“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After break, to Bette.) Now for a cousin of Richelieu in the 18th-century France you put up some struggle pretending that you do not understand what you like to think of as intellectual discussions, and you make a great fight against what you like to think of as verbalization, and you pretend to yourself that you do not understand what I am saying when I am saying it. [...]

[...] And so now you pretend a vulgar, earthy, frank, common behavior that does not fit the inner self and yet fools you on an egotistical basis very well. However, it also serves to blunt your own abilities and to cause inner behavior that, again, is not suited to your capacities for it causes you to pretend not to understand that which you do well understand and therefore to block from your ego information that is otherwise quite plain. [...]

[...] The same little boy or girl might also sit astride a toy horse, and pretend that the horse is part of the merry-go-round. [...]

This trick was this: it pretended to accept the psychic nature as part of itself and began a campaign ostensibly aimed at living up to its image, of adapting it. [...] It would get its own way by pretending to give in. [...]

[...] It is pretend.

[...] When the death was not acted out in drama form—this you are familiar with, we shall not go into it here—then instead the mother pretended to have an attack of one kind or another, and she told the child that the child was directly responsible.

[...] She said she could feel herself begin to protest when Seth got to the part concerning her mother’s pretending of death, but Seth led her over the rough spots well.

[...] Ruburt hit on an idea yesterday, and forgot it: he mentally pretended that he was skiing. [...]

[...] It is much easier to pretend that all such experiences are symbolic and not literal, to evolve complicated psychological theories, for example, to explain flying dreams.

Pretend for a moment that you are a child, and I am trying to undertake the particular chore of explaining to you what your most developed, adult self will be like — and in my explanation, I say that this adult self is to some extent already a part of you, an outgrowth or projection of what you are. [...]

[...] Consciousness only pretends to bow to the idea of time. [...]

[...] Normal waking consciousness pretends there was never any break. [...]

When you do not approve of yourselves, then you do not approve of your own power, and so you pretend that you have none. [...] Often you both pretend that you have no power in the society, and this is not the case.

[...] They do not permit themselves the dimensions of their creaturehood, and by pretending not to feel what they feel, they deny the integrity of their own experience.

[...] If you understand the nature of probabilities, you will not need to pretend to ignore your present situation. [...]

To pretend to ignore your age, to act young because you fear your age, is no answer. [...]

(Long pause.) The individuals concerned pretend to themselves that they have no memory of the other personalities’ existences or activities. [...]

[...] Pretend then that the inner self is another land—and that you are a tourist—and highly curious—that you are intellectually and intuitively curious—pretend that all this courage you use in your daily endeavors is an aid to help you find your way in this new and strange and wondrous environment. [...]

Then pretend you are having a dream that begins with the image of an orange. [...] Next, pretend that you are waking from the dream to realize that another dream was simultaneously occurring, and ask yourself quickly what that dream was. [...]

[...] But pretend for a moment that you are looking at this situation from the other side. Pretend that while you are in the dream state you are concerned with the problem of physical consciousness and existence. [...]

[...] Pretend that you are some weird creature with two faces. [...]

[...] You do not have to pretend they are not there, but know that the increased motion, and new psychic motion, will take care of the situation. [...]

When you bunk your head / against the sky / and it gives— /
you’re tempted to back off; / suspicious, confused /
as a scared animal / treated kindly: You growl, /
pretend to lick or bite / yourself— / too scared to /
even wag your tail.

Someone magically / took my leash off / and I was so scared /
I pretended it was / still there even / tighter than before.

Each of you now as you sit before the image that you call Jane Butts or Ruburt, each of you now are, indeed, as ghostly as you may think that I am for you form your own physical image about you and you pretend it is your real self. You are, in other words, apparitions and in a gigantic mass hallucination you all agree upon the people that you see, and you all pretend that you are the selves that you see but you are far more than this. [...]

[...] You pretend to agree that the room exists and so we meet in no place of space or time. [...]

[...] You hide them from the present self simply to insure the fact that the reality is not a pretended one. [...]

[...] Pretend then that the room itself is a dream from which you are almost about to awaken, and with your eyes closed still, you will awaken from this room into another place and another time, and with your eyes closed you will awaken to another reality as valid and legitimate as this one. [...]

I never pretended to be a mechanical genius. [...]