“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

By now I was used to Seth. The sessions, so strange at first, were a familiar part of our lives. There was a lot I didn’t understand—there still is—so I hoped to develop my abilities more fully and to learn more. But I thought that the Seth sessions themselves would more or less remain the same. Looking back now at the earlier material, I can see that I should have known better.

Seth began the session, our 406th, by telling Rob the direction the material would take in following years. “You have been given a sketchy outline, but we have time to fill it in,” he said, smiling. “For that matter, the outline itself is scarcely completed. … We want to deal with the nature of reality as it exists within your camouflage system and within other systems, and to study the overall characteristics that pertain to it, regardless of any given materialization.

I couldn’t tell Rob what I was experiencing, of course, but he began to suspect that something was happening. Seth became very emphatic, watching Rob closely for one thing. For another, Seth began to stress each word.

Seth said, “We will make an effort in the future to give you both some direct experience in concepts. These experiments will run along with, and closely follow, the vocalized expression of the concepts involved. They will give you some small glimmering of the unfortunate but necessary loss of meaning that occurs when any concept must be communicated in physical terms. This will be a different kind of in-depth learning, a rather unique and original development that will be as devoid as possible of stereotyped symbols, which are usually almost automatically superimposed on such experiences. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Rob said, but he spoke almost automatically; the delivery had quickened, and he was having trouble keeping up with the notes. Later we were to read that above paragraph over many times when—as you’ll see shortly—I found myself almost “in over my head.”

Seth’s voice continued to get stronger. “I am the Seth that I say that I am, but I am also more. The Seth personality that is part of me is the portion that can most clearly communicate with you. Do you follow me?”

The voice became even more powerful. Rob thought of asking Seth to slow down, but he wasn’t sure what was happening, and thought it best not to interrupt.

Rob called me several times, getting no response. Then he touched my shoulder and I jumped rather violently. This interrupted the trance state. I didn’t know what was going on either. The powerful energy kept flowing through me. If I stood up I felt as if I’d go flying through the wall, propelled by this force. My head felt huge, as if my ears were out several feet. This last sensation wasn’t new; I’d had it in some Psy-Time experiences. But trying to contain that energy was something else.

The next Wednesday night I was somewhat hesitant as session time approached. We began at the dot of nine, but instantly Rob knew that this wasn’t going to be a “normal” session. For one thing, the voice was different. It was much more like my own voice, yet it wasn’t mine. Seth’s deep tones, his gestures and characteristic way of using words—these were absent.

The voice was much softer than usual. Rob had to listen closely to get all the words. “The development in the last session was latent from our first session, but it was a development that could or could not have occurred. Had it not, then many important future developments would have been blocked. The points where the [Seth] voice was loudest and most powerful—these points often represented openings through which the development could occur. For various reasons, however, that method was not used. The energy would have been diverted from the voice in which it had already been built up, you see.”

“I intend to implement this material whenever possible by helping both of you achieve subjective experiences that will fill out the words for you. These will vary according to conditions but are much more possible now, after the sessions’ latest development.

I’m only giving excerpts here, but through these passages the voice became even more lilting and neuter. Finally it stabilized: high, clear, distant, and unemotional.

Here we had a break and I came out of trance easily enough. This also gave me the opportunity to tell Rob something that happened just before the session started. I got the feeling that a cone came down just over my head. I didn’t think that an actual physical cone was there, but the idea of shape was definite. The wide end was about the size of my head, with the narrow part on top like a pyramid.

Since then, I’ve had this cone effect often, always in this kind of a session. Right after the session resumed, I began to feel that tremendous energy again as the new voice spoke. “You have always been in contact with me, but you were only able to ‘see’ a portion of me. Keep in mind that all names are arbitrary, and we use them merely for your convenience. Basically, Seth’s name or mine isn’t important. Individuality is important and continues in ways you do not suspect.

“There are points of contact having nothing to do with time, as you know it, that are significant to all personalities; origins of new energy that are sometimes brought into existence because of the strong latent psychic capacities within individual selves. At these points, whole conglomerations of new self-units come into being, their origin sparked, as given in the last sentence. They then disperse and go their own ways, but the mutual origin and the strength of that initial psychic birth remain.”

“These [personalities] may develop in entirely different fashions and in various dimensions, but a strong sympathetic attraction exists between them. There is a point of contact where knowledge can be communicated from these various dimensions, and for too many reasons to give you now, Ruburt is in proper coordinates for such communication to take place.

“My personality structure is far different—very rewarding to me but unfamiliar to you. … I do not want you to feel that I have taken away a friend. I am also a friend. In many ways I am the same friend. Other portions of me are concerned elsewhere, for I am aware of my own existence in other dimensions and keep track of them and direct my many selves.”

Rob nodded. Both of us felt almost sad, in one way. I think we were afraid that our regular Seth sessions were over, and that the new ones would take their place. “Besides,” Rob said, “what do we call this new personality?” We knew it was meaningless basically, but we felt we needed a name, a label. And how exactly was this new personality different from Seth? What could it do that Seth couldn’t? “I wish it were more masculine or feminine,” I said. “A neuter personality seems so strange.”

