“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

If only the physically-oriented ego survived, very little indeed would survive at all. The physically-oriented ego is hardly aware of your experiences in their entirety. The physically-oriented ego, if it alone survived, would contain only your conscious memories. Even now, in physical existence, you operate on a much deeper and more complicated level than this. Events and experiences which are forgotten, or which escaped the physically-oriented ego, still affect your activities in this life, and if they did not your physical existence would be brief indeed. (Jane pounded the tabletop for emphasis, eyes wide and dark.) Any survival that was based upon the survival of the physically-oriented ego alone would be as shallow as a paper cutout. These things escape you. You take it for granted that the physically-oriented ego represents your own psychological identity, you see, and this is an illusion. It contains a portion of your psychological feeling of identity, but only that.

Feelings and sensations and memories that it knows nothing of have built up your psychological identity, and given you a sense of continuity. Of these this ego knows but little. Intimacy with your self and with your own identity, that is intimate knowledge of your own identity, resides in all portions of the self, and is not dependent upon a survival based upon the survival of the physically-oriented ego. This would represent a sham of a survival indeed.

The survival personality does not need to do this. To him all realities are psychological realities, a thought as real as a chair—in fact, much more real. Therefore, communications between survival personalities and physically-oriented personalities are bound to suffer difficulties, and these difficulties are the result of the change of psychological frameworks.

[...] There are other methods that are also used by surviving personalities. (Pause.) Such objects may be moved without the help of any survival personality however, by the concentrated focus of psychic energy on the part of one or several individuals.

[...] (Pause.) There are survival personalities who help you. [...]

[...] In this method the impetus comes from survival personalities, acting directly through the physical mechanism of the most sensitive person at the table.

The concept of the survival of the fittest has had a considerably detrimental effect in many areas of human activity — particularly in the realm of medical ideology and practice.

The whole idea was developed in the most mechanistic of terms, stressing competition among all aspects of life, pitting one life form against another, and using physical strength and dexterity, swiftness and efficiency, as the prime conditions for the survival of any individual or species.

[...] The survival of the fittest concept, however, has been exaggerated far above those of cooperation.

Survival, of course, is important, but it is not the prime purpose of a species, in that it is a necessary means by which that species can attain its main goals. Of course [a species] must survive to do so, but it will, however, purposefully avoid survival if the conditions are not practically favorable to maintain the quality of life or existence that is considered basic.

A species that senses a lack of this quality can in one way or another destroy its offspring — not because they could not survive otherwise, but because the quality of that survival would bring about vast suffering, for example, so distorting the nature of life as to almost make a mockery of it. [...]

A survival personality in many respects is psychologically much different from the individual that he was. [...] When communications take place between a survival personality and a personality who exists within the physical system, then this involves a reshuffling, again, on the part of the survival personality, where the ego is momentarily given greater reign.

The survival personality therefore momentarily inserts his ego in its old position. [...] This reassembly however does cause some disorientation on the part of the survival personality. [...] The survival personality’s inner self gives this reassembled ego concepts in the same way that, often, the subconscious gives the ego concepts in physical existence.

The survival personality for example relies mainly upon telepathic communication. The survival personality does not think in terms of words, but experiences concepts in a much more direct manner. [...]

Ego concern is a very jealous concern, and it is directly connected to the personality’s concept of survival necessities within the physical universe. The ego that is overly fearful for survival will allow little potential to show itself unless that potential is directly connected with physical survival. [...]

Your own talents have worked for the survival of your personality, Joseph. [...] You may not think of your artistic abilities as serving any practical purpose, insofar as survival is concerned, and yet they have been your main security, and in very practical ways.

The ego that ignores too many of the possibilities of the inner self is soon in dire difficulty, and is forced to realize that it has been considering survival in a very limited light.

(Pause.) There has been great discussion in past years about the survival of the fittest, in Darwinian terms,⁴ but little emphasis is placed upon the quality of life, or of survival itself; or in human terms, [there has been] little probing into the question of what makes life worthwhile. [...]

[...] Newborn animals either die quickly and naturally, painlessly, before their consciousnesses are fully focused here, or are killed by their mothers — not because they are weak or unfit to survive, but because the [physical] conditions are not those that will produce the quality of life that makes survival “worthwhile.”

[...] Why one in the family will die and another survive — for in this mass venture, the individual still forms his or her private reality.

Survival is a basic psychological structure. Consciousness survival: construction of this basic psychological structure of consciousness survival must be interpreted, or projected or constructed, in terms of physical survival within your physical field.

Inadequate perception, manipulation, or construction in the psychological structure of consciousness survival leads to the psychological creation of fear and hatred.

