Case Profile: Jane Roberts - The 'Channel' for 'Seth'

photos of Jane Roberts (left) and with 'Seth' in control (from back cover of The Seth Material 1970)

 

Jane Roberts (1929-1984) is today considered one of the most famous 'psychics' of the 20th Century although perhaps the more appropriate distinguishing term now would be 'channeler' in relation to the transcendental communication of 'Seth.'  Jane reflected about her life in chapters of The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981) while her close friend—and student of 'Seth'—Susan M. Watkins is the author of the memoir Speaking of Jane Roberts (2001).  Susan also wrote about the Jane Roberts/'Seth' case in two volumes of Conversations With Seth (1980/81) focusing on Jane's ESP class.

Jane concluded in her 1981 book:
 

Seth wasn't just presenting an evocative theoretical framework through which we could view reality; he was initiating a new and superior philosophical system that explained reality more clearly than science or religion.  It was as simple as that, I decided.  So I simply had to shake off those old beliefs for myself and for my readers as well.

Jane estimated her 'trancetime' since 1963 as being approximately 4,000 hours, representing her "regular schedule of speaking for Seth" through the years.  "For eight of those years, while I conducted my 'E.S.P.' classes, though, there were three Seth sessions a week, averaging from two to three hours . . . The tally constantly rises, of course, as Seth continues to dictate his books and other material . . ." 
 
The first book about the transcendental communicator 'Seth' was published more than fifty years ago: How to Develop Your ESP Power (1966) and was followed by such books as The Seth Material (1970), Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul (1972), The Nature of Personal Reality (1974) and Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology (1975).

In The God of Jane, Jane Roberts offered her response to a scientist insisting that "In science, the burden of proof for any extraordinary event must fall on the claimant."
 

I wasn't making any extraordinary claims!  My experiences were psychological facts, regardless of the interpretations that might be made about them.  So-called paranormal events had been reported for centuries by quite normal persons.  People throughout history had recorded instances of precognition, telepathy, out-of-body experiences and all such related phenomena.  That data represented its own kind of evidence—an evidence that science had no right ignoring.

Dorothy Jane Roberts was born in 1929 to Delmar Hubbell Roberts and his wife Marie Burdo at a hospital in Albany, New York.  Jane in The God of Jane related that a California movie studio representative having expressed interest in doing a movie about her life made her reflect about her circumstances.  The thought of someone faking a Seth trance was too much for her to see any potential for a movie yet the interest brought an unusual insight: "I suddenly realized that I'd included very little personal background in my own books."  This article presents some passages from The God of Jane.

 

I wasn't particularly happy with the thought of telling the world that I'd grown up on welfare, or that "ladies of the evening" often served as our housekeepers when their usual places of business were closed down in my original home town of Saratoga Springs, N.Y.  That background was once as much a part of my life as my experiences today are, though, and it was from that living framework that the Seth sessions eventually emerged.

Susan M. Watkins reported in Speaking of Jane Roberts:

Her parents divorced when she was an infant and soon afterwards her mother became bedridden with rheumatoid arthritis, the same condition to which Jane would eventually succumb.  ("I'd never seen her walk," Jane later remembered.)  Raised in the Catholic Church, Jane was sent to an orphanage run by nuns while her mother was hospitalized with the disease.  Jane lived there for nearly two years.

Then she was sent home to care for her invalid mother, about whom Jane revealed:
 

She was on all kinds of medically prescribed drugs, which helps explain some of her actions; and if she could be "a terror," she was also quite intelligent, imaginative, and above all, dramatic.  She finally ran a telephone service from her bed, with my help.  When I was in grade school she took creative writing courses by proxy, sending me to nighttime adult writing courses where I took notes for her and she did the assignments.

As a child, Jane knew she was going to be a writer —

When I wrote poetry, the universe seemed to talk to me.  Sometimes I talked back, and on rare occasions we spoke at once.

A fortuitous occurrence is reiterated by Susan: "In her senior year in high school, Jane won honorable mention in a poetry contest sponsored by Scholastic Magazine, and as a result was awarded a scholarship to Skidmore College in Saratoga." 

Jane summarized the turn of events during her formative years in her memoir, including leaving college before graduation and her mother's suicide attempts.  Jane wrote about her mother's overdoses of sleeping pills —
 

She'd become more and more irrational, and I suspected even then that the pills for pain she took contributed.  Anyhow, I went to the welfare authorities while my mother was in the hospital, said that I was leaving, insisted that the authorities provide the care for her that I couldn't, and left for California—where my father lived.

I left with a fellow student who had just graduated.  I'd been dating him regularly.  He had a motorcycle, and the two of us took off on it.  It was 1950.  We crossed the continent on that cycle, and crossed it several times later by car.

Susan shared some other details about Jane's life.

She and Walt returned to Saratoga several months later, married ("We didn't dare show our faces in town otherwise") and Jane took a variety of jobs, including one as Society Editor for the Saratoga newspaper and another as a supervisor in a radio factory.


Then in 1953, while "cutting up, dancing and raisin' hell at a party," she met Robert F. Butts, an artist who was working on the Mike Hammer comic strip with someone Jane knew and had shown up at the party as a lark.  Jane was twenty-four and married; Rob was a thirty-four-year-old bachelor.


"I took one look at him and that was it," Jane told me years later.  "Not long after that—I mean, we hadn't even kissed or touched or anything—I told him, 'I'm leaving town and I'm leaving with you or without you, so make up your mind.'  And Robbie felt the same, and he did the honorable thing, you know, and talked with Walt, and told him that we were leaving, and you know, Walt was relieved . . ."


She and Rob drove to Marathon, Florida, to file for Jane's divorce, and were married on December 27, 1954.

The couple lived in Tenafly, New Jersey, commuting to New York City, where Rob found office work in the comic book field.  They moved to Rob's hometown of Sayre, Pennsylvania when a New York City job interview at a company that produced labels and advertising designs for clothing resulted with Rob being hired as artist for a facility located in the small town.

More details are provided in Conversations With Seth, Volume One with Susan mentioning jobs that Jane had: "At one point Jane sold Avon products and kitchen knives by bicycle . . ."  During this period Jane wrote 'science fantasy' short stories and novellas for magazines.  Accompanying her first published short story in a 1956 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine, editor Anthony Boucher referred to Jane as "a stunning little brunette who ranks high among what [writer Cyril] Kornbluth calls Boucher's Belletristic Beauties . . . she can write—freshly, imaginatively, and sounding (God bless her!) like no one else in or out of our field."  Susan mentioned that this magazine bio is "to modern eyes mind-bendingly sexist."
 
