“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“The man and woman in the York Beach dancing establishment … were fragments of your selves, thrown-off materializations of your own negative and aggressive feelings … the images were formed by the culminating energy of your destructive energies at the time. While you did not recognize them consciously, unconsciously you knew them well. Unconsciously you saw the image of your destructive tendencies, and these images themselves roused you to combat them.”

Now Seth was saying, “Looking back, you can say that the effect was therapeutic, but if you had subconsciously accepted the images, it would have marked the beginning of a severe deterioration for you both, personally and creatively. Again, the images marked the critical culmination of your destructive energies. The fact that the images were of yourselves shows that your destructive energies were turned inward, even though materialized in physical form.

Then when the session resumed, Rob asked the question that had been on our minds since Seth first mentioned the York Beach images. “If Jane and I had subconsciously accepted those images, would we have been able to return home, where we’re known? The images were older.”

By the time Seth gave us this information, we had the background to understand it. In his discussions on health, Seth has always maintained that illness is often the result of dissociated and inhibited emotions. The psyche attempts to get rid of them by projecting them into a specific area of the body; in the case of ulcers, the diverted energy goes into the actual production of the ulcer itself. If really large areas of the self are inhibited, a secondary personality can be formed, grouped about those qualities distrusted and denied by the primary ego, and usually opposed to it. In other instances, the inhibited emotions can be projected outward into other persons, or as in the case of the York Beach images, very charged repressed energy can actually form pseudophysical images which present the personality with the physically materialized image of his fears.

[...] Some generic images will have strong personal significance because of past life experiences. The generic image does not only color the dream state, however. These images are the first basis from which thought evolved. [...]

These generic images have been captured and built upon. These images also color physical perception. [...] The basic assumptions of which I spoke are thought processes of a subconscious variety, based upon these generic images.

Inhabitants of other systems have their own generic image patterns. Even within your own system these generic images vary. The predominating image for an individual is that of his own species, but the ancestral patterns are strongly supportive. [...]

Returning to our last discussion, I want to make it clear that these generic images, activated during certain levels of consciousness, are then interwound into dream drama.

Seldom, but sometimes, an individual may send a personality fragment image into another level of existence entirely, even without his own knowledge. This image personality fragment may even gain valuable experience on this other level. [...] Sometimes the individual is not even capable of assimilating this knowledge, or even recognizing his own returning personality image. The type of fragment your friend saw was something like this latter personality image, but so disconnected from your friend, and so absent-mindedly was it sent upon its travels, that its information was probably passed directly to the entity which your friend represents.

[...] The images were formed by the culminating energy of your destructive powers. [...] Unconsciously you saw the image of your destructive tendencies, and these images themselves roused you to combat them.

Looking back, you can say that this effect was therapeutic, but if you had subconsciously accepted the images it would have marked the beginning of a severe deterioration for you both personally and creatively. Again, the images marked the critical culmination of your destructive energies. The fact that the images were of yourselves shows that your destruction was turned inward even though materialized in the outer world.

Your dancing represented the first move away from what those images meant, and violent action was the best thing under the circumstances. Because your personalities were momentarily disconnected from their usual physical and psychic environment, and because the ordinary physical duties were not necessary, it was all the more easy for you to release these energies into the formation of the images you saw. However, you very nearly drained your energy reserve in forming these images. [...]

[...] And in one of your excursions you came upon the image of a small god, long since forgotten by that civilization, and the god was called “Marumba.” It was a small black image—something like the stereotyped Buddha image—but with several differences. [...] The eyes of the image were like dowels. [...]

Maraba Iraqua was your name, and you put about your body the dead wings of birds and danced about the image. [...] and used their wings, dancing about the image. [...] But you did not learn all the secrets of this strange image. And when you died, they ate your flesh and burned your bones and buried them in a circle around the image. [...]

Now, the image of the god was to be put into the earth, flat upon it. And by the pressure of the ivory image upon the earth, the months were also told and it sank into the ground, little by little. And you became obsessed with learning the message that this image seemed to give you. [...]

[...] But you came upon this image of a lost god, alone, and you did not tell your friends or associates, but instead you listened. [...]

After you have managed to feel yourself above your body in your astral form, you again tell yourself to see the image of the same past self. You may then imagine its image merging with your own, and its memories a part of your own consciousness. When you have succeeded, then still feeling yourself in the astral form, tell yourself that you will next see the image of the life before last: the image of the person you were, then repeat the other steps.

