“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We have much yet to cover about various topics only lightly touched upon so far, including the nature of matter, the process involved in its continual creation and manipulation, and the truly astounding cooperation involved, as all living things contribute their energy to keep the physical universe in any kind of permanent, coherent form.

Matter is in some ways the basis of your universe, and yet matter itself is merely energy changed into aspects with certain properties that can, under certain conditions, be perceived by your senses, and that can therefore be manipulated.

It is a medium for the manipulation and transformation of psychic energy into aspects that can then be used as building blocks. Yet even the appearance of this physical material, though it seems more or less permanent by its nature, is not permanent, and is only cohesive enough to give the appearance of relative permanence to the senses that perceive it.

Matter is continually created, but no particular physical object is in itself continuous. Change in a particular physical object is not change as you conceive it. There is not, for example, one particular physical object that deteriorates with age. There are instead continuous, for now I will say continuous creations, of psychic energy into a physical pattern that appears to hold a more or less rigid appearance. This appearance appears, that is, this physical object appears to change and to age, but the material does neither. It does not exist long enough to do either, for one thing. There is an infinite number or series of creations of matter. The ability of the individual creator of any particular physical form to use psychic energy to control and manipulate causes the outer appearance of deterioration and aging of matter.

Matter itself does not age or deteriorate. This may throw you, but I will prove my case. I will also prove it even in so far as the so-called aging of rock formations and other archeological events are concerned. Matter is created directly from energy on a subconscious level.

Again, no particular material object exists long enough, as an indivisible or rigid or identical thing, to change or age. The energy behind it weakens. The physical pattern therefore blurs. Each re-creation after a certain point becomes from your standpoint, less perfect; and after many such complete re-creations, that have been completely unperceived by you, then you notice a difference and assume that a change in one object has occurred.

There are laws that we will get into later, involving the strength or force of energy as it passes through various fields, and is perceived in them. The energy itself does not weaken, however. It passes beyond and through. It fills forms, and as it passes the forms seem to blur, as a wind will fill out the sails and then disappear.

This may seem like a sideline but it is not. In the painting of a picture, you are actually forming new patterns through which energy can flow into material form. There are reasons, which I will discuss later, why the painting, that is the physical pattern of a painting, may seem to, and often does, exist longer than the man who paints it.

No particular physical particle has any kind of durability. It constantly vanishes as such, and is replaced. The pattern which is filled by physical matter is composed of, of course, psychic energy; and it continues like an afterimage, seeming to become weaker, as indeed it does, as it or the energy behind it passes beyond the field in which matter as you think of it is effective. Growth in living things, perceived as living organisms, does not involve the extension of a particular physical thing.

When you consider that behind all matter there is a conscious energy, then you will see where the pattern comes from. It is not the material that composes man, that gives him his identity. No physical nerve structure, or combination of purely chemical and material properties, will ever result in consciousness. The consciousness gives meaning to the physical material.

The physical material, it is true, makes the consciousness effective within a particular field. Growth does not involve one particular physical extension, in terms of one thing that of itself is permanent enough, in itself, to expand. As individualized psychic energy approaches your particular field it begins to express itself within that field to the best of its ability.

It constantly comes more and more into the field, focusing more of itself within it. You have a psychic arrival and departure. As the energy approaches it creates matter, first of all in a rather inadequate, almost plastic fashion. It continually recreates matter as it comes fully within what you call the physical plane, then energy’s construction into matter simply becomes more proficient and focused. But the fetus then is simply not the infant, and the infant is not the adult.

I hope you realize that what we have here is value fulfillment of individualized portions of energy within the physical field, through construction of this energy into matter. But the creation is continuous, like a beam, or rather an endless series of beams, at first weak as they are far off, then stronger, then weak again as they pass away.

I really do regret saying good evening. I am particularly close to you both this evening. When possible I will endeavor to close our sessions before 11:30, for practical reasons, so that while you are learning to draw upon additional energy you will not be tired the following day. A time will come when it will not bother you in any case.