“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Consciousness is composed of energy, with everything that implies. The psyche, then, can be thought of as a conglomeration of highly charged “particles” of energy, following rules and properties, many simply unknown to you. On other levels, laws of dynamics apply to the energy sources of the self. Think of a given “self” as a nucleus of an energy gestalt of consciousness. That nucleus, according to its intensity, will attract to it certain masses of the entire energy patterns available to a given identity.

From your viewpoint these offshoots of energy become unreal. They exist as surely as you do, however. In terms of energy, this multiplication of selves is a natural principle. (To me:) Your “sportsman self”* was never endowed with the same kind of force as that of your artistic or writing self. It became subsidiary, yet present to be drawn upon, taking joy through your motion and adding its vitality to your “main” personality.

Had it been given extra force through your environment, circumstances, or your own intent, then either your artistic self would have become subservient or complementary; or, if the energy selves were of nearly equal intensity, then one of them would have become an offshoot, propelled by its own need for fulfillment into a probable reality. Do you follow me?

In terms of energy, intent is stabilizing. There is a center to the self, again, that acts as a nucleus. The nucleus may change, but it will always be the center from which physical existence will radiate. Physically, intent or purpose forms that center, regardless of its reality in terms of energy.

In your family life in this reality, your parents acted opaquely to each other. There were strong energy shifts, so that the personalities did not meet directly. Give us a moment … Some of this is difficult to explain. In a way they were unfocused, yet each with strong abilities, but dispersed. There was a reason for this.

They contained within themselves intense and yet blurred talents that were used as energy sources by the children. They came together precisely to give birth to the family, and for no other main reason as far as their joint reality was concerned. They seeded a generation, then.¹

In another system of reality your father was — in fact, still is — a well-known inventor, who never married but used his mechanically creative abilities to the fullest while avoiding emotional commitment. He met Stella (my mother). They were going to be married — and in terms of years, the same years are involved, historically. At one time, then, in your father’s past as you think of it, having met Stella, he did not marry her after all. His love was for machinery, the speed of motorcycles, mixing creativity with metal. At that point of intersection, equal desires and intents within him became like twin nuclei. Whole regroupings of energy occurred, psychological and psychic implosions, so that two equally valid personalities were aware in a world in which only one could live at a time.

She had one son, then a hysterectomy, on purpose. She schooled herself rigorously, moved in social circles, hid the unschooled, naive aspects of herself. In that life, for example, she would certainly not wear red bows in her hair. All of the controlled energy made her somewhat bitter, though she was successful. She died in her 50’s — do you follow me?

Her energy was such that it spilled over into this system with your father, however. Someday I will try to explain this more clearly, in terms of energy patterns. Historically, however, many probabilities exist at once. When your mother died in her 50’s in one probable system, your mother in this system was the recipient of energy that then returned.

Your father’s greatest vitality was in the inventor’s reality, and so in your terms this one suffered. This does not mean that each personality, regardless of probabilities, is not endowed with free will, and so forth. Each is born, in whatever system, from a source gestalt energy, and develops.

(Some quick figuring showed us that the 50’s for my mother had encompassed the years 1942–51. From my present viewpoint I had no idea if she’d consciously or unconsciously experienced any influx of energy resulting from the death of a probable self during that decade. In those days the Buttses didn’t think in such terms, for one thing; for another, I was absent from the family home in Sayre for much of that time. In 1947, for example, when my mother was 55 years old, I was 28 and living in New York City. I wasn’t to meet Jane for five years. And even if Stella Butts were still living, I think it would be difficult to question her about an event that would have taken place approximately a quarter of a century ago.

(I told Jane now that had my mother received any additional energy during her 50’s, she might have expressed its benefits through the habitual mores of our society, in terms of changes rather than of probabilities, say “My life changed for the better at that point, when I made that decision.” I added that perhaps the important thing for us now was to observe our unfolding lives with Seth’s ideas of the larger, or whole self, in mind, and so achieve insights we could interpret in terms of probabilities. So we decided not to ask Seth to backtrack and give us material about the son my mother’s probable self had had in her reality, even though that son was a probable self of mine.

Because no system is closed,⁴ there are flows of energy between them, and interaction. Some of this is exceedingly difficult to verbalize, since the word “structure” itself is not only serialized, but particle-ized.

(Pause.) You think of entities as particles, for example, rather than as waves of energy, aware and alert, or as patterns. (A one mimute pause.) Think of Ruburt’s living area in Adventures⁵ for example. Imagine that at age 13, three strong energy centers come to the surface of the personality — highly charged, so that one person cannot adequately fulfill the desires or abilities presented. You may have a three-way split at age 13. At [age] 40, each of the three selves may recognize age 13 as a turning point, and wonder what might have happened had they chosen other courses.