“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Incidentally I do have access to your conscious and unconscious minds, but only when you permit it. Consciously neither of you are aware of the subtle permission or refusal of permission that you yourselves give. And as far as suggestion is concerned, since you both have been reading along these lines, there is a point where the most suggestible of persons is beyond reach.

It is unfortunately true that the dominant present ego can be degraded on your plane to an amazing degree, through for example brainwashing and so forth. However this situation, while bad enough, is not as dire as you might think. When you are considering the human personality as a thing of this time only and destroyed by death, then its disintegration for any reason seems truly a tragic thing. And it is tragic.

Nevertheless, when you think in terms of the entity and its various personality manifestations throughout your earth time then you realize that the basic self, the entity, cannot be destroyed in any particular earth life. You are, I know, acquainted with the idea of regeneration. If you will imagine the various reincarnated personalities—and this is a most unpleasant analogy—as the various limbs and other faculties of the entity, then you will see why if one fragment is disintegrated it can be regenerated in the same manner that a physical cell of your body can be regenerated.

This is actually not as bad an analogy as I first thought, in that oftentimes a particular personality will be like the right arm of the entity as a whole, while another particular personality will have both feet on the ground. To get back however to the original point I wish to make, there is a point beyond which the most suggestible personality will be beyond reach, no matter what the circumstances are. Manifestations of the personality may follow the lines that suggestion commands. This is bad enough, but it only means that the personality has been forced to change its mode of action in the physical world. The personality seems shattered because the actions seem so changed. And here again we have your cause and effect, misapplied. The basic personality, that is the primary personality, has not been changed and will not change except through the personality itself.

What may occur is that lesser fragments of the personality, that were at one time possible competing elements for the dominant personality, take over.

These may come to the foreground in bad circumstances, and actually save the basic personality itself from what would certainly be disintegration. It is as if the basic personality throws the dirty dogs bone after bone, all the while saving the real morsel.

Planets have been used as planes and used again as other planes. A plane is not a cosmic location. It is oftentime practical that entities or their various personalities visit one plane before another. This does not mean that one plane must necessarily be visited before another. A certain succession is merely more useful for the entity as a whole.

Frank Watts did indeed come from the state of sorrow. He was a makeup personality—that is, through Frank Watts I had to make up for past errors. Never a pretty proposition. These people who seem borne from sorrow to sorrow are often of this type. I should not make light of Frank Watts, since almost literally he redeemed me. This plane for Frank Watts was a plane of sorrow. I will of course make it all up to him, or try to. He has absolutely no sense of humor.

I didn’t hear her speak. I know she didn’t do as beautifully as she does for me in your own living room, and I am sure she spoke in her own voice. Nevertheless I understand she came up against a Frank Watts in poet’s clothing—a shocking experience for anybody. She always did like to teach, and this ability is one of the carry-through traits of her various personalities.

Yet as always I dislike parting. When I get through with what I should say, then I just feel like saying what I would like to say. I think your progress is coming along very well, and I am pleased. Ruburt is learning a certain discipline and controlled manner that will do his present personality great benefit. You, Joseph, are opening in one way, and gaining an added self-control and confidence in another.

(Malba said it takes time to prepare for a seance, 15 minutes at least in relaxation before; a black cloth on our table reaching to the floor would help, as well as drapes on the upper half of our windows, to cover the white Venetian blinds. She said that my old friend, Father Trainor was on her plane, and that both of them would probably reincarnate again. She is a female personality but does not operate sexually.