“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.”

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?

These experiences have taught me this: We are multidimensional personalities now—you and I and everyone else. I think that consciousness congregates just as atoms and molecules do; that there are clumps of consciousness just as there are clumps of matter; and that we are a part of these clumps, whether we know it or not. We know little about our own psychology and less about the nature of consciousness. To learn more we must be willing to examine our own consciousness, individually. In doing so, I’m convinced that we will discover a greater individuality, uniqueness, and sense of identity. In sticking so close to the confines of egotistical physically oriented awareness, we may be closing ourselves off from answers to our deepest questions, knowledge that can help us deal more intelligently with physical life.

“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.

We both know that some sessions seem more “immediate” than others, and now as Seth continued we saw why.

“As I have told you, projection is involved to some extent, both on my part and Ruburt’s. Your [Rob’s] own presence is also important, whether or not you are present at any given session. … Now when you watch, say, educational television, you see the teacher, and he speaks. He may or may not actually be speaking at that time, for you may be watching a film. But the teacher exists whether or not he is speaking at that time, and his message is legitimate. So now see Ruburt as my television screen. … It makes no difference whether or not I am myself speaking within Ruburt now … or whether I did this last night in his sleep, and tonight is a film or playback.

“All the channels are not yet working on this set, you see,” Seth said humorously. “You know all of me that you are able to know at any given time in your terms. It would be relatively impossible for me to make my full reality clear to you, for your understanding would not contain it. Now, take a rest period. We would not want to blow a tube. …”

“I would make clear the nature and conditions in which I now have my existence, and explain some of the reasons for the often contradictory statements made concerning life after death—statements received by various mediums in which quite different pictures of afterlife reality are received.

“Now whether or not a medium is in a trance that is as deep as the Atlantic Ocean, the medium will not be a pure channel. The ego simply will be bypassed, but the other layers of the self, and the neurological structures particularly, will continue to operate as always. They will be altered by the perceptions that pass through them.”

Seth goes on to give examples of the various kinds of distortion that can occur in normal and extrasensory perception. “Now, Ruburt, or any individual in a low mood, might misinterpret information, overstating pessimistic elements. Persons given to the need for self-punishment will consistently misinterpret any perception in this manner.”