The couple moved in 1960 to Elmira, where Rob worked at a greeting card company and Jane in an art gallery (1960-64) and later as an aide in a nursery school.  "They found a one-bedroom second-floor apartment . . . with big wraparound bay windows looking out toward the Chemung River, a block away."  Jane's novel The Rebellers was published in 1963 as an Ace double paperback.  That year, Rob had back trouble, their old pet dog Mischa passed over and Jane was having difficulties settling on another book idea.

On the evening of September 9, Jane began working on some poetry.  What happened next was described by Jane in The Seth Material (1970).  "My body sat at the table, my hands furiously scribbling down the words and ideas that flashed through my head . . . Those ideas were only a touchstone for what would come later."

Jane recounted that shortly afterward she began recalling her dreams and "in the next two months I had two vivid precognitive dreams, the first, to my knowledge, that I ever had."  Then: "At a newsstand we noticed a book on ESP.  The words 'Clairvoyant Dreams' popped up from the cover, and we bought it."

Rob suggested Jane write a book about ESP.  At first, she was hesitant as she had no experience with nonfiction.  She recalled Rob telling her: "Couldn't you work out a series of experiments and try them out?  Use yourself as a guinea pig."  The idea made sense to Jane: "I could investigate a subject that intrigued me, and do a book at the same time."

She sent an outline for the book to her publisher and was surprised when there was a quick enthusiastic response.  Jane wrote:

. . . what did I have to lose?  (It wasn't until much later that I remembered that another of Rob's suggestions had launched me into fiction in the first place.)

So we began.  We settled on the Ouija Board first, because it seemed the least complicated of our various experiments.  Our landlady found a board in the attic and we borrowed it.

Susan described the Ouija Board experiments that followed.

They sat in a fully-lighted room, both of Jane's hands on the pointer, one of Rob's hands free to write down whatever they might get.  Much to their surprise and embarrassment, the pointer quickly began spelling out messages, claiming to come from a man named Frank Watts who'd lived in Elmira and died in the 1940s.  

Jane remembered that at that time she and Rob "were much more interested in finding out what made the pointer move than in the messages it gave."  They later learned that a man with the communicator's name was known to have lived in Elmira before his passing in the 1940s.  During the December 8, 1963 Ouija Board session, the messages included the proverb "Consciousness is like a flower with many petals."  Jane and Rob asked Frank if they could "refer back to you on any specific question in the future?"  The response came that "I prefer not to be called Frank . . . That personality was rather colorless . . . I call myself Seth."

Jane wrote in The Seth Material:

Through the whole session I'd been hearing the words in my head before they were spelled, and I'd felt the impulse to speak them.  Now the impulse grew stronger and I grew more determined to fight it.  Yet I was terribly curious.  And what could happen, after all?  I didn't know—and this made me even more curious.

The pointer began to spell out the answer to Rob's question.

IN SOME SUBMERGED MANNER, ALL FRAGMENTS OF A PERSONALITY EXIST WITHIN AN ENTITY, WITH THEIR OWN INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS . . .

The pointer paused.


. . . Actually it was the words that pushed at me—they seemed to rush through my mind.  In some crazy fashion I felt as if they'd back up, piles of nouns and verbs in my head until they closed everything else off if I didn't speak them.  And without really knowing how or why, I opened up my mouth and let them out.  For the first time I began to speak for Seth, continuing the sentences the board had spelled out only a moment before.

Susan appraised: "And thus, from one moment to the next, Jane's life had changed utterly, and her life's work truly began."

In 2018 Jane Roberts can be seen channeling Seth in "The Seth Video" (taped in 1974) available to be viewed in the entirety (59 minutes) on You Tube.  Seth is heard to say: "As I have told you often, there is a spiritual biology within your being and it speaks through each of your moments . . . Your atoms and your molecules and your cells know themselves to be part of All That Is." 
 

Jane Roberts reflected about her life and her destiny to become known as a 'psychic' author in Chapter 6 of The God of Jane.  The chapter is entitled "Goodbye Freudian Flaws, Darwinian Demons, and Crucified Gods."
 

As I went rummaging through my past, I was mildly shocked when my own notes reminded me that Rob and I had been married almost ten years before the Seth sessions started.  From my 1979 vantage point those early years seemed strangely telescoped and shortened, so that I thought of our marriage in one breath and the first Session started in the next—as if there were hardly any time between.  But I know we spent most of those years in our Water Street apartment, both working, painting and writing steadily, buying nothing on credit so that we'd have peace of mind, concentrating on our work.  We went without a car for several years.  We had freedom within the system, we figured, as long as we kept our wants in line.  So even though we just had enough to get by, we felt quite triumphant most of the time.  We were learning our crafts and supporting ourselves.  When I sold a story or Rob sold a painting, we knew that it was all worthwhile.

So I had all that behind me when the Seth sessions started late in 1963, and since then I've acquired those 4,000-some odd hours of trancetime, and more evidence of life's greater dimensions than I could reasonably expect.

Jane admitted that her psychic experience brought realizations that were "shockers" as far as her relationship with the world was concerned.
 

. . . I discovered that psychics were either scoffed at, thought of as frauds, nearly idolized, or supposed to be all-wise and all-knowing — all attitudes that drove me up the wall.  For example, on tour to publicize The Seth Material, Rob and I were almost yanked out of a studio just minutes before we were to go on the air.  A secretary had been unable to establish the whereabouts of Raymond Van Over, the psychologist who wrote the book's Introduction.  The studio suspected that he didn't really exist and that we were "frauds."  Luckily, at the last moment, he was located.  We were allowed to go on the air.  Then, I was bewildered, embarrassed, and confused.  Now I wouldn't have gone on if they'd plied me with gifts.

But the fact is that I was very sensitive to criticism for the very good reason that often I still shared many of the beliefs that stimulated it.  Coming to psychic awareness, strongly gifted in that area, I still carried along with me the beliefs that I'd acquired from my own background and the culture of the times.  And I was always weighing my "new information" against the old.

