“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We had been speculating about spending our immediately-past lives in Boston, since Seth had hinted at this in the last session. We opened the session by sitting silently at the board, but Jane began to receive Seth even as the pointer spelled out his greeting. She laid the board aside and began to dictate in a normal voice, pacing as usual.)

Of course two lives would be sufficient to give you the three roles, but in some cases a personality does not function into adulthood, and therefore does not experience motherhood or fatherhood. Also for one reason or another a personality may not have offspring. Beside the three necessary roles there is another quality, different in dimension, which is also necessary for the personality, and this involves the fullest use of potential.

The ability to do this is not predestined in any way, shape or manner, but it seems to be inherent, unpredictable; but one of the basic characteristics of any given fragment.

I have only begun to go into this, but this matter is extremely important. Everyone who has left your plane has developed as far as he can on your plane. But as in your life certain environments tend to encourage some people in the realization of their talents, and seem to hinder others in the development of their peculiar talents, so some personalities expand in their capabilities on your plane; and some who do rather poorly on your plane expand surprisingly on other planes.

This talent for using energy to form unit patterns is elemental, not only on your plane but in all other planes. It involves drawing upon the basic vitality of the universe in using the inner senses, and actually pulling to oneself more and more of this underlaying vitality. Lest this suggest images of graspy potbellied souls, gluttonously grabbing the stuff of the universe for themselves out of the mouths of the less ambitious, let me hasten to inform you that such is not the case.

(Jane’s voice was still normal and her eyes had their usual darker look. But by now the rhythm of her pacing as she dictated Seth’s messages had picked up quite a bit. She was moving about faster than ever before; so much so that I began to think it might be extremely fatiguing if she kept it up.)

Therefore, with such an unnatural division it seems to man that he does not know himself. He says “I breathe, but who breathes, since consciously I cannot tell myself to breathe or not to breathe?” He says “I dream, but who dreams? I cannot tell myself to dream or not to dream.” He cuts himself in half, then wonders why he is not whole. Even in my own lifetimes on your plane I sensed this basic contradiction. Man has consistently admitted to the evidence only those things he could see, smell, touch or hear, and in so doing he could only appreciate half of himself. And when I say half of himself I exaggerate. He is aware of only a third of himself, because two-thirds of himself exists in that realm to which he will not admit.

It is as if a man found himself in a completely dark room, into which no sounds came. And he looked down, could not see his body, could not hear his voice, and therefore deduced that he had no body and no voice, even though he knew he had both a body and a voice before he entered that room. But he says “I will at any moment believe only what I can see, and though I am sure that I saw more at one time, now I can see nothing and so I have no body, since I cannot see it.”

With the hands that he does not think he has, our imaginary man then feels the contours of his body. But does this help him in his dilemma? No. He yells witchcraft. If someone else says “Oh, I feel a body,” he says “You are a medium.” Or, if you prefer, a crackpot. The fact remains that you have within yourself the evidence.

You will notice I am sure that the brief breaks are getting briefer in duration; and yet I am letting you break more often but for shorter periods. This material, you will find, will be a basis for other material that will come, and I prefer to give it to you before we go any further into a study of time.

As breathing is carried on in a manner that seems automatic to the conscious mind, so this important function of transforming the vitality of the universe into pattern units also seems to be carried on automatically. But this transformation is not as apparent to the one part of yourself that you are pleased to recognize, and therefore it seems as if this transformation is carried on by someone even more distant and alien than the unrecognized part of yourself that breathes.

But since it is so difficult for man to even recognize the self that moves his own muscles and breathes his own breath, then I suppose it should not be startling that he cannot realize that this whole self also forms the camouflage world of physical appearance, in almost the same manner that he forms a pattern with his breath upon a glass pane.

Without knowing what he was doing Ruburt has been developing his inner senses to an almost amazing degree, but naturally he did this unknowingly, pursuing other aims. In the past he was so bound to the conscious ego that in fiction he found it difficult to write anything that was not strictly autobiographical.

The poetry has always been the result of facility in use of the inner senses, but until lately he was unable to give this sufficient pattern in terms of unitary form. His efforts in the book The Physical World as Idea Construction represented a breakthrough on his part. He realized, I believe, from the beginning that the conscious critical mind had little to do with the initial conception.

(By now Jane’s delivery was really wound up. Though she did not talk much faster she emphasized the words more, used more gestures, and paced about even more rapidly. However I had the feeling she was not in as deep a trance state as before. Her hands still bothered her also; she had taken off one ring at the start of the session but had left her wedding ring on; now she was trying to get that one off too, but without success.)

In many cases he refuses to admit the mover. He trusts himself much more when he says “I will read,” and then he reads, than he does when he says “I will see,” and then he sees. He remembers having learned consciously to read, but he does not remember consciously having learned to see. And what he cannot remember consciously he fears, and what he fears he simply denies existence to.

He becomes trapped by his own artificially-divided self. He looks for gods, anything at all, to explain perfectly natural functions that belong to him. This beautifully absolves him in his own eyes from all responsibility, but it does not. I have been speaking here only, if you will believe it, of personalities in their particular lives as they operate on your plane, and I have much to say.

