“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In this section, therefore, I have outlined various experiments or exercises for the reader. These will certainly lead you to form your own versions of the exercises given, or will open your mind so that spontaneously, in your own way, you become aware of events that were literally invisible to you before.

(9:34.) Identity itself is composed of pure energy. It takes up no space. It takes up no time. I said that there are invisible particles that can appear in more than one place simultaneously.⁵ So can identity. Atoms and molecules build blocks of matter, in your terms, even while the atoms and molecules remain separate. The table between Joseph and myself (Jane, in trance, sat with her feet upon our long narrow coffee table) does not feel invaded by the invisible particles that compose it. For that matter (amused), if you will forgive me for that old pun, the atoms and molecules that form the table today did not have anything to do with the table five years ago — though the table appeared the same then as now.

(Long pause, eyes closed. Jane’s delivery had slowed considerably.) In somewhat the same way your identity changes constantly, even while you retain your sense of permanence. That sense of permanence rides upon endless changes — it is actually dependent upon those physical, spiritual, and psychic changes. In your terms, for example, if they did not occur constantly your body would die. The cells, again, are not simply minute, handy, unseen particles that happen to compose your organs. They also possess consciousnesses of their own. That [kind of] consciousness unites all physical matter.

Your thinking mind, as you consider it, is the top of your mountain. In certain terms you can see “more” than your cells can, though they are also conscious of their realities. Were it not for their lives you would not be at the top of your psychological mountain. Even the trees at the highest tip of the hillside send sturdy roots into the ground, and receive from it nourishment and vitality — and there is a great give-and-take between the smallest sapling in the foothills and the most ancient pine. No single blade of grass dies but that it affects the entire mountain. The energy within the grass sinks into the earth, and in your terms is again reborn. Trees, rocks, and grass constantly exchange places as energy changes form (very forcefully, leaning forward, eyes wide and dark).

Physically speaking, and generally, your body is composed of grasses and ants and rocks and beasts and birds, for in one way or another all biological matter is related.⁹ In certain terms, through your experience, birds and rocks speak alphabets — and certain portions of your own being fly or creep as birds or insects,¹⁰ forming the great gestalt of physical experience. It is fashionable to say: “You are what you eat” semicolon; that, for example, “You must not eat meat because you are killing the animals, and this is wrong.” But in deeper terms, physically and biologically, the animals are born from the body of the earth, which is composed of the corpses of men and women as much as it is of other matter. The animals consume you, then, as often as you consume them, and they are as much a part of your humanity as you are a part of their so called animal nature.

When you eat, you must eliminate through your bowels. That resulting matter eventually returns to the earth, where it helps form all other living things. The “dead” matter — the residue of a bird, the sloughed-off cells — these things are not then used by other birds (though they may be occasionally), but by men and women. There is no rule that says your discarded cellular material can be used only by your own species. Yet in your terms any identity, no matter how “minute,” retains itself and its identity through many forms and alliances of organizations.

The material I picked up about my father’s psychic intents was at first very bewildering. Hinted at was such a diffusion of consciousness that at the time individuality seemed to have little meaning. For I glimpsed Robert Butts, Sr. as he decided to disperse “himself” into a series of other personalities in both the past and the near future, so that I wondered how — in that mélange of identities — my father could possibly know himself. Seth’s explanations in ESP class last night and in this evening’s session helped clear my mind considerably, though: According to him, consciousness has no difficulty in making such alliances while maintaining continuity of identity, though its vast abilities are certainly almost impossible for us to grasp.

7. Seth first discussed his blueprints for reality in Session 696 for Volume 1: “Each probability system has its own set of ‘blueprints,’ clearly defining its freedoms and boundaries, and setting forth the most favorable structures capable of fulfillment … As an individual you carry within you such a blueprint … The information is knit into the genes and chromosomes, but it exists apart … In the same fashion the species en masse holds within its vast inner mind such working plans or blueprints.”

12. While reading those passages on identity, the reader might keep in mind the subject matter of Appendix 18: the complicated relationships involving Jane, Ruburt, and Seth.