“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The shape of the physical environment, for example, is not static; though it is made of material it is not one thing at one place and within one time, and not something else. That is, the quality that you call environment, and speak of as if it were one thing with one shape and form always, is indeed at various times many things in many places, with you at the focal point.

A setting—right in one small area of psychological perspective can, therefore, result in a beneficial turnabout in the manipulation of other basic structures, even though they seem unrelated. After one small note I would end the session. Happily, since the session has been an excellent one.

Your friend has made two friends, one older and one approximately his own age, both male. [...]

For one thing, Monday’s session hit him in the solar plexus, so to speak; and all joking aside, the session did take quite a bit out of him, simply because he was inclined to block the material, though he did not in most instances.

(“There are also others, or at least one more.” [...] One was by Peggy Gallagher and this is the one used as envelope object. [...] This second one included the photo of Mrs. Berry. The second article also included another photo—this one of a man who was also elected with Mrs. Berry. [...]

For one thing the self is usually thought of in terms of existence only within one particular time sequence pattern. [...]

These four personalities existed however in one physical lifetime. [...] In the same manner, you see, several manifestations of one identity appear to you to be stretched out in serial form within a successive time framework.

[...] You will say, “The four egos belonging to Eve all belonged to one physical body, but in the reincarnational process we are faced with the issue of several bodies, each one discarded and experiencing physical death.”

You may have two children, one of whom, generally speaking, behaves like Augustus One, and one who acts like Augustus Two. Because one seems so compliant and docile and one is so violent and unruly, you may never see the connections between their behavior, thinking them so obviously different. [...] In such cases what you usually have is a situation in which one child is acting out unfaced aggressive behavior for the whole family. [...]

[...] Thus the hatred of one generation of adults whose parents were killed in a war helps generate the next one.

Now, dictation: So, therefore, can a family be so divided, and one member always appear as a hero and one the villain or the demon.

[...] It needed the existence of a sophisticated memory system in which new situations and experiences could be judged against recalled ones, and evaluations made in an in-between moment of reflection.

(I then realized I was also “seeing” one of the men, the one who had laughed. [...] The one in my vision was a thin man in shirt sleeves, perhaps in his late thirties, with thick straight brown hair combed straight back, a thin very friendly face with a generous mouth. [...]

Either one should be permanent. Your home situation will be much more stable for one thing, and such an arrangement is really necessary for Ruburt’s efficiency. [...] The divider may only be a symbol but it is a necessary one. [...]

[...] At the bottom of one of the objects is a reference to Spring 1963. [...] For some reason I do not recall now I clipped the second paragraph off one of the cards. [...]

(“A connection with a family group, of one, five, three and two.” [...] Types one, two and three polio vaccines are referred to on the cards, but this leaves the five to be explained. [...]

(Seth’s reference to a tree concerns one I had drawn directly on the kitchen wall, in India ink on the yellow paint. It happened to be one of my best drawings, done very quickly above the spot where we had placed the small refrigerator. One can look into the kitchen from one end of the living room and thus see the tree, and in a subdued light it is very effective. [...]

[...] The food preparation centers should always be separate, and you do have room for those facilities in one place. The bathroom is one of your more fortunate environments. [...]

(Actually we have two refrigerators, and since our kitchen is very small we kept the smaller icebox there and the larger one in the bath. [...]

(When I picked Jane up after work at the gallery, she told me one of the flashes from Seth was this:)

[...] The three men were part of one entity, gaining physical existence in one time. [...] There are reasons why the entity did not return as one person. For one thing the full consciousness of an entity would be too strong for one physical vehicle. [...] One of these is a personality that most stories of Christ refer to.

Now, remember: in one way your reality is a probable system. [...]

[...] No one system could contain it or satisfy it. [...]

Not one portion of consciousness is lost in this process, you understand. [...]

[...] The experience will deepen and reinforce your sense of individuality, and you will know for yourself that you are one in many, and yet many in one.

[...] This is one approach. You may for example end up using this as the main method of communication between your present and your past one. [...]

[...] In two lives in particular however you were both proficient, and one of Ruburt’s recent dreams was based on one such episode.

[...] I have some hints, I hope practical ones for both of you, but they will take your attention.

Pretend then that behind or within but unseen by you, behind or within the number 1, for example, there are an infinite number of other 1’s, lined up so to speak behind the one that you see. (Jane leaned forward, gesturing:) The one that you see is the self that you see or recognize within your system. [...]

