“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“Precisely what steps do you want us to follow?” one of the students asked.

“First, you must try to understand the nature of reality. To some small extent I have begun to explain this in the Seth Material. The five hundred and some-odd sessions we have barely represent an outline, but they are enough to start with. The ideas, in themselves, will make you think. I have told you that there are Inner Senses as well as physical ones. These will enable you to perceive reality as it exists independently of the physical world. You must learn to recognize, develop, and use these Inner Senses. The methods are given in the material. But you cannot utilize the material until you understand it.

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.

Seth has used several analogies to explain this point. He said in another class session: “You have more than one conscious mind. We want you to change the channels of your awareness. … If you consider the conscious mind that you usually use as one door, then you stand at the threshold of this mind and look out into physical reality. But there are other doors … you have other conscious selves. …

“You are not expected to become unconscious, then. There is no need to feel that when you block out the ordinary conscious mind, there is only blankness. It is true that when you close one conscious mind—door—there may be a moment of disorientation before you open another.

Seth insists that there is only one way to learn what consciousness is: by studying and exploring our own awareness, by changing the focus of our attention and using our own consciousness in as many ways as possible. He says: “When you look into yourself, the very effort involved extends the limitations of your consciousness, expands it, and allows the egotistical self to use abilities that it often does not realize it possesses.”

At times, we can “read minds”—though that is a popular term, leaving much to be desired. But to use the Inner Senses properly, they must be used smoothly, often blending one into the other. It is often difficult to know whether we are receiving clairvoyant or telepathic information, for example. Not that it matters. Using the Inner Senses, we simply increase our entire range of perceptions.

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.)