“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It seems to you that you have only one form, the physical one that you perceive, and no other. It also seems that your form can only be in one place at one time. You have indeed other forms that you do not perceive, and you also create various kinds of forms for various purposes, although you do not perceive these physically either.

Your main sense of identity is involved with your physical body, so that it is, for example, extremely difficult for you to imagine yourself without it, or outside it, or in any way disconnected from it. Form is the result of concentrated energy, the pattern for it caused by vividly directed emotional or psychic idea images. The intensity is all important. If you have, for example, a highly vivid desire to be somewhere else, then without realizing it consciously a pseudophysical form, identical with your own, may appear in that very spot. The desire will carry the imprint of your personality and image, even though you remain unaware of the image or its appearance in the other location.

(9:30.) There are many such incipient or latent forms. To help you imagine what I am speaking of, you might think of them as ghost images, or shadow images, though this is only for the sake of analogy — forms, for example, just beneath, that have not emerged completely into physical reality as you know it, but are nevertheless vivid enough to be constructed. You would think them quite real indeed, if you could see them.

Each individual actually sends such replica images of himself out frequently, though the degree of the materialization may differ, some forms, for example, being more or less shadowy than others. However, these forms are not mere projections — “flat” images. They have a definite effect upon the atmosphere. They “make room” for themselves in ways that are rather difficult to explain, although they may coexist at times with physical objects or shapes, or may even be superimposed upon these. In this case there is a definite interaction — an interchange that is, again, beneath physical perception.

You may suddenly strongly wish that you were standing by a beloved but distant, familiar seashore, for example. This intense desire would then act something like a core of energy projected outward from your own mind, given a form, your form. The place that you had envisioned would then attract the form, and it would instantaneously stand there. This happens with great frequency.

It would not be seen under usual circumstances. On the other hand, if the desire were still more intense, the energy core would be greater, and a portion of your own flow of consciousness would be imparted to the form, so that for a moment you in your room might suddenly smell the salt air, or in some other way perceive the environment in which this pseudoimage stands.

(9:44.) The extent of perception will vary here to a great degree. To begin with, your physical form is the result of great emotional focus. The fantastic energy of your psyche not only created your physical body, but maintains it. It is not one continuous thing, although to you it seems permanent enough while it lasts. It is nevertheless in a constant state of pulsation, and because of the nature of energy and its construction, the body is actually blinking off and on.

Now: This is difficult to explain, and for our present purposes it is not entirely necessary that you understand the reasons for this pulsing; but even physically, you are “not here” as often as you are. Your emotional intensity and focus create forms beside your physical body, however their duration and degree are dependent upon the intensity of any given emotional origin.

Your space is therefore filled with incipient forms, quite vivid, but beneath the regular structure of matter that you perceive.

These projections, then, actually are sent out constantly. Some more sophisticated scientific instruments than you now have would clearly show not only the existence of these forms, but also vibrations in varying waves of intensity surrounding those physical objects that you do perceive.

(10:02 to 10:20.) There are also realities (pause), that are “relatively more valid” than your own; in comparison, strictly for an analogy, for example, your physical table would appear as shadowy in contrast, as [like] those very shadowy tables we imagine. You would have a sort of “supertable” in those terms. Yours is not a system of reality formed by the most intense concentration of energy, therefore. It is simply the one you are tuned into, part and parcel of. You perceive it simply for this reason.

Other portions of yourself, therefore, of which you are not consciously aware, do inhabit what you could call a supersystem of reality in which consciousness learns to handle and perceive much stronger concentrations of energy, and to construct “forms” of a different nature indeed.

(Pause at 10:30.) Think again about this form that you sent to the oceanside. Though it was not equipped with your own physical senses, it was of itself to some extent able to perceive. You projected it unknowingly, but through quite natural laws. The form built up from intense emotional desire. (Pause.) The image then follows its own laws of reality, and to some extent, and to a lesser degree than you, has a consciousness. (Pause.)

Now: You are, using an analogy again, sent out by a superself who strongly desired existence in physical form. You are no puppet of this superself. You will follow your own lines of development, and through means far too difficult to explain here, you add to the experience of the superself and also then extend the nature of its reality. You also insure your own development, and you are able to draw upon the abilities of the superself.

I mention this again in the middle of our present discussion so that you do not feel lost, or negated, or insignificant. There are obviously an infinite number of gradations in the types and kinds of forms of which we have been speaking. That energy which is projected from our “superself,” that spark of intense identity that resulted in your physical birth, that unique impetus, in the one way has many similarities to the old concept of the soul — except that it contains only a part of the story.

Now, through very intense emotional focus you can create a form, and project it to another person who may then perceive it. This may be done consciously or unconsciously; and that is rather important. This discussion does not concern the so-called astral form, which is something entirely different. The physical body is the materialization of the astral form.

(11:05.) It does not desert the body for any length of time, however, and it is not this that is projected in cases like the seaside analogy used earlier. You are presently focused not only in your physical body, but within a particular frequency of events that you interpret as time. Other historical periods exist simultaneously, in forms quite as valid; and other reincarnational selves. Again, you simply are not tuned to those frequencies.