“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Organized religion professes to hold the opposite idea, that man’s identity is independent of physical matter—after death. It often looks askance, however, at any investigations that might show man taking advantage of that independence now. While it preaches the survival of the soul, it is suspiciously uninterested in studying cases in which there seems to be communication between the quick and the “dead.”

Yet I really believe that the facts are clear to anyone broad-minded enough to look into the field of parapsychology, or bold enough to do his own experimentation into the nature of consciousness. The facts should be clear to any person who has ever experienced a valid precognitive dream, clairvoyant event, or telepathic communication.

“Now, as to my availability at your sessions, you are able, within the conditions we have set, and with my assistance, to call upon the elements of my personality with which you are acquainted. Sort of a vitalized fourth-dimensional letter or communication, in which, if you’ll forgive the term, the medium is the message.

“In ways, Ruburt is turned into a vitalized telegram. When you send a communication or telegram, you merely send words. I send portions of myself. My entire essence need not always be involved. I need not be entirely focused within your dimension, in other words, but I am sufficiently focused to meet our appointments. The psychological bridge of which I have spoken serves us well, however, and this exists on Ruburt’s part as well as my own.

Seth went on to say that I had given my permission for such an arrangement, and that much of our work went on while I was sleeping or otherwise engaged. “This does not mean that I use Ruburt as a puppet, and stuff his mouth with tapes as a recorder, that you are always listening to replays, or that emotionally I am not always with you in sessions. It means that in such multidimensional communications, more is involved than you suppose.

Obviously I’ve avoided calling Seth a spirit and leaving it at that. I don’t like the phrase for one thing, and for another, I think that this is too easy an answer. In accepting one solution, we may be closing our minds to others that lie beneath. I am not saying that Seth is just a psychological structure allowing me to tune into revelational knowledge, nor denying that he has an independent existence. I do think that some kind of blending must take place in sessions between his personality and mine, and that this “psychological bridge”’ itself is a legitimate structure that must take place in any such communication. Seth is at his end, I am at mine. I agree with Seth here. I don’t think it is a relatively simple matter of a medium just blacking out and acting like a telephone connection. I do think that Seth is part of another entity, and that he is something quite different from, say, a friend who has “survived” death.

I don’t find these ideas contradictory. Seth could still be a part of an ancient entity, and Seth Two another portion more evolved in our terms. If physical life evolves, why not consciousness itself? I don’t find it difficult to accept the possibility that we might be independent fragments of such entities or clumps of consciousness. And granting this, some kind of communication between us would be possible. We would be all formed from the same “mental stuff,” whatever that stuff is. To us, however, such experiences would seem supranormal.

Seth Two said that certain portions of my personality acted as transparent windows into these other realities and consciousnesses. If so, many such “windows” must exist. Seth Two may have evolved almost beyond our understanding. The “distance” alone would make communication difficult, and a series of translators may be necessary—Seth may be one of them.

“Such a book would also include my methods of entry into your system and the sort of psychological bridge personality that results. Again: what you have in sessions is not my complete identity. There must be some sort of psychological structure present for me to use during my communications. At times, however, my identity comes through clearly enough so that, comparatively speaking, I can exist independently, as myself, without Ruburt’s assistance.

He went on to say that vocal communication is not the rule. It is not used by more advanced entities nor by less developed ones than ourselves. In order to make sense to our three-dimensional selves, information must be “squeezed” through—and this in itself causes some distortion.