“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

From their parents they learn to pare down the dimensions of their own practically accepted personhood. To that extent they cut themselves off from large portions of their own subjectivity. The “us-ness” of a single identity is experienced less and less. It exists, nevertheless. (Long pause.) I told you that at certain levels contradictions would certainly seem to appear, but the us-ness of the self represents an important psychic characteristic. The child’s explorations of its environment are in a fashion quite different from its later adolescent explorations of the world. A child’s curiosity goes out in all directions. In a fashion it psychologically multiplies itself as it goes. Its consciousness spreads out to include all that it perceives, while still retaining a sense of its own singularity.

To some extent, particularly at certain levels, that participation brings about a far greater sense of sympathy and power than adults ever realize, particularly in your cultural times. The child does not have to cry out or address or search for a particular kind of God, because it understands through such subjective behavior that its own precious singularity is also a part of the greater us-ness of all other creatures, and that its singularity is automatically assured, as is its own us-ness within that larger context.

The approach that you use in the production of art is instinctively “magical.” It is quite natural for children to play creatively with the various states of their own consciousnesses, to explore the “us-ness” of a seemingly single identity. They play at being historic known characters. They play at being trees or animals or stars. They play at being all of those things. They understand the multiplicity that resides within the idea of single personhood.

The child understands that it is itself, and yet that it is simultaneously a portion of its parents, alive within their lives (intently), as well as within its own. In calling out to them, the child calls out to a quality of its own us-ness. The child expects the parents to come to its support in the same way that it expects its own fingers and toes to support its various positions and decisions. The child understands that in a certain fashion (underlined) the parents are an extension of its own identity. At the same time it knows that the parents are equally independent, and that its own identity is a part of extensions that are the parents’.

(Pause at 10:20.) Now in terms of psychology as you understand it, the soul could be considered as a prime identity that is in itself a gestalt of many other individual consciousnesses — an unlimited self that is yet able to express itself in many ways and forms and yet maintain its own identity, its own “I am-ness,” even while it is aware that its I am-ness may be part of another I am-ness. Now I am sure it may seem inconceivable to you, but the fact is that this I am-ness is retained even though it may, figuratively speaking, now merge with and travel through other such energy fields. [...]

[...] The growth of feelings, sensations, I am-ness, concepts and beliefs was paralleled by the resulting exterior manifestations of animal species, and mineral and vegetable emergences; with these came the growth of complementary neurological structures, and the precise physical formations, such as mountains, valleys, seas, and so forth needed to sustain them.

[...] Also, Seth Two had usually expressed “itself” in the singular, whereas tonight’s material was coming through under the plural “we”:) “All con-scious-ness has as-pects that are act-i-va-ted and ex-pressed in all idi-oms or real-i-ties. [...]

[...] It must have died years ago, as did its companion, the apple tree I had drawn to illustrate Jane’s poem, “The You-ness of the Universe,” in her book of poems, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time (1975). [...]