Behind 1 then imagine the infinite other 1’s, literally for the analogy’s sake one behind the other. Now this long line of 1’s may seem to stretch out indefinitely (Jane spread her arms wide), or may seem (Jane clapped her hands together) to snap together into one. [...]

[...] She said, “I think I’m going to get the other one,” meaning Seth’s larger personality. [...]

[...] One number, for example 7, can be considered itself as an identity. [...]

[...] You briefly consider streets One and Two, but rather quickly decide against them. [...] One house might remind you of one a relative lived in years ago. A tree might be reminiscent of one that grew by your family home. [...]

[...] You can physically move from one place on the planet to another with relative ease. Centuries ago, ordinary people did not have the opportunity to travel from one country to another with such rapidity. [...] Civilizations are locked one into the other. [...]

[...] In the 565th session at 9:30, for Chapter 16, he used the example of one’s possible responses to a telephone call to show how all “probable actions are equally valid,” no matter which one of them is physically actualized.

[...] I have a room I’m converting into a studio, and one in which to work on this manuscript. [...]

He and the Catlover (Seth’s nickname for Maggie Granger) chose one particular way because they are too cagey and shrewd to take another recommended way. Now one place they stay: has water on one side and foliage on the other with large square openings in the front; and I do not believe here by the large square openings there is any glass. [...] They can stand and look out over the ocean and sight two or three other islands, one they have visited. [...]

We will, at one time or another, speak with you each in a more private session. [...]

A strange fruit they see, it resembles a coconut but it is not one. [...]

[...] There is a large wooden object that he is taken with, like a totem, fatter it seems though and not so tall as one. [...]

[...] You speak of one self within one body because you are only familiar with one portion of yourself. You suppose that all personhood in one way or another must have an equivalent of a human form, spiritual or otherwise, to “inhabit.”

[...] To do this you must understand, again, that man must move beyond the concepts of one god, one self, one body, one world, as these ideas are currently understood.”

4. In this (725th) session Seth mentions two of my recent inner experiences and one of Jane’s. Each one had to do with strands of consciousness, although in this note I’ll stress only the very unsettling one I had with my “dead” father last Sunday night, December 11.

[...] In the beginning of this work I “warned” the reader that here in these sessions we would go beyond ideas of one god and one self.³ I stated that your ideas of personhood would be expanded. [...]

[...] Returning to our analogy, however: You are like one violet, born in one spring on one ledge, and we will call the ledge, here, 1940. [...]

[...] It seems to you as if one reincarnational existence would be layered above the other. [...] New vegetation grows at the bottom layers, for example, as well as at the top ones.

You are only aware of your own position within time, or your own place on the “platform,” or the ledge as you understand it.¹ Not only do these ledges or platforms of time exist simultaneously, but each one brings forth its own batches of personalities in its own different seasons. To that degree you are aware of your own season only, and we will call it the physical one — the particular probable reality that you accept as real.

[...] You read the book from the beginning, so you think of one life or page following another. [...] But in larger terms it is just one volume that you, the greater psyche, are reading, told in terms of serial time.

i didn’t want to sleep
for fear the world would disappear
but new days kept coming and coming.
the old ones slipped away one
by one, but were always replenished.

[...] In one way they’re like casual jottings that she left half finished and unseen in her journals, until I found them when I began searching for fresh material for the frontmatter of this Volume 2 of Dreams. [...] And as I reread them I understand once again that my wife is still teaching me about her courage, and about the ineffable, unending mystery of the universe that each one of us is creating moment by moment, separately and all together.

I offer each one of these poems with a brief commentary. [...] The third poem is the only one she formally titled.

I was walking past the world
one day,
half deciding not to stay,
when I saw you standing there,
ten years ahead of me in time
but so close in space
that I reached out
and touched your arm.

[...] One is bronze, one is iron. One is a dagger.

[...] I can only see two numbers as far as the date is concerned, and both numbers are 1—one, one. [...] The current is a strong and cold one, and becomes colder by the cove.

[...] One has something to do with rubber, though I do not now see the connection. One has something to do with a female, and has a symbol; and the date may be ascertained from it.

[...] At one of our favorite spots we met the Gallaghers, Bill and Peggy. [...]

[...] They meet with a certain biological validity because of the selectivity earlier mentioned, whereby only one series of neurological pulses is accepted — and upon these rides the reality of the egotistical self. At one “time” a god interpreted in those terms served as a model for the egotistical behavior of one self toward another self.

