“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At the exact time the session was due Monday, Jane, Del, Midge and I were visiting our landlord and his wife on their farm in Pine City. As 9 PM approached I watched Jane to see if she would give any sign that she was aware of Seth, or that he wanted a session. She gave none; later Jane said she hadn’t the slightest inkling of Seth’s presence as session time passed. Del and Midge have left, and we anticipate a normal session tonight.

I might mention that Ruburt handled the situation with his father’s mistress in a much more intelligent fashion than he would have, if it were not for the insight he has gained as a result of these sessions.

I know your cat meant no harm, and would regret depriving him of his playmate, except that when it is possible it is not only wise but advantageous to help any living creature, regardless of its stature in your scheme of things.

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.

However, they were not by any means identical, either in space, time, or physical bulk. Quite literally the cat’s bug was larger and heavier in bulk, existed longer in his—that is the cat’s—time, and also took up more space.

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.

(Break at 9:31. Jane was dissociated until Willy nipped her. She said Seth had wanted her to pick up the bug herself, but even while dictating she carried the parallel fear that the bug would bite. Just before Jane began dictating again we let Willy into the room again, to see how he would behave. He answered us by curling up in his favorite cane chair. Jane resumed in the same good, somewhat deeper voice at 9:42.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

He actually creates his own environment, but this environment is created by him according to conceptions received telepathically now, in childhood, in infancy, and even before birth.

Limitations set upon the self are damaging to the race as a whole, and impede value fulfillment. Psychic gates are closed by parents and fences set up around the self, closing out many important possibilities of growth and fulfillment; these barriers must be broken; as man’s conception of himself enlarges so will his actual capabilities and possibilities be extended. His psychic limitations are largely self-adopted.