“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

My own work is such an investigation. I consider my psychic experiences, the Seth sessions, and my entire relationship with Seth as a learning adventure—a continuing one. I think that the Seth Material contains insights and information concerning the nature of reality that are sorely needed. The theories expand the meaning of individuality and challenge us to accept the larger self that both science and religion at various times have taught us to deny.

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.

Rob asked Seth once if he was always available to us for a session, and Seth’s answer shows clearly that we have more than a simple one-to-one relationship. I trust the answers that we received and think that they are honest statements about a very complicated psychological connection.

From Sessions 458, January 20, 1969:

“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.

“I am, however, automatically a part of the message that I bring to you. At times I am ‘here’ more completely than in other sessions. These reasons often have to do with circumstances usually beyond normal control: electromagnetic conditions, psychological circumstances. These could be considered as atmospheric conditions through which I must travel.

“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.

“Again: the medium is the message in the Spacious Present,” Seth said, smiling, “and whenever the time for the program arrives, I am here in your present, regardless of where I am in what you would term my present. … I may prepare my film in advance when Ruburt is not consciously aware of it. This does not imply that such a session is less legitimate.”

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.

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.

“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.

Naturally I do not claim that the material represents pure, undistorted knowledge. This question of distortion came up for perhaps the fiftieth time in the 463rd session. After I signed the contract for this book, our friend Peg Gallagher was doing a story about Seth for the local paper, and she attended a session to get material. After several joking remarks to Peg (“Someday I will interview you”), Seth began speaking about distortions.

One night before our regular Wednesday session Rob and I were pretty upset over the state of the world in general. We sat talking and Rob wondered aloud why we behaved as we did. “What real sense or purpose is behind it all?” he said. “Granted some part of us knows what we’re doing, still we seem hell-bent on destroying the planet, if not through war, then through pollution.”

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 Seth sessions are still continuing, twice a week. Seth’s topics and range of conversation are widening and growing continually. If what we have so far is an “outline,” then it is an outstanding one.