“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

But there are other plays going on simultaneously, in which you also have a part to play. These have their own scenery, their own props. They take place in different periods of time. One may be called “Life in the twelfth century A.D.” One may be called “Life in the eighteenth century,” or “in 500 B.C.,” or “in A.D. 3000.” You also create these plays and act in them. These settings also represent your environment, the environment that surrounds your entire personality.

Though I use the analogy here of a drama, these “plays” are highly spontaneous affairs in which the actors have full freedom within the play’s framework. And granting these assumptions that have been stated, there are no rehearsals. There are observers, as you will see later in our book. As in any good theatre production, there is an overall theme within each play. The great artists, for example, did not emerge out of a particular time simply because they were born into it, or (because) the conditions were favorable.

(10:44.) This does not mean that the play is not real, or that it should not be taken seriously. It does mean playing a role — an important one. Each actor must of himself realize, however, the nature of the production and his part in it. He must actualize himself out of the three-dimensional confines of the play’s setting.

Four o’clock in the afternoon is a very handy reference. You can say to a friend, “I will meet you at four o’clock at the corner,” or at a restaurant, for a drink or a chat or a meal, and your friend will know precisely where and when he will find you. This will happen despite the fact that four o’clock in the afternoon has no basic meaning, but is an agreed-upon designation — a gentlemen’s agreement, if you prefer. If you attend the theatre at nine o’clock in the evening, but the actions of the play take place within the morning hours, and the actors are shown eating breakfast, you accept the time as given within the theatre’s play. You also pretend that it is morning.

Play is a very important — indeed, vital — attribute in the development of growth and fulfillment. Children play naturally, and so do animals. For that matter, insects, birds, fish, and all kinds of life play. Even ants and honeybees play. [...] This playful activity is, in fact, the basis for their organized behavior, and they “play” at adult behavior before they assume their own duties.

Creatures play because the activity is joyful, and spontaneous and beneficial, because it activates all portions of the organism — and again, in play youngsters imitate adult patterns of operation that lead finally to their own mature activity.

[...] The nurses and aides on the floor are full of hell today, telling explicit sexual jokes and playing tricks on one another.

(Jane described a very vivid and even exhilarating dream she’d had last night, in which she’d been playing with her own collection of trinkets, sitting on the floor, and so forth. [...]

In periods of play the child actually often continues some games initiated quite naturally in the dream state. These include role-playing, and also games that quite simply involve physical muscular activity. [...] In dreams the mind is free to play with events, and with their formation. [...] In play the children try out events initiated in the dream state, and “judge” these against the practical conditions. [...]

In play, particularly, children try on any conceivable situation for size. In the dream state adults and children alike do the same thing, and many dreams are indeed a kind of play. The brain itself is never satisfied with one version of an event, but will always use the imagination to form other versions in an activity quite as spontaneous as play. [...]

[...] Infants play in their dreams, performing physical actions beyond their present physical capacities. While external stimuli are highly important, the inner stimuli of dream play are even more so.

[...] Children’s games are always “in the present” — that is, they are immediately experienced, though the play events may involve the future or the past. The phrase “once upon a time” is strongly evocative and moving, even to adults, because children play with time in a way that adults have forgotten. [...]

(9:00.) I want here to stress the basic playful exercising aspects of creativity. When a child indulges in physical play, it exercises its muscles and its entire body. No one has to tell a child to play, for playing comes naturally. Playful games in childhood, not dictated by teachers or parents, often give clear indications of a child’s abilities and leanings. You can sense by watching a child’s play the future shape that his or her life can most productively take. [...]

[...] They are physical landmarks of psychic and artistic inner journeys, but what you do with your consciousness, how you extend it, is even more important, for as physical play is meant to lead to a future physical body that is mature and fulfilled, so the creative nature of that kind of inner play leads to future extended consciousness, an inner being that is the mature version of an earlier self. [...]

This session should be of excellent use, really, to both of you—and remembering the playful nature of creativity will help Ruburt get back to his book. He does that by forgetting the book, and playing with the ideas that it contains. [...]