In the following chapter, Jane wrote: "I'd always thought that the universe knows us no matter who or what we are, and at times that knowledge had risen into vivid emotional awareness."  Another realization expressed in the book is: "We each do experience events as if we were at the center of reality, of course.  That's a psychological fact . . . Each of us must have the focus of the universe turned in our direction at the intersecting point between Being and our particular being, as that universal energy is transformed into our private experience . . . this would apply . . . to each consciousness — to cats, insects, plants, objects that we consider inanimate, and to atoms, whatever their organization."

Jane at times would fondly refer to Susan M. Watkins as "Sue-Belle."  Susan first met Jane Roberts at a 1967 New Year's Eve party at Jane and Rob's apartment.  Her friend Dan had been pressing her for weeks to "meet this woman who spoke, as he put it, for the spirit of a dead person.  By then, Jane had been speaking for Seth for almost exactly four years and had published How to Develop Your ESP Power, which I didn't even know existed."  Susan was 22 at the time.  Eight months later, Dan brought her to another party at Jane's house, insisting that Susan needed to tell Jane about a vivid 'astral projection' Susan had experienced.  After the get-together, Susan telephoned Jane and asked to have 'a talk' with her.  During the visit, Jane invited Susan to join her Thursday night 'beginners' ESP class.

As a class participant, Susan was encouraged by Jane to dedicate herself to her writing and there was a prophetic incident.  When Jane mentioned a short story she had written entitled "The Chestnut Beads," Susan realized that she'd read the story in a science fiction magazine while attending Syracuse University.  Susan accepted this as "a pleasant serendipity" yet she would later find a startling coincidence and "some other rather intriguing connections."
 

In 1978, long after I'd married and divorced Ned Watkins (whom I met in 1968, at Jane and Rob's place), when I was putting together the proposal for Conversations With Seth, it was Jane's editor at Prentice-Hall who pointed out that in The Chestnut Beads, the main character/Jane-figure's child is named Sue Watkins!  Which of course hadn't meant a thing to me when I read it in 1963, or to Jane when she wrote it in 1957, or to either of us when we became friends in 1968.

Jane met Ned Watkins when Jane discontinued the Thursday night ESP class and Susan began attending the Tuesday night class.  She married Ned in February 1969 and their son Sean was born in October.  Susan found the marriage "mismatched" and the couple divorced the following year.  Susan observed about her relationship with Jane:

 

She and I were not girlfriends, or even best friends, in the way those words usually suggest; the center of our common interests precluded that.  To me she was a creative mentor-comrade-mother figure who encouraged my writing and "psychic" abilities and demanded that I take them seriously.


. . . our mutual interests were almost exclusively focused on writing and "psychic" experiences, and in analyzing what those experiences might mean.

The publication of The Seth Material was a commercial success for the publishing company Prentice-Hall, Inc.  Susan remembered Jane and Rob's joy upon receiving her advance from the publishers — circa 1970 $2,500 was a considerable amount of money for them at the time. 

Susan recalled that the idea for Jane's ESP class was originally proposed by an acquaintance who was an Elmira kindergarten teacher following the publication of Jane's first book about Seth: How to Develop Your ESP Power (1966 / later retitled The Coming of Seth).  Jane eventually ran an ad in the local newspaper and the teacher was among the first class participants.  Jane's weekly ESP classes began in September 1967 and lasted until 1975.

  

Jane commented about the class with her Introduction of Conversations With Seth Volume One.
 

. . . Seth also stresses the even greater living art that we can make of our lives, and emphasizes that the creative abilities are devoted not just to specific arts and crafts, but to the entire framework of our lives.  Certainly in those terms, class was as creative as any art form, and it was a kind of psychic theater of the mind with its own dramatic episodes.

And class kept changing, as Sue's book shows.  People came and went through the years.  Sometimes the one-nighters and people passing through outnumbered the regulars.  We could fit only so many people comfortably in that one room, yet I tried to give as many people as possible the opportunity to hear Seth speak.  For that reason I'm amazed when on occasion I hear that some scientist believes that "the whole thing is a fraud," that there is no Seth; or conversely, that I encourage blind belief on the part of my "followers."   The fact is that Seth came through some 300 times over those eight years in full light, responding spontaneously to on-the-spot questions in a way impossible to prepare beforehand.  Though I made a special effort to admit any scientists, very few contacted us.  I think four or five psychologists visited class in that entire eight-year period, and two physicists.  They were great people: But it's too bad that more of their colleagues didn't join them.  Far more professionals contact us now, and we make an effort to see them when possible.  Often Seth comes through during such visits, but between 1967 and 1975, the classes provided a ready-made platform and format for such activity.

Class attendees participated in ongoing E.S.P. experiments during classes in addition to hearing Seth speak through Jane.  Susan described what happened when Jane decided to try 'table-tipping' in a session at the house of student Rachael Clayton where class sometimes was held for a change.
 

"I got all ready and said the sort of thing I thought I should say," Jane recalls, rolling her eyes humorously at the memory.  "I said, 'Spirits—move this table!  Spirits, move this goddamn table!"  And it really took off!  It danced all around the room, our fingers sliding all over the top of it."

"The table started giving messages to people, you know, on the one-tap-for-A scale, with somebody writing these all down . . ."

 
The table-tipping became a recurring phenomenon with Jane mentioning, "Sometimes we'd have two or three tables going at once . . ."

Susan described the evolution of the E.S.P. class in Conversations With Seth Volume One:
 

In the beginning, class interest was mostly concerned with what you might call "basics": discussions on the nature of identity, the "door" or envelope test experiments, table-tipping, life after death, reincarnation, healing.  Jane did occasional psychic readings, and she or Seth sometimes gave past-life impressions as they pertained to questions or remarks brought up in class—although Jane wouldn't allow Seth to come through in class for a long time: The first class session was Jane's 386th trance, in 1968, and was the first time she spoke for Seth without Rob there to take notes.

 
In 1971, a second "phase" of class began—initiated, I think, with the "secrets" sessions [when participants each told a secret] and carried through the reincarnational "dramas," mobility-of-consciousness exercises, the Alpha healing experiments, and, for many of us, a heightened awareness in the dream state.  Jane started speaking the Sumari songs and scenarios in November of that year; Seth Two appeared on the scene and observed that the "experiment" was continuing; and events were rapidly moving out of the realm of theory.

