“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“Increased concentration of the conscious individual is the trend. Then these split personality fragments or images can be kept under scrutiny without taxing the present ego to distraction. Now, what you would call the subconscious performs this task; not too well, since it was never meant to focus clear attention. Consciousness will expand within your plane. The scope of consciousness will be so broadened that all personality fragments, split personality images, and individual fragments in succeeding incarnations will be held in clear focus without strain. It is toward this that evolution is headed, though of course, at its usual donkey-slow rate.”

I continued giving this material from 9:00 on, steadily, until Rob had writer’s cramp at 9:50. I’ve only given excerpts. Both of us were amazed that I’d spoken for so long, and delivered such involved sentences without corrections or hesitations of any kind. Then, ten minutes later while we were resting, Rob said that he was going to ask if we’d ever seen such “personality fragment” images. At once, the words started up in my head again, and I began to dictate. While speaking I had no idea of the meaning of the words, so it wasn’t until our next rest period that I knew what Seth had been saying. It was this following passage that both of us, later, found so disquieting.

In late 1963, some months before our sessions began, we’d taken a vacation in York Beach, Maine, hoping that a change of environment would improve Rob’s health. The doctor didn’t know what was wrong with his back and suggested that he spend some time under traction in the hospital. Instead we decided that his reaction to stress was at least partially responsible, hence the trip.

“Your dancing represented the first move away from what those images meant, and violent action was the best thing under the circumstances … a subtle transformation could have taken place in which you and Jane transferred the bulk of your personalities into the fragments you had yourselves created … and from their eyes watched yourselves across the room. In this case your present dominant personalities would no longer be dominant.”

During a break Rob told me what Seth had said about the images. Neither of us had ever heard about thought-forms then, and the whole thing sounded incredible to me. And yet, I thought, psychologists talk about projection and transference by which we project our fears outward to another person or object and then react to them.

The evening grew late, but Seth showed no signs of wearing out. Just before midnight, Rob and I took another rest period, and decided to end the session. (It was Seth, incidentally, who suggested we take a five-to-ten-minute break every half hour or so.) Rob and I didn’t know what to make of this session. It was the first time I’d spoken for so long at a time, for one thing. For another, we didn’t know how to evaluate what was said.

Should we continue with the sessions? I was somewhat more reluctant than Rob, being so directly involved, but what an opportunity, I thought! We decided to hold at least a few more sessions to see what might develop. Rob had some questions about fragment personalities he wanted to ask: What did Seth mean when he said we could have turned into those images? Rob wrote the questions down so he wouldn’t forget them, and two nights later we sat down at the board once more. At this point, of course, we had no idea whether or not each session would be our last, regardless of our conscious decisions. For all we knew, Seth might vanish as Frank Withers had. Rob had his list of questions ready so we could get some answers while we still had the opportunity.

“You don’t have to make your mind up one way or the other tonight, do you?” Rob asked. “What’s the rush? See what else he has to say. Besides, I’ve learned as much about my family tonight as I have all my life. That’s worth something.”

Instantly the words tumbled through my head and out my mouth. I was out and Seth was on. “The images represented a culmination of many years’ experience of a negative trend. If you had accepted them, you would have ended up as replicas as you transferred into the images. Yet, what creativity and constructiveness you possessed would have softened the faces. You would be recognizable to friends but changes would be noted. The remark would be made that perhaps you didn’t seem the same, and with good reason.”

“Was the boy real or what?” Rob asked.

“It was a personality fragment of your own. You were wishing for a playmate, and were jealous because your brother stayed so long with your father. Quite without knowing it, you materialized a personality fragment as a playmate. You had no way of knowing what had happened at the time, and could not give any permanence to the image.

“Occasionally a personality will astound itself by such an image production. Usually this type vanishes by the time the personality reaches adulthood. In childhood, however, such instances are frequent. Often when a child cries about a bogeyman, what he has seen is such an image production or fibrous projection, formed by vivid desire on the part of the subconscious.”

“But reincarnation—and kids forming fragment personalities or whatever as playmates?” I frowned. “Still, it’s fascinating as the dickens. And think what it means if it’s true!”

“Now as to the York Beach images. Here aggressive and destructive energies were unconsciously projected outward, given a pseudo-reality and temporary physical validity. The emotional charge provides the pattern and impetus for such creations. According to the extent of physical reality to be achieved, the physical body of the originator transfers or transposes portions of its own chemical structure. Proteins are used, and there is a high carbohydrate loss.

In the meantime, the Christmas holidays came along. We had no sessions for two weeks. Both of us wondered what would happen when—and if—we tried again. But the next episode so upset our ideas of what was possible, so outraged our conventional theories, that we very nearly quit the whole thing. Obviously we didn’t—yet our reactions were to color our activities for the next several years, and greatly influence the direction in which I would allow my own psychic abilities to operate.