“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

One student had a guest with her, Mary, who wrinkled up her forehead when Seth finished speaking. “But if we ‘momentarily put aside’ the ego,” she said to me, “won’t we be unconscious?”

I didn’t have a chance to answer. Seth answered for me—his way. “You are an identity,” he said. “Pretend that you hold a flashlight, and the flashlight is consciousness. You can turn this light in many directions, but instead you are in the habit of directing it along one certain path, and you have forgotten that there are other paths.

One night while Bill and Peg Gallagher were visiting us, a neighbor also came to call. Polly was a rather emotional young woman, and she asked me if I could “pick up” any impressions about her. I refused, saying that I was tired. Actually I felt that she was “highly charged,” unpleasantly so, and I didn’t want to get involved. Apparently my curiosity got the best of me. I switched to my Inner Senses to find out what was wrong—but without realizing that I was doing so. (In the use of the Inner Senses, like anything else, we have to learn discrimination and discretion.)

At first the pain frightened me so that I just blurted out what was happening; I didn’t mean to embarrass Polly. Later I felt foolish and angry at myself, wondering if the pain episode was some kind of subconscious dramatization. Two years later Polly left town. Before she went, she called to tell me that the episode was quite legitimate. The child had been her own, and my description of the room tallied with her hospital room. Naturally, she didn’t want anyone to know about the child, who had been put up for adoption (and it was none of my business anyway). She had been brooding about the birth the night she visited us, because she had just heard from the baby’s father for the first time in years. Probably this is why I “tuned in” to the episode. In this case I used inner vibrational touch to become aware of her feelings.