“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Therefore a thought, surely one of the most intimate possessions of a self, does not remain within the self. The thought belongs to the individual from whose mind it sprang, and yet he does not really possess it. He can keep it but he cannot keep it. He can hold it as his own, and yet he cannot prevent it from passing on to others, though he presses his lips tightly and does not speak it aloud.

The skin and bone, being physical, are adequate barriers to bound other material, but they have no hold over what is not material. A man’s intent is subconsciously sensed by everyone with whom he comes in contact. Telepathy accounts for the usefulness of spoken language. Without telepathy no language would be intelligible. The outward layer of skin, while serving as a physical enclosure, serves as a physical enclosure only for the sake of convenience, as far as distinctions are concerned.

Therefore speaking in physical terms only, the self is not bounded. It is not independent nor self-contained. It needs for its survival nutrients that come from outside of the skin. Not only this, but in all cases its own excretions are needed for nourishment of what is notself, or by what seems to be notself.

Each self is therefore not only ejecting almost in missile fashion such energy from his own core, but he is also constantly impinged by such energy from others. He chooses to translate whatever portions of this energy he so chooses, back into forms that can be picked up and understood by his own mechanism.

This will make sense to you as you contemplate it. It is true that these constructions take place on a subconscious level, but to the degree that you realize what you are doing, they will become more comprehensible to the intellect, until full awareness of the origin of physical matter would be reached.

The secondary personalities find fulfillment mainly in the dream world, but the dream world is as actual and as real, as effective and efficient as your own. Here various problems set for the entity are worked out, problems that either are too minor to be handled by a primary self on your plane, or problems that for one reason or another could simply not be solved by physical constructions.

This is extremely important, since the dream world operates within the dimensions of your own psychic field, but utterly divorced from both space-time continuum and physical construction. Here you see the self truly spills over, not only into what you would call notself, but into areas with which the conscious self is barely familiar. On an unconscious level however the self is very aware of the progress of these secondary personalities, and indeed uses this plane itself for the fulfillment and development of qualities originally attached to it, but incompatible with its main intents. The two planes constantly enrich and affect each other.

The one stability between self and what is notself, and the one and only difference, is not an identity that is part and parcel of constantly changing physical framework, not the outer ego whose conception of who it is constantly changes, according to its age and environment, but the inner self behind all physical constructions.

However, as we know the cell is a part of the body, giving nourishment and receiving nourishment from it. Its outer rim, more correctly, connects it to the body. Parts of it literally travel throughout the body. It is yet an individual. It possesses condensed consciousness and comprehension, it partakes of value fulfillments through the gestalt of which it would not otherwise be capable. If you considered the body as a closed system, which it is not, then you could say that the self of the cell had as its limitations only the limits of the whole closed system. But the system is not closed, and through the participation of the cell in the activities of the body, which is an open system, then you could truly say that the cell itself had no limitations.

I closed our last session somewhat earlier, and intend to do the same this evening. I had even contemplated cutting down the number of sessions, but do not want to do this.

You will perhaps think that some of your experiments had to do with secondary personalities, Joseph, but so far at least this is not so. Very soon now we will go into your experiences. I would now bid you both a most fond good evening.

Again, may I say that I look in on you now and then. Ruburt’s idea of taking the children’s classes at the gallery is a good one. I have not had the opportunity to go into her Mrs. Masters but I shall do so. The salesman’s ability of Ruburt’s will serve him well in the children’s classes. I am rather surprised that he and his Mrs. Masters have managed to get along as well as they have. I would caution him to be very calm at the gallery during the next two weeks. And now good evening.

(End at 11:15. Jane was dissociated as usual. Jane felt that Seth was in one of his expansive and friendly moods, and would have continued but for the late hour. Neither of us exhibited any hand phenomena during or after the session.)

(Friday, 5/29, 3:30 PM: Upon reaching the desired state I then fell asleep. In a short time I was awakened by a child’s voice speaking briefly but loudly in my right ear. Just before coming awake I had a brief impression of a man and a boy at a table or bench, upon which were some model trains. Loren and Dougie? If so I did not recognize them, nor understand what the boy said. On this day Jane and I sent Linda a graduation present. [She and Dougie are Loren’s children.]