“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(When Jane lay down for a nap late this afternoon she had quite an unusual experience. From her notes: “Just before I went to sleep, I had a sort of mental projection that seemed to be into the past, my past. I was a baby in my hometown, Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The time was about 1931 to start with. Everything was misty, gray, without color. First, ‘I’ looked down on ‘myself’ in my carriage. Then, I moved through the streets easily enough as I got ‘older’ during the projection. Wait — just now as I wrote this I picked up something [from a part of my consciousness other than Ruburt or Seth], to the effect that the projection environment is as focused as mine is, really, but that it’s a probability of mine. Biologically I wasn’t keyed into it in my ‘now’, I was in it and not in it, between focused realities … traveling in or through these fluctuations of consciousness Seth talked about in the last session. He mentioned probable kinds of consciousness in that session, too. Was I trying to develop one of those here in my own physical reality? But this was definitely a waking event, taking place just before my nap. I described the whole thing to Rob as soon as I got up….

Now: Give us a moment … Body is also pattern. Period. While the material that composes it changes constantly, the pattern maintains its own integrity. The form is etched in space and time, and yet the pattern itself exists outside of that framework also — the body is a projection, therefore, into the three-dimensional field.

The consciousnesses of the cells within it, however, are eternal. The physical framework, then, is itself composed of immortal stuff. The projection in time and space may disappear, in your terms, wither and die. The main identity continues to exist, even as the consciousnesses of millions of cells still exist that at one time were part of the body.

Give us a moment … In some adventures you do visit other probable realities in which you have a body structure quite as real as “your own.” Your own psychological makeup, for that matter, achieves its marvelous complexity because it draws from the rich bank of your greater probable existences. Even a small understanding of these ideas can help you glimpse how limiting previous concepts of psychology have been.

(A one-minute pause at 10:25.) The self that you know and recognize carries within it hints and traces of all of your probable characteristics that can be actualized within your system of reality. Your body is equipped to bring any of these to fulfillment. Now, because of the selectivity mentioned earlier,¹ certain directions may be easier than others, and some may appear impossible. Yet within the psychological and biological structure of your species, the roads of probabilities have more intersections than you know.

(10:32. I thought Jane’s trance had been a good one, even though she’d used many pauses, but she told me that she hadn’t been at her best. Nor had she been aware of her slow delivery. She also felt that we’d eaten supper [at 7:30] too close to session time.

(I discussed with Jane the questions I’d thought of when Seth had commented, above, on “… how limiting previous concepts of psychology have been.”: As a discipline, why was psychology so narrowly developed? Why hadn’t it continued expanding until it encompassed ideas like those Jane was delivering tonight, for instance? Her work was unique in that it was coming through her individual personality, I added — yet, why wasn’t the theory of probabilities, or its equivalent, say, common knowledge, or at least considered, in psychology today? I asked if Seth cared to comment.

(After we talked for a few more minutes, Jane said, “I’ve got the feeling you’re going to get answers to your questions about psychology — but they’ll be presented as the Preface to this book. “We hadn’t given the idea of a preface a thought. Making a joke, I asked Jane what was coming up next in the session. I meant generally, but she replied, “The Preface.” Even then, I don’t think either of us expected Seth to carry out such a project tonight. But as he came through at 10:57:)

(“All right. Thank you, Seth. Good night,” I said at 12:01 A.M. and Seth was gone almost at once. See the Preface at the beginning of this book. Jane said that although Seth hadn’t actually considered my specific questions about psychology after all, they had served as an impetus for the Preface. She felt good. I read the Preface to her — and she felt even better.