“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“What do you have to say about the psychiatrist’s idea, that all this is merely Jane’s subconscious talking?”)

We have gone into this before, and I have no doubt that we will on endless occasions; and if I succeed in convincing you of my reality as a personality I will have done exceedingly well. It should be apparent, and I’ve said this before, that my communications come through Ruburt’s subconscious. But as a fish swims through water, the fish is not water, and I am not Ruburt’s subconscious.

About Ruburt’s subconscious again. You see, the slight but still rather remarkable evidence of telepathy I gave you with Philip had two purposes, or one large one.

I wanted to show you that telepathy did exist, and I wanted to show Ruburt that more than his own subconscious was involved. I wanted to build up his confidence. I am definitely a personality independent of Ruburt’s subconscious. Now, Ruburt assembles me, or allows me to assemble myself, in a way that will be recognizable to you; but regardless of this assembling, I exist in an independent manner, and with the past of which I have spoken.

I cannot simply appear in your midst, or make myself known in my own form. I have explained camouflage patterns to you, I have explained the way the vitality or stuff of the universe changes from plane to plane. Then why do you find it strange that at your end I must to some degree change essence, and find a point of entry, which happens to be Ruburt’s subconscious? It has enough camouflage pattern to enable me to make contact, but not so much as to distort me out of all recognition. I have described the effects of entry into your plane of the so-called flying saucers, and my entry into your plane is something of the same.

I am not Ruburt’s subconscious, though I speak through it. It is the atmosphere through which I can come to you, as the air is the atmosphere through which a bird flies, but the bird is something different from the air. A certain reassembly of myself is necessary when I enter your plane, and this reassembly is done partially by myself, and partially by the combined subconscious efforts of you, Joseph, and Ruburt. Will this satisfy you now?

The entity itself does not have to keep constant check on its personalities, because in each personality there is an inner self-conscious part that knows its origin. This part, for now, I will call the self-conscious beyond the subconscious. The breather and the dreamer are not so automatically controlled as it would seem. I have mentioned before that some part of you knows exactly how much oxygen the lungs breathe, and how much energy it takes to pace a floor, and this is the part of you of which I spoke. It is the part, and the self-conscious part, that receives all inner data.

The part that translates inner data sifts it down through the subconscious, which is a barrier and also a threshold to the present personality as it operates on the camouflage plane. I have mentioned many times how vitality changes as it approaches and forms various planes. I have said that the topmost part of the subconscious contains personal memories. That beneath these are racial memories and so forth. Things are simply not layered in the way I speak of them. But continuing with the necessary analogy, on the other side of (or beneath to you) the racial memories, you no longer exist within your plane, and look out upon another with the face of this other self-conscious part of you. This part receives inner data, is in contact with the entity, to some greater degree than you are in contact with your dreams, and actually directs all the important functions that you think are either automatically controlled, or unconsciously controlled.

At the same time imagine that these creatures are really one creature, but with definite parts equipped to handle two entirely different worlds. The subconscious therefore, in this truly ludicrous analogy, would exist between the two brains, and would enable the creature to operate as a single unity. At the same time, and this is the difficult part to explain, neither of the two faces would ever see the other world. They would not be aware of each other. And yet each would be fully self-conscious.

The bookcases should stay as they are, my dear Ruburt. Enough is enough, and you have optimum benefit from them. You should feel much better. The bedroom arrangement is fine, and if my dear Joseph will not blame Ruburt’s subconscious I would make one further suggestion that is not, however, to involve any more complicated arrangements on Ruburt’s part: simply, when it is possible, the addition of either a comfortable chair or a small desk and chair, quite simple, to your bedroom arrangement, as a more or less permanent fixture for a small private place, accessible when he wants it, for our so sensitive and sometimes pigheaded Ruburt.

(This was to the effect that Jane’s dream, back in July of 1963, had been correct, but that Jane had been too eager to put a less serious implication upon it. The real meaning of the dream was that, rather than go through the operations on her eyes, Miss Callahan had decided subconsciously to die; and that she had reached this decision at the same time that Jane dreamed it.