“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(By 8:45 no witnesses had appeared. Up from her nap Jane felt both nervous and sleepy. The thought had come to her that Seth would discuss the self and the notself tonight. As session time approached our cat Willy put on one of his performances, persistently diving at Jane’s legs and ankles; as usual he calmed down as soon as the session began.

This is why I have mentioned earlier that the individual was supremely important. Yet the self limits itself through boundaries that are arbitrary and erected through fear, and also through habit that originally had its source in the necessity for physical survival. Physical survival does not demand these habits any longer, and they remain as shackles. You should know by now that individual thought does not remain within the boundary of the physical individual. This indeed has actually been proven, in so far as telepathy is recognized as a fact, at least by some, and soon by all.

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.

An individual or a self also cannot hide from others his own basic intent. It is his and yet, though he possesses it, he still cannot prevent others from sensing it. Along these lines there is much to be said in that many intangibles, considered most secret by the self, do not remain within the self. No skin or bones or skeletal cage can keep the thought of the self from going outward.

Those qualities, those attributes which the self considers most its own, are in no way bounded; nor can they be held in by the self. Thoughts, dreams, purposes and intents, plans and wishes are constantly speeding outward from the core of self unimpeded. They are not closeted within the skull as you might think.

As many quite real phenomena cannot be seen by your eyes, so with your outer senses you cannot perceive these constant departures of quality-energy from the self into what seems to be notself. These energies, these thoughts and wishes, travel. They pass through physical matter.

These secondary personalities, known to psychologists, have a much more important place within reality than is suspected. No psychic action is invalid. Every psychic action exists, has an effect and has durability in terms of value fulfillment. Every psychic action, and a psychic action is any psychic happening such as a dream, or thought, that may have no existence in terms of space and time, every psychic action then contains within it the potentialities of value fulfillment, transference, and even energy transformation.

No psychic action is static. These secondary personalities cannot be referred to as full selves, yet they can certainly not be set aside as so-called not-selves. They come into some prominence and fulfillment through dreams, and through enticing the main personality at times into the adoption of conscious or unconscious thoughts which would ordinarily not be chosen by the primary self, and therefore at times altering the course of the primary self.

Now, you should see from this that your universe is therefore itself a gestalt. As an individual cell can be considered to be apart from the rest of the body, as its outer rim can be considered as something that divides it from the rest of the body, so the self can be considered as apart from the universe, and its outer skin thought of as dividing it from the rest of the body.