“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

On some relatively few occasions, for example, Ruburt has been able to contact what he calls “Seth Two.” That level of reality, however, is even further divorced from your own. [...] In a manner of speaking, Seth Two’s reality includes my own, yet I am aware of my contribution to “his” experience.

(Then in the 754th session, on August 25, Seth gave an excellent dissertation on what he called “the stamp of identity” — explaining how the individual psychically marks certain exterior aspects of reality and “makes them his or her own,” in tune with personal inner symbols. [...]

[...] It is futile to question: “What is the difference between my psyche and my soul, my entity and my greater being?” for all of these are terms used in an effort to express the greater portions of your own experience that you sense within yourself. [...] Hopefully this book will allow you some intimate awareness, some definite experience, that will acquaint you with the nature of your own psyche, and then you will see that its reality escapes all definitions, defies all categorizing, and shoves aside with exuberant creativity all attempts to wrap it up in a neat package.

(Pause.) Again, rather than trying to define the psyche, I will try to incite your imagination so that you can leap beyond what you have been told you are, to some kind of direct experience. [...] I call Jane Roberts “Ruburt” (and, hence, “he” and “him”) simply because the name designates another portion of her reality, while she identifies herself as Jane. [...]

Now nevertheless the dream world, the mind and the reality universe do exist. They exist in a climate that we will call the value climate of psychological reality. [...] This takes the place of what you call space. This value climate of psychological reality is a quality which makes all existences and consciousness possible. [...]

[...] To deny the reality of what does not exist in space would be to deny much of mankind’s own heritage and abilities.

What you consider death has no more basic reality than has your idea of time and space. [...]

[...] This should be considered along with our material on the expanding universe, since dream locations represent, certainly, a reality, even a framework that has no existence in your space; and measured purely along the lines used to measure your space, you would receive no hint at all of their existence or reality. [...]

Here’s Seth from the 750th session, held on June 25, 1975, two months after he finished Volume 2. In it he not only sums up his motives in producing “Unknown” Reality, but comments on another one of his basic ideas that I think it important to stress every so often; this time, perception is involved. “The ‘Unknown’ Reality was written to give … individuals glimpses into alternate patterns of reality. [...] You are part of what you perceive. [...]

Seth presented his sessions for “Unknown” Reality as usual, but dispensed with any chapter framework. [...] As he told us in the 743rd session, a few days after the visit of Tam and his associate: “This book had no chapters [in order] to further disrupt your accepted notions of what a book should be. [...]

As in Seth Speaks and Personal Reality, the usual notes are presented at break times, but I’ve indicated the points of origin of what would ordinarily be footnotes by using consecutive (superscription) numbers within the text of each session; then I’ve grouped the actual notes at the end of the session for quick reference. [...]

[...] (This was true even when she was consciously unaware of what she was up to. See the verse from her early poem, Summer Is Winter, which precedes these notes.) As I see it, her task with the Seth material is to place these basic artistic ideas at our conscious service, so that their use in our daily lives can change our individual and collective realities for the better; and by “artistic ideas” here I mean the deepest, most aesthetic and practical — and, yes, mystical — truths and questions that human beings are capable of expressing, then contending with. [...]

“Think of the Inner Senses as paths leading to an inner reality. The first sense involves perception of a direct nature—instant cognition through what I can only describe as inner vibrational touch. [...] His consciousness would expand to contain the experience of what it is to be a tree—any or all of the trees. [...]

[...] It means that in family, business, or social contacts, we will be intuitively aware of what the other person is saying to us: we will know what is beneath words. We will also use words better ourselves to communicate our inner feelings since we will know what those feelings are. [...]

“First, you must try to understand the nature of reality. [...] These will enable you to perceive reality as it exists independently of the physical world. [...]

In a recent class session, Seth said: “If you would momentarily put aside the selves you take for granted, you could experience your own multidimensional reality. [...]

[...] But they will actually be solved in inner reality. [...] Find out what the nature of inner reality is. You can then use inner reality as a secure basis from which you can look outward and see the world’s problems more clearly and in better focus. [...]

And if you would work, and if you would look inward, and if you would explore the levels of your own reality and the levels of your own consciousness, then you would know what this state is—and you would remember it—and you would always have its reality as a guide. [...]

[...] You have seen, and you continue to see what can be done—and you have seen others come to class with no experience and little knowledge. You have seen our dweller in the hall here (Theodore) use his abilities—and he does not need to look for wonders because he is experiencing reality. [...]