“We taught man to speak before the tongue knew syllables. We adopt whatever personality characteristics seem pertinent, for in our own reality we have a bank of complete inner selves, and we are all Seth. We attempt to translate realities into terms that you can comprehend. We change our face and form, but we are always the one. Many of us have not been born in flesh, as I have not been. In one way we have seeded ourselves through endless universes.

“Yet in such a small mass, these intensities contain memories and experiences electromagnetically coiled one within the other through which I can travel—even as I can travel through other selves which I have known and which are a portion of my identity, and yet which are so beautifully unpredetermined, for you do not exist as completed personalities within my memory, but you grow within my memory.

“I told you that Ruburt’s personality acts like a warp in dimensions. In certain coordinates it exists at particular points that serve as entryways. The personality in general is formed from components existing in many realities and is an apex point. A window cannot see through itself, but you can see through a window. So Ruburt’s personality … is transparent in that respect.”

“The source and power of your present consciousness has never been physical, and where I am, many are not even aware that such a physical system exists. The physical system is an illusion, but you must accept it and from its viewpoint try to understand the realities that exist beyond it. The illusions are real since they exist. Your [reality] is simply not one that I have pursued, and one of the purposes of my participation in these sessions is to acquaint the one called Ruburt with inner travel. He must leave the physical system, and in so doing set up habits and paths that can be used to advantage.”

No one thought anything in particular about that last statement until later that night. The voice continued for a short time and I encountered some difficulty “getting back.” I felt suspended in darkness somewhere far above, but I was also aware that Seth was close by. A few minutes passed. Suddenly Seth came through, loud and clear. The contrast between the two personalities was so marked that even Rob was startled. Seth started to joke. “Now that ‘Big Brother’ has had his say, I will bring our Ruburt back to you.”

“The inner portions of your own identity and reality are not known to you, for you cannot objectify them, and therefore you do not perceive them. So much of your energy is used in these physical productions that you cannot afford to perceive any reality but your own. Again, like children playing with blocks, your focus of attention is upon physical blocks.

“Later, in your time, all of you will look down into the physical system like giants peering through small windows at the others now in your position and smile. But you will not want to stay, nor crawl through the small enclosures. … We protect such systems. Our basic and ancient knowledge and energy automatically reaches out to nourish all systems that grow—”

When the personality compared physical reality with children’s blocks, he made a remark about individuals returning in our future to peer into physical reality like giants squinting down to watch children play with blocks upon the floor. (As the voice spoke, my eyes were closed, of course, and I don’t remember what the voice said, but have checked Rob’s verbatim notes of the session.) In here someplace, suddenly I saw a giant’s face peer into our living room, its face filling up the entire window.

I didn’t feel as if this were happening. To me it was happening, literally. I simply panicked and started yelling. It took Rob some minutes to get me out of trance, but by then I was ashamed of myself. I felt like a real coward.

Rob was worried about me and wondered if I should continue with the session, but by now I was really embarrassed at making such a fuss, and I knew that the experience was significant. I went back into trance, but very soon I was to break off again.

I hoped this was the end of the session, but it was obvious that Jane wanted to continue, or at least was willing to continue, in spite of the unsettling experience. I tried to talk her out of it, but her eyes kept closing. …

I tried to find my voice to tell Rob I wanted to end the session, but the other personality was using it. Through all of this I use the word “I,” but “I” was so a part of the action that it was difficult to separate myself from it. Now, wanting out, I tried again to use my own voice.

This time I “found myself,” pulled myself together, and found my vocal chords while the other personality paused for a moment. It was just about here that I saw the giant face peering down through the pyramid above me. In the earlier episode, I’d screamed involuntarily. In the second, I found that there were ways of “finding” my own voice, and ending the experience. With Seth such a question never arose. There was no pressure put upon me by the other personality to continue the experience … but I had to learn how to terminate it myself when I wanted to.

Very startling though, the whole thing. If a psychologist wants to say simply that the whole thing was hallucination, then he would have to admit that it was hardly random, but well directed, to a point and for a purpose. The merging of myself with the action in the expansion episode was frightening at first. All in all I guess I reacted well enough and brought the thing to an end in the second episode when I decided I’d had enough for one night. I wasn’t just tossed willy-nilly the second time, and I broke the trance in anticipation of the experiences I knew were coming. So I did learn from the first episode.

That session was well over a year ago. Our usual Seth sessions still continue, and only now and then does this other personality speak. We refer to it as Seth Two. Often these sessions involve me in some kind of subjective experience, though now I am learning how to handle myself when this happens. Once during a rest period, for example, Rob wondered what it was like to be nonphysical. When the session resumed, I felt myself seemingly suspended, fully alert and aware—but bodiless—in space. I had no form as far as I knew, but I possessed complete freedom of motion—something like conscious air. This time I wasn’t frightened, realizing that we were getting an answer to Rob’s question. During this experience, the emotionless, lilting, distant voice explained what nonphysical existence was like.

“Now, these characteristics are mine, and I am who I say I am. And yet the Seth that you know is but a small portion of my reality … the part that has been physical, and can understand your problems.

“But beyond that self there is another self and still another self of which I am fully aware. And to that self, physical reality is like a breath of smoke in air … and that self does not need the characteristics that you know and think of as mine.”

“So I am the Seth that is beyond the Seth that you know. And in me the knowledge and vitality of that Seth still rings. In your terms, I am a future Seth, but the terms are meaningless to me.