[...] Next, feeling that you are in the astral form, tell yourself that from that image you will be able to see the image of the person that you were in your immediately past life.

[...] You, Joseph, being proficient with images, may find it easier than Ruburt. Now when you feel that you have this new image of your past self before you, then imagine that your consciousness is moving from your astral form into this past self. [...]

[...] Otherwise will your consciousness as mentioned earlier into the image, then ask yourself: Who am I? [...]

[...] From these, you see, normal images are built up, and from the images thoughts are formed.

[...] Consciousness, in forming an image, or creating it, then responds to it creatively, setting up frameworks for further creative actions. Consciousness experiences reality directly, but having formed physical matter into a personal image, it must then creatively translate data to that physical brain. [...]

[...] Thus thought becomes an inner image which is translated into a thermal image, and then into intuitional form, into highly condensed and codified data, and then into a pure and direct sort of experience which you cannot understand as physical creatures.

[...] Behind thoughts are images, which are more basic but still physically oriented. [...]

[...] Your mental images are therefore of course very important, and two of Ruburt’s of a negative nature have been broken down. [...]

He has not had nearly as much difficulty with his trousers in the bathroom, and the old image has been largely altered. [...]

Mental images are vital. [...]

[...] You react to images as well as to words.

[...] You are seeing the image that you have projected upon him, and no one can live up to that image. [...] You may have a relationship with that human being, but there is a world of difference between that human being and the imagined image of him to which you react. And it is that image that you see when you look at him and when think of him. That imagined image is real in your mind, it is reality. But you cannot project that image upon another human being and deny him his own reality. You have no chance in a thousand lives of having a relationship with the man you think of as being Dick Reed, because you cannot have a two-way relationship with an image that is one-sided and has no flesh. [...]

[...] You are so used to the image that you have projected outward that you are uncomfortable when you try to face a situation nakedly without the image. You project the image on one specific individual so strongly. [...] You do not want to or had not wanted to face even a transient relationship with a man because you did not then have time, you see, to project this image in any dependable manner. [...] You did not have time to project the image upon him, and you were afraid to see clearly without it. Practice in such relationships would allow you to get used to an environment without this image. If not giant steps, baby steps, each such encounter being a small exercise in seeing another male individual without your image glasses on.

One point, you see, this artificial image that you have projected upon others has prevented you from knowing them, and in itself has prevented any legitimate relationship which might otherwise have occurred. As long as you allow this image to cover your eyes, you do not see the individual man and do not react to him for the image is between the two of you. [...] On the one hand he resents the image that you have placed upon him, and on the other hand it serves his vanity to accept it. He would much rather have you think of him as this image. He is hiding himself and you have very nicely given him an image to hide behind. [...]

[...] And around school he plays the ‘cool guy’ role, the ‘love them and leave them’ image. [...] This is the image that others project on him and he allows the image to stay. [...] Most of the other women or men like to destroy the image or try to prove it wrong, but they do that out of resentment; they see Dick as a threat. Now showing that image and suddenly having Seth come along and say he doesn’t want physical relations with a female; this could be hard to accept. [...]

[...] A personality communicating with your system, who was once a part of it, can make use of this trace image. The trace image is not his consciousness however. His consciousness is aware of the trace image, and on occasion can utilize it.

The personality does indeed turn its focus into another field of reality, and does desert the camouflage image that it maintained. However, some trace of that personality remains in that camouflage reality, quite literally, as what you might call a ghost image.

[...] This image trace is a lingering manifestation, an imprint within your system, a part of its reality, and is held within it as you might for example retain an idea in your mind long after the idea has been expressed physically. As a painting that is destroyed physically may still be retained in your mind, so in the reality of the physical system a trace remains, an image trace of the camouflage structure that enclosed a given personality.

For example (pause, eyes closed; one of a series along in here), I was about to explain by telling you that these image traces are not, of course, visible physically, but latent. I believe your word latent suggests something that has not yet shown itself, however, and the particular kind of ghost image to which I am referring has instead already been manifested physically.

[...] When you are at rest, awake but with eyes closed, images and pictures will often appear to your inner eye. Some will be physical-like materializations, images of trees or houses or people. [...] As a rule, even the images that are recognizable will quickly be replaced by others in a kaleidoscope of constantly changing forms.

