“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now: Good evening.

Now it is difficult to explain to you how direct experience actually works, for it exists — a total field of perception, innocent of the physical clues such as color, size, weight, and sense, with which your physical perceptions are clothed.

Now, each event of which you are aware is already a translation of an inner event, a psychic or mental event that is perceived by the soul directly, but translated by the physically oriented portions of the self into physical sense terms.

It goes without saying then that the soul does not require a physical body for purposes of perception; that perception is not dependent upon physical senses; that experience continues whether or not you are in this life or another; and also that the soul’s basic methods of perception are also operating within you now even as you read this book. It also follows that your experience within the physical system is dependent upon a physical form and physical senses — again, because these interpret reality and translate it into physical data. It also follows that some hints of the soul’s direct experience can be gained by momentarily switching the physical senses off — by refusing to use them as perceptors, and falling back upon other methods. Now you do this to some extent in the dream state, but even then in many dreams you still tend to translate experience into hallucinatory physical terms. Most of the dreams that you recall are of this nature.

(9:35.) Now this particular level of consciousness, occurring in the sleep state, has not been pinpointed by your scientists. During it, energy is generated that makes the dream state itself possible. It is true that dreams allow the physically oriented self to digest current experience, but it is also true that the experience is then returned to its initial components. It breaks apart, so to speak. Portions of it are retained as “past” physical sense data, but the whole experience returns to its initial direct state.

Now, the soul is never diminished, nor basically are any portions of the self.

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.”

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?

(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.

Now this is the true nature of the psychological being of which you are part. As mentioned earlier, later in the book I will give you some practical suggestions that will allow you to recognize some of your own deeper abilities, and utilize them for your own development, pleasure, and education.

Now you may take your break.

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.

Now you may call this a spiritual or psychological or psychic exploration, as you prefer. You will not be trying to find your soul. In that respect there is nothing to find. It is not lost, and you are not lost. The words you use may make no difference, but your intent does indeed.

End of dictation. And now give us a moment, if you please.