“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.

Seth agreed, and devoted one entire class to the session. He had some interesting things to say about his own reality, too. In a way, it is not the kind of in-depth discussion Seth would give in one of our private sessions, but it contains an excellent thumbnail description of his theories on personality, for those who have no previous knowledge of the Seth Material. For that reason, I’ll use excerpts from it to open this chapter.

There were about ten of my regular students at the session. Seth was at his best: smiling, often breaking up serious material with a few light jokes or comments. Most of the time he spoke directly to the student who requested the session, or addressed the sixty members of her psychology class, who were not present. The whole session ran about six single-typed pages.

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!

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.

Seth’s personality, of course, comes through on tape better than on the printed page, because his inflections and connotations are obvious. Also, we recorded a few moments of conversation, so that my normal voice could be compared with Seth’s. Even the most lecturelike private session is always enlivened by Seth’s gestures, and this is more marked when he is relating to a group.

Of course, these abilities don’t mean much unless you learn to use them and experience them for yourself. Early in our sessions Seth described what he calls the Inner Senses—inner methods of perception that expand normal consciousness and allow us to become aware of our own multidimensional existence. It was some time before we fully understood what these meant, and how we could use them, and we are still learning to use them more effectively.

As mentioned earlier, what Seth said to us in sessions was also backed up by what happened in them. As he spoke about latent potentials, we found ourselves discovering our own. To a large extent, then, our personal experiences corroborated Seth’s theories. For example, Session 138 on March 8, 1965, is a case in point.

At the time, we were having sessions in the bedroom, which is small, with one window looking out on the large yard. It was summer; hardly anyone knew of the sessions yet, and Seth’s full voice, rising out on the nighttime air, would have raised questions we weren’t ready to answer. As he has done since the beginning, Rob sat with pen and paper, taking verbatim notes. He often felt quite warm, since we closed the window to keep the sessions as private as possible, particularly since neighbors were often sitting in the yard. (The heat never bothers me when I’m in trance, although otherwise I’m very susceptible to it.)

“In line with the statement made earlier that action necessarily changes that which it acts upon [which is basically itself], then it follows that the action involved in our sessions changes the nature of the sessions. I have spoken often of consciousness as the direction in which a self focuses. Action implies infinite possibilities of focus.”

Toward the end of the session, Rob asked Seth if he’d explain what was happening. Seth said: “Ruburt is experiencing action gestalts. Like every other consciousness, he is action; but this evening he is experiencing action, to some small degree, without the ego’s usual attempt to separate itself [from action].

“I mentioned, in our last discussion, that this material would be the basis for future sessions. It is true that another dimension has been added to the sessions, and I hope to instruct Ruburt along the lines of more direct perception as we continue. I told you that such developments could be expected. These are natural unfoldings and will continue according to their own nature and in their own time. I expect that this latest development will involve still another.”

This sort of thing began to happen frequently in sessions. Later we took it for granted, I guess, without realizing what an impression it made on us the first time. My experiences usually parallel whatever information Seth is giving. According to Seth, this involves the use of the Inner Senses, and my experiences are meant to point up the existence of these abilities not only in me, but as the latent capabilities of each personality.

From Session 224: The Personality and Time