[...] The error is in the original inability to perceive the correct inner data, the basic underlying psychological structure of consciousness survival.

[...] And you will get nowhere—either in the relationship or without it—until you assert yourself in relation to your environment and realize that you are strong enough on your own to survive in physical reality. [...] It is your fear that you could not survive that made you cling to the relationship. [...]

You may, but the point is, you must know that the tree in the forest survives, and it reaches toward the sun. And you as an individual can survive, andthen you are free to make other relationships—and in a wholesome and constructive manner. [...]

For many reasons having to do with your own past existence, and with your mother in this life, there was a basic insecurity and a feeling that you were not strong enough to survive on your own. [...]

[...] (Pause.) Mr. Edwards admits that he calls upon surviving personalities, healers who have survived death in your terms. In the past Ruburt would not admit, basically, that such survival was a fact, much less ask for help from such quarters.

[...] Those who have survived physical death in your terms, must use words in their communications, for you do not understand wordless communications. [...]

[...] I am speaking of those who have survived death in your terms. [...]

[...] This is true of individuals, but it also applies to many so-called survival groups, who congregate in one or another portion of the country, collecting supplies to carry them over the holocaust and to defend their families from those who might steal their provisions.

[...] It is not that plants understand your ideas in usual terms — but that they do indeed pick up your intent, and in the arena of world survival, they have a stake.

I do not want to romanticize nonhuman life either, or to overestimate its resources, but nature also has its own ways — and in those ways it constantly works toward survival of life in general. [...]

[...] It is presently in the vogue to say that the conscious mind, as you consider it, deals with survival. It deals with survival only insofar as it promotes survival in your particular kind of society. In those terms, if you remembered your dreams, and if you benefited consciously from that knowledge, even your physical survival would be better assured.

[...] No one was more surprised than I was, then, to find myself quite abruptly speaking for someone who was supposed to have survived death. [...] A surviving soul seemed part and parcel of the adults’ nonsense I’d thought I’d escaped, thanks to a college education, a quick mind, and a fine dose of native rebelliousness. It took me a while to discover that I was being as prejudiced against the idea of survival as some others were for it. [...]

[...] “I do speak in trance for a personality who claims to have survived death. [...]

To me it was tantamount to intellectual suicide to even admit the possibility that Seth actually was a personality who had survived death. [...]

[...] It gets its energy of course from the source self, and its primary directives to insure the fulfillment and the survival of the person. [...]

[...] His food, clothing, and survival depended on toeing the mark. [...]

His survival in college, since he had a scholarship, was dependent upon toeing the mark, and even then he refused to do so; and was quite unceremoniously kicked out on his independent ass.

[...] I didn’t see how our ancestors had survived, were the movie accurate. [...] There was no compassion, no intuition; little understanding revealed by the characters in the movie other than the emotions of bloodlust, survival of the fittest, and selfishness. [...]

The environment, man, and the animals were all characterized as ferocious, hostile to each other, each one determined to attain survival at the expense of the other. [...]

[...] Aggression becomes a method of survival. [...]

[...] It becomes a condition for survival. [...]

[...] Science says that there is no will, yet it assigns to nature the will to survive—or rather, a will-less instinct to survive. To that extent it does admit (underlined) that the machine of the body “intends” to insure its own survival—but a survival which has no meaning beyond itself. [...]

Man’s will to survive includes a sense of meaning and purpose, and a feeling for the quality (underlined) of life. [...]

[...] A man, literally of flesh and blood, must then prove beyond all doubt that each and every other [human being] survives death — by dying, of course, and then by rising, physically-perceived, into heaven. Each man does survive death, and each woman (with quiet amusement), but only such a literal-minded species would insist upon the physical death of a god-man as “proof of the pudding.”

In evolution man’s nature is amoral, and anything goes for survival’s sake. There is no possibility of any spiritual survival as far as most evolutionists are concerned. [...]

The idea of man’s survival of death was not new. [...]

Then how much more triumphant you will feel, when you realize you have lived and died many times and managed to survive, as indeed I have managed to survive. [...]

You (to Sue) willsurvive adulthood—many adulthoods. You have survived many. [...]

You (Daniel) also will survive. [...]

[...] As Seth mentioned in the last session, Jane decided this evening to try to contact a survival personality as a medium would ordinarily for interested observers or relatives.

[...] Jane then suggested that I speak to Seth, since I was used to doing so; her hope being that by going into trance on her own she might contact a survival personality—namely, Blanche Price.

(The session, Jane said, verged often on the unpleasant, as if Blanche had to go through her own last memories first in order to make contact, and we wondered whether a survival personality would want to do this very often. [...]