The third stage of class—although all of these stages slid easily into one another and were not obvious at the time—probably had its beginnings in the aftermath of the Flood of 1972, when Hurricane Agnes washed through the Chemung-Susquehannah River Valley, dramatically affecting the lives of everyone in its path.  That June 23rd, Jane and Rob stayed in their apartment with their paintings and manuscripts and the 50 notebooks of the Seth Material, alone in the neighborhood, as the swollen Chemung River crested ten feet deep on Water Street lawns.  When class resumed a month later, we began using Seth's tricky "belief assignments," plunging in depth into our individual reality systems—and, by inference, into mass reality as we know it.

Susan commented about the subject of reincarnation: "Past-life information given by Seth or Jane, divined by others, or acted out in 'drama' form was important for a certain phase of class . . . such information had an emotional validity about it that couldn't be denied, even without the 'past-life' connotations."
 
In one of the Speaking of Jane Roberts Endnotes, Susan described initially unpublished transcripts of Seth material that became known as 'the deleted material.'
 

The Deleted material, mentioned in Rob's notes throughout the published Seth books, refers to the sessions directed to private matters in Jane and Rob's life, or, on occasion, to friends and others who asked for advice.  Rob excised these sessions from the ongoing body of material and placed them in their own notebooks, and as such they form a powerful, intimate examination of the joint reality (as Seth often phrased it) created and lived by one couple—Jane and Rob—and thus demonstrate how each of us does the same.

During two February 1972 evening sessions in a motel room in the Florida keys, Jane's creative self or 'Creator' ("as the voice itself puts it") spoke out.  Susan commented about the voice: ". . . it expresses Jane'e beliefs in explicit, frightening absolutes."  In this transcript, 'Ruburt' is the 'male entity name' that Seth used for Jane.  The passage begins: "All right, call me the Creator, this part of me that's talking.  We're using it to designate what I am."  Here are some other excerpts.
 

I'm composed of your strong drives for creativity.  My purpose is to protect and direct your energies specifically in the areas of writing and painting.
 

I do not want you to go hungry, or to be unhappy.  I do not want you to be in want, but outside of that nothing else concerns me but your work.  
 
My methods have not brought about what I wanted, however.  Now you spend half your time trying to figure them out, and what is wrong with Ruburt—time that you should be working.

 
The God of Jane and Speaking of Jane Roberts chronicle how Jane Roberts knew how fateful was her relationship with Seth and their ceaseless rapport.  Her success as an author enabled her to decline speaking engagements and interviews if she expected the opportunities to be counterproductive to presenting herself and the Seth material in the manner she thought appropriate.  Susan revealed that among the media outlets Jane turned down was the Long John Nebel radio show in New York City 1970 and two invitations from ABC News circa 1981.
 
Another memoir involving the Jane Roberts/'Seth' case is The Road to Elmira Volume One (2011) by Richard Kendall, who was instrumental with "The Seth Video."  In an interview for Conversations With Seth Volume One, Richard recalled a memorable moment in class that occurred after he admitted having used heroin.  Richard commented: ". . . it's like I've just been trying to recapture forever the 'lost joys of youth.'"  Seth is quoted to have told him at the time: "Now, we will see that you do, so that you will see that there are many ways to break an egg and also so that you will not have to look back for the rest of your life with envy toward the ecstasies of your youth."  Richard commented that the statement gave him the exhilarating feeling that "someone, or some-ones" were willing to help him find joy again.

This article is continued with "Jane Roberts/'Seth': Developments in the Sessions 1964-1969 (from The Seth Material)".

Jane Roberts/'Seth': Developments in the Sessions 1964-1969 (from The Seth Material)

In The Seth Material (1970), the transcendental communicator bringing messages via a Ouija board to Jane Roberts and her husband Rob Butts is quoted as having said on December 8, 1963:
 

You may call me whatever you choose.  I call myself Seth.  It fits the me of me, the personality more clearly approximating the whole self I am, or am trying to be.  Joseph is your whole self, more or less, the image of the sum of your various personalities of the past and of the future.

 

The preceding Ouija board message had been: "To God, all names are his name."

Rob had been the one asking the questions.  A week later, Jane began speaking for 'Seth' during sessions in a trance state.  Seth used the name 'Ruburt' when referring to Jane.  The trance dictation sessions for Seth became a familiar part of the couple's life.

The details about the sessions progressively become more elaborate.  Jane mentioned: "Seth gave us a detailed account of two past lives and began a reincarnational history of Rob's family.  The material contained some excellent psychological insights; using them, we found ourselves getting along much better  with our relatives."  Then, an experimental seance guided by Seth on January 2, 1964 confronted Jane and Rob with phenomena that included their seeing alterations in their own mirror images.  After the seance, Jane found herself appalled and upset: "Actually, for the first time in our lives we found ourselves experiencing events that we couldn't explain, and doubting the obvious evidence of our senses—an uncomfortable spot for anyone."
 

It hadn't been a month yet since we began with the Ouija board.  Our ideas of what was possible were being turned topsy-turvy.  We decided to hold one other session to see what Seth had to say about the affair, and again we considered dropping the experiments, book or no book.


The next night we held what we thought might be our last session.  After it, we knew that we were committed, and to us the session really marks the beginning of the Seth Material, the end of the preliminary data.

For the first time Seth really "came through" as a definite other personality, laughing and joking.  Rob just couldn't believe that he was speaking to me, in any ordinary terms.  But more than this, Seth's long monologue on the nature of reality captivated and intrigued us.  We had no idea that it was actually a highly simplified explanation, cleverly geared toward our own level of understanding at the time.  It made a tremendous impression on us nonetheless.

 
Jane mentioned: "It was at this session that Seth suggested we hold sessions twice a week, saying that a schedule was far better than spasmodic activity." 

The following is an early quotation of Seth about the subject of time.
 

The study of time will teach you about the nature of fifth dimension also.  Our imaginary wires composed of solidified vitality are fluid, I hope you understand this, even while they are solidified.  For solidity is illusion.

Jane reflected —

For a while I think I spent half the time trying to psychoanalyze Seth and the other half trying to analyze myself.

 
In the final chapter of The Seth Material, Jane acknowledged that she didn't claim that the material represents "pure, undistorted knowledge" and mentioned about Seth: ". . . he is most concerned that the material be as little contaminated by distortions as possible."  Seth is quoted about the subject of distortions from what was designated as the 463rd session:
 

Now whether or not a medium is in a trance that is as deep as the Atlantic Ocean, the medium will not be a pure channel.  The ego simply will be bypassed, but the other layers of the self, and the neurological structures particularly, will continue to operate as always.  They will be altered by the perceptions that pass through them.
 

