“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We had a fascinating session one night, lasting several hours. Not until it was over did I realize what he’d been up to—now that’s a good psychologist! Gene had questioned Seth in what I guess you could call “professional philosophical jargon,” making frequent references to esoteric Eastern theories with which I was totally unfamiliar. Gene has his Ph.D. from the University of Leeds, England, in experimental psychology, and taught at Cambridge. He also had an excellent knowledge of Eastern philosophy and religion. Yet Seth not only took him on, but in some way I still don’t understand, he used Gene’s own terminology and jargon to beat him at his own game—and with humor and grace.

Now Seth said: “The ‘joke’ is highly relevant. If you realized thoroughly that your physical world was an illusion, you would not be experiencing sense data.”

“You do not know it now. When that point is reached, you will be able, if you prefer, to experience any ‘reality … illusion’ at your will, but the self who experiences these ‘reality … illusions’ will know itself as reality. There is no place for it to go, because it is the only reality, and will create its own environment.”

“But that is a discussion of the me here and now.”

“I am using terms of continuity now simply for explanation. First there must be a period, and then it has passed, when you are completely immersed in a given system as if no other existed; value fulfillment as a rule being achieved in this manner. This does not mean that you are not dwelling in other systems simultaneously. The illusion must be probed to its depth.”

“For you, now, there are steps.”

“Now there is a small yard with lemons for the brothers; a pink stucco house, two bedrooms to the rear, not a new house. They used the Ouija board in the kitchen. They are near the right corner of the block, but not at the corner. They are not far from water. There is high grass for a while, and some wooden posts and wires.”

In here, because of the specific material, Rob began to wonder if projection was involved. “Are you at the location now?” he asked.

“To some degree. There are sand dunes of a sort. There, I’ve changed my position. Now I am facing the house. The directions have changed somewhat due to my position. A garagelike structure to my right now, and behind it other structures leading to the water. Beyond, a dune area and a beach. The tide is in.”

Now in here, I was changing my position in the air. As far as I can figure out, I was the one at the location, not Seth.

He absolutely refuses to let people use him as a crutch—this goes for me, too—and maintains that the Seth Material itself provides a means by which people can understand themselves better, reevaluate their reality, and change it. Despite the sessions held now and then to help particular persons, and despite their incidents of extrasensory perception, the sessions remain focused primarily on the material. It is here we feel that the real significance of the sessions rests.

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.