“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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

(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 398th session for March 11, 1968:) Personalities are not static things. Entities are eternal. They are not as nicely nor as neatly packaged out, one to a body, as your psychologists believe. They constantly change. They grow. They make decisions. They use the physical body fully, or they partially depart according to their own inner needs and development.

(Class offers an extremely rich learning environment, for Jane as well as her students. Since in this appendix the focus is primarily upon the relationship involving Jane-Ruburt-Seth, however, I can only write here that many other developments of great interest to us [Jane’s Sumari songs and poetry, for instance], had their origins within the class framework.

(From my notes at the close of the 700th session for May 29, 1974, in Volume 1: “In our case,” Seth said a bit later, “Ruburt almost ‘becomes’ the material he receives from me. If certain other beneficial alterations occur, and further understanding on Ruburt’s part, we may be able to meet at other levels of consciousness — in the dream state, when he is not cooperating in the production of our book material.” For Jane has never met Seth, face to face, you might say, in a dream. The closest she’s come to this situation is in giving a session for him in the dream state, as she does in waking life.

(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.

My memory does not include a predetermined past in which Ruburt exists. He can do things that did not happen in my memory of that existence, and did not, in fact, occur. Now that is a “mind-blowing” statement, and it applies to each of you. It is important in terms of your own understanding of yourself and the nature of time.

And added later: The opportunity to do so developed much sooner than I thought it would — only a week after the 711th session was held. See Appendix 19 for Session 712.

In Seth Speaks, Seth developed Jung’s ideas about the anima and the animus by stating that such other-sex qualities or personifications within each of us actually represent memories of past lives. (Jung himself thought the questions of reincarnation, and of karma [or, roughly, destiny or fate], to be “obscure” — he couldn’t be sure of the existence of such phenomena.) From Session 555 for October 21, 1970: “The anima and the animus … are highly charged psychically, and also appear in the dream state. They operate as compensations and reminders to prevent you from overidentifying yourself with your present physical body.” And from Session 556: “The reality of the anima and the animus is far deeper than Jung supposed. Symbolically speaking, the two together represent the whole self with its diverse abilities, desires, and characteristics … Personality as you know it cannot be understood unless the true meaning of the anima and the animus is taken into consideration.”

25. Jane held her first ESP class on the evening of September 12, 1967, although she didn’t let Seth come through within that format until the following December, so cautious was she in taking that psychic step. She had no personal experience or other precedent to go by; her How to Develop Your ESP Power had been published in 1966, but she was still experimenting with her own abilities (even as she is now). It could also be said that at issue was the whole question of firsthand public interaction with, and acceptance or rejection of, Seth and his material. Classes were quite small for some time, although they’d grown considerably by the end of 1969. After The Seth Material was published in 1970, class became well known enough to start attracting visitors from various parts of the country. It still does so.

Since this session was held almost 13 months after “Unknown” Reality was completed, I can look back and note that Seth developed the statement on reincarnation in his material on counterparts; this begins with Session 721 in Section 5. Appendix 21 grew out of that session. In that same section, the 725th session (with Note 4) contains additional information on particles, identities, and psychological gestalts.