“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Using the outer senses, you are more or less forced to conceive idea groups only within the scope of perceptions received by the outer senses. It is true that use of the outer senses, and full joyful use, is necessary on your plane. Not only necessary but beneficial, and the means toward various kinds of value fulfillments. Nevertheless, their range is severely limited.

They feared that their selves would be annihilated. Such a development as we are considering involves instead an expansion or extension; in the same manner that the expanding universe takes up no space, but expands in terms of value fulfillment, so the expanding consciousness would take up no space, but would also expand in terms of value fulfillment. This is your new frontier, your new challenge.

(She had a long rest period, and indeed needed the rest. She resumed in a normal but emphatic voice, using many gestures, and with the usual darkening of her eyes, at 10:14.)

This must most certainly sound outlandish to you. Nevertheless I will never refrain from giving you the facts, regardless of your reactions at the time, as you will come to see how this idea in particular is not unthinkable, but feasible.

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.

But as the mind represents, and it does, motion and excitement to the trees, so would the consciousness, as it rustled through the cells and molecules of so-called space, represent refreshing experience and momentary new satisfactions.

I mentioned space travel because I know that you are interested in it, but this is only one example, and a spectacular one to catch your interest, of the advantages of extension of self.

(As break began, I realized that my hands felt fat or enlarged; at the same time Jane said hers did also, and that she had been aware of it earlier in the session but forgot to mention it. My right hand, and especially the third finger, felt very full and engorged. At such times the skin acquires a taut, almost flushed look, and the fingers feel strained when they are doubled up. The phenomenon lasted for several minutes with both of us.

(Jane also announced that at various times during the past two or three weeks, she had had the feeling of her left foot or hand—never the right—being plunged in hot water. It is not a feeling of perspiration, but more like a hot flash. It will happen at any time—at work, at home, etc. It is a feeling almost as though the limb could dissolve or merge into a warm environment that was enveloping it.

Your scientists will very soon discover that the self has no real boundaries, but they will not think of the implications involved, on their own, for quite a while.

Part of the limitations set upon the self are cultural, and vary according to civilizations, but the basic cause is the absolute reliance upon the outer senses—

(At this moment I heard clearly the crunching banging sound of an automobile accident, through our open windows. Our living-room windows command a good view of our street, one of the main ones in Elmira, but a quick look told me the accident was out of our visual range. Jane heard it too, but merely cast a casual look through a window. As with the burning chicken described in the last session, she paid no attention; during delivery she seems to be largely impervious to distractions.)

—even when your own technological advancements prove beyond doubt that in many cases the evidence of your own outer senses is wrong, and does not represent reality, but represents an arbitrary pattern forced upon reality. Through the outer senses you must always see reality in arbitrary, really unchanging terms; and reality can simply not be held within such boundaries.

This extension of self will occur in some degree before any really effective brotherhood of man is accomplished. This is unfortunate but true. The self begins learning its arbitrary limitations at the same time that it tries expansion in childhood. If the cultural limitations were lifted this would at least be of some benefit.

(Again, I became aware that my right hand felt enlarged; the feeling had subsided but now returned, and with an increased intensity. It was somewhat of a handicap in writing; the hand, having a different feeling as it held the pen, made me concentrate more on the simple physical act of putting the words down. And I saw Jane rubbing her hands together as she paced back and forth while dictating.)

The various species and the multitudinous varieties of life in your universe could with much validity be compared to cells, organs, or limbs of some gigantic creature. There is no reason to feel that man is insignificant, or that the individual is impotent or at the mercy of forces he can neither perceive nor comprehend. To the contrary, the individual, any individual, is supremely important, necessary; and his, or even its, ability to use its energy constructively, but most of all to expand in terms of value fulfillment, is more vital than I can say.

There is a temporary and initial, barely perceivable enlargement, a deep pulsing in the manner of a beating forth of cells and molecules—actually a sort of pulsation resulting in a minute but definite enlargement of tissue. You experience this in slow motion. Completed, the process would represent what would appear to be a propulsion of consciousness or self from the tissues.

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.

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.

My most beloved friends, this is one of our best sessions to date. I think of you most highly, and I respect you both, not only as excellent pupils but as dearest friends. I will hereby close the session. Let me tell you, Joseph, that your room divider has proven of great psychic value to you both; and you have not had any gum boils since I suggested putting the refrigerator in the kitchen.

(By the time we got organized the sensation had begun to diminish with each of us but I took the measurements anyhow.

(Then came a rather unpleasant experience. Driving or gliding along river road just north of Chemung NY, with fence on my right so that I could not get off the road, I saw sweeping down the hill some distance ahead of me a big tractor-trailer truck—on the wrong side of the road. This experience had duration enough for me to consider the best way to avoid it. It did not swerve about, merely headed straight for me until it loomed up enormously right in front of me. There was no crash but I was frightened; part of the time I saw the truck through a veil of white. Then I realized I had plenty of room to pull off the road to the left, and so would be safe.