“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(John arrived at 8:00 PM. By now Jane was already nervous, especially so after her very short sessions last week. Her wry neck was much abated, but she had lost her mental connection with the steady flow of the material and was wondering how she would do when it came to resuming dictation.

Nothing remains unchanging, personalities and entities least of all. You are still thinking in terms of concrete things. You cannot stop an entity or a personality in time, as you would like to do. I am Seth today. I keep my continuity but nevertheless I change, and offshoots like currents explode into being.

As an idea changes, so do entities change while still retaining individuality and durability. But you cannot set up imaginary barriers, and stop or freeze my identity, nor for that matter your own.

Ruburt was myself, Seth, many centuries ago, but he grew, evolved and expanded in terms of a particular, personal set of value fulfillments. He is now an actual gestalt, a personality that was one of the probable personalities into which Seth could grow. I represent another. I am another.

I realize that this is somewhat difficult, but when you reread the last two sessions you will understand this material completely. Ruburt is now the result of the Seth that I once was, for I have changed since then. Ruburt represents, and is, a personality formed by that Seth which was myself, by focusing upon and using a peculiar set of attributes and abilities. To make it simpler, perhaps, we split, this being necessary always so that various possibilities can be brought into action.

In their materialization upon your plane, and as seen from your own camouflage perspective, you seem to be aware of new entities, but this is because of your own limited viewpoint. In your time scheme entities have had time to produce more fragmentary personalities, but in truth from your viewpoint these personalities can be seen to have changed long ago.

The old analogy, rather trite I’m afraid, is still a good one. Walking through a forest you find many trees. Time can be conceived of, truly, as the entire forest. You however see a tree in front of you and call it the future. You think that the tree was not there because you had not come to it yet. The tree behind you, you call the past. You are walking so to speak along one narrow path, but there are many paths. The forest exists as a whole. You can walk forward, so to speak, and backward, though you are only now learning how.

There is no past, present or future in your terms within it, but only a now. Because of the endless possibilities within this now, durability is maintained in terms of value fulfillment, the fulfillment of literally endless values. Therefore the forest is constantly expanding. Remember your expanding universe theory, but not in terms of space or indeed in terms of time, but in terms of fulfillment of abilities and values that may be constructed upon various levels and in various guises, your present plane of existence being one.

I also said that new entities were being formed, but in the framework of the spacious present all this is spontaneous. The contradiction seems a contradiction only on your terms. On my terms there is none. For practical purposes you may say, in truth on your own terms, that entities simply have had time to develop further personalities. But I want it understood that this is true only within your own time framework.

I suggest your break, and if this hasn’t broken you up then nothing will. You are indeed as you can see broken up a million times, and put together in many various manners; and yet you retain the inner ego, and in other words your own identity. But this identity must change. This again is no contradiction. Nothing can be static, and believe it or not, nothing is.

I will go further and shock you thoroughly, by mentioning that your regular seeds that do not develop, do not fail as a rule because of a lack of the necessary environmental ingredients, but simply because, for various reasons during a particular arbitrary point, they do not choose to so develop.

Change, as you must know, involves not only growth but a complete disorientation, to make way for a different, perhaps newer, orientation. You see value fulfillment in terms of growth, and therefore think of disintegration in terms of psychic destruction and death. That is, you see an ending as the effect of any beginning.

On your plane each atom and molecule contains the potentiality for any physical construction whatsoever. Each atom and molecule contains, as I have said, a generalized consciousness, in which all of the basic laws are known, and also a limited but definite self-awareness.

In other words the whole in almost any case is more than the sum of its parts. Yet the inner consciousness of the individual atoms and molecules is not changed; but each of them combine to form this extral—

(Intrigued by Jane’s delivery of the word extral, I checked Webster’s Unabridged for 1951. The prefix extral was not listed, nor was extralvalue; but extralimitary, meaning outside the limit or boundary, was. It might be said that the overtones of the two words, extralvalue and extralimitary, were the same. Jane speculated that since she had studied Latin in high school Seth might have used her own subconscious knowledge to coin a new word.

(It will be remembered that Philip is the name given by Seth as John Bradley’s entity. John had not mentioned to us that he felt changes were imminent in his company, Searle Drug, but after the session he noted that such might well be the case. Searle was facing stiff competition in a market that now favored the buyer, John said, and new methods and perhaps new personnel were called for to meet the problem.

There is a truth behind your cause and effect theory but it is far from what you imagine, and has nothing to do with continuity. This may be difficult at this point to imagine, but a durability such as that of the spacious present has nothing to do with your idea of continuity in terms of a present, past and future.

Through the inner senses then, you may perceive the inner laws, and remember that the inner ego knows what it is about. The intellect of the outer ego is but a pale image of your own inner ego. We will also go into this later.

This is rather unpleasant, but such an energy used unwittingly, say, when Ruburt was feeling upset with a certain person, could lead to unfavorable circumstances for the person involved, nor is this shades of witchcraft. Any energy can be used for almost any purpose.

(I told myself I would visit Ed and Ella Robbins. Whether a dream or not I do not know, but I seemed to roam through their house. Flash of young daughter Lorrie, running from living room to kitchen area; flash of oldest daughter, Arlene. Roamed through house, upstairs and down.