — and yet the name does not belong to the atoms and molecules in the lips that utter the syllables. The name has meaning only to you. Within your body you cannot put your finger upon your own identity. If you could travel within your body, you could not find where your identity resides, yet you say, “This is my body,” and, “This is my name.”

(10:14.) If you cannot be found, even by yourself, within your body, then where is this identity of yours that claims to hold the cells and organs as its own? Your identity obviously has some connection with your body, since you have no trouble distinguishing your body from someone else’s, and you certainly have no trouble distinguishing between your body and the chair, say, upon which you may sit.

In a larger manner, the identity of the soul can be seen from the same viewpoint. It knows who it is, and is far more certain of its identity, indeed, than your physical self is of its identity. And yet now where in this electromagnetic energy field can the identity of the soul as such be found?

It regenerates all other portions of itself, and gives you the identity that is your own. And when it should be asked, “Who are you?” it would simply answer, “I am I,” and be answering for you also.

(Pause at 10:20.) Now in terms of psychology as you understand it, the soul could be considered as a prime identity that is in itself a gestalt of many other individual consciousnesses — an unlimited self that is yet able to express itself in many ways and forms and yet maintain its own identity, its own “I am-ness,” even while it is aware that its I am-ness may be part of another I am-ness. Now I am sure it may seem inconceivable to you, but the fact is that this I am-ness is retained even though it may, figuratively speaking, now merge with and travel through other such energy fields. There is, in other words, a give and take between souls or entities, and no end of possibilities, both of development and expansion. Again, the soul is not a closed system.

It is only because your present existence is so highly focused in one narrow area that you put such stern limits upon your definitions and the self, and then project these upon your concepts of the soul. You worry for your physical identity and limit the extent of your perceptions for fear you cannot handle more and retain your selfhood.

The soul is not frightened for its identity. It is sure of itself. It ever seeks. It is not afraid of being overwhelmed by experience or perception. If you had a more thorough understanding of the nature of identity you would not, for example, fear telepathy, for behind this concern is the worry that your identity will be swept away by the suggestions or thoughts of others.

Now: I want to emphasize again that while all this sounds difficult in the telling, it becomes much more clear intuitively when you learn to experience what you are, for if you cannot travel inside your physical body to find your identity, you can travel through your psychological self.