“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Then Seth himself continued in that 24th session:) Concepts fit together in patterns. In order for there to be communication between us I must disentangle a concept from its pattern, which is somewhat difficult. It is somewhat like having to free a particular word from a strong emotional association. I experience patterns made up of concepts, and you use words in associations.

(From the 28th session for February 24, 1964:) As far as Ruburt is concerned, there is no danger [to him in these sessions]. For one thing, I am an extremely sensitive but disciplined, and sensible if somewhat irascible, gentleman, if you will forgive the term. None of the communications from me have been in any way conducive to a development toward mental or emotional instability. (Smiling:) I may make bold to remark that I am more stable than you or Ruburt, or your fine psychologist [who just wrote to you].¹¹

I also do not take my responsibility lightly, and to a great degree I feel responsible for you, and for any results coming from your communications with me. If anything, the personal advice I have given you both should add to your mental and emotional balance, and result in a stronger relationship with the outside world.

This does not mean that I use Ruburt as a puppet, and stuff his mouth with tapes as a recorder, that you are always listening to replays, or that emotionally I am not always with you in sessions. It means that in such multidimensional communications more is involved than you suppose.

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.

(With much good humor:) For all of those who have in their deepest, most sacred thoughts, imagined that to be quiet was good and to be dignified was pious, then such a performance as mine should certainly make them think!

(From the ESP class session for April 20, 1971:) I am very afraid to tell [all of] you that I have forgotten what I considered to be secrets through the lives I have lived. I certainly know that like any of you I have not always been charitable in the past. I know that I have hated one parent or another. I know, certainly, that once I plundered in the wages of war. I do not come to you as someone who does not know what it is like to be human,²⁶ and in those personality characteristics that I use when I speak to you, I show you that the emotional life continues….

Now, I can be playful because I am not as serious and mystical as the rest of you. I am myself, and if you were yourselves,²⁸ you would not be so self-consciously profound about your beliefs and the nature of your reality. (Humorously, to a certain student:) You would trust your mustache!

(The 768th session was held on March 22, 1976, 11 months after Seth had finished dictating “Unknown” Reality. Originally Jane and I deleted the following rather personal material from the session — yet we present it here because in it Seth explores further the connections involving the three of us. My notes at the time show that I was also distinctly surprised by Seth’s comments on his emotional behavior at his own “level of activity,” but I soon understood my reaction as a sign that we still had things to learn about him, as well as ourselves. In one passage Seth referred to some health difficulties, now resolved, that had bothered me just before our sessions with him began.

Ruburt’s experience is obviously intertwined with yours. My characteristics as they are displayed through the Seth personality, therefore, come from you as well as Ruburt … Triggers were needed also to initiate my emergence into your world through that personality I display. Ruburt’s own background and questions were highly vital as such initiating principles. Your questions merged with his. It was the practical impetus of your need at the time, however, that operated as the final emotional trigger — you recall the circumstances.³¹

Ruburt provided himself with a background in which a parent (Jane’s mother) was steadily, chronically ill,³² and in which the medical profession with its beliefs was in constant sight. His mother was not medically neglected. His background included far more than sickness and the medical profession, however, but Ruburt knew that the conventional medical framework was not the answer to human ills. As you became more and more incapacitated, the trigger was set to find another solution. Psychic structures interweave, and realities do, one through the other (as Jane had written a few hours before the session).

In your terms, I am relatively unemotional at my own level of activity. Rather, my emotional behavior does not follow your patterns — that is closer to “the truth.” I have long delegated your kind of emotional activity to what you would call unconscious behavior. Our focuses are different, yet the overall coloration of your experiences does come through to me, and through this delightful personality (Jane indicated herself), I can to some extent relate to it.

Now I do not mind being nonscientific, and neither do any of you mind, because if all of your realities were confined to scientific theories you would have no realities at all, and neither would your fine scientists.³⁶ And in my time, I was also quite a dogmatic scientist. The times were different, however, and then I was even more intolerant in my beliefs than your scientists generally — underlined — are today!

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.

“Pretend that you are some weird creature with two faces. One face looks out upon one world and one looks out upon another. Imagine, further, this poor creature having a brain to go with each face, and that each brain interprets reality in terms of the world it looks upon. Yet the worlds are different, and more, the creatures are Siamese twins.

“At the same time imagine that these creatures are really one creature, but with definite parts equipped to handle two entirely different worlds. The subconscious, therefore, in this ludicrous analogy, would exist between the two brains, and would enable the creature to operate as a single unit.

Two quick reminders: 1. Clairvoyance (“clear-seeing”) is the paranormal perception of events or objects regardless of distance, and without help from another mind. 2. Telepathy is the communication of thoughts or emotions between minds, regardless of distance. In actuality, it’s often difficult to tell whether clairvoyance, telepathy, or both operated in a given instance. Nor am I noting here how the use of these phenomena may be connected to the perception of the past or future.

“On Ruburt’s part this can sometimes be disconcerting. We must always work with psychological organizations, however. The emotions always follow associative lines in this regard.

28. Seth’s remarks here are actually an extension of a long discussion on individual beliefs and spontaneity that he’d initiated in a class session two weeks ago: “Now, my words will not, I hope, be used to begin a new dogma. My dogma is the freedom of the individual (my emphasis). My dogma is the sacrilegious one — that each of you is a good individual. There is nothing wrong with your emotions, or feelings, or being. When you know yourself then you are joyfully — joyfully — responsive, and, being joyfully responsive, you can carry your society to the furthest reaches of its creativity.”