“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“Matter is a medium for the manipulation and transformation of psychic energy into aspects that can then be used as building blocks. … Matter is only cohesive enough to give the appearance or relative permanence to the senses that perceive it.

“Matter is continually created, but no particular object is in itself continuous. There is not, for example, one physical object that deteriorates with age. There are instead continuous creations of psychic energy into a physical pattern that appears to hold a more or less rigid appearance.

“No particular object “exists long enough” as an indivisible, rigid, or identical thing to change with age. The energy behind it weakens. The physical pattern therefore blurs. After a certain point each re-creation becomes less perfect from your standpoint. After many such re-creations that have been unperceived by you, then you notice a difference and assume that a change … has occurred. The actual material that seems to make up the object has completely disappeared many times, and the pattern has been completely filled again with new matter. …

“Physical matter makes consciousness effective within three-dimensional reality. As individualized energy approaches your particular field, it expresses itself to the best of its ability within it. As energy approaches, it creates matter, first of all in an almost plastic fashion. But the creation is continuous like a beam or endless series of beams, at first weak as they are far off, then stronger, then weak again as they pass away.

“You and Ruburt perceive Mark, and yet neither of you sees Mark’s Mark. As he sits in his chair, he is constantly creating his own physical image, using his own psychic energy, and using particular atoms and molecules for the construction of his body. So far we have here, then, one Mark, constructed by himself, and before the evening is out you will be amazed at how many Marks we end up with.

At this time Rob and I were thinking of buying the house mentioned earlier. That very day we had gone to look it over again, and were surprised to find the back door wide open. Now Seth told us that we had opened the door ourselves, using psychic energy to do so, and that this was just one instance of mind influencing matter.

The session simply astonished me. We had so many questions to ask, we didn’t know where to begin. Exactly how do we form events from mental energy? How do we form objects? How do we agree on what we see?

“Thoughts and images are formed into physical reality and become physical fact. They are propelled chemically. A thought is energy. It begins to produce itself physically at the moment of its conception.

“Mental enzymes are connected with the pineal gland. As you know them, body chemicals are physical, but they are the propellants of this thought-energy, containing all the codified data necessary for translating any thought or image into physical actuality. They cause the body to reproduce the inner image. They are sparks, so to speak, initiating the transformation.

“In your system of reality you are learning what mental energy is, and how to use it. You do this by constantly transforming your thoughts and emotions into physical form. You are supposed to get a clear picture of your inner development by perceiving the exterior environment. What seems to be a perception, an objective concrete event independent from you, is instead the materialization of your own inner emotions, energy, and mental environment.”

But as you will see, we form our physical reality not only now and after death, but through at least several lifetimes, as we learn to translate energy and idea into experience. We not only form our environment now, but ahead of time we choose our parents and circumstances. Perhaps after reading the next two chapters you’ll see why I finally accepted the idea of reincarnation after having been “dead set” against it.