[...] The search upon which you have all embarked can only be begun from the center of your own reality. This is what you have to work with. [...]

[...] You must also know that what I am telling you cannot be translated into words, and so you are getting at best a secondhand translation. Words cannot convey the message but working from the words you can obtain a portion of the reality behind them. [...]

[...] However, they became what they seem to be for these chosen people have also accepted this role, and the exterior drama will be worked out in such a way that it makes sense within the time period in which it seems to take place. In this same framework, as the exterior drama begins to fade and as it has left meaning, in your terms, only now as time seems to pass, then once again the interior drama arises, but this time with a new story, with a different god and with new prophets; and as the old weakens so the new interior drama begins once more to arouse man from within his dreams, and again they choose and someone appears, or two or three, and a new drama is projected into external reality. [...]

[...] You are all children in one way playing beneath the maple trees, dreaming in the long twilights of your adult state even as your adult selves now seemingly so independent would not know what to say to your childhood selves if you met them; but within you the childhood self must also grow, and allow it its growth. In the reality that you know there are many boxes. [...]

[...] It is a particular reality in which you have chosen to know your existence, in which you have chosen to develop yourself, and it is indeed a system, again, like no other system, a unique and dear and beloved portion of reality in which you have decided to flourish for awhile. And in denying it, again, you deny the reality of experience. [...]

[...] In the episode that we mentioned earlier, and the famine, you are afraid that you could not cope with physical reality. [...] You were not equipped, because of your background, to cope with hard reality. [...] But it left you, that life, with the feeling that physical reality was so difficult that you could not handle it alone. You resolved, therefore, to store up what food you had in terms of fat and protein to hold you against times of famine. [...]

[...] I merely mean that in past lives there were certain portions of reality in which you did not have experience. [...] If you knew this and if you knew what the problems were at this point, the problems would not be as real and the solutions would not be as valid. [...]

[...] For information is given to you not only in your waking, conscious, alert daily life but in what you would call your unconscious sleep state. [...] Your dream life is continuous, only your waking ego closes out the inner stimuli and does not see it, for it must concentrate upon physical daily reality. [...]

[...] Jane asked during hreak what transpired. Brad said that it dealt with his struggle with reality—and his having to “face the music.” [...]

[...] Each physical photographer has an idea of what he wants to capture on film, and so to that extent he structures his picture and his view. [...] You can take what you want, so to speak, from dream reality, as basically you take what you want from waking life. For that reason, your dream snapshots will show you the kind of experience that you are choosing from inner reality.

(In ordinary terms I can only wait, of course, to see if I decide to create that distant probable moment in this reality. [...] Since through my internal vision I evidently looked in upon a particular past life of my own, however unaware I was of what I was doing, it seems that the knowledge of that existence may not be too deeply buried within my psyche. I might try jogging my memory through suggestion, to see what else about that life I can recall. [...]

[...] You have certain pet ideas, therefore, and you use them to structure your own world view of the reality you know. It is important that you understand what your own beliefs are. [...]

[...] You should write down a description of each scene and what you remember of it, including your feelings both at the time of the dream, and later when you record it. [...] Each picture will serve as just one small glimpse of a different kind of reality. [...]

(Seth II:)(Words lost)...observed then realize that we are highly interested in such experiments as Seth is conducting, and that as we observe you, so do you, though unconsciously, observe other realities in your sleep state. If our reality seems strange to you then yours seems strange to us. We move through systems such as yours faster than the speed of light, and so what I am saying is already a translation and, in your terms, a message left in the past of your time. Your own consciousness also travels faster than the speed of light, and big portions of you does understand, to some degree, the nature of our reality. [...] There are portions of your own identity, in other terms, that dwell in these probable systems that have not known physical reality and that come to observe those portions of itself that have so developed in that fashion. [...]

Now some of this is, indeed, a translation or, again, you would be speaking with Seth II, yet what I am continues to exist. [...] I have a reservoir of personality banks upon which I can draw, and as a teacher I use the one that is most effective in any given system of reality and this is the one that I use here. [...]

[...] You know what this entails so in a way, you see, you are much more prepared than the others were for you know in advance what both questions are and what priorities operate. [...]

[...] The creative selves within you know what you are up to and I know what I hope this class will be up to and you must have faith in each other and trust if we are going to do the kind of group experiments that I have in mind. [...]

