“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At 8:35 Bill Macdonnel also arrived to be a witness. It will be recalled that John and Bill had been witnesses to various sessions, but not jointly before this. They had however met here before on other than session nights.

(The arrival of two unexpected witnesses made Jane a little nervous, but the mood passed rather quickly, she told me later. At 8:59 she was in the kitchen making coffee. She began delivery on time in a voice pitched little lower than usual, and rather strong. Her pacing was slow. Once again her glasses were off, her eyes very dark.)

Also I mentioned that the spacious present knows no beginning or end, and that energy, of which everything is composed, can never be withdrawn. Nor can individualized energy ever lose its individuality, nor in a very actual sense can anything which has ever existed go out of existence, but merely change its form.

Since energy cannot be withdrawn but only change its form, then there can be no ending, but only a contraction such as that which I have earlier explained. And expansion must then follow, the expansion in your terms bringing a new beginning.

Ruburt in the child’s perceptive poem could not let go this idea, and we must speak as he did then, in terms of beginning and end. But I disapprove of the terms, since in themselves they serve to perpetuate a most unfortunate distortive concept.

(See the 81st session and the material on the God concept. By now, Jane’s voice had strengthened, although it was not any lower. But she spoke with much expressive determination, using many gestures and smiling often.)

You will ask me, then, the source of the wish to be. You will of course ask me the source of the source, and I will say again that only within the framework of your intense but limited camouflage universe does such a question have meaning or validity.

Far be it from me to reinforce my little atheist’s early catechism lessons. I must however substitute the word God for energy, but still say that energy always was and always will be.

Philip should read the sessions dealing particularly with the laws of the universe, that is with the inner laws of the universe, appreciating then the facts that this universe within all universes is spontaneous while having durability. It would be backtracking to repeat that long discussion, but as the inner universe has as its attributes spontaneity and durability, and as the spacious present is simultaneous while containing within it all pasts and all presents and all futures, and as Philip understands the meaning of expansion in terms not of time or of space but of value fulfillment, so will he intuitively then grasp that no contradiction occurs with actual reality when I say that there is no beginning and no end.

You come into awareness of a dream, and you leave awareness of a dream, but the dreams that you seem to dream tonight have been long in existence, in your terms of time. They seem to begin tonight because you are aware of them tonight, so you think that reality must begin and end.

For every consciousness on your plane, or any other plane, existed simultaneously and in essence even before what you may call the beginning of your world. And what you are yet to be existed then and still exists now; and not as some still unfulfilled possibility, but exists in actuality.

What you will be, Joseph, what Mark and Philip and Ruburt will be, you all are now, not in some misty half-real form, but in the most real sense. You simply are not aware of these selves anymore on a conscious level than you are aware of what you refer to as past selves.

The material that I have given you concerning the nature of planes will be quite handy here. I have told you that a plane is not necessarily a planet, nor a place, but even a mere focus of awareness. A dream is an awareness of and existence in another plane, whereby the self changes focus to keep in touch with the various portions of itself so that inner communication can be maintained.

I do not believe that Philip has read the material dealing with the perspective universe, in which the dream is projected into a changing but durable and quite real existence, independent of the dreamer.

Now. No other commands are built-in, no other prohibitions given. But built-in of course into this necessity for experience, is the compulsion toward value fulfillment, and as you know this does not apply alone to growth, which is in itself a camouflage materialization of value fulfillment along one line only.

Personalities may indeed become entities. One personality may not be but one personality in your terms, as I have mentioned a man being one personality may be seen in terms of a father, a teacher, an artist, a community member and so forth.

The father does not negate the reality of, say, the artist. The father does not rob the artist of free will, nor does the entity rob the personality of free will. It is the personality who makes the choices. The entity may not either aid or prevent any choice that the personality may make. The entity may not like any particular choice made by the personality, but he, the entity, cannot change the course that the personality chooses to take.

If you say that the personality cannot take any choice of which the entity is not aware, then this is true; but it is also true that the entity is utterly incapable of changing that choice made by the personality, even though the entity knows about the choice ahead of time, so to speak.

There is here no puppet, and there is no hand that moves the strings. If there were you see, you would indeed have a much more perfect world, but you would not have that one built-in prerequisite: complete as possible existence within all facets, and manipulation within all facets, of a given plane.

Now. What you call karma has meaning only in basic terms within your particular plane. I do not want to get too complicated. Nevertheless personalities on your plane work out individual problems within that plane through various existences. Here we have also free will, but a continuity so to speak of purposes. No purpose is forced upon any personality. He, the personality, adopts in various reincarnations upon your plane those purposes most in keeping with his own needs. And for Mark’s sake may I say that levels of existence do not necessarily imply higher or lower levels, but concentric levels, even as the layers of the subconscious do not imply upper and lower levels, but are merely terms used for the sake of simplicity.

I will here begin to close the session, though like Philip's universe, the sessions never began at a specific point in time, and Ruburt knew of them long before he paced this floor, though he was not aware of them. And they will end, or they will end in your terms, with your change of planes. But they will not end, and as we have known each other in the past and in the future and in the present, so these sessions exist in the spacious present, where time as such has no meaning.

(End at 10:58. Jane was dissociated as usual. See page 58 for a brief resume of the material involving John Bradley’s neighborhood in Williamsport, PA. Again, John said the initial V meant nothing in particular to him, but when he returned home he planned to do what he could to ascertain just what did take place three doors from his own place, to a woman with at least two children, or who is connected somehow with children. I suggested that a visit to his local newspaper back-issue file might be the easiest way to check.