“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“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!

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.”

But according to Seth, no individuality is ever lost. It is always in existence. The tricky point here is that the self has no boundaries except those it accepts out of ignorance. Our individual consciousness grows, and out of its experience it forms different “personalities” or fragments of itself. These fragments—Jane Roberts is one of them—are entirely independent as to action and decision, yet the inner psychic components are constantly in communication with the whole self of which they are part. These “fragments” themselves grow, develop, and may form their own entities or “personality gestalts”—or, if you prefer, whole souls.

“These three dilemmas represent three areas of reality within which inner vitality can experience itself. And here also we have the reason why inner vitality can never achieve complete materialization. The very action involved in vitality’s attempt to materialize itself adds to the inner dimension of vitality itself.

“Here you will find the innate knowledge concerning the creation of the camouflage universe as you know it, the mechanics involved, and much of the material I have given you. You will find the ways and means by which the inner self, existing in the climate of psychological reality, helps create the various planes of existence, constructs outer senses to project and perceive these, and the ways by which reincarnations take place within various systems. Here you will find your own answers as to how the inner self transforms energy for its own purposes, changes its form, and adopts other realities.”

The question comes up, then: How can we ignore time? What is there about ourselves, or time, that we can disconnect one from the other? Some of you may not be interested in such questions, but others will feel cheated if they are left unanswered. Seth does not ignore such issues, and I’m closing this chapter with a few excerpts in which he considers them. Here Seth partially explains the nature of time, and shows why we are basically free of it.

“Every action changes every other action—we go back to our ABC’s. Therefore, every action in your present affects those actions you call past. Ripples from a thrown stone go out in all directions, and I am going out rather far on the limb myself right here. Remembering what you know of the nature of time, you realize that the apparent boundaries between past, present, and future are only illusions caused by the amount of action you can physically perceive.

“There are, for example, limitations set here that must be clearly stated, but within these limitations you will find that events can be changed and are constantly changed, regardless of the apparent point of their original happening.