“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There is much I have not told you about your city, for you will have to discover it for yourselves. I am merely encouraging you to focus your joint energies in that direction … You will be dealing with symbols, yet you will learn that symbols are reality, for you are symbols of yourselves that live and speak. You do not think of yourselves as symbols [but] there is no symbol that does not have its individual life.

(We read that in ordinary terms highly creative people [like Jane] usually generate large amounts of theta and low-alpha waves pretty constantly while doing their thing. Measuring and recording brain waves is a complicated task, however; not only is it important which areas or lobes of the brain are monitored — if not all of them — but because of the mechanical limitations of the EEG itself much that goes on in the brain is necessarily missed. In addition, the two hemispheres of the individual brain often show variations in electrical energy states. But most importantly, we think, while the EEG can indicate broad categories of brain activity, it can hardly probe the participant’s very individual and subjective content of mind within this camouflage [physical] reality. Nor at this time, given the minimum premise that Jane’s speaking for Seth constitutes any indication of “paranormal” activity, do we think that her performance could be identified as such per se on the graphs of her brain waves. The state of “EEG art” isn’t that advanced yet [if it ever will be]. Presumably, however, when speaking for Seth, Jane would show definite changes in all frequency areas in both hemispheres, with the theta and delta ranges altered the most. We also think that her EEG readings would vary once again when she spoke or sang in Sumari, her trance “language.”

(Then from Seth himself:) In one sense meeting with you costs me little energy, it is true. On the other hand the effort to communicate explanations does involve a very real endeavor on my part. And so you are not the only ones who grow weary in this respect. As I have said, feeling is action, and in my communications to you feeling plays a strong part.

(From the 83rd session for August 31, 1964:) Man sees not even half of the whole entity which is himself. It is true that on this journey [with the sessions] discipline, some caution and understanding, and much courage, is demanded. This is as it should be. I am helping you in this … You are both (meaning Jane and me) peculiarly suited for such a pursuit, with a combination of intuitiveness, basic psychic facility, and yet integrated inner identities … I also want to add that I am not a control, as mediums speak of controls. I am not, as I believe I have mentioned, a secondary or split personality of Ruburt’s. For example, I am not a conglomeration of male tendencies that have collected themselves into a subsidiary personality that struggles for recognition or release. I say that I am an energy personality essence, since that is what I am … My name for him is Ruburt,¹⁵ which happens to be a male name simply because it is the closest translation, in your terms, for the name of the whole self or entity of which he is now a self-conscious part.

(From the ESP class session for February 16, 1971:) I [come through so forcefully] for several reasons: because that is the way I am, in the guise that I choose to use in my communications, and to get everyone over the idea that so-called spirits must be sweet-faced, quiet, sober, and dignified. That, for example, is one of my main concerns. I also want each of you to understand that energy is being used — and that the same energy Ruburt uses is available to each of you.

(Jane was particularly bothered by people’s attitudes about Seth, for they often considered him as a “spirit guide” in conventional spiritualistic terms. Though almost eight years had passed since Seth had first come through, she’d known for some time that she wanted to explore the whole phenomenon more deeply. Jane believed Seth when he told us he was an “energy personality essence, no longer focused in physical reality” — she just wanted to know more about what he meant by that statement. She was certain, she wrote, that far more than Seth’s being a spirit guide was involved, that “in larger terms the abilities of living personality are connected with … other facets of creative consciousness.”

“The entity itself does not have to keep constant check on its personalities, because in each one there is an inner self-conscious part that knows its origin. I have mentioned before that some part of you knows exactly how much oxygen the lungs breathe, and how much energy it takes to pace a floor, and this is the part of you of which I spoke. It is the self-conscious part that receives all inner data.

17. For many readers Seth’s remarks about the anima and the animus will require a bit of explaining. Carl Jung (1875–1961), the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, postulated that the unconscious of the male contains a female, archetypal (or typical, instinctive) figure called the “anima”; the correlative male form in the unconscious of the female Jung called the “animus.” In Session 119, then, Seth comments on how Jane herself has an animus — the hidden male within — and on how Ruburt, that larger “male” entity of which she is a “self-conscious part,” contains an anima, or hidden female. (See the excerpts in this appendix from the 83rd session.) The contrasts are most interesting. From this information I infer that the entity or whole self of each of us, regardless of our current, individual sexual orientation, contains its own counterbalancing male or female quality, whichever the case may be. Seth hasn’t said so yet — nor have we asked him — but I suspect that an energy gestalt like the entity is much more aware than we can be of its “hidden” opposite-sex form — or forms; for there may be many of them.

Two notes in connection with the excerpts from the 83rd session: 1. The famous professional break between Freud and the younger Jung occurred in 1931: Seth’s material touches upon the divergent psychological paths taken by each of them. 2. The libido is regarded as the sexual urge or instinct — positive, loving, psychic energy that shows itself in changing ways as the individual matures. Seth:

“There are a few points of a general nature that I would like to make. Ruburt has been reading Jung, though not consistently. The libido does not originate in the subconscious of the present personality. It begins instead in the energy of the entity and inner self, and is directed by means of the inner senses — outward, so to speak, through the deeper layers of the individual subconscious mind, then through the outer or personal areas.

Here are a few insights from Seth’s material in the 241st session: “This psychological framework is in itself capable of growth. It represents on Ruburt’s part an expansion, and indeed on my own part also. It is formed partially by abilities inherent within all personalities — psychic abilities — and it is composed of energy. It is not a secondary personality, for it exists in quite a different dimension than do secondary personalities….

(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.

26. Although in that 1971 class Seth stressed his experiences with the human condition through reincarnation, in 1964 he’d had this to say: “To me this [reincarnational and family material] is all so obvious that I almost hesitate to mention it, but this is because I tend to forget what human experience on your plane actually involves.” (See the excerpts from the 27th session in this appendix.) In that early session Seth spoke to me alone; in class he faced a large group. I’d say that from his position or focus as an “energy personality essence” both attitudes are true, rather than contradictory — and that one or the other predominated according to the circumstances and subject matter of the session involved. I don’t think the time gap between the two sessions — seven years — was a factor.

34. Since Jane and I equate the “bits” of consciousness mentioned in this excerpt with Seth’s EE (electromagnetic energy) units and his CU’s (units of consciousness), see the references listed in Note 3 for Appendix 12.

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.