“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now: Ruburt had a different kind of experience lately. (Yesterday afternoon, Sunday, August 10, 1975.) In a state between usual waking or sleeping he found himself giving a session such as this one, where earlier he had only heard my words in his head.

You were taking notes as usual. He forgot what the session was about, remembering only one portion that seemed significant. The experience was quite vivid, obviously not a dream, yet not a normal waking event. Following this in a period of usual activity (the same evening), he sensed his own image speaking for me and sitting across the couch from him in our (Seth’s) accustomed position. This involved several kinds of perception, and the willingness to accept a greater mobility of consciousness.

When Ruburt on the couch sensed himself in the chair giving a session, to himself on the couch, this was symbolic of a new kind of relationship between the two of us. At the same time it illustrated part of our relationship as it happens in sessions, in which Ruburt allows a portion of himself to step aside. He was that portion as the normal waking self, the focus personality.

He, that portion, watched television while still sensing us across the table. You saw no one in this position (in the chair), and physically not even a chair was here. At another level however Ruburt was projecting a portion of his psyche outward, and from his own position viewing us at least to some extent.

(9:25.) There was a definite separation, however, in that the focus personality was able to sense its own greater extensions—or rather, those extensions to which it gives permission. Ruburt sat physically on the couch, yet at another level he did sit here (in the chair facing the couch), and in our relationship that was a fairly “sophisticated” kind of manipulation, involving the projection of a form outward—the double. But in this case the double was going about “its own affairs.” Those affairs involved the delivery of a session from the projected image to the physical one. The material was unconsciously assimilated.

Now: in the first episode mentioned the experience was the same, only more vividly experienced since the focus personality was not fully awake and did not have immediate sense data to handle. There, Ruburt was inside the image that he had projected. His main consciousness was merged with mine in the session format; while in the waking experience his consciousness was in the normal image, which sensed the projected one. In the first experience then Ruburt projected an image outward and his consciousness entered it, then he had a session by the same mechanics we always use. The unprojected portion of him listened. He wanted to retain what was said, and sought for methods. He tried to have you take notes, but realized the physical incongruities. He became confused, tried to take notes himself as the listening image, and realized those notes would not exist physically either.

The thing is, he does unconsciously project in such a way—particularly in the sleep state. There are classes at other levels of reality that he conducts in that way. Your concepts may limit your conscious experience of the psyche’s vast activity, but the psyche does not limit its experience.

I was saying in his first episode: “Ask and you shall receive, ask halfheartedly and you shall receive in exactly that measure,” and I was looking at you exactly as I am now. Ask and you shall receive. This applies in every area of experience. When you ask you expect an answer, or at least a reply of a kind. If you ask on the one hand and then say “I do not want to know” on the other, the results will be minimal. Ruburt was asking for flexibility but he did not fully want it, and so halfhearted questions bring halfhearted answers. Lately he asked wholeheartedly, and there will be a wholehearted answer and reply—from the psyche itself, which understands its parts. There is a wisdom and an understanding operating, a beautiful give-and-take in life between the intensity of a desire and its fulfillment—an underlying exquisite sanity. While symptoms of any kind serve a purpose they are considered legitimate. The psyche will not remove them until the intensity of desire for freedom rises high enough to meet those purposes in other ways.

(10:05.) Ruburt had not completely wanted his flexibility. It was only because he went so far in certain directions, because he grew so much in certain areas, that the problem of physical stance with the world arose.

His understanding had to grow to match, and so did yours. This is the session, then, that I was giving him (yesterday). In daily life this means that he finally understands that his negative feelings were methods that he chose to automatically keep the body in a certain condition. He can recognize, but not as before be engulfed by them. Your active participation now means just what it means. You did not give it fully before because you were as unsure as he was. You live in a joint reality. Your two purposes now merge, and so you will get results.