“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

CHAPTER
TWENTY:

Personal Evaluations—
Who or What Is Seth?

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.

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.

As to who or what Seth is, his term “energy essence personality” seems as close to the answer as anyone can get. I don’t believe he is a part of my subconscious, as that term is used by psychologists, or a secondary personality. I do think that we have a supraconscious that is as far “above” the normal self as the subconscious is “below” it, though Seth maintains there are no real levels to the self—the terms just make things simpler. I ascribe ESP abilities to this supraconscious and think that it has access to information regarding the nature of reality not normally available to the egotistical portions of the personality. It may be that Seth is the psychological personification of that supraconscious extension of my normal self.

If so, how independent would he be? The question can’t be answered easily. Certainly he wouldn’t be present within my personality structure as I know it. I don’t believe, for example, that his presence would be disclosed by any psychological testing of my own personality. The inherent relationship would snap into focus during a session, however, when the supraconscious identity would take over.

The matter of Seth’s sex also arises here. To me at least, the intuitive portions of most personalities seem to have a feminine rather than masculine cast. If Seth were just my higher intuitive self, I would expect him to be feminine or to be the pseudomasculine type of male character so frequently created by women writers. Usually males instantly recognize characters drawn in this manner as overly romantic. While Seth is not “blatantly” male, in his actions and speech he is more a man’s man than the woman’s man type. Men like him. While he is a teacher, he is not basically the stereotyped “spiritual guide” either. He is simply himself—which may, after all, be the badge of his own independent existence.

His effect upon others is immediate. Apparently he has considerable “presence.” He reacts to others, and relates much better than I do to people from various walks of life. As the excerpts show, though, he has made it plain that the characteristics by which we know him are only a portion of his personality and those he finds most helpful in getting our attention and delivering the material.

“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.

“The teacher is within the tape; the personality is condensed. Your question stems from the feeling that if I am here, I cannot be someplace else at the same time, or that all of my energies must be focused here if I am here. There are aspects of my identity with which you are not acquainted … though at a ‘later’ time you may be.

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.

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.

Seth has promised to write his own book, dictated during sessions, in which he will answer some of these questions: “In my book I will show the personality from the inside out, so to speak. … To some extent it will relate my own experiences, but I hope it will give a picture of the nature of reality as seen by someone who is not imprisoned within the three-dimensional system.

“The book would involve a study of mediumship, not from the viewpoint of the medium, but from the viewpoint of the personality for whom she speaks. It would involve an examination of your system of reality as it appears to me. …

“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.

“Information can rarely flow like crystal-clear water, with the medium [as] a faucet to be turned off and on at will. It must be sifted through the layers of the medium’s personality. The nervous system reacts to the data even as it translates it. Nothing is neutral in those terms. The information is received and translated, as it must be, into mechanisms which the nervous system can handle and interpret. Like any perception, the information then becomes a part of the nervous system’s structure. It cannot be otherwise.

“It is a logistic contradiction to imagine, with your physical structures, that any perception can be received without the perceiver’s inner situation being altered. I am trying to make it as clear as possible—information automatically blends with, is intermingled with, and enmeshed with, the entire physically valid structure of the personality.

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.”

Since he is responsive, he must be affected by his relationship to us (though perhaps not to the extent that we are affected by him!). There is no doubt that my own personality has grown as it accommodated itself to the Seth experience. I had to learn to handle more stimuli than ever before, and to maintain overall stability as I learned to develop latent abilities. This certainly involved strains and stresses as well as rewards: but none that couldn’t be resolved with a sense of humor and some common sense. When I feel I need a rest, I take a break, which Seth respects with good grace.

That was November 6, 1968, and starting that night we had a series of sessions dealing with the questions that were foremost in our minds. On that particular evening, our 446th session, the other personality, Seth Two, came through in that distant clear voice.

“The training will serve you for existence in a variety of interrelated systems. If the sorrows and agonies within your system were not felt as real, the lessons would not be learned. The teachers within your system are those who are in their last reincarnation, and other personalities who have left the system but have been assigned to help those still within it. …

“You are dealing with the transformation of emotional energy into action and form. You then manipulate within the system which you have yourselves created, and by its effects learn where you have succeeded and failed. The system includes some fragment personalities who are entering for the ‘first’ time, as well as those in later reincarnations.