“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The units form themselves into the various systems that they have themselves initiated. They transform themselves, therefore, into the structured reality that they then become. Ruburt is quite correct in his supposition of what he calls “multipersonhood” in Adventures.¹

The point of all this is that these units are unpredictable, and fulfill all probabilities of consciousness. Any concepts of gods or other beings that are based upon limited ideas of personhood will ultimately be futile. You view the fantastic variety of physical life — its animals, insects, birds, fish, man and all his works — with hardly a qualm; yet you must understand that the nature of consciousness itself is far more varied, and you must learn to think of an inner reality that is as infinite as the exterior one. These concepts alone do alter your present consciousness, and change it in degree. The present idea of the soul, you see, is a “primitive” idea that can scarcely begin to explain the creativity or reality from which mankind’s being comes. You are multipersons (intently). You exist in many times and places at once. You exist as one person, simultaneously. This does not deny the independence of the persons, but your inner reality straddles their reality, while it also serves as a psychic world in which they can grow.³

(We were interrupted by a long-distance telephone call at 10:37. A television producer wanted Jane to appear on his show. I asked him to write us. When I hung up, Jane said, “I’m still half in.” She sat quietly for a few moments, then resumed the session.)

(“It sure doesn’t start out like a book to me,” Jane said. “It doesn’t seem to be simple, like the others. Maybe this time he’s going to go ahead and do it his own way … I can honestly say that the title was completely unknown to me.” She smiled at her unwitting pun on “Unknown” Reality. “Are you ready to start a new book, Rob?”

As I did when she began delivering each of the other Seth books, I suggested to Jane that she relax about the whole thing and just let Seth do his work. We quit for the night at 12:03 A.M.)

1. Jane uses “multipersonhood” on the last page of Chapter 11 in her Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. “But really,” she said, “the whole chapter builds up toward that definition, or idea.” In her view, the quality called multipersonhood encompasses all of the inner personifications, or Aspects, of the source self, which she defines in the Glossary of Adventures as “the ‘unknown’ self, soul, or psyche; the fountainhead of our physical being.” In her own case, then, Seth would be a personification of an Aspect of her source self; but he would also have an existence of his own at other levels of reality.

2. In connection with Seth’s discussion of animals and men here, see his excellent material in Chapter 12 of Personal Reality. Summarizing parts of that chapter very simply: In Session 647 Seth goes into the challenges early man faced as he contended with his own burgeoning consciousness. In Session 648 he discusses animal instinct, health, illness, and suicide, and the eras during which men and animals mixed. For the same session Jane contributed impressions of her own on animal medicine men.

Jane and I placed no particular emphasis upon this information when Seth came through with it, but in retrospect we realized that it contains two significant points: Seth’s reference to “another book,” which we think is “Unknown” Reality, and his use of the word “counterparts.” In its ordinary dictionary sense, the term has appeared a few times in the sessions, but Seth’s use of it in the passage quoted above has a special implication, I think; one that Jane and I missed at the time of its reception. For in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, Seth’s concept of counterparts certainly takes on its own unique meaning within his study of personhood. (Although not bringing up his ideas of reincarnation or points of power in the 683rd session, Seth implied both of those qualities in many parts of that material.)

5. This “margin of safety” between my mother and me is beautifully illustrated in my dream of two nights ago. And as if to further reassure my conscious mind, I saw my mother with people who were still “living”; this has been the case in other recent dream experiences I’ve had with her. Here’s the relevant portion of the description I wrote for Through My Eyes: “Then I saw my mother [Stella] between my brother Linden and his wife, all separated each from the other a little bit, all walking obliquely toward me across a featureless plain. Everything was in brilliant color. The three figures were cut off at their waists, as though I saw them on a screen. My mother didn’t speak to me or look directly at me; like the others, she faced just past my left shoulder.

“Linden and his wife were close to their present physical ages in the dream, a year or so younger than I am, at 54, but Stella looked to be a few years younger than she should have been [she died at 81]. I know I created my dream image of her to make our communication understandable to me — yet I felt that she was alive, in our terms and in hers. My mother was obviously in control of her faculties, even though she appeared to be a little distraught … The fact that she looked past me speaks of some sort of barrier, or distance, between us even in the dream state. This could be for my own protection, I think….”