The words I speak to you transmit information, but the words are not the information, only the verbal carriers of it.

Information can rarely flow like crystal-clear water, with the medium [as] a faucet to be turned off and on at will.  It must be sifted through the layers of the medium's personality.  The nervous system reacts to the data even as it translates it.  Nothing is neutral in those terms.  The information is received and translated, as it must be, into mechanisms which the nervous system can handle and interpret.  Like any perception, the information then becomes a part of the nervous system's structure.  It cannot be otherwise.

 
The 'distortions' commentary reminds the reader of the necessity of thinking and discriminating when considering perspectives of metaphysical aspects of reality.  The transcript for Session 34 on March 11, 1964 in The Early Sessions Book 1 (1997) includes the response to Rob's question, "Are all religions distortive?"
 

All religions are distortive.  For that matter much of your science is distortive.  Both arrive at approximations, at best, of reality.  Religion has been the cause of much prejudice and cruelty, but the bomb over Hiroshima was not caused by the Catholic Saint Theresa showering down any roses.  The distortions in science and religion have been truly disastrous.  I will go into this upon another occasion.
 
Science is apt to turn into another religion, if it has not done so already.  Any fanaticism is truly vicious, one-sided, limiting, and causes an alarming shrinkage of focus that is explosive and dangerous.  And I will have more to say about that later."

 
A 1968 session recounted in Chapter Seventeen of The Seth Material is introduced with Jane recalling: "By now I was used to Seth.  The sessions, so strange at first, were a familiar part of our lives.  There was a lot I didn't understand—there still is . . . we settled down for our usual Monday night session . . . I sat in my rocker.  Rob sat on the couch as usual, taking notes.  According to Rob, Seth's voice was unusually powerful that night . . . Seth began the session, our 406th, by telling Rob the direction the material would take in following years."  Seth is quoted:
 

"You have been given a sketchy outline, but we have time to fill it in," he said, smiling.  "For that matter, the outline itself is scarcely completed. . . . We want to deal with the nature of reality as it exists within your camouflage system and within other systems, and to study the overall characteristics that pertain to it, regardless of any given materialization.

"Some of this material will automatically answer many questions with which you have been concerned—problems with which your scientists have been dealing.  We will discuss the interrelationship that exists between all systems of reality, including certain points of contact that include them all.  These various points can be mathematically reduced, and will, in some future of yours, serve as contact points, taking the place of space travel in some cases."

This material ran several pages, as Seth discussed the future content of our sessions.  Right after this we took our first break.  Neither of us realized, even at this point, that the session would be any different from the usual.  As soon as we resumed, however, I suddenly felt a powerful surge of energy flow through me, so that inside it "I" seemed almost lost and swept away.

I couldn't tell Rob what I was experiencing, of course, but he began to suspect that something was happening.  Seth became very emphatic, watching Rob closely for one thing.  For another, Seth began to stress each word.

"If you keep these channels open and free, you will get material that is as undistorted as possible," he said.  "Ruburt's range is an excellent one, and the plane of reality in which I have my existence is far beyond those to which persons in the physical system usually have access. . . . You and he must see to it that Ruburt does not color his reading experiences through reading material that is distorted.  This [kind of material ] has its purposes, and it does do some good, explaining reality in terms that people can understand, for the props and fantasies are familiar ones.  There is no necessity for them here, however."  He continued, suggesting that I stay away from books that "deal exclusively with conventional religious subjects, interpreting reality in those limited terms."

At this point, Rob became aware of the new and rather odd energy in Seth's voice as his delivery grew more powerful.  My open eyes were very dark.  Rob began to look up whenever he could snatch a moment from note-taking.

Seth said, "We will make an effort in the future to give you both some direct experience in concepts.  These experiments will run along with, and closely follow, the vocalized expression of the concepts involved.  They will give you some small glimmering of the unfortunate yet necessary loss of meaning that occurs when any concept must be communicated in physical terms.  This will be a different kind of in-depth learning, a rather unique and original development that will be as devoid as possible of stereotyped symbols, which are usually almost automatically superimposed on such experiences.  Do you understand?"

"Yes," Rob said, but he spoke almost automatically; the delivery had quickened, and he was having trouble keeping up with the notes.  Later we were to read that above paragraph over many times when—as you'll see shortly—I found myself almost "in over my head."

Seth's voice continued to get stronger.  "I am the Seth that I say that I am, but I am also more.  The Seth personality that is part of me is the portion that can most clearly communicate with you.  Do you follow me?"

Rob nodded, "Yes," he said again.

"The Seth portion of me has been intimately connected with you both, and so, in that respect, have I.  This is closely related to the definition of a personality energy essence, from which, of course, all personalities spring."

The voice became even more powerful.  Rob thought of asking Seth to slow down, but he wasn't sure what was happening, and thought it best not to interrupt.

"There is a particular corner within Ruburt's personality, also deflected into your own, that allows him rather clear access to informational channels most difficult to reach from your system.  During this session, and at this moment, the contact is particularly good.  There is also access to energy far beyond that which is usually experienced.  Ruburt sensed this in the past, and feared to open these channels until he felt himself suitably ready.

"There exists what could almost be compared to a psychological and psychic warp in dimensions, and that corner of Ruburt's personality is an apex point at which communication and contact can take place."

Then, to Rob's surprise, Seth told him to end the session.  Rob was to follow the procedure given, recently, to end my trance.  (Just lately I had begun going into particularly deep trances compared to earlier ones, and Seth had suggested that Rob call out my name three times.)  Seth said, "This evening you have reached somewhat beyond the personality by which I usually make myself known to you.  Even if I continue to speak, end the trance."

Rob called me several times, getting no response.  Then he touched my shoulder and I jumped rather violently.  This interrupted the  trance state.  I didn't know what was going on either.  The powerful energy kept flowing through me.  If I stood up as if I'd go flying through the wall, propelled by this force.  My head felt huge, as if my ears were out several feet.  This last sensation wasn't new; I'd had it in some Psy-Time experiences.  But trying to contain that energy was something else.