[...] For example, you have visual images when you are born, internal visual images, symbols that are activated the moment you open your eyes for the first time. [...] You keep trying to utilize your eyes properly until exterior images conform with the inner patterns. [...]

(Pause at 9:48.) The images that you see in this circumstance represent the thoughts and feelings experienced just before you closed your eyes, or those that were paramount in your mind somewhat previously. [...] Because the images may seem to have no direct connection logically to these thoughts and feelings, you do not recognize them either as your own, nor are you able to tie them up with what they represent.

(9:57.) Through the use of symbols, however, your feelings would be given full play, each image rising and falling in flow with feelings so far underneath consciousness — pools of emotion — that you were not aware of them. They would automatically bring about these images however. [...]

Such images are constructed of emotional energy, but they also are partially formed from the chemical structure of the individual or individuals behind such productions. [...] The impetus is emotional, and the pseudoframework is formed of emotional energy, but the image itself must be built up in part of physical components, and these must come from somewhere.

[...] The same reserves, you see, can be used to construct images. When images of survival personalities appear, they must also utilize such properties.

Now, as to your York Beach images. [...]

[...] It is highly unusual, but possible, according to the strength of the psychic discontent, that the consciousness could then split itself up, some residing in the new image.

[...] When you find yourself facing such negative images in your mind and projecting them into the future, you should at once mentally wipe out that image and replace it with a constructive image, seeing yourself, for example, sitting in command of a well-ordered room.

You must mentally wipe out the negative image, for example. If you think that tomorrow Johnny F will misbehave in study hall, you should, in your mind, replace this with the image of Johnny F behaving very well. [...]

[...] Any time you see yourself in your mind as unhealthy or staggering, you must immediately wipe the image away and make an effort to see instead a mental image of yourself as healthy and strong.

[...] This exercise will indeed wipe out the previous negative image.

As leaves drop from the tree, so finally do dream images depart from close connection with the personality. [...] Dream images are often images which cannot be created for various reasons within physical reality at any particular time. Dream images may appear later however as physical images.

There are seasonal variations, temperature variations, electromagnetic and chemical reactions that all influence the production and efficiency of dream images, and that also influence the effect of dream images upon the individual. There is also, as I mentioned, a close relationship existing between dream images and other materializations, that are not ordinarily regular physical occurrences.

Dream images are in a most vital manner extensions of the self. [...] And as branches are composed of all those elements that make up the whole tree, so indeed dream images are composed of those elements that make up the personality.

It is obvious that the dream images are not responsible to the ego, however. [...] As leaves bring vital nutrients to the tree trunk, so also do dream images bring nourishment to the personality.

You have noticed in our own work that oftentimes information will be perceived by Ruburt in terms of visual images. [...] The images are formed from my ideas. [...] I try to direct his image making, but in both instances the same process of image making is involved. You can understand in fact the way in which sense images are organized much more clearly by studying instances where sense images exist without an actual object representing them in the physical universe. [...]

[...] The perceiver constructs the pseudomaterial apparition as he constructs the physical image of his contemporaries, but in, or rather and in line with telepathic data that is received by or from the consciousness whose material image is being constructed.

Sense images are built up, you see, in the same manner whether or not you are trying to perceive an apple, a star, or a human being. They are built up in the same manner whether or not you want to perceive a thought that must be made physical, or the image of a consciousness that must be made physical.

[...] There is a round sun or lamp image. [...]

[...] Chemicals as you know them, body chemicals, are physical, but they are the propellants of this thought energy, containing within them all the codified data necessary for translating any thought or image into physical actuality. They cause the physical body to reproduce the inner image. [...]

[...] The intensity of a thought or image largely determines the immediacy of its physical materialization. [...] There is nothing about your physical image that you have not made.

The initial thought or image exists within the mental enclosure of which I have spoken. [...] All thoughts or images are not completely materialized, however. [...]

[...] Physical formations of other images, you see, radiating outward; these subject to continual change, as is the physical image, and all of this reflecting the inner and basic action.

The infant sees mental images before birth, before the eyes are open. [...] You remember other faces, even though the mind you call the conscious one may not recognize the images from that deep inner memory. [...]

[...] That energy is also a part of your personality — and as you paint such images you will undoubtedly feel some considerable bursts of ambition, and even exuberance. The feelings will allow you to identify the images of such personalities.

