“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“You must still be able to experience any one of these illusions, knowing they are illusory, with full knowledge of their nature, and still know that the basic reality is yourself. There is no place to go because you are the place—and all places—in those terms. But the ‘joke’ is relevant. The most important thing I have said this evening is that the joke is relevant. You must be free enough to explore the nature and experience of each living thing within your own system, knowing that it is yourself, and then leave your system. These must be direct experiences.”

But, as often happens when I try to second-guess Seth, I was really wrong. Our session, the 339th, started shortly afterward, and almost immediately I left my body, though I had little sensation of doing so. I just found myself hovering in midair, looking down on a particular neighborhood that was obviously someplace in Southern California. Back in the living room, Seth was describing what I was seeing, but I was only distantly aware of his voice. To me it sounded far less distinct than a very poor long-distance telephone call.

I had no idea how to tell Rob that I was out of my body, as Seth was carrying on as usual. My body, I knew, would be animated, as Seth talked. Once I laughed to myself and thought: “I’ll have to send him a telegram.” In the meantime I floated in the air, quite high, looking down on the location Seth was describing. I was able to move about, changing my position to get a better view. But I had no connection at all with the body that sat in the living room. Seth was saying:

The brothers lived in Chula Vista, a place I’d never visited. They lived in a pink stucco house with two bedrooms to the rear. The corner was two houses to the right. The house itself was half a mile from San Diego Bay. Numerous sand dunes were nearby and wooden posts, exactly as described, were scattered along the dunes.

The family had come from Australia and hoped to return. Several other impressions, not mentioned here, were also right, others wrong: For example, Seth said that the mother was dead. Actually she was quite alive, though the family had cut her off emotionally and she did not always live at home.

After this, Seth proceeded to tell Phil where she lived, though he didn’t give a specific address. “She lives in … the third or fourth house in the middle of a dead-end street, in the northeastern section of town, but west of the establishment in which you met her. …”

All of this was highly interesting to Phil, who had no idea where the woman lived, and knew nothing about her except her name and probable age. Since he was to be in town the next day, Phil went back to the bar and started asking questions. He found out the woman’s address from the bartender and drove down the street to discover that Seth knew what he was talking about. She lived in the third house before the end of a dead-end street, in the northeastern section of town, but west of the bar. She was Catholic and had a child and a male friend who was a car salesman rather than a mechanic.

But from now on I’ll let Seth speak for himself. I’ve chosen excerpts dealing with the subjects at hand. In some cases, Seth gave demonstrations to make his point. In the chapter on health, for example, I’ve included excerpts from some readings for specific people. I’ve followed the same procedure with the data on reincarnation. To explain his theories on the nature of physical reality, I’m using excerpts from a session in which he really demonstrated that he knew what he was talking about—if an apparition in the living room can pass as a legitimate approximation.

“Your world is formed in faithful replica of your own thoughts. … Certain telepathic conditions exist that we call root assumptions, of which each individual is subconsciously aware. Using these, you form a physical environment cohesive enough so that there is general agreement as to objects and their placement and dimension. It is all hallucinatory in one respect, and yet it is your reality, and you must manipulate within it. The world in which your parents live existed first in thought. It existed once in the stuff of dreams, and they spawned their universe from this, and from this they made their world.

“If you sell yourselves short, you will say, ‘I am a physical organism and I live within the boundaries cast upon me by space and time. I am at the mercy of my environment.’ If you do not sell yourselves short, you will say, ‘I am an individual. I form my physical environment. I change and make my world. I am free of space and time. I am a part of all that is. There is no place within me that creativity does not exist.’ “