“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Sometimes, though, I find it quite a challenge to excerpt a number of sessions to illuminate a particular one. I want the passages chosen to make sense on their own, out of context, and to focus clearly on the subject; at the same time, I don’t want to include too many or too few of my own notes. But in this appendix, at least, I discovered that it wasn’t always possible to achieve both of those goals just as I wanted to — not in connection with each point mentioned. It also became inevitable that at least some elements of Seth’s own “separate-but-connected” reality would have to be considered. In addition to those concerns, on occasion I found myself rearranging the quoted discussions a bit — although really to a minor degree — for even greater brevity and clarity. So here’s how it all worked out:

(Perhaps I put this appendix together as I did partly because Jane herself isn’t much turned on by reincarnational concepts, although she does like the way Seth insists upon the unlimited attributes of each personality; and within such a “simultaneous” framework there’s plenty of room for probable selves, reincarnational selves, and [added later] counterpart selves.²

(From the 27th session for February 19, 1964:) There is so much I want to say. When your training is further advanced, much further advanced, we may be able to take certain shortcuts. It is difficult for me to have to string out this material in words, and for you to record it. You see, it is possible in theory for you to experience directly a concept-essence of the material in any given night’s session.⁸

Ruburt is not myself now, in his present life. He is nevertheless an extension and materialization of the Seth that I was at one time. Nothing remains unchanging, entities and personalities least of all. You cannot stop them in time … I am Seth today. I keep my continuity but I change, and offshoots like currents explode into being. Ruburt was myself, Seth, many centuries ago, but he grew, evolved, and expanded in terms of a particular personal set of value fulfillments. He is now a personality that was one of the probable personalities¹⁴ into which Seth could grow. I represent another. I am another.

To make it simpler, we split — this being necessary always so that various possibilities can be brought into action … Yet we are bound together, and no invasion [of Ruburt] occurs because in one way of speaking our psychic territory is the same.

(From the 119th session for January 6, 1965:) Ruburt should learn much of advantage from the book by Jung¹⁶ which he is reading. And I would like to mention here that I am not Jane’s animus … Nor could I possibly live up to Jane’s animus. I use the name “Jane” here rather than “Ruburt” because the animus belongs to Jane and to the present personality. Talk about reflections — because Ruburt has an anima!¹⁷

When communication takes place between a survival personality and one who exists within the physical system, this involves a reshuffling on the part of the survival personality, where the ego is momentarily given greater reign … If this was not done, then in most cases communication would not be possible, just because the survival personality would have such difficulty impressing the personality who was still ego-oriented within the physical system.

Information must be sifted through the layers of the medium’s personality. Any perception instantly alters the electromagnetic and neurological systems of the perceiver … It is a logistic contradiction to imagine, with your physical systems, that any perception can be received without the perceiver’s inner situation being altered. I am trying to make it as clear as possible: Information automatically blends with, is intermingled with, and enmeshed with, the entire physically valid structure of the personality.

I very seldom speak symbolically to you. I speak as literally as possible, but in order that any information may appear within your three-dimensional system, translations of it [through Ruburt] are automatically necessary or you would not perceive it.

(As she probed the Jane-Ruburt-Seth relationship in Adventures, Jane found herself developing her own nomenclature, separate from Seth’s, for many of the concepts she and Seth had experienced over the years. “But I didn’t plan it that way,” she said. “That’s just the way it all came out.” She calls the conscious self the “focus personality,” for instance, since it’s focused in this physical [camouflage] reality. The focus personality is composed of aspects of the “source self” [or entity]. Each aspect exists independently, in its own dimension of actuality, but the aspects’ combined attributes form the basic components of the selves that we know. To Jane, Seth is a ‘personagram” — an actual personality formed in the psyche at the intersection point of the focus personality with another aspect.

2. Seth began his material on counterpart selves late next month, in the 721st session. Out of that session grew Appendix 21. The material in Appendix 18, then, is intended to further enrich the counterpart information in Session 721, as well as in its appendix.

7. For some related material on patterns and probabilities, see Note 13 for Appendix 12.

8. Even 11 years later, I’m certainly far away from experiencing the concept-essence of any given session, as Seth suggests may be possible. I’m expressing contradictory beliefs, obviously, but it seems unlikely that I can use my abilities in such a fashion, even though I tell myself I’d like to.

14. Seth discussed many facets of his concept of probabilities in Volume 1, of course. In Volume 2, see Note 16 for Appendix 12.

(To go into modern knowledge of the components of the atom can be a very complicated task, so I’ll note only that such particles are regarded as actually being packets of energy, or “probability patterns,” that can also manifest themselves as waves; both the particle and the wave aspects are legitimate in space-time. An atom, then, is composed of a “heavy” positively charged nucleus orbited by “lighter” negatively charged electrons. Generally speaking, these positive and negative qualities could be those Seth referred to in the 464th session.

The electron is the lightest particle known to have mass and charge, and its internal structure — whatever it may be — is unknown. The atomic nucleus is largely made up of more massive protons and neutrons, but investigation within the nucleus has either uncovered or produced many other subatomic particles as well — over 200 of these, some of them very unstable, are presently known. According to Seth, of course, all of the particles or probability patterns discussed here would be composed of the much, much smaller CU’s, or units of consciousness.

Since Seth obviously sees little real difference between the concepts of fields and wave/particles, I’d say that in the 775th session he cast his material in accord with the latter so as to make it as clear as possible to us who are so bound by ideas of space and time: “In those terms …” But overall the physicists discuss energy and Seth talks about consciousness — and therein, as I see it, lies the basic contrast between the two approaches to reality.