“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

If we could remove these blind spots and enlarge the focus of our attention, I think that we would become aware of these other events, and that telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance would be normal, practical methods of obtaining information. In other words, I think that ESP abilities are natural ones that we have denied because they seem to contradict our ideas of reality.

We identify with our bodies, as indeed the psychologists tell us that we must. But this identification is based upon the idea that without a body there is no self. It also supposes that all knowledge comes to us through the physical senses. Obviously, according to this idea, we couldn’t perceive anything if we were out of our bodies. In fact, there would be no self to get out to begin with, since our consciousness would be the result of our body mechanisms. This is the orthodox view of many scientists and psychologists.

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.”

The facts of my experience—and that of others—are these. We are, to some extent, free of our physical bodies. We can see and feel and learn while our consciousness is separated from the physical form. We can perceive portions of the future. We do have access to information that does not come through the physical senses. If it wants to, science can take a hundred years to accept these ideas. In the meantime they are still facts. Hallucination is not involved, unless I am hallucinating now as I write this page, sip my coffee, and feel honest indignation that some of us would limit our abilities to protect limited concepts. Why should we take it for granted that concepts are right, if they contradict our experience?

In a way I was just as bad: I questioned myself and my experiences at every corner, and still do. But at least I didn’t let outdated concepts dictate what portions of my own experience I could accept as real, and what portions I must reject. But if I had not been affected by such ideas, I could have accepted my initial psychic experiences more freely and examined them wholeheartedly. Instead, particularly in the beginning, I was as much appalled as delighted with each new development.

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.

I have many questions myself. For example: How conscious is Seth when he is not speaking through me? If he is my window into other realities, am I his window into physical life? My idea is that Seth is fully conscious, but of—and in—other dimensions of existence. But this only leads to the question: What is nonphysical life like?