2. Seth mentioned a “correspondence” among my dreams, painting, and writing because just lately I’ve been doing small oil paintings of a few of my more vivid dream images. [...] Now, futilely, I wonder why I didn’t try painting images from my dreams at a much earlier age; and why one so seldom hears about other artists doing the same thing. [...]

(We’re presenting his material for me because it has good general application: If Seth deals with my own painted images without even mentioning the words reincarnation or counterparts, still he does reveal how such “residents of the mind” make up part of each person’s innate knowledge of his or her own greater — or larger — self.

[...] Beside translating inner images into paintings, for example, you may unknowingly be translating sensually invisible sounds into images. In a way quite impossible to describe, it would be true to say that our sessions actually translate multidimensional images into words. You have no words for the kinds of images I am speaking of, for they are not objects, nor pictures of objects, nor images of images, but instead the inner dimensions, each separate and glowing, but connected, prisms of knowledge, that have within themselves more reality than you can presently begin to imagine.

[...] Early artists drew pictures to share the images they saw in their dreams. In a fashion they practiced dreaming in their sleep, and thus learned also to think (underlined) in terms of the measurement of physical images, and to move objects around in their minds before they did so physically.

People like Ruburt translated inner knowledge in many ways — through acting it out, through singing or dancing, through drawing images on cave walls. [...]

[...] A small note to our friend — again — to trust the great power of the universe that forms his own image, to trust his spontaneity, and his body’s natural urges toward relaxation, motion, and creativity, as these show themselves in their own rhythms.

[...] I saw a devil image walking away from me in one direction, and on the other side of me an angel image, walking away; and I knew I had both these images of myself. [...]

[...] Jane had some very beautiful images, she said, of the muscles of her neck and back as they supported her head. [...] Then came images of the muscles and fibers of her arms.

[...] Yet, she said, she felt an image walking just ahead of her; at the same time the feeling of warmth had left her. Residual feelings and images from the session did remain with her, though.

(In the same average voice she began: “In the shadow of the image organized religion [at the same time my hands want to fly up], after it has been set up, has always been afraid of revelationary knowledge; to protect itself; and the Catholic Church in particular cast it in the form of a devil, which I was taught: the sin of pride, wanting to learn.”

The main issue, however, in that particular era, was a shared belief system, a system that consisted of, among other things, implied images that were neither here nor there—neither entirely earthly nor entirely divine—a mythology of God, angels, demons, an entire host of Biblical characters that were images in man’s imagination, images to be physically portrayed. Those images were like an entire artistic language. [...]

[...] The particular, brilliant, intensified flowering of painting and sculpture that took place, say, in the time of Michelangelo (1475–1564) could not, in your probability, have occurred after the birth of technology, for example, and certainly not in your own era, where images are flashed constantly before your eyes on television and in the movies, where they are rambunctiously present in your magazines and advertisements. You are everywhere surrounded by photography of all kinds, but in those days images outside of those provided by nature’s objects were highly rare.

In a fashion, those stylized figures that stood for the images of God, apostles, saints, and so forth, were like a kind of formalized abstract form, into which the artist painted all of his emotions and all of his beliefs, all of his hopes and dissatisfactions. [...] The point is that the images the artists were trying to portray were initially mental and emotional ones, and the paintings were supposed to represent not only themselves but the great drama of divine and human interrelationship, and the tension between the two. [...]

[...] On a quite unconscious level you possess a biological self-image that is quite different from the self that you see in a mirror. [...]

Such images have little to do with your own basic or natural personalities, or with your own individual backgrounds, but you apply such images upon yourselves like overlays. In such cases you are unable to really estimate your own progress of your own accomplishments, for you are not looking at them based upon your own capabilities and inclinations, but using the hypothetical idealized images instead. [...]

Many difficulties arise when you compare yourselves to stylized or idealized versions of yourselves—to composite images of yourselves that you may have picked up along the way—a subject that we have mentioned earlier. [...]

He may think of some hypothetical literary writer—a composite image again, comfortable enough, slightly avant-garde, fashionably so, in contact with his peers, quite forgetting again that his—and his mind has always been far less conventional than that, far more probing and again, forgetting that he always enjoyed viewing society from a vantage point slightly outside of it. [...]

[...] He tries to view his own work through some idealized image of a psyche who is as gifted as he is as a writer, and also highly gifted in meeting the public, putting on performances, acting as a healer, as a prophet, and as an expert therapist all at once, and in so doing his own characteristics and natural abilities and inclinations become lost along the way. [...]