“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The cells and molecules, forming their psychic gestalt into a particular human physical structure, are separated from what you might call the outer environment, and yet they are also connected to the outer environment more than they are separated from it. It is the inner ego, and the inner vitality and the inner ego’s determination, along with the cooperation of all the cells that compose the physical body, that enables such a particular structure as the human body to exist as a separate construction, and to maintain the necessary sense of identity.

Chemically in particular, the dependence of the physical body and the self to the planetary environment is obvious. It is known to your scientists that the chemical relationship between the personal physical self, and the chemical environment of the not-self is intimately connected.

The self will truly utilize the atoms and molecules; the consciousness will travel by this method. The particular physical body will then be known for what it is: a cooperative psychic gestalt, a psychio-physical structure formed together by the inner ego, utilizing atoms and molecules that are in themselves living and conscious.

We will be deliberate for a moment to get this material through, since I know it is difficult for you. I want to make these points to lead up to the main one. Consciousness comes first, and forms the physical body in ways that I have described. Nevertheless there are no real boundaries that separate self from nonself.

Now. Space travel, when it occurs, will utilize expansion of self. Your idea of death is based upon your dependence upon the outer senses. You will learn that it is possible, through no physical act (and underline that, through no physical act), to relinquish the physical body, expand the self, using atoms and molecules as stepping stones to a given destination, and reforming the physical body at the other end.

In the beginning entry to your plane requires a simple energy unit, a sperm, a simple but potent capsule that contains all the future potentiality. After entry into your plane, the self or identity, the consciousness, without any physical act, can leave the physical body, expand, travel through the medium of atoms and molecules, and completely reassemble.

(Later, Jane told me that as she was delivering this material aloud, she also contained within another parallel channel of thought from Seth, as she often does. This time she was quite aware of Seth’s concern lest anyone, upon reading this section of the material, commit suicide in a misguided effort to prove that it is possible for the consciousness to get along without the physical body. Jane said that at times she is aware of as many as three separate, parallel streams of thought, at the same time as she is giving voice to one of them.)

This seems strange because you do not fully comprehend that the energy, the vitality that is individualized into consciousness forms the physical body; and once it appears on your plane it can leave the body and reassemble itself. It would represent no more in one way to the atoms and molecules through which it passed, than the wind that passes through the treetops.

The consciousness, with its source in the inner universe, being not bound by time or space, is in a position to expand along the lines that I have mentioned. The physical body in a large degree is not. Do not mistake me. For practical purposes, theory aside, you could not maintain allegiance to your plane, live out a normal life span for example (and this is necessary) while separate from the physical body.

Nevertheless, you can leave the physical body and reassemble it. I am sorry to say that if you have a bad gall bladder, the reassembled body will also have a bad gall bladder, since it is the consciousness who has caused the illness to begin with. Even if you leave the body momentarily you do not leave your problems behind, or at least you must come back to them.

Now. Since the identity-consciousness is composed of the combined and cooperating generalized consciousness of all the body’s atoms and molecules, and the consciousness of the inner ego, these molecular consciousnesses that once or initially found expression in forming their physical construction, no longer do so; but are competent to do so again when the self-consciousness so demands.

The combined molecular consciousnesses, retaining identity, form a gestalt consciousness that is the ego, the outer ego, that is in turn utilized by the consciousness of the inner ego. The inner ego being unhampered by the laws of your plane, once having entered your plane at physical birth, can therefore leave the physical body and then reconstruct it.

Since the conscious ego is composed of the gestalt molecular consciousness, then when it leaves the physical body it takes the molecular consciousness with it, and this molecular consciousness is therefore present to aid in future construction. However, since you must deal with physical laws while dwelling upon the physical plane, you cannot dispense entirely with the physical constructions, but in such extensions of consciousness you must utilize other physical molecules and atoms.