“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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:

Exactly a week later Bill called us, sounding very nervous. He told me that something very strange had happened, and since he was still upset about it, he thought he’d discuss it with me. Instantly I remembered my own experience, and told Bill to wait while Rob got my notes, so I could check them as Bill talked. Bill told me that exactly a week before he had been awakened suddenly. Seth stood by his bed, fully three-dimensional, looking just like Rob’s painting of him. He shook Bill’s shoulder and disappeared. Bill told his mother at breakfast the next morning, and wrote a report out for us.

First of all, I thought I had been in a crowded room in my out-of-body experience, but Bill was obviously in his room, alone. Another thing, he saw Seth smoking a cigarette; I smoke. Did Bill hallucinate Seth’s three-dimensional image? If so, he did this at the same time that I felt I was with him. And he felt Seth shake his shoulder while in my experience I shook it.

One day I met Mrs. Brian, a former student who dropped out of class due to illness, who told me she had read a newspaper article about this present book that appeared in the local paper. It contained a few excerpts of the Seth Material, and a reproduction of Rob’s painting of Seth. Mrs. Brian had a terrific headache while reading the article; suddenly she thought she felt Seth’s presence. An inner voice, presumably Seth’s, told her that she had been feeling sorry for herself, that she must stop brooding over her health at once, get up, and go out for a walk. If so, she would improve at once.

All of this is interwound with the idea that personality is composed of action. Seth’s description of the three creative dilemmas upon which identity rests is thought-provoking and original. His ideas on God are a natural and fascinating extension of these theories.

To our knowledge at least, the inverted time theory and the system of probabilities are entirely original with the Seth Material. Seth’s idea of the nature of pain is also quite divorced, I believe, from current metaphysical thought. He views suffering as simply an attribute of consciousness and an indication of vitality, considered alarming only by those areas of identity that still fear death as an end.

“You create your reality according to your beliefs and expectations, therefore it behooves you to examine them carefully. If you do not like your world, then examine your own expectations. Every thought in one way or another is constructed by you in physical terms.

“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.