I shook my head, "Wow.  If I ever had any doubts . . . whatever's going on, it's not coming from me, not from my own personality."  Later in my own notes I wrote, "tremendous energy seemed to flow through me, with the definite certainty—that God—that this was coming from beyond me, and was automatically translated into words at my end.  I feel this as significant a development—almost—as the original Seth session.  The sense of contact was undeniably there.  The feeling I had was that I really was in touch with some all encompassing reality."

The excerpts below are from the transcendental communication transcripts of two following sessions as presented in Chapter Seventeen of The Seth Material. 

"There are reasons why these particular connections have been made.  There are events that unite us and that have served as turning points in the development of our various personalities.  In some strange manner, what I am now is linked to what you are."

"This communication, while taking place in your time, is nevertheless responsible in other dimensions for what you would call future developments in your own personalities which you can, in turn, contact.  I look back on you as the selves from which I sprang, yet I am more than the sum of what you will be when you are finished with the dimensions and times that I have known.

"For I have sprung entirely away from you and would be alien in your terms.  That you can even contact me is a most remarkable development.  Yet had you not been able to contact me, I would not be what I am."

Here the voice was very distant, high and clear, so unlike the usual Seth voice that Rob was still rather taken back.  "I am more, however, than this portion of me that you contact, for it is only one portion of me that experienced that reality."

"I have done my best to give you an understanding as a basis for future sessions.  Seth as you knew him will also be Seth as you know him, for whether or not I speak as myself or through him, he is still the intermediary and the connection between us.  More, he will still appear as you have known him.  There are necessary emotional elements that are uniquely his own.

"My personality structure is far different—very rewarding to me but unfamiliar to you. . . . I do not want you to feel that I have taken away a friend.  I am also a friend.  In many ways I am the same friend.  Other portions of me are concerned elsewhere, for I am aware of my own existence in other dimensions and keep track of them and direct my many selves."

"I have told you who we are.  We are Seth, and whenever we have spoken we have been known as Seth.  The entity had its beginning before the emergence of your time.  It was instrumental, with many other entities, in the early formation of energy into physical form.  We are not alone in this endeavor, for through your centuries other entities like us have also appeared and spoken."

"You grow through my memory as a tree grows up through space, and my memory changes as you change.  My memory of you includes your probable selves, and all of those coordinates exist simultaneously in a point that takes up no space. . . ."

This article is continued with "Jane Roberts/'Seth': Developments In the Sessions 1971 (from Seth Speaks)".

Jane Roberts/'Seth': Developments in the Sessions 1971 (from Seth Speaks)

 

Following The Seth Material (1970), the teachings continued with Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul (1972).  The source of Seth Speaks is a series of trance dictation sessions with the intended outcome being an entire book written by Seth.  The transcendental communicator known as 'Seth' had previously commented on one occasion:

 

"You are cocreators.  What you call God is the sum of all consciousness, and yet the whole is more than the sum of Its parts.  God is more than the sum of all personalities, and yet all personalities are what He is.

"There is constant creation.  There is within you a force that knew how to grow you from a fetus to a grown adult.  This force is part of the innate knowledge within all consciousness, and it is a part of the God within you."


"There were three men whose lives became confused in history and merged, and whose composite history became known as the life of Christ [the historical Jesus]."

The predicament of an individual unit of consciousness within All That Is (you or me) is further elucidated in Seth Speaks.
 

Those who understand thoroughly that reality is self-created will have least difficulty.  Those who have learned to understand and operate in the mechanics of the dream state will have great advantage.  A belief in demons is highly disadvantageous after death, as it is during physical existence.  A systematized theology of opposites is also detrimental.  If you believe, for example, that all good must be balanced to evil, then you bind yourself into a system of reality that is highly limiting, and that contains within it the seeds of great torment.


There are systems of probability that are not connected with your own system at all, much more advanced than any you presently imagine, and in these, the truths of which I have been speaking are well known.  In them individuals creatively and purposely create realities, knowing how to do so and giving full rein to the creative abilities of consciousness.


Throughout your reincarnational existences you expand your consciousness, your ideas, your perceptions, your values.  You break away from self-adopted restrictions, and you grow spiritually as you learn to step aside from limiting conceptions and dogmas.

The transcript of one session in Chapter 21 is presented in this article.  There are also some excerpts of following session transcripts in Chapter 22, the culminating chapter preceding Appendix session transcripts.  I am referencing the 1994 edition of Seth Speaks and included are some of the notes (in italics and parentheses) about the sessions as recorded by Robert F. Butts, the husband of Jane Roberts or 'Ruburt' as she was called by Seth.

SESSION 586, JULY 24, 1971,

9:01 P.M. SATURDAY

Now: Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

(Smiling): And welcome back. . . . Now give me a moment, and we will begin by resuming our chapter on religion.

Ideas of good and evil, gods and devils, salvation and damnation, are merely symbols of deeper religious values; cosmic values if you will, that cannot be translated into physical terms.

These ideas became the driving themes of these religious dramas of which I have spoken.  The actors may "return," time and time again, in different roles.  In any given historic religious drama, therefore, the actors may have already appeared on the historic scene in your past, the prophet of today being the traitor of the past drama.

These psychic entities are real, however.  It is quite true to say that their reality consists not only of the core of their own identity, but also is reinforced by those projected thoughts and the feelings of the earthly audience for whom the drama is enacted.

Psychic or psychological identification is of great import here and is indeed at the heart of all such dramas.  In one sense, you can say that man identifies with the gods he has himself created.  Man does not understand the magnificent quality of his own inventiveness and creative power, however.  Then, say that gods and men create each other, and you come even closer to the truth; but only if you are very careful in your definitions — for how, exactly, do gods and men differ?

The attributes of the gods are those inherent within man himself, magnified, brought into powerful activity.  Men believe that the gods live forever.  Men live forever, but having forgotten this, they remember only to endow their gods with this characteristic.  Obviously, then, beyond these earthly historic religious dramas, the seemingly recurring tales of gods and men, there are spiritual realities.

Behind the actors in the dramas, there are more powerful entities who are quite beyond role-playing.  The plays themselves, then, the religions that sweep across the ages — these are merely shadows, though helpful ones.  Behind the frame of good and evil is a far deeper spiritual value.  All religions, therefore, while trying to catch "truth" must to some large degree fear its ever eluding them.

The inner self alone, at rest, in meditation, can at times glimpse portions of these inner realities that cannot be physically expressed.  These values, intuitions, or insights are given each to each according to his understanding, and so the stories told about them will often vary.

