“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We had but a 5-inch reel, and since the hypnosis material was also on this reel we didn’t think we could record the whole Seth session, even with 4-track technique. But Jane set up the recorder, placed the mike on a coffee table near the center of the room, and ran a few feet of tape to make sure her voice was picked up from any part of the room. She then rewound the tape, recorded her name, the time and the date, and switched the set off. This was done by 8:45.

I know quite well that your toy is recording. This bothers me in no way whatsoever. Ruburt is aware of the droning of the machine but this will pass. And congratulations, my dear friends, on our 25th anniversary. You will be much older by the time I get through with you.

Ruburt has been complaining with loud inner wails because he has been sleeping later in the mornings, and hasn’t put in his full work time this week. And of course I am to blame. I am most certainly not to blame. I certainly will not be the family whipping boy. It is true that I have disrupted your schedule to some degree, but not after all in any great manner. How could you be spending the same amount of time any more profitably? The truth is, that the lazy ego finds excuses where it may.

If you use psychological time in the manner which I described, you will find that I have given you a time gift, in that you will receive great refreshment and relaxation in a short period of clock time. And your need for sleep will be minimized. This involves some training on your part, but is relatively easy and should come without too much difficulty.

(Break at 9:27. I announced the time aloud, we made a few comments on how the session was going, then Jane shut off the recorder. She was not nervous by now, as usual. We had the machine set to record at the slowest speed possible, in order to make the tape last. When Jane felt Seth coming on again, she turned on the recorder, I announced the time, and Jane began to dictate once more. Resume at 9:31.)

At the same time, using the rather weak analogy of music as compared to inner data, you are refusing to use the phonograph. That is, you are refusing to use the very inner senses which are equipped to handle the data that you wish to capture.

Almost everyone is familiar with something else, however, and that is the psychological experience which may have no observable physical effect, and yet can change a personality to a large degree. Now the change in the personality may have secondary physical effects. The personality may act in certain ways in the physical world as a result of a psychological experience. But these physical effects are secondary to the experience, and the experience of itself makes no physical effect upon the material world. Any such effects are made after the experience by the personality involved.

A death in a family, for example, is a physical occurrence. Various members of the family will react differently, as you know. The psychological experience will be intensely diversified, personal, unpredictable as far as each family member is concerned. You cannot observe this actual psychological experience with the outer senses. Even you yourself cannot see, smell, touch that inner experience. You cannot hold it in both hands and look it over. You cannot observe it in any objective manner, as you can observe a pencil on a table, yet it would be foolish to say that this psychological experience did not exist. It is too vivid to ignore, and oftentimes the personality is almost divorced from action because of this experience that is psychological, that cannot be observed with instruments, or even by the person involved.

Your scientists with their instruments have succeeded in inducing the emotions of fear, sorrow, and so forth in some operations, but the experience itself remains subjective and psychological. Some physical effects, and again even these are secondary effects, may be observed as far as the emotions are concerned, in that pulses may quicken, certain chemicals and hormones may quicken their activity.

There are so many gradations, and you have so many misconceptions, that I must tell you that at times I am appalled. Even my sense of humor withers.

(Break at 10:35. Jane turned off the recorder, not wishing to speak into it until her voice had “returned” to her. At times she felt this way subjectively about Seth taking over her voice, though outwardly during this session there had been little change. When Jane began dictating again, for the first time her voice became somewhat louder and heavier. Resume at 10:38.)

If you follow them backwards as it were, they will lead you to the inner senses as such, while being at the same time the same thing. I hope I have made this point clearly.

The fields intermingle. I wanted to make another point, which was that data received by the inner senses is as intense and vivid, and often more so, than any psychological experience, and as I mentioned, you cannot examine a psychological experience in a laboratory either. But the worst of fools would not deny psychological experience for this reason.

On the other hand your inner senses are much more reliable. Your inner data is much more reliable. Your psychological experience is valid, whether chairs are solid or not. And the inner data and the inner self which you deny is a lot more permanent, my dear Joseph, and I am speaking to you as proof.

What you are pleased to call the subconscious represents merely the part of the inner senses, or of the inner self, that even your society can no longer ignore. And this is indeed only the surface. Here you find of course the repository for personal memories, and not of personal egobound conscious memories either, but also of psychological experiences that the ego itself prefers to forget.

This dual self, in fact, does not exist anywhere else as far as I know. We will go into some of the reasons for this duality again later. Tonight’s discussion is important because for the first time I have really tried to show you how the inner and outer planes or fields are connected.

They are fields within fields. In our discussion of fifth dimension, I mentioned how the vitality of the universe changes in different planes while it actually makes up the planes at the same time. In this manner also the so-called whole self and entity are connected, in this case by many diverse patterns, the inner senses being composed of the same elements of which the entity itself is composed.

Death is the personality’s release from the physical plane, or we will use the term “the physical field,” and that is all. To the ego this is a frightening future in prospect. To the ego, even sleep seems a slap in the face. Recognition in physical life of the whole self would do much to negate this death fear, since there are rather pleasant psychological experiences which are akin to the experience of death, and which would prepare the personality for this eventuality.