[...] Actually, this was one of those times when it seemed that I could have continued note-taking indefinitely. [...] Jane had been in trance for an hour and forty-one minutes, but even so she was out of it rapidly. [...] But you know: If you think you’re on to something no one else has, you’re afraid you’ll be called batty by the rest of the world … Seth is a great organizer, though. [...]

[...] That animal — the past one — existed as surely as the one presently perceived, yet in man’s context, physical action had to be directed to a highly specific area, for physical survival depended upon it.

[...] The specialized “new” kind of consciousness in one body had to respond pinpoint fast. Therefore it focused upon only one series of neurological messages.

He and the cat lover chose one particular way because they are too cagey and shrewd to take another recommended way. Now one place they stay: has water on one side and foliage on the other, with large square openings in the front, and I do not believe here by the large square openings there is any glass. [...] They can stand and look out over the ocean and sight two or three other islands, one they have visited. [...]

We will at one time or another speak with you each in a more private session. [...]

A strange fruit they see, it resembles a coconut but it is not one. [...]

[...] There is a large wooden object that he is taken with, like a totem, fatter it seems though, and not so tall as one. [...]

(Long pause, one of many.) I do not want to ruin your idea of stability, and I do not want to confuse you. [...] (To me:) I said, for example, that you died as a child in one probability, and again in the (military) service, and I gave you a small sample of your parents’ probable history. [...]

[...] I gave you one or two small examples of your mother’s probable existences. Think in physical terms of the generations going out from one seed into the ages.

Now: Your self-reality in any given moment is like that seed, following probable generations that appear in other dimensions as well as this one. In each now-moment, you draw from the vast bank of unpredictable actions certain ones that are “significant” to you; and your private idea of significance will result in what then seems to be predictable action.

[...] It is the result of one line of “development” that could be taken by your particular earth personality in flesh. [...] They occur at once, but each one simultaneously affects every other. [...]

(9:30.) In greater terms, it is impossible to separate one physical event from the probable events, for these are all dimensions of one action. [...]

[...] The physically oriented consciousness, responding to one phase of the atom’s activity, comes alive and awake to its particular existence, but in between are other fluctuations in which consciousness is focused upon entirely different systems of reality; each of these coming awake and responding, and each one having no sense of absence, and memory only of those particular fluctuations to which they respond.

[...] It would seem to you as if there would be gaps between the fluctuations, and the description I have used is the best one for our purposes; but the probable systems all exist simultaneously, and basically, following this discussion, the atom is in all these other systems at one time.

[...] In one way, an atom could be compared to a microsecond.

[...] It seems to you, then, that the world began—or must have begun—at some point in the past¹ (a one-minute pause at 9:18), but that is like supposing that one piece of a cake is the whole cake, which was baked in one oven and consumed perhaps in an afternoon.

At one time, then, you were more open in a fashion to the kinds of consciousness that you admitted into your circle of reality. At one time, in those terms, you did not draw the lines as finely as you do now. [...]

(Long pause.) The entire picture of physical life as you understand it must be of course experienced from your own viewpoint, but its complexity, its order and magnificence of structure and design should be understood as composing but one example of the infinite number of realities, each constructed by the propensities and characteristics of its own nature and the nature of its own consciousness.

[...] The “inner structure” is one of consciousness, and the deeper questions can eventually only be approached by granting the existence of inner references.

[...] Ruburt wrote that one did not have to bargain with God for one’s life—an excellent point. One had only to accept one’s life—a second excellent point. [...]

In those terms it is like a creative venture, finished to the best of one’s ability in the given medium, and leaves one with a sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, and completion. (Long pause.) One woman wrote Ruburt about the definite healing of her mother from cancer. [...]

[...] There is no such thing as a wasted life, no matter how it might appear, and while the desire for death is a natural one, it can also serve at various stages as one that extends any given life for a while by clearing away old debris. The desire actually works for the purpose of value fulfillment, whether it can be pursued more fully in this life, or whether it is time to begin a new one. [...]

(8:43.) In that framework it almost seems as if the most natural wish would be the wish to live one life for some kind of eternal duration. [...] Each individual knows, however, that more than one lifetime is involved, and carries within it—as indeed the animals do—the knowledge that earth’s existence is in time and space, meaning that a certain turnover is necessarily implied. [...]