“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The characteristics of consciousness are the same (seme) whether you are in a body or outside of one. The peaks and valleys of consciousness that I mentioned exist to some degree in all consciousness despite the form adopted (adepted) after death (deth). The nature of your consciousness is no different basically (bascially) than it is now, though you may not be aware of many of its characteristics.

Now your consciousness is telepathic and clairvoyant, for example, even though you may not realize it. In sleep when (whene) you often presume yourself to be unconscious (unconsious) you may be far more conscious than you are now, but simply using abilities of consciousness that you do not accept as real or valid (valed) in waking (waping) life. You therefore shut (shup) them out of your conscious experience (experiencl). Consciousness, yours and mine, is quite independent of both (poth) time and space. And after death you are simply aware of the greater powers of consciousness that exist within you all the time.

Since they do, of course, you can discover them now and learn to use them. This will directly (dreactly) assist you in after-death (agter) experience. You will not be nearly so startled by the nature of your own reactions (reactone) if you understand beforehand for example that your consciousness not only is not imprisoned by your physical body, but (bud) can create other portions at will. Those who “overidentify” their consciousness with their body can suffer self-created torment (tortment) for no reason, lingering about the body. Indeed, quite the forlorn soul, thinking it has no other place to go.

Give us a moment. This was an exercise, actually, in the manipulation of consciousness. Close to death, this same sort of thing happens in varying degrees when the consciousness realizes that it can no longer express itself through the mediumship of the body. If the dying person overidentifies with the body then he can easily panic, thinking that all expression is therefore cut off, and for that matter that his consciousness is about to be extinguished.

We will be dealing now, after what I hope is suitable background material, with some chapters on the nature of existence after physical death, at the point of death, and involving the final physical death at the end of the reincarnational cycle. It was important that you understand something about the nature and behavior of your own consciousness before we could begin.