“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“He is not human in your terms, though he passed through human stages; and here the Buddhist myth comes closest to approximating reality. He is not one individual, but an energy gestalt.

“There is no such lapse in many other personality structures. Events are simultaneously perceived. Reactions are also nearly instantaneous in your terms. Growth and challenge are provided not in terms of achievement or development in time, but instead in terms of intensities. Such a personality is able not only to react to and appreciate Event A, say, in your present time, but to experience and understand Event A in all of its ramifications and probabilities.

“Obviously such personalities need far more than the neurological systems with which you are presently equipped. Your own neurological system is physical, but it is based upon your own inner capabilities as of ‘now.’ It is the materialization of an inner psychic framework. Many other personality structures do not need a materialized perceptive framework such as this, but an inner psychic organization is always present.

“In actuality, following the image through, and strictly as an analogy, there would also be an infinite number of threads both above and below your own, all part of one inconceivably miraculous webwork. Yet each thread would not be one-dimensional but of many dimensions, and conceivably, if you knew how, there would be ways of leapfrogging from one thread to the other. You would not be forced to follow any particular thread in a single-line fashion.

“There is, however, a self, who has already traveled these routes, of whom the other selves are but part. This self, in dreams and dissociated conditions, communicates with the various ‘ascending’ selves. As this self grows in value fulfillment, he can become aware of these travelers on other threads, who would seem to him to be future selves.

“All of this sounds complicated, but only because we must deal with words. I hope that intuitively you will be able to understand it. In the ‘meantime,’ the overall self is forming new threads of activity, you see. The frameworks that it leaves ‘behind’ can be used by others.

“Now—and this will seem like a contradiction in terms—there is nonbeing. It is a state, not of nothingness, but a state in which probabilities and possibilities are known and anticipated but blocked from expression.

“Dimly, through what you would call history, hardly remembered, there was such a state. It was a state of agony in which the powers of creativity and existence were known, but the ways to produce them were not known.

“All That Is retains memory of that state, and it serves as a constant impetus—in your terms—toward renewed creativity. Each self, as a part of All That Is, therefore also retains memory of that state. It is for this reason that each minute consciousness is endowed with the impetus toward survival, change, development, and creativity. It is not enough that All That Is, as a primary consciousness gestalt, desires further being, but that each portion of It also carries this determination.

“If—and this is impossible—all portions but the most minute last ‘unit’ of All That Is were destroyed, All That Is would continue, for within the smallest portion is the innate knowledge of the whole. All That Is protects Itself, therefore, and all that It has and is and will create.

“The first state of agonized search for expression may have represented the birth throes of All That Is as we know It. Pretend, then, that you possessed within yourself the knowledge of all the world’s masterpieces in sculpture and art, that they pulsed as realities within you, but that you had no physical apparatus, no knowledge of how to achieve them, that there was neither rock nor pigment nor source of any of these, and you ached with the yearning to produce them. This, on an infinitesimally small scale, will perhaps give you, as an artist [this was addressed to Rob, of course], some idea of the agony and impetus that was felt.

“In other words, All That Is existed in a state of being, but without the means to find expression for Its being. This was the state of agony of which I spoke. Yet it is doubtful that without this ‘period’ of contracted yearning, All That Is could concentrate Its energy sufficiently enough to create the realities that existed in probable suspension within It.

“It then purposely gave them more and more detail, and yearned toward this diversity and grew to love that which was not yet separate from itself. It gave consciousness and imagination to personalities while they still were but within Its dreams. They also yearned to be actual.

“In Its massive imagination, It understood the cosmic multiplication of consciousness that could not occur within that framework. Actuality was necessary if these probabilities were to be given birth. All That Is saw, then, an infinity of probable, conscious individuals, and foresaw all possible developments, but they were locked within It until It found the means.

“The pressure came from two sources: from the conscious but still probable individual selves who found themselves alive in a God’s dream, and from the God who yearned to release them.

“On the other hand, you could say that the pressure existed simply on the part of the God since the creation existed within Its dream, but such tremendous power resides in such primary pyramid gestalts that even their dreams are endowed with vitality and reality.

“The motivating force is still All That Is, but individuality is no illusion. Now in the same way do you give freedom to the personality fragments within your own dreams and for the same reason. And you create for the same reason, and within each of you is the memory of that primal agony—that urge to create and free all probable consciousness into actuality.

In other words, the whole frame of reality according to Seth includes far more than reincarnation and development within the physical system that we know. We have many sessions dealing with the nature of other realities, and sessions on “cosmology” that can’t be included in this book because of the space requirements. One of the most important points, I think, is that God is not static Himself. Whole blocks of Seth material discuss the potentials and makeup of consciousness as it is manifested in molecules, man, and pyramid energy gestalts. All of these are intimately connected in a cosmological web of activity. But as Seth says, “Even this overall pyramid gestalt is not static. Most of your God concepts deal with a static God, and here is one of your main theological difficulties. The awareness and experience of this gestalt constantly changes and grows. There is no static God. When you say, ‘This is God,’ then God is already something else. I am using the term ‘God’ for simplicity’s sake.

“Consciousness, seeking to know itself, therefore knows you. You, as a consciousness, seek to know yourself and become aware of your self as a distinct individual portion of All That Is. You not only draw upon this overall energy but you do so automatically since your existence is dependent upon It.

“This psychic gestalt may sound impersonal to you, but since its energy forms your person, how can this be?

“The responsibility for your life and your world is indeed yours. It has not been forced upon you by some outside agency. You form your own dreams, and you form your own physical reality. The world is what you are. It is the physical materialization of the inner selves which have formed it.” But if God cannot be objectified, what about Christ? Seth says that he did not exist as one historic personage. “When the race is in deepest stress and faced with great problems, it will call forth someone like Christ. It will seek out and indeed from itself produce the very personalities necessary to give it strength. …

“You have been given free will. Within you there are blueprints; you know what you are to achieve as individuals and as people, as a race, as a species. You can choose to ignore the blueprints. Now: Using your free will, you have made physical reality something quite different than what was intended. You have allowed the ego to become overly developed and overly specialized. In many respects, you are in a dream. It is you who have made the dream too vivid. You were to work out problems and challenges, but you were always to be aware of your own inner reality, and of your nonphysical existence. To a large extent you have lost contact with this. You have focused so strongly upon physical reality that it becomes the only reality that you know.

“In the dawn of physical existence, in the dawn before history began, men knew that death was merely a change of form. No God created the crime of murder, and no God created sorrow or pain. … Again, because you believe that you can murder a man and end his consciousness forever, then murder exists within your reality and must be dealt with. … The assassin of Dr. King believes that he has blotted out a living consciousness for all eternity. … But your errors and mistakes, luckily enough, are not real and do not affect reality, for Dr. King still lives.”

My class is small but students range in age from sixteen to sixty. One evening we were discussing student riots. Carl and Sue are both in their early twenties. They had been upholding ideas of nonviolence and peace. The older adults began complaining about the rioters with some bitterness, however, until Sue said with some heat: “Well, I’m against violence, too. But sometimes it’s justified—”

“There is no man who hates but that that hatred is reflected outward and made physical. And there is no man who loves but that that love is reflected outward and made physical.”