“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

“In the most important way, and in the only basic way, I am Seth, dispensing with certain characteristics which are mine, which I used to contact you. The Seth personality, again, is legitimate and independent and is a part of my identity. Seth is learning as I am.

“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.

The difference in the two personalities was particularly apparent in a recent ESP class session in which Seth was at his jovial best, showing personal interest in each student. As usual during such times, my face was extremely animated, and Seth’s characteristic gestures were quite noticeable. After speaking to each student individually for a moment, Seth said with a touch of humor: “I come here, I hope, as an ‘endearing’ personality, with characteristics to which you can relate.

“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.”

“Know that within your physical atoms now the origins of all consciousness still sing and that all the human characteristics by which you know yourselves still exist. …