[...] His creativity showed itself, however, when he allowed himself to play, when he forgot what he thought he should do, and did what he wanted to do. [...]

Give us a moment … When children play, often the play events seem as real or even more real than ordinary physical events that are experienced outside of the play framework. Children playing at cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers, can on occasion become quite as frightened by the pursuit or the chase as they would be if they were actually caught up in such an adventure in ordinary life.

[...] When the child is playing, its sense of joy or anger or danger is very strongly felt. The child’s body will often reflect those conditions and reflexes that would be elicited if the so-called “play” events were real.

CHILDRENS’ PLAY, REINCARNATION, AND HEALTH

We will begin a new chapter, to be entitled: “Childrens’ Play, Reincarnation, and Health.”

(4:05.) In other cases of a child’s illness, have the child play a healing game, in which he or she playfully imagines being completely healthy again, outdoors and playing; or have the youngster imagine a conversation with a friend, describing the illness as past and gone. Play could also be used even in old peoples’ homes, for it could revive feelings of spontaneity and give the conscious mind a rest from worrying.

In all cases of illness, games or play should be fostered whenever possible, and in whatever form. Many dictatorial religions pointedly refuse to allow their congregations to indulge in any type of play at all, and frown upon it as sinful. Card-playing and family games such as Monopoly are actually excellent practices, and play in any form encourages spontaneity and promotes healing and peace of mind.

I have mentioned before that play is essential for growth and development. Children learn through play-acting. [...]

(4:29.) Some playful behavior on Ruburt’s part would be of considerable benefit — and this would be even better if the two of you could possibly indulge in some kind of play together, even if only mind games were involved — games with no particular purpose, except fun.

We enjoy a sense of play that is highly spontaneous, and yet I suppose you would call it responsible play. Certainly it is creative play. We play, for example, with the mobility of our consciousness, seeing how “far” one can send it. [...] It might seem that we use our consciousness idly in such play, and yet again, the pathways we make continue to exist and can be used by others. [...]

We are beginning to learn the creative joy of play. I believe, for example, that all creativity and consciousness is born in the quality of play, as opposed to work, in the quickened intuitional spontaneity that I see as a constant through all my own existences, and in the experience of those I know.

[...] On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough.

We can be highly motivated therefore, and yet use and understand the creative use of play, both as a method of attaining our goals and purposes and as a surprising and creative endeavor in itself.

You are indeed now playing a game with yourself, but it is not relevant, and it may be irrelevant. But you had better play it reverently.

([Gene]: “Isn’t the object of the game to play the game—not to create or probe?”)

([Gene]: “But these distortions are part of the game that Shiva plays with yourself [me] and conversely.”

You are playing a game.

[...] Ruburt has been playing dead. His ideas convinced the body that playing dead was the way to insure overall survival. [...]

Some people play dead mentally or emotionally. Some play dead in a very specific manner, deadening certain organs. [...]

[...] Under some conditions animals in perfect condition will play dead, or otherwise immobilize themselves. [...]

[...] When an animal is playing dead it knows when the immediate danger is over. [...]

In other words, we will try to instill a somewhat playful attitude, even toward the most severe problems, for the very idea of play encourages the use of the imagination and the creative abilities.

The child plays at being an adult long before he is one, and so you can play with more desirable beliefs while you are still growing into that more beneficial picture.

[...] It is much better if you can imagine this endeavor more in the light of children’s play, in fact, rather than think of it as a deadly serious adult pursuit.

[...] As you do, keep the idea of child’s play in mind, however. [...]

(11:05.) In play, children adopt certain rules and conditions “for a time.” [...] Innumerable play events can occur with varying intensity, yet generally speaking the results cease when the game is over. The child plays at being an adult, and is a child again when his parents call, so the effects of the game are not long-lasting. [...]

Play then at another game, and pretend that you are of the opposite sex. Do this after an encounter in which the conventions of sex have played a part. [...]

[...] All of this is done somewhat in the way that a child plays, through the formation of creative dream dramas in which the individual is free to play a million different roles and to examine the nature of probable events from the standpoint of “a game.”

