“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Seth’s remarks about inner sounds were quite interesting in view of an episode that had taken place 10 minutes or so before the session started. As we made ready for it in our living room, Jane became aware of a faint buzzing — a sound I couldn’t hear. She repeatedly exclaimed over this noise until, investigating, we located its source high up in a far corner: a small insect moving among the leaves of our philodendron vines. We’ve encouraged the plants to grow up a set of poles that reach from the top of a bookcase to the ceiling. [The whole structure serves as a modest room divider, shielding the living room from the hall entrance to the apartment.]

5. As an artist I’m so used to observing our physical world in terms of forms, colors, shadows, shapes, and “negative shapes” — the patterns formed by areas between and around shadows or objects — that I sometimes have to remind myself of the obvious: that each individual in the world perceives it from his or her own viewpoint. How strange, I’ve found myself thinking, that Joe, say, doesn’t see our environment in artistic terms, since what I see is so plain to me. But then, I tell myself, Joe has a method of cognition that’s quite natural to him. If he loves flowers, for instance, he may enjoy more of a sheer emotional reaction through the appreciation of a rose than I can.

6. Reading backward is something I’ve casually indulged in for many years. I don’t think those actions inspired Seth’s advice here, although my unconscious motivations for such a practice may coincide with it. I developed the habit as a teenager, reading signs and automobile license plates aloud and backward when my father would take my mother, my two younger brothers, and myself for Sunday rides in his 1932 Chevrolet. I found it to be great fun. I also taught myself to read upside-down print — an equally fascinating endeavor. In later years, working with others on a daily basis, I’d occasionally talk backward in a joking manner (ekil siht). The interesting thing here was that after a while my co-workers not only came to understand what I was saying, but joined in the game.