(“Now, if you had all been really paying attention to what I have been saying for some time about the simultaneous nature of time and existence, then you would have known that the theory of evolution is as beautiful a tale as the theory of biblical creation. Both are quite handy, and both are methods of telling stories, and both might seem to agree within their own systems, and yet, in larger respects they cannot be realities…. No — no form of matter, however potent, will be self-evolved into consciousness, no matter what other bits of matter are added to it. Without the consciousness, the matter would not be there in the universe, floating around, waiting for another component to give it reality, consciousness, existence, or song.”

[...] It is according to when you come into the picture, and what you choose to observe, and what part of the play you decide to observe. It is more the other way around, in that evolved consciousness forms itself into many different patterns and rains down on reality. [...]

In greater terms, seconds and moments do not exist, either, but the reality that is behind time or that you perceive as time, the “outside time” events, are composed of units that also have their own kind of consciousness. They form what appears as time to you, as atoms and molecules form what appears as space to you. [...]

[...] (Pause.) He had one job, in what seems to be a factory location, in a rather dark environment, with rows of what I assume to be machinery and large windows, treated so that the sunlight did not shine through brightly.

[...] The inner self knows what is behind the stars and planets that the eyes views, but the ego would be swept aside in panic. [...] The whole cosmic structure however was the materialization of one original thought, for the thought, the real reality, must always exist before the representation of it.

[...] (Pause, smile.) The possibilities that have come to reality within this universal system have each given birth to other systems and other realities, as one tree bears a thousand seeds. (Pause.) You yourselves through your own mental actions create realities of which you yourselves are unaware, and you give birth to more than physical children.

[...] There is interrelationship, intertwining realities, and connections that cannot be denied. I told you that dream reality consisted of more than you knew, and that the dream universe continued whether or not you perceived it. Within that context those inhabitants dream in turn their own dreams and form electromagnetic realities. [...]

[...] You only perceive the portions of them that are apparent within your own system of reality.

You are mainly concerned now with physical orientation and the corporeal materialization of inner reality. [...] It is not necessary that you hold in steady consciousness data that does not directly apply to what you consider your physical reality at any given “time.”

What should you do, then, if you find yourself feeling tired? This is your conscious assessment of your body’s reality at a given time. [...]

[...] There is some information and data that does not “apply” to physical reality. Some of it is perceived by “nonphysical entities” who organize it into their system of reality, where it does have meaning, but we will not be concerned with it here.

In your present life the conscious mind assesses physical reality and has behind it all the energy, power and ability of the inner self at its disposal. [...] Its job is to assess that reality effectively, using that fine focus mentioned earlier. [...]

The authors instead tell you to be positive, compassionate, strong, optimistic, filled with joy and enthusiasm, without telling you what to do to get out of the predicament you may be in, and without understanding the vicious circle that may seem to entrap you. Such books, again, while sometimes of value, do not explain how thoughts and emotions cause reality. [...]

(“Ruburt sensed this quite clearly, and as usual feels twinges, wondering what I am going to write about and what kind of a book it will be. [...]

[...] These together form the reality that you know. You are hardly at the mercy of a reality, therefore, that exists apart from yourself, or is thrust upon you. [...]

[...] I hope to teach you methods that will allow you to understand the nature of your own reality, and to point a way that will let you change that reality in whatever way you choose.

[...] Once you understand what these are, and what effects can be expected, such journeys can be undertaken consciously, with the conscious mind that you know acting as the astronaut, for example, and the rest of your consciousness acting as the vehicle. Such journeys lead to quite valid realities, but as an astronaut must know the best landing conditions, so you must learn how to “come in” at the most auspicious time and under the best conditions.

The probable realities connected with your own system are like the suburbs, say, surrounding a main city. If for simplicity’s sake you think of other realities as different cities, then after you leave your own you would pass through the suburbs, then into the country, then after a time into other suburbs until you reached another metropolis. Here each metropolis would represent a conglomeration of consciousnesses operating within an overall general frequency of clearest focus, a high point of psychic communication and exquisite focus in the given kind of reality. Unless you are tuned in to those particular frequencies, however, you could not pick up that reality. [...]

[...] At the time words were clearly distinguishable, though later he forgot what they said. [...] He has often wondered about the nature of my own independence, and the kind of reality in which I exist.

(End at 12:35 A.M. As we ate breakfast several hours later, Jane told me that during the night she’d kept waking up with ideas she thought were connected to “Unknown” Reality. When I asked her to write down what she could remember of them, she produced these items, with whatever distortions they may contain:)

[...] I do not mean that a moment is simply stretched, or that time is slowed down alone, but that all the experiences possible within a moment become realities within that framework. Such systems have little to do with you in any practical manner, nor is such information given to dwarf your idea of what your own consciousness is. It is important, however, that you realize the fact that there is more creativity and variety in an inner reality than you ever physically perceive.