Dictation: In their play children often imaginatively interchange their sexes. [...]

A note: in creativity play and work are invisibly entwined. [...] With Ruburt the play-work elements that had once been together became separated; from play-work to work-play, and occasionally the combination simply became work.

Your mother felt that his creativity was a threat to stability, so maintaining your own creativity stubbornly, you still felt to some degree that it was a threat, that it would not pay off, and so you tried to clothe it in the garb of work, effort, regular hours, and stability, and to deny or play down its playful aspects.

[...] For the book he was exploring creativity and other ideas of work and play. [...]

[...] Work was not play, then. [...]

[...] On March 25th, she recorded the 329th session, with the intent of playing the tape for her honors class in high school. She has written us since then that the tape has been played. [...]

(Pat could offer no confirmation concerning H B. Pat also said that two women were in her honors class when she played the tape; one of these being a Radcliffe student teacher. Pat also played the tape for a girl friend of hers outside of school: Ellen Tabb, and Ellen’s friend, Adrian, a male. [...]

It was not played at the school for these people, I believe two men and a woman. [...]

(Nor, evidently, is Seth referring to the two adults sitting in on the class the day the tape was played. [...]

(The idea seemed to be that creativity, mine and anyone’s, is initially playful, curious, seeks expression—and is one of the highest kinds of psychic play—the artist playing with concepts no matter what the art; and actually inserts his or her reality onto the world, superimposed upon it. [...]

[...] Basically the creative play exploration, writing, is the main core of my creativity—and I do that for the love of doing it. [...]

When you create a poem or a song or a painting you are in a state of play, of enjoyment, of freedom. [...] They do not stop to ask whether or not the play is real or pertinent. Physically, play develops their body mechanisms. [...]

[...] (Pause.) Play brings you a needed rest from your distorted concepts of selfhood, and many of the world’s finest inventions have come when the inventor was not concentrating upon work, but indulging in pastimes or play.

[...] He played with the concept, then. [...]

[...] Yet there is a great correlation between what you think of as creativity, altered states of consciousness, play, and “spiritual” development.

You are playing games with yourselves. [...] You are setting up a game of checkers—one part of you is playing one game and another is playing another game. [...]

[...] Your children play with wooden blocks and they make houses. You play with mental blocks and you make worlds. [...]

[...] It is not enough to play games. [...]

Now I come to you often with playful characteristics—like a benign bishop who comes for a cup of tea and discusses realities with you. [...]

Children’s play, creativity, and dreams all involve you with the birth of events in the most direct of fashions. The games that you play or habitually observe will, of course, tell you much about the kind of organization that occurs in your own experience. [...]

[...] Before conditioning, children’s play follows the love of performance, of body or imagination, for performance’s sake only; the expansion of mental or physical abilities. [...] The exercises I will suggest have to do with games “that anybody can play,” then — with the natural joyful manipulation of the imagination that children employ.

[...] They should be considered as creative play, though of a mental nature, and they actually consist of mental endeavors tried quite spontaneously by children. [...]

[...] In their own periods of imaginative play, however, children utilize dream events, or events perceived in dreams, while clearly realizing that these are not considered actual in the “real” world.

[...] It is important that you try to play this with him, or know what he is doing, simply because you reinforce each other so strongly. So you play your own “as if” game with him. [...]

[...] Even if you want to play it with him, it is extremely important that it is an “as if” imaginative game.

Up to now you both have been playing the illness game strongly, in your imagination both creating symptoms, imprisoning Ruburt within them in the present, seeing them in the future, and examining future events in the light of present symptoms.

So you understand how to play the game. [...]

In Ruburt’s recent experience, he found himself inside the chassis of a recording device — signifying that instead of playing a cassette at several different speeds, he was instead, so to speak, playing his own consciousness at different speeds.

He was not just listening, then, to recorded material, but he was himself the recorded information and a recorder upon which the experiences played.

(4:31.) The analogy of the many speeds of consciousness actually fits in well with the actual neurological sequences upon which consciousness plays. [...]

[...] 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. [...]