You must remember, and this is I’m afraid a sideline: but I must communicate this data to you by words which must necessarily be strung out in order, end to end, when now to me there is no such necessity, and I will go into this further. As I began to say, I have been speaking of your plane and the personalities upon it. Now I will go into this further, into the entities involved.

It is true that as a rule you are not aware of your whole entity, which as a rule does not reside within your boundaries. But there is no reason why you must be blind to the whole self of your present personality, which is part of your entity, and which can be glimpsed on your plane in terms of the breathing and dreaming self of which I have spoken.

Another thing. It is in some ways convenient that you are not consciously aware of each breath that you take. But it is sheer stupidity to ignore the inner self which does the breathing, and is aware of the mechanics involved. What you almost get here is that some little unknown self performs these necessary functions, and that is not the case. I have said that the mind is a part of the inner world, but you have access to your own minds which you ignore, and this access would lead you inevitably to the truths about the physical world. Working inward you could understand the outward so much more clearly.

This is not meant to discourage the intellect, but the intellect has never yet been used for the purpose for which it was developed. I suggest a brief break, and may I say that I am unusually pleased with tonight’s session, and with Ruburt’s performance, since this material is coming to you without any distortion whatsoever, as far as I can tell. This is indeed our best session to date.

(Break at 11:18. During this monologue Jane was not as far out, she said, yet was still “away” while talking. The phenomena persisted with her hands, though to a lesser degree, but she still could not get her wedding ring off.

Outer physical time is a complete camouflage, unnecessary basically on your plane; but you have made it seem necessary because of your refusal to admit the inner self as part of your whole personality, and therefore you have not been able to utilize psychological time to its fullest advantage on your plane. Psychological time as I have said is a natural pathway, part of an inner sense, that was meant as an easy access from the inner to the outer world and back again. You do not use it as such.

This is one of the reasons why breathing seems automatic, and why dreaming seems to confound your physical camouflage idea of time. It is perfectly within your present capabilities to understand that time, to your dreaming self, is very much like time to your waking inner self. But you must first disconnect the physical concept of time and watches.

This concept is one of the easiest to explore, since as I have said your clock time is one of the most artificial of your camouflages. The time concept in dreams may seem far different than your conception of time in the waking state, when you have your eyes on a clock and are concerned with getting to some destination by, say, 12:15. But it is not so different from time in the waking state when you are sitting alone in a room with your thoughts, and with no particular need to get anywhere.

You will I am sure see the similarity now between this inner, alone sort of psychological time, experienced very often in waking hours, and the sense of time experienced in dreams. This is meant to show you but one more point of similarity between the waking and sleeping selves. In other words it is meant as another proof that they are indeed but one self, and that any divisions between them are artificial.

The intellect is extremely important in the manipulation of camouflage patterns once they are created. You have made your world, and your intellect should help you deal with what you have created. It has other vital functions which I shall enumerate at a later date. However, I cannot say this too often: You are more than your conscious mind, much more, and the self which you do not admit happens to be the portion of yourself which not only insures your own survival in the physical universe which it has made, but which is also the connective portion of yourself with inner reality. Which is, when all is said and done, the only basic reality; and which also continually enables you to create these camouflage patterns, and which contains knowledge and intuitions and memories which you need in a most desperate manner if you are ever to understand yourselves, and if the race of mankind is ever to evolve to its fullest.

A capacity to use your inner senses to some extent was necessary. I cannot explain fully, but I was dependent upon some of your abilities to some degree, and I will go into this also when I get to it. If you prefer to take a break and continue, that is perfectly all right with me. However I will leave it up to you both.

(“Well Seth, that was great but we’ve decided to call it a night.”

(The next two sensations appeared somewhat later in the evening. The second one came perhaps after 11:30 PM, while we were sitting around the table eating. This sensation was so strong that I put down my sandwich and took off my glasses, because I literally did not know what to expect next. The wave of feeling washed over me very strongly. Although everyone about me was talking quite loudly, I had the weird sensation of voices within me, of mouths open or crying in soundless rhythm. I also felt, or sensed or perhaps glimpsed, a great chute or trough or pathway of some kind that reached down into me from above me, or at least from outside of me. I definitely felt apprehensive on this second occasion; I thought of some kind of attack, although there was no pain of any kind. The sensation in my chest was very strong. I believe, now that I look back, that this time I barely glimpsed the possibility that this might be an attempt at communication with me, from where I don’t know, or that perhaps it might be a premonitory warning. I believe I thought of my aging parents, but am not sure.

(But now, the next day, the memory still lingers. What was it? Maybe Seth will know.

(While writing out this statement, I am reminded that I experienced the same sensation, one time in a milder form, about a year ago. It happened on my job at Artistic Card Co., at noon. I was alone in the art room, eating lunch at my desk, when the feeling swept over me from head to foot. There was no warning, no pain, but the surprise of it doubled me over my desk. I was of course frightened momentarily, thinking of some kind of attack, but it quickly passed and did not return. I happened to be alone at the time.

(I remember that I stood up and paced about for a few moments. Within a short time I forgot about it, until now. I recall that in a recent session Seth said that I had called for help. I had not left my full-time job at Artistic then, but was close to doing so, and at the time I had not been feeling well. Also, when I had the experience last Saturday, I was not feeling my best. As best I can remember, I did not tell Jane of the sensation I experienced at Artistic a year ago.