For examples, the main character in a religious historical drama may or may not consciously be aware of the ways in which such information is given to him.  And yet it may seem to him that he does know, for the nature of a dogma's origin will be explained in terms that this main character can understand.  The historical Jesus knew who he was, but he also knew that he was one of three personalities composing one entity.  To a large extent he shared in the memory of the other two.

The third personality, mentioned many times by me, has not in your terms yet appeared, although his existence has been prophesied as the "Second Coming" (Matthew 24).  Now these prophecies were given in terms of the current culture at that time, and therefore, while the stage has been set, the distortions are deplorable, for this Christ will not come at the end of your world as the prophecies have been maintaining.

He will not come to reward the righteous and send evildoers to eternal doom.  He will, however, begin a new religious drama.  A certain historical continuity will be maintained.  As happened once before, however, he will not be generally known for who he is.  There will be no glorious proclamation to which the whole world will bow.  He will return to straighten out Christianity, which will be in a shambles at the time of his arrival, and to set up a new system of thought when the world is sorely in need of one.

By that time, all religions will be in severe crisis.  He will undermine religious organizations — not unite them.  His message will be that of the individual in relation to All That Is.  He will clearly state methods by which each individual can attain a state of intimate contact with his own entity; the entity to some extent being man's mediator with All That Is.

By 2075, all of this will be already accomplished.

You may make a note here that Nostradamus saw the dissolution of the Roman Catholic Church as the end of the world.  He could not imagine civilization without it, hence many of his later predictions should be read with this in mind.

The third personality of Christ will indeed be known as a great psychic, for it is he who will teach humanity to use those inner senses that alone make true spirituality possible.  Slayers and victims will change roles as reincarnational memories rise to the surface of consciousness.  Through the development of these abilities, the sacredness of all life will be intimately recognized and appreciated.

Now there will be several born before that time who in various ways will rearouse man's expectations.  One such man has already been born in India, in a small province near Calcutta, but his ministry will seem to remain comparatively local for his lifetime.

Another will be born in Africa, a black man whose main work will be done in Indonesia.  The expectations were set long ago in your terms, and will be fed by new prophets until the third personality of Christ does indeed emerge.

He will lead men behind the symbolism upon which religion has relied for so many centuries.  He will emphasize individual spiritual experience, the expansiveness of soul, and teach man to recognize the multitudinous aspects of his own reality.

Now you may take your break.

("Thank you."

(9:37.  Seth spoke humorously about break, since the pace had been mostly fast, with few pauses.  Jane's trance had been good.  I had to work harder than usual taking notes because I was out of practice; I also discovered I'd temporarily forgotten some of the symbols I use in my own version of Speedwriting.

(During the break Jane read over parts of Chapter Eighteen of The Seth Material, then announced that she thought there was a contradiction, between that material—originally from the 491st session on July 2, 1969—on the three Christs, and the information given by Seth this evening.  Here are the paragraphs in question from pages 246-247 of the chapter on "The God Concept":

("There were three men whose lives became confused in history and merged, and whose composite history became known as the life of Christ. . . . Each was highly gifted psychically, knew of his role, and accepted it willingly.  The three men were a part of one entity, gaining physical existence in one time.  They were not born on the same date, however.  There are many reasons the entity did not return as one person.  For one thing, the full consciousness of an entity would be too strong for one physical vehicle.  For another, the entity wanted a more diversified environment than could otherwise be provided.

(The entity was born once as John the Baptist, and then he was born in two other forms.  One of these contained the personality that most stories of Christ refer to. . . . I will tell you about the other personality at a later time.  There was constant communication between these three portions of one entity, though they were born and buried at different dates.  The race called up these personalities from its own psychic bank, from the pool of individualized consciousness that was available to it."

(I too had begun wondering.  All along we'd been thinking the three personalities making up the Christ entity had already lived and died, but now here Seth was talking about the third personality returning in the next century.  What was the explanation?  We weren't upset; yet we did feel uneasy as the session resumed at 9:57.)

Now: Let us resume.

The third historical personage, already born in your terms, and a portion of the entire Christ personality, took upon himself the role of a zealot.

This person had superior energy and power and great organizing abilities, but it was the errors that he made unwittingly that perpetuated some dangerous distortions.  The records of that historical period are scattered and contradictory.

The man, historically now, was Paul or Saul.  It was given to him to set up a framework.  But it was to be a framework of ideas, not of regulations; of men, not of groups.  Here he fell down, and he will return as the third personality, just mentioned, in your future.

In that respect, however, there are not four personalities.

Now Saul went to great lengths to set himself as a separate identity.  His characteristics, for example, were seemingly quite different from those of the historical Christ.  He was "converted" in an intense personal experience — a fact that was meant to impress upon him the personal and not organizational aspects.  Yet some exploits of his in his earlier life have been attributed to Christ — not as a young man, but earlier.

All personalities have free will and work out their own challenges.  The same applied to Saul.  The organizational "distortions," however, were also necessary within the framework of history as events are understood.  Sal's tendencies were known, therefore, at another level.  They served a purpose.  It is for this reason, however, that he will emerge once again, this time to destroy those distortions.

Now he did not create them on his own, and thrust them upon historical reality.  He created them in so far as he found himself forced to admit certain facts: In that world at that time, earthly power was needed to hold Christian ideas apart from numberless other theories and religions, to maintain them in the middle of warring factions.  It was his job to form a physical framework; and even then he was afraid that the framework would strangle the ideas, but he saw no other way.

("Why the two names, Paul and Saul?")

He was called both.  When the third personality reemerges historically, however, he will not be called the old Paul, but will carry within him the characteristics of all the three personalities.

(Jane paused again.  "Can I ask you a very stupid question?")

You may.

(There followed a short exchange between Seth and me, which isn't recorded verbatim because it was too rapid.  I was interested in learning whether, and when, the three personalities of the Christ entity had met as physical beings.  It seemed that superior psychic interactions would have taken place among them, and I wanted to know more about this.  Jane, as Seth, listened politely to my groping questions.)

It is easy to see that you have no knowledge of the Bible —

("True.")

— for this would be fairly apparent to those who have.

Paul tried to deny knowing who he was, until his experience with conversion.  Allegorically, he represented a warring faction of the self that fights against his own knowledge and is oriented in a highly physical manner.  It seemed he went from one extreme to another, being against Christ and then for him.  But the inner vehemence was always present, the inner fire, and the recognition that he tried for so long to hide.

