“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Besides normal reasons (Jane dictates:) he was psychically inclined, at a time when Jane was young and herself close to a past life. She sensed his deep and personal inner awareness. It confused and haunted him, since his inarticulateness applied also to thoughts within himself. He felt strongly but could not explain. In his solitary nature he came close to being a mystic but he was unable to relate his personality as Joseph Burdo with the social world at large, or even to the other members of his family. There was a block, regrettably. He felt strongly his connection with the universe as a whole and with nature as he understood it. But to him nature did not include his fellow human beings. The solitariness that besieged him—because it did besiege him—is dangerous to any personality unless it comes after identification with the human race.

That is, in his feeling of unity with All That Is, he excluded other human beings, and on your plane it is necessary for the personality to relate to them. Only after such relation is isolation of that nature of benefit. Jane sensed her grandfather’s feeling of identification with the rest of nature however, and since she had not yet developed a strong ego personality as a young child she felt no sense of rejection as did, for example, the other members of the family. When he spoke of wind she felt like wind, as any child will unself-consciously identify with the elements.

As far as the ink sketch is concerned, do not forget that while your man was imprisoned by his senses, in trying to reach beyond them in your physical universe your man could not perceive anything at all; and yet it is through these very earthy senses that he has a chance to glimpse beyond, or indeed realize that there is a beyond to glimpse.

Perception of beauty through the senses is the trigger on your plane for subsequent inner perceptions. The two are so closely bound, through music for example, which can only be appreciated through the senses. Psychic actions take place which lead the individual beyond the senses. There is much more to be said here. There is a phrase which I will explain at a later date—inner senses—which you will find extremely interesting. By this I mean senses within the senses. I would use behind the senses but I believe this would lead to confusion.

Everything on your plane is a materialization of something that exists independent of your plane. Therefore within your senses there are other senses that perceive inward. Your regular senses perceive, or as Jane would like to say create, an outer world. The senses within them, that is within the recognizable senses, perceive and create an inner world, they perceive part of an inner world. This is difficult for me to explain to you. However as your regular senses are limited according to the plane which you inhabit—in your case dear friends on your plane extremely limited, I’m afraid—so are the corresponding inner senses limited.

It is a sort of psychic focus, a concentration of awareness along certain lines. As your ability grows in relation with the environment of your plane then you can afford to look around, use the inner senses, and enlarge your scope of activity. This is only natural. Survival on a particular plane depends upon your concentration in that plane. Again, when survival is more or less satisfied by attention then you can avail yourself of the opportunity to turn your attention elsewhere.

To some extent though to a much lesser degree you can do this on your own plane, but in a weak fraction of a dimension. That is, you can perhaps sense or remember an earlier moment intuitively or capture an earlier moment visually as in a photograph, or audibly as in a recording. You can through motion pictures refer back to past time, capturing the visual and auditory data of a moment and even the apparent motion of its sequence. Viewing through your so marvelous television—ha—a historical moment for example you can refer to much that has passed.

In one sense meeting with you costs me little energy, it is true. On the other hand the effort to communicate explanations does involve very real effort on my part. And so you are not the only ones who grow weary in this respect. As I have said, feeling is action, and in my communications to you feeling plays a strong part.

(“Do you have a sense of play and relaxation on your plane?”)

We have a much stronger sense of play and relaxation than you have, and much more enjoyable. We can play as a child plays, having however full conscious appreciation—the I am principle—which the child lacks in his fanciful games.

(As nearly as I can recall it was then that I began to feel strange, as if something were going to happen. I put this feeling down to imagination. Almost at once I felt dissociated, drowsy, and sat in the rocker without rocking. My eyelids felt very heavy, my head slumped sideways. I could hardly keep awake but at the same time my senses were extremely acute; I could hear every sound in the house. Rob asked what was wrong. I answered that I felt very odd and unlike myself.

(Since my senses seemed so acute, Rob asked me to read a letter on my bulletin board, the small print on a match cover, and a few lines from a book, all held out much further than I could usually manage. I read the stuff.

(My condition: A feeling of weightlessness, of inability to function in the physical world, yet because my motions were so strange this gave Rob the impression that my limbs were heavy; to me they were light as air. I felt relaxed to the ninth degree. Yet all the while my senses were amazingly alert and I conversed with Rob more or less normally. My body seemed to have no physical resistance. When Rob took my hand it was very wet and floppy.