“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(From the 242nd session for March 16, 1966:) The ego is not the most powerful or the most knowledgeable portion of the self. It is simply a well-specialized part of the personality, fully equipped to operate under certain circumstances²¹ … When those conditions no longer exist [after “death”], then other layers of the self take over the dominant position, and the personality realigns its psychological components. The ego does not disappear, however; it merely takes a back seat in some respects, as your own subconscious does during physical existence. The ego is under the control of what may loosely be called “the inner self.” The survival or nonphysical personality has somewhat the same relationship to the ego as the dreaming personality has to it in physical life.

(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.

(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.

(Seth, then, would be a message from the source self except that in this case the messenger is the message, formed into a richly “worded” psychological structure instead of into dry words on, say, a telegram. Seth in sessions would stand for Jane’s Seth Aspect, who does indeed exist in a different kind of reality than ours. But that “invisible” Seth would send out an actual psychological structure that takes over in place of Jane’s, as her own structure voluntarily steps aside during sessions. Earlier in this appendix, see the excerpts on the psychological bridge from the 242nd session.

[...] Class lasted from 7 P.M. until after midnight, and by the time it was over everyone involved was, if not exhausted, certainly well exercised emotionally. [...]