“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Your ego gains assurance from what seems to be the memory of its immediate past. A man who loses memory of past events feels insecure and lost, but other types of personality gestalts operate far differently. Instead of a time sequence that governs or seems to govern thought, mental activity of any kind, and overt action, you have associative processes, offshoots, and possibilities. To some extent you can gain an idea of this through an examination of your own stream of consciousness. But the comparison is highly superficial, for here too continuity reigns, even though associations are given greater play.

As we have to some extent mentioned earlier, here we have travel through probable actions, where each conceivable action is experienced. The self allows itself to change while retaining knowledge that it is the self who changes. It develops through the changes. Time can only be measured through experience. It is obvious that other gestalt personalities experience more in an equivalent amount of your time, but this is not the point.

The point is that as something that comes and goes and passes, that brings into existence and destroys, has no such reality outside of your own system. Now your own system includes not only your physical universe as you know it, but also any personalities, living or dead in your terms, who are physically oriented.

There is in all of this an order. It is an order that the inner self is to learn. It is intuitively known, but it must be realized. There are personalities far more developed than my own; there are personalities that operate in a context that even I would find extremely alien, but no particle of individuality is ever lost, and no experience.

(9:34. Jane’s trance was a good one, but she came out of it rather easily, while yawning quite a bit. The above paragraph refers to Pat Norelli in Boston; she telephoned Jane earlier this evening.

(Just before break ended Jane said: “Seth was gone during break, but he just came back; I can feel him. I felt him return. I’ll bet he went to Boston.” Resume at 9:44.)

Now. Ruburt’s dream was a legitimate experience. He has helped Miss Callahan in the past in the same manner, but was not able to recall the experience.

Now he knows what I know, though some experiences that are uniquely mine, he can never know as I know them. When I know all he knows, then symbolically speaking I will be where he is—but then also symbolically speaking, he will be gone.

This does not mean that experience is a dream, by any means. It simply means that presently you perceive but a small portion of yourself, and in limited terms. I am already, in quotes, “Big Brother,” you see.

Now the time sequence, while followed physically by your animals, is psychologically experienced far differently. They are much freer. Your past, present and future does not concern them. They also have memory of the past and future, but always experienced within the context of the present; and this is quite at variance with your own experience.

Some systems are built entirely along these lines. Always there is the expansion of consciousness, though the lines of these progressions may be quite alien to your own. There are far too many complicated discussions along this particular line, so we will not attempt the matter now, but merely note it as one we will develop in the future.

The self that stabbed you in the back was the self negatively (underlined)developed in this life’s early existence. It tried to stab you in the back, and did so, but you were able to retaliate and to slay your would-be assassin.

Now you have also been helping others adjust after the death, but you have not remembered. You should be able to if you make the effort.

Our friend the artist (Van Elver; see the data last session regarding sepia) is not available this evening, but if you make the point of reminding me before sessions, I will see that we get more information for you.