“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This episode and a few similar ones have made me wary of such encounters with so-called objective academicians. But all psychologists aren’t so narrow-minded and intellectually rigid. Last year one of my students was taking a psychology course in the local college night sessions, and with the professor’s encouragement, she frequently discussed Seth and our ESP classes. My student wanted to do one of her required papers on the nature of personality as explained by Seth. She asked Seth if he would give a special session for this purpose. She wanted to record it and play it for the college class.

“It is true that there are no limitations to the self, and in one respect you can say that the self reaches out to encompass the environment. Current theories regarding the nature of personality do not take into consideration the existence of telepathy or clairvoyance or the fact of reincarnation. What you have, in effect, is a one-dimensional psychology. Identity operates in many dimensions, however. …”

Then Seth addressed the members of the college class for whom the recording would be played. We all thought, later, that this session was hilarious in one way—a personality invisible in our terms, addressing an absent psychology class on the nature of personality! Yet Seth certainly knew what he was doing, for he used his own unorthodox method of communication as a case in point.

“You have here [in the session itself] a provocative demonstration of the nature of personality,” he said. “For my personality is not Ruburt’s, nor is his mine. I am not a secondary personality, for instance. I make no attempt to dominate Ruburt’s life, nor indeed would I expect him to allow it. I do not represent any repressed portions of Ruburt’s own being. As those here know, he is hardly the repressed type on his own!

“Now, in dreams you do have contact with other parts of yourself. This communication goes on constantly, but your ego is so focused upon physical reality and survival within it that you do not hear the inner voice. You must realize that what you are cannot be seen in a mirror. What you see in a mirror is but a dim reflection of your true reality.

“You do not see your ego in the mirror. You do not see your subconscious. You do not see the inner self in a mirror. These are but terms to express the part of you that cannot be seen or touched. But within the selves that you know is the prime identity, the whole inner self. This whole self has lived many lives. It has adopted many personalities. It is an energy essence personality, even as I am. The only difference is that I am not materialized within physical matter. You do not suddenly acquire a ‘spirit’ at death. You are one, now.”

“You may, if you wish, call me a subconscious production. I do not particularly enjoy such a designation, since it is not true. But if you do call me a subconscious extension of Ruburt’s own personality, then you must agree that the subconscious is telepathic and clairvoyant, since I have shown telepathic and clairvoyant abilities. So, may I remind you, has Ruburt on his own. … However, unless you are willing to assign to the subconscious those abilities—and most of your colleagues do not—then I cannot be considered to have such a subconscious origin.

The psychology class was as much interested in Seth’s reality as in the nature of personality, as he well knew. Smiling, Seth said, “One other point: These sessions are scheduled, and therefore operate under certain controlled conditions. Ruburt’s own personality is in no way threatened by them, and his ego has been carefully coddled and protected. It has not been shunted aside. Instead it has been taught new abilities. … I was not artificially ‘brought to birth’ through hypnosis. There was no artificial tampering of personality characteristics here. There was no hysteria. Ruburt allows me to use the nervous system under highly controlled conditions. I am not given a blanket permission to take over when I please, nor would I desire such an arrangement. I have other things to do.”

As far as I can see, Seth’s reference to hypnosis had to do with the “training” undergone by some mediums in which hypnosis is used to initiate and stabilize the trance state, and occasionally to call forth the communications of “control” personalities. This didn’t happen in my case. The whole thing was spontaneous. Although I know how to use self-hypnosis now, having studied it in the past several years, I’ve never used it for a session.

“Once more, action is not a force from without that acts upon matter. Action is, instead, the inside vitality of the inner universe—it is the dilemma between inner vitality’s desire and impetus to completely materialize itself, and its inability to completely do so.

“It is this dilemma, between identity’s constant attempts to maintain stability and action’s inherent drive for change, that results in the imbalance, the exquisite creative by-product that is consciousness of self. For consciousness and existence do not result from delicate balances so much as they are made possible by lack of balances, so richly creative that there would be no reality were balance ever maintained.

When we do “Psy-Time,” as Rob and I call it, our experiences seem to take place outside of the usual time framework. It’s like shifting gears, so that perception happens in a different context. Psy-Time is the “time” I travel in when I’m projecting, for example. When I went to California in the episode mentioned in Chapter 9, over six thousand miles were covered in a half hour. Obviously, in normal time, this would be impossible.

“Difficulties arise, in fact, when such alterations do not occur automatically. Severe neurosis is often caused precisely because the individual has not changed his past. Once more, the only reality that can be assigned to the past is that granted to the symbols and associations and images that exist electromagnetically within the physical brain and nonphysical mind.