(Long pause at 11:29.) While words are difficult to use here, again, what I am saying applies, in different ways perhaps, to the behavior of worlds, atoms, and psychological structures. Give us a moment … In the life that you know, as given in Personal Reality, your beliefs act to specify the particular probable events that will become “real.”¹⁰ Because you are a probable self, an understanding of your own nature will show you some of the abilities, not used here, but present, that you can indeed choose to actualize. [...] They are being developed in another reality; therefore in this one they can be utilized far easier than you might suppose. [...]

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.

[...] “I knew what I was saying when I said it, but I’ve forgotten it all now …” She paused, then continued in a way I thought somewhat unusual for her: “We’re doing the best we can with what abilities we’ve got. You wonder what this material’s application is — what good does it do to know it?”

It seems to you that reality is composed of those actions that you choose to take. [...] Physical reality is constructed from what seems to be a series of physical acts. Since this is the usual criterion of reality for you, then nonphysical acts usually escape your notice, discretion, and judgment.

(10:19.) Each probable system of reality of course then creates other such systems, and any one act, realized, brings forth an infinite number of “unrealized” acts that will also find their actualization. Now all systems of reality are open. [...] So what you do is also reflected to some degree in the experience of your probable selves, and vice versa.

[...] Now all of these possible actions have a reality at that point. [...]

[...] This is the nature of reality. [...]

[...] You will find your own way through complicated mazes of reality according to your own intuitional nature. You will find what you expect to find. You will seek out what you want from the available reality data.

Individually, you move in a very limited area of this vast universe, and yet inner reality is more (long pause) massive in size, if you speak in terms of size. It is far more extensive even in physical terms, and its reality exists in dimensions which do not exist within the physical system. [...] You gloss over what you do not understand.

In your journeys into inner reality you cannot proceed with the same root agreements, you see. Reality, per se, changes completely according to the basic root agreements from which you proceed. One of the root agreements upon which physical existence is based is that physical objects have a reality that is entirely independent of any subjective cause; and that these objects, within definitely specified limitations, are permanent.

[...] The unifying and the limiting aspects of consecutive moments are absent in inner reality. [...] You are not forced to perceive action as a series of moments within inner reality, therefore.

The personality does indeed turn its focus into another field of reality, and does desert the camouflage image that it maintained. However, some trace of that personality remains in that camouflage reality, quite literally, as what you might call a ghost image.

[...] Consciously you work with what you call a one-reality field psychological structure. [...]

[...] This image trace is a lingering manifestation, an imprint within your system, a part of its reality, and is held within it as you might for example retain an idea in your mind long after the idea has been expressed physically. As a painting that is destroyed physically may still be retained in your mind, so in the reality of the physical system a trace remains, an image trace of the camouflage structure that enclosed a given personality.

[...] Consciously you are not aware of what you call reincarnations, though these occur within your own system. [...] This is what you do when you imagine that you have several existences as different people.

And that self tells you that there is a reality beyond human reality, beyond human characteristics that you know... And within that reality even I am dwarfed and there is knowledge that can never be verbal. [...]

[...] We gave you the pattern by which you learned to form your physical reality. We gave you the patterns intricate, involved, and blessed from which you form the reality of each physical thing you know. [...] We taught you to form the reality that you know.

Yet what you are is now, and what your friend Seth is is now. [...]

You exist, therefore, now within this reality as present and immediate as you are now... [...]

[...] This communication goes on constantly, but your ego is so focused upon physical reality and survival within it that you do not hear the inner voice. You must realize that what you are cannot be seen in a mirror. What you see in a mirror is but a dim reflection of your true reality.

[...] What Seth is saying is that each of us can reach the inner self, that the Inner Senses help us to perceive other than three-dimensional reality, and that we can get to this knowledge with determination and training. [...] The physical senses help us to perceive the exterior reality that we know. [...]

“Now this couple represented a sort of time-projection, for literally you could have become what they were. [...] Because past, present, and future exist simultaneously, there is no reason why you cannot react to an event whether or not it happens to fall within the small field of reality in which you usually observe and participate.

Seth says that the physical body and its senses are specialized equipment to allow us to live in physical reality. To perceive other realities, we have to use the Inner Senses—methods of perception that belong to the inner self and operate whether or not we have a physical form. [...] Other realities are also camouflage systems, and within them consciousness also has specialized equipment tailored to their peculiar characteristics. [...]