“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In order to understand my answer it is necessary that our material on the construction of physical matter be understood. We shall also be considering the nature of sense perceptions very shortly, and this data will also help to answer your question.

Some such data will never be utilized. Some such data will be utilized time and time again. Now you see the energy does not reside within any given physical object, but in the idea form that is within it. Physical objects do not exist as such in a basic manner. You can only perceive large areas of reality data however by transforming it into terms that can be picked up by the physical senses.

Every thought therefore has this kind of reality, which is the only reality, basically speaking. (Long pause.) Sense data itself has a reality independent of any given object. This sense data has its own intensity. If you can tune into that intensity, so to speak, you will automatically translate it into physical data, and you will perceive a physical object.

If you tune into that intensity imperfectly, you will have a pseudophysical object, that is in one or more respects different from a normal object. It may be obvious for example to some of your physical senses, and not to others. It may be only partially materialized.

In such cases however definite atoms and molecules are utilized. Now. In our seance we were, again, manipulating energy and forming objects from it—objects that you could perceive with your physical senses. The whole matter, if you will forgive my pun (smile) on matter is highly intriguing, and we shall have several sessions at least, dealing with the reality of sense data, and the unreality, comparatively speaking, of matter itself.

What you perceive with your physical senses is of course real. It is one of the forms that reality takes. But if you insist upon believing that only physical data is real, then you see you will never learn what is within it.

Reality changes its form in order to become known to itself. It constructs varieties of consciousness with varying kinds of sense apparatus, or perceiving apparatus. Each consciousness then perceives reality in a different fashion. Yet all fashions you see are legitimate, as far as physical sense apparatus is concerned. But the mental or psychic energy behind all this is the one basic reality.

Now you can translate inner data into the terms of the outer senses, but always some distortion is absolutely necessary, for the very method of perception you see colors that which is perceived.

The objects that you will see and the places that you will visit, in dream or out-of-body experiences, are basically as real as any physical object or location, because neither are basically real. Nor of course are they unreal. As soon as you begin to translate an idea you are distorting it. The inner senses you see do not distort the data, but when you attempt to make such data available to the ego, then distortion to some extent must enter in.

(Clues were available however. As soon as she opened the double envelope and saw the front of the object, Jane announced that the picture thereon was of a moose. Actually it is a black line drawing, in some detail, of an eagle. We pursued this impasse for some little time. Jane insisted the drawing represented a moose; she interpreted the spread of the eagle’s wings as stylized antlers. My tracing is quickly done on page 217, and shows little detail, but the drawing on the actual object is very well and finely done, including individual feathers on the wings, etc. I could see little relationship between an eagle and a moose here except in the most abstract sense. It was easy for us to agree that Jane saw a moose instead of an eagle because she wanted to. Intellectually she agreed that the drawing was of an eagle, but said that she saw a moose.