“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I told Jane to wait a minute, and laid my writing board aside. I knelt to pick up the insect, and found it quite difficult to do. I remember that it resembled a beetle, was about half an inch long, was a beautiful light red-brown color, and lay helplessly on its back with its legs thrashing. It was very nicely shaped; I seemed to see it as though under a magnifying glass; all the details of its construction seemed crystal clear. When I did get it in my cupped hand without damage, I felt it struggling with surprising strength. I went to the kitchen window, opened the screen and tossed the insect free. I sat back down and picked up my pen.)

There is something here we may as well consider now, having to do with the cooperation existing between all living creatures in the construction of the physical universe. This interaction is extremely important, and the balance continues to be a delicate and sometimes perilous one.

We will take your cat and his bug. Your cat created the bug that he saw. The bug that he saw was a different construction from the bug that was seen by either of you, and all three constructions were different from the bug’s physical construction of himself. These bug constructions, by various means which we shall discuss, tallied in your camouflage space to an amazingly approximate degree.

Your bug, Joseph, differed in actual physical construction also from Ruburt’s. It was better detailed and more precisely drawn, smaller in size from either Ruburt’s or the cat’s, existed less in your camouflage time, and took up a measurably less amount of your space.

Your cat is also different, a completely different construction, for each of you. It is easier, perhaps, to understand if we first consider the difference between the bug’s construction of the cat, and the cat’s construction of the bug, before we go on.

In comparison with a human’s construction of your cat, for example, the bug creates a limited one, but one that is nevertheless efficient and valid for his own purposes. To your way of thinking, the bug does not construct a whole cat.

The bug’s cat construction is a huge and terrifying animal-mountain sort of construction. However, the construction is endowed with what we may call physical properties of which you are unaware.

This is difficult to explain. A psychic coordination, a sensitive apathy, received by the bug as to the nature of the cat, creates about the bug’s construction of the cat b-a-n-d-s in infrared, solid to both the cat and the bug. The bug then sees a gigantic but blurred, incomplete so to speak, cat image, which is surrounded by infrared solidity, which is significant to the bug in terms quite incomprehensible to you.

If you could be more aware of the manner in which other species view physical objects, you would easily see the great difference existing between various constructions of what you think of as one physical object.

These are completely separate constructions of energy into matter. You do not—and I repeat: you do not —perceive all constructions into matter. You only perceive your own physical constructions. Ruburt intuitively grasped this fact even before our sessions.

(Here Seth refers to Jane’s book, The World as Idea Construction, which she began in the latter part of last year, 1963. These sessions began later, in December/63.)

There are, obviously, many points to be explained, but there are absolutely no exceptions to it. Telepathy is one of the main binders in the world of constructions. The similarities, and there may be an almost endless number of constructions of what you might call one physical object, the similarities only seem so great because you see so little.

The chair, as constructed by Ruburt, is constructed constantly when he is in the room. It is partially constructed by him when he is in another room in your apartment.

When he is not at all concerned with the chair, he does not bother to construct it. He could be miles away, suddenly imagine this room, and instantaneously construct the chair. If he did, and if someone else were present in the room, they would not see it, for you are only aware of your own constructions.

The physical matter that is the chair, or rather Ruburt’s chair, is formed as I explained, and no atom in it is the same today and tomorrow. He uses energy to construct his physical universe. You construct your own chair in the same manner, using different energy; and again no atom of your chair is the same today and tomorrow.

That same chair, so to speak, is constructed differently by everyone who enters your home. The question of its location in space is not difficult. Inner telepathic ground communication covers this very nicely. There are rather amusing slip-ups here that do occur, as when you bunk into a chair, for example. The fault here not being forgetful. It is remembering that causes the trouble.

“You forget” (in quotes); that is, you forget to construct the chair in its correct location. If you continued to ignore the lapse of construction, you would not suffer the bruise. But you remember just in time, construct your chair where your knee is.

There are many implications in this material, as you will see. Also remember that the atoms allow themselves to be used in these constructions, and that they contain the generalized subconsciousness and capsule comprehension of which I have spoken.

I was concerned at the time with other data. However we will go into this now. First, you and Philip and Ruburt, when you are all present in the room, each construct from energy your own physical materialization of the idea, television set.

The idea is current. Otherwise it is possible that the constructions would not all agree, but would gradually be brought into line. In your physical constructions of the television set then, you are aided generally by the current idea of television set, as it exists in mass knowledge.

This applies generally with most other idea constructions, and later we will discuss the construction of an unfamiliar idea into physical construction which is then classed as an invention. Your constructions of the television set are further aided by other hidden unconscious data, such as the material best suited for the constructions, the general size, shape and color with which you have previously been familiar. All this being basic.

You have also on a telepathic level a transmission of specifics which aids in giving more precise detail, and aids in pinpointing approximate locations. All this without any cooperation from the atoms that compose the initial, meaning first, construction.

This needs brief explanation. If the three of you turn your attention to the set, the first one to consider it will form the so-called initial construction. This is for simplicity’s sake. I have told you that all living—and I will use the term conditions—cooperate in the formation of your physical universe. Your construction of the set, Joseph, will involve the use of energy formed into various combinations of atoms and molecules; and these themselves give off vibrations that are received subconsciously, and also serve therefore to give indications of approximate location, bulk, and even particular material and color, to the subconscious mind of any observer, so-called; although he does not see your construction but forms his own, more or less in faithful replica, to what he has subconsciously perceived telepathically from you and any other constructor, from generalized notions of the idea behind the construction, and from vibrations and even impacts received from the atoms and molecules that compose other constructions of the so-called single object.

Now, due to variations existing in the capacity of various individuals to receive, perceive, and act upon such information, no constructions are exactly the same, though generally they appear the same; and for utility’s sake they are effective enough.

This is not a case of a hose looking like a snake. This is a failure of a different sort, according to whether or not the constructor of the hose is present or still constructing his object. There is something here that I will explain. I have briefly mentioned before, I believe, what I will term an afterimage. When you cease active construction of an object, the pattern begins to fade but remains inactive.

Going upon the little information at hand, given the darkness, fears come to the foreground. The individual actually constructs a snake, but a faulty impossible one, from the weak hose pattern. The snake, for reasons that we will discuss later, under these conditions could not exist in your universe.

If our individual calls for help, and if per chance the constructor of the hose answers the appeal, his hose construction would take precedence, filling its old pattern.

The individual’s ability to receive these impressions of which we have been speaking, and his ability to translate them and to construct them, is all determined by his own personal psychic background in past existences and in the present one, and by his own inner conception of himself, the physical universe, his place in it, and by his inner reactions to ideas.