“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.

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.

The individual self is, therefore, literally a part of what would seem to be completely different objects. In a shorthand you could say that the self is the object which he contemplates, since indeed he constructed the object to begin with from the self.

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 self, then, is far from limited even on your own plane. I mentioned, or hinted however that the influence of the self, and therefore the self itself, also had reaching effects in realities that did not consist of a space-time continuum. This would have to follow if my statement that the self is truly limitless is true.

Your own present personalities are merely the result of the particular qualities and ego-images (hyphen) upon which you have chosen to focus your energies and your intent. Initially, before existence upon the physical plane this time, you could just as easily have focused upon a different quality-personality gestalt, although your choice most probably would be in line with a large field of possibilities, possible according to the desires of your entity.

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.

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.

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 still prefer two sessions a week however, and on those occasions when the situation warrants it, I will then feel free to continue as much longer as I would like, within reason.

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.)

(Sat. 5/30, 8:00 PM: Experienced my sensation at suggestion of lightness in the desired state. Telling myself I would visit Ed and Ella, I then glimpsed a teen-age girl talking on the telephone. I did not recognize her. Her brown hair was pulled back; she was sitting on a straight chair beside a small table, holding phone in left hand, wearing dungarees. Full figure 3/4 front view. No lipstick; lips were parted as though she was caught in speech. Brief, though a small amount of duration.