“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The spirit of Island One says: “I quite enjoyed my venture, and I’ve learned that the great explosive thrusts of creativity are good — but, oh, I yearn for my own quiet, undisturbed shores; and so if you don’t care I think I’ll return there.” And so it does — to find a land in some ways transformed. The sands still lie glittering, but the fog and mists are gone. The beloved birds have multiplied, and there is in the old familiar sameness a new, muted, but delightful refrain, colon: new species in keeping with the old, but more vigorous. The spirit of Island One realizes that it would find the old conditions quite boring now, and the new alterations fill it with pleasing excitement and challenge. What a delightful interchange. For the spirit is convinced that it definitely improved the condition of Island Two, and there is no doubt that the spirit of the second island improved Island One beyond degree.

So the volcano throws its energy into the formation of still more new species, while the desert spirit sings its calmness through their tissues. But this new life confounds it also, and it yearns to return home to its old quietude. There, the spirit of the third island has quickened the desert’s abilities so that it blooms with muted flowers not present before. The two spirits meet. Each island is changed. “We are counterparts, each of the other, yet inviolate.”

The spirit of the first island visits the second one, and finds itself amazed. It feels an ever-thrusting power, rushing up from beneath, that erupts in always-changing form. Yet it is always itself, comparing its experience to what it has known. When the volcano itself, ceaselessly erupting, wishes for peace, the spirit of the first island thinks of its own quiet home shores. The volcano learns a new lesson: It can direct its power in whatever way it chooses, shooting upward or lying quietly. It can indeed be dormant and dream for centuries. (Slowly now:) It can, if it chooses, allow soft sands to lie gracefully upon its cooling expanse.

(Seth speaking to Stan after Stan had discussed spirits and demons:) ...Through merely the mental and physical contortions that you have forced yourself through this evening. You are a spirit. You are a spirit now; you are simply clothed in flesh. You do not suddenly become a spirit as is and all spirits are not long-faced and boastly [sic], although you could frighten me under certain circumstances. [...]

I give you all my greetings, and I will be around here mostly to show you that all spirits are not dead and dusty and to remind you that you, yourselves, are spirits. [...]

[...] The spirit that is you forms your image. [...]

[...] With what he has learned, he can put much to advantage that he could not have earlier, but the base of operations should be from the home, where surely his spirits will be far more easily maintained and upheld. [...]

[...] Let the heart be filled with tr__*(I cannot read my notes for this word) now, knowing that its base can be more refreshing, and his spirits revived far more easily through the recommendations that have been given. [...]

So will your own spirits be revived, seemingly like magic, knowing that the basis of your hearts’ loves rests where it should. [...]

Illness result of partial failure to materialize spirit faithfully. Lose control of matter when spirit is fatigued.

[...] Both represented high points of your entities, images in the mental genes, blueprints for your spirits to follow. [...]

Brain is mechanism and mind is spirit.

The “spirit guide” designation may be a handy symbolic representation of this idea, and I’m not saying that spirit guides do not exist. I am saying that the idea deserves greater examination, for the spirit guide may represent something far different than we think. [...]

[...] There he’s accepted as an independent spirit — a spirit guide by those with spiritualistic beliefs — or as some displaced portion of my own personality by the scientific community. [...]

If I said, “Look, people, I don’t think Seth is a spirit in the way you mean,” then this was interpreted as an acknowledgement that Seth was only a portion of my personality. [...]

You are, as I said earlier, a spirit now; and that spirit has a consciousness. The consciousness belongs to the spirit then, but the two are not the same. The spirit may turn its consciousness off and on. By its nature consciousness may flicker and fluctuate, but the spirit does not.

I do not particularly like the word “spirit” because of several implications attached to it, but it (ot) suits our purposes in that the word does imply an independence from physical form.

The spirit, therefore, is never in a state of nothingness, with its consciousness extinguished. [...]

[...] Many tribes believed, quite rightly, in the inner spirit that pervades each living thing. And they often referred to, say, the god in the tree, or the spirit in the flower. But they also accepted the reality of an overall spirit, of which these lesser spirits were but a part. [...]

The Hebrews conceived of an overseer god, an angry and just and sometimes cruel god; and many sects denied, then, the idea that other living beings beside man possessed inner spirits. [...]

In those times men spoke and confided to the spirits of birds, trees, and spiders, knowing that in the interior reality beneath, the nature of these communications was known and understood. [...]

[...] Now, you have been given the free will because the spirit of Christ is within you, this does not mean that you do not have free will. The spirit of Christ gives you the life to do with it what you choose. [...]

[...] Before this brings to your mind hilarious images of tipsy spirits, if you will excuse the pun, I will leave you to the rest and quiet in which I found you, perhaps. [...]

[...] You said the spirit of Christ had entered every person, and yet mankind does not reflect this. [...]

[...] To the contrary, he does not have to see me as a white-gowned spirit. [...] But the picture of a white-robed spirit, with those connotations, is not one I have given him.

He is not, therefore, supposed to think of me, and I have said this often, as some sort of ghostly spirit in those terms. [...]

Because Ruburt is at times so literal, he then did become bothered by thoughts of setting himself up, or thoughts of misrepresentation; and all of this because of the interpretation of the word spirit, or spiritual, and highly colored interpretations at that. [...]

[...] If parents believe that the body is somehow an inferior vehicle for the spirit, or if they simply view the body as unreliable or weak and vulnerable, then children will at an early age begin to consider good health as a rarity, and learn to take depression, poor spirits, and bodily aches and pains to be a natural, normal condition of life.

[...] It is not just a vehicle for the spirit. It is the spirit in flesh. [...]

([Ron:] “Are there instances in which a spirit from another reality would intervene in this reality, and we would call that a destructive act, but the spirit would say it was creative?”)

(Ron:] “But in the terms that we are all spirits acting out our own inner drama, the term spirit has some meaning?”)

(Long pause.) In ways most difficult to explain, man “absorbed” an animal’s spirit before he killed it, so that the spirit of the animal merged with his own. [...] Nature and spirit therefore were one.

[...] Intuitively any real artist feels the spirit within matter, and unconsciously at least tries to portray it. Some so-called objective painters, however, use the form to quite imprison the spirit within it. [...]

Eyes bothered me quite a bit all day; got some discouraged though did try to keep spirits up, etc.; and did fairly decent job of it.

[...] He has done well, and you have helped him in the important matter of keeping his spirits up in the meantime. [...]

[...] He tried to douse his normally vital animal spirits, and now the body and the animal spirits do need some such extra attention.

[...] The spirit behind the indulgence is important.

Some extra care as you plan then will also serve to liven the spirits of the spontaneous self. [...]

The free association is indeed then operating as it should, and that expression will clear the mental and emotional roads, so that Ruburt’s natural, innate high spirits can begin to show their faces again. [...]

(“If I ever felt high spirits I wouldn’t know what to do.”

[...] They will say, “I am nothing, but the spirit of God moves through me, and if I do any good it is because of God’s spirit and not my own,” or, “I have no ability of my own. [...]

[...] Christ spoke in terms of good and bad spirits because these represented the people’s beliefs. (See the 647th session in Chapter Twelve for related material.) In their terms he showed them that “bad” spirits could be vanquished; but these were, then, symbols accepted as realities by the people — sometimes for quite “normal” diseases and human conditions.

[...] It means acquiescing to your reality as a spirit in flesh. [...]

[...] I reminded myself often of the physician within etc; and “talked” to the “divine parent of my being”—and tried to keep my spirits up though now and then I’d really get scared. [...]