“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We sat silently at the board. Both of us were tired and not very much in the mood. We’d both had rough days working, and almost decided not to hold the session at all. But the pointer began to move.

In a sense all things could be called fragments, but there are different kinds. Personality fragments differ from others in that they can cause other fragments to form from themselves. In a way, say, (Here Jane lay the board aside and stood up. Pacing back and forth, she began to dictate:) that a tree cannot, personality fragments form other fragments having all the properties of the parent fragment—emotional life and so forth.

As for others all fragments have (pause) are throwoffs or projections. Difficult to explain, I am not doing well. In a physical sense this board is a projection of wood or a tree, but in this case the board has less properties than the parent tree. The tree can grow, the board cannot. A personality fragment on the other hand never has less properties than its parent. This is the difference. A personality fragment has all the properties of its parents inherent, though it may not know how to use them. The board however cannot learn to grow, even though you stick it in the earth.

(Jane continues:) In a sense the present individual in any given life could be called a fragment of his entire entity, having all the properties of the original entity, though they remain latent or unused. The personality fragment in this sense can learn to develop what it has, rather than seek new powers. There are no new powers. The image that your friend saw was, as I said, a personality fragment of his own. It contained all the abilities of your friend, whether latent or not I do not know. This type of personality fragment is of different origin than your friend, who is himself a fragment of his own entity. We call this type a split personality fragment, or a personality image fragment. Usually it cannot operate on all levels of your physical plane.

The consciousness will expand on your planet, just as it expands for those who go beyond your plane. The scope of consciousness will be so broadened in the future that all personality fragments, split personality images, and even individual fragments in succeeding incarnations, will be held in clear focus without strain. It is toward this that evolution on the earthly plane is headed, though of course with its usual donkey-slow rate.

(Break at 9:50. By now I had developed writer’s cramp from taking the above down at nearly top speed. We were both by now more than a little surprised and amazed. Jane had delivered the entire monologue exactly as I have recorded it here. She made no mistakes in delivery, did not lose her way, make any changes or corrections of any kind, at all. She said that Seth would have outdistanced her had she insisted on keeping to the board. She had to recite it because the words sounded within her. Resume at 10:00.

(“Seth, did I get all that down correctly?”)

I said what I said. I presume you got it all. Take a break.

Please do not comment, because Jane is having enough troubles with me tonight as it is. Ruburt, you are doing fine. Speaking about the problem you mentioned, because your aggressions are fairly well controlled consciously, and because in the present your creative energies are in the realm of your subconscious, at this stage they can be, and often are, used to create unhappy image personality situations such as at York Beach. You can rely to some extent on Jane’s intuition, which has been strong in all her incarnations. However, often she will only recognize something strange, and be unable as in that case to pinpoint the trouble.

Jane’s entity is an extremely strong one. Her intuition represents glimpses by her present person of her whole entity. As a rule these intuitions come through strongly. However, she is not operating at full entity level any more than you are, so you cannot rely upon her intuitions to catch all the mistakes that you may make.

Your dancing represented the first move away from what those images meant, and violent action was the best thing under the circumstances. Because your personalities were momentarily disconnected from their usual physical and psychic environment, and because the ordinary physical duties were not necessary, it was all the more easy for you to release these energies into the formation of the images you saw. However, you very nearly drained your energy reserve in forming these images. The energy you used dancing came from psychic reserves, saved subconsciously for emergency.

Jane was literally though unknowingly kicking her heels in the faces of the images you had created. You are lucky that the images themselves did not rise up and fight back, since the image fragments have all the powers of their parents, though they may be latent.

Remind me of this again. I would tell Jane to remember her own idea construction, for part of the answer is certainly there. It all depends on which side you are looking at the problem from.

9 PM Friday. Night all, and Willy.

(The incident referred to is as follows: Rob was very sick last winter and spring and into summer. We planned on a vacation in Maine. Rob was inclined to call it off, but I was for it and we went. In a York Beach joint, I immediately noticed a couple sitting across the room from us. They disturbed me to such an extent that I watched them almost constantly all the time we were there, three hours or more.

(The couple seemed detached from the room, observing, as we were also detached and observing. I wanted to speak to them, had strong impulse to do so but didn’t—after all, what on earth would I say? I mentioned my feelings to Rob, along with their uncanny resemblance to us, and also said that they could almost be us many years from now, though I certainly hoped not.