His was the portion that was to deal with physical reality and manipulation, and so these qualities were strong in him.  To some extent they overruled him.  When the historical Christ "died," Paul was to implement the spiritual ideas in physical terms, to carry on.  In so doing, however, he grew the seeds of an organization that would smother the ideas.  He lingered after Christ, [just] as John the Baptist came before.  Together the three spanned some time period, you see.

John and historical Christ each performed their roles and were satisfied that they had done so.  Paul alone was left at the end unsatisfied, and so it is about his personality that the future Christ will form.

The entity of which these personalities are part, that entity which you may call the Christ entity, was aware of these issues.  The earthly personalities were not aware of them, although in periods of trance and exaltation much were made known to them.

Paul also represented the militant nature of man, that had to be taken into consideration in line with man's development at the time.  That militant quality in man will completely change its nature, and be dispensed with as you know it, when the next Christ personality emerges.  It is therefore appropriate that Paul be present.

In the next century, the inner nature of man, with these developments, will free itself from many constraints that have bound it.  A new era will indeed begin — not, now, a heaven on earth, but a far more sane and just world, in which man is far more aware of his relationship with his planet and of his freedom within time.

Now you may take a break in time.

Notes in the book chronicle questions that Rob had about this new information provided by Seth.  Jane told him the answers to these questions had "come" to her: "She didn't get this information in exact words, she said, but felt it and had to translate it . . ."
 

Now: Let us continue.

Ruburt was correct in the answers he just gave you.

I would like to make certain points clear.  The "new religion" following the Second Coming will not be Christian in your terms, although the third personality of Christ will initiate it.

This personality will refer to the historical Christ, will recognize his relationship with that personality; but within him the three personality groupings will form a new psychic entity, a different psychological gestalt.  As this metamorphosis takes place, it will initiate a metamorphosis on a human level also (emphatically), as man's inner abilities are accepted and developed.

The results will be a different kind of existence.  Many of your problems now result from spiritual ignorance.  No man will look down upon an individual from another race when he himself recognizes that his own existence includes such membership also.

No sex will be considered better than the other, or any role in society, when each individual is aware of his own or her own experience at many levels of society and in many roles.  An open-ended consciousness will feel its connections with all other living beings.  The continuity of consciousness will become apparent.  As a result of all this the social and governmental structures will change, for they are based upon your current beliefs.

Human personality will reap benefits that now would seem unbelievable.  An open-ended consciousness will imply far greater freedom.  From birth, children will be taught that basic identity is not dependent upon the body, and that time as you know it is an illusion.  The child will be aware of many of its past experiences, and will be able to identify with the old man or woman that in your terms it will become.

Many of the lessons "that come with age" will then be available to the young, but the old will not lose the spiritual elasticity of their youth.  This itself is important.  But for some time, future incarnations will still be hidden for practical reasons.

As these changes come about, new areas will be activated in the brain to physically take care of them.  Physically then, brain mappings will be possible in which past-life memories are evoked.  All of these alterations are spiritual changes in which the meaning of religion will escape organizational bounds, become a living part of individual existence, and where psychic frameworks rather than physical ones form the foundations for civilization.

Man's experience will be so extended that to you the species will seem to have changed into another.  This does not mean there will not be problems.  It does mean that man will have far greater resources at his command.  It also presupposes a richer and far more diverse social framework.  Men and women will find themselves relating to their brethren, not only as the people that they are, but as the people that they were.

Family relationships will show perhaps the greatest changes.  There will be room for emotional interactions within the family that are now impossible.  The conscious mind will be more aware of unconscious material.

I am including this information in this chapter on religion because it is important that you realize that spiritual ignorance is at the basis of so many of your problems, and that indeed your only limitations are spiritual ones.

The metamorphosis mentioned earlier on the part of the third personality, will have such strength and power that it will call out from mankind these same qualities from within itself.  The qualities have always been present.  They will finally break through the veils of physical perception, extending that perception in new ways.

Now, mankind lacks such a focus.  The third personality will represent that focus.  There will be, incidentally, no crucifixion in that drama.  That personality will indeed by multidimensional, aware of all its incarnations.  It will not be oriented in terms of one sex, one color, or one race.

For the first time, therefore, it will break through the earthly concepts of personality, liberating personality.  It will have the ability to show these diverse effects as it chooses.  There will be many who will be afraid to accept the nature of their own reality, or to be shown the dimensions of true identity.

For several reasons, as mentioned by Ruburt, I do not want to give any more detailed information as to the name that will be used, or the land of birth.  Too many might be tempted to jump into that image prematurely.

Events are not predestined.  The framework for this emergence has already been set, however, within your system of probabilities.  The emergence of this third personality will directly affect the original historical drama of Christ as it is now known.  There is and must be interactions between them.

You may take your break, or end the session as you prefer.

("We'll take the break.")

The session briefly resumed with some banter about chapter headings for Seth Speaks along with some remarks about Rob having missed an ESP class.  Seth invited Rob to have some further personal sessions while continuing the book sessions.  Seth's final words for Session 586 were: "My fondest regards then, and good evening.  It's always a pleasure."

A chapter outline for Seth Speaks as given by Seth mentioned a plan to speak about "my own relationship with the personality you call Seth Two, and with multidimensional consciousness far more evolved than I."  This became Chapter 22 with Seth giving accounts of Earth incarnations: "In the historical time of Christ, I was a man called Millenius, in Rome."  He was a merchant whose wares included bells for donkeys.  Seth also mentioned: "Much later in your terms I would end up as a minor pope in the third century, meeting again some of those I had known — and if you will forgive a humorous note, once more familiar with the sound of bells."

Seth continued:
 

It is not my purpose to go into my past existences in any great detail, but to use them to make certain points.  First of all, I have been many times both man and woman, and I have immersed myself in various occupations, but always with the idea of learning so that I could teach.  I had a firm background in physical existence, therefore, as a prerequisite for my present 'work.'

I did not play the part of any towering personality of historical note, but became experienced in the homey and intimate details of daily life, the normal struggle for achievement, the need for love.  I learned the unutterable yearning of father for son, son for father, husband for wife, wife for husband, and fell headlong into the intimate webs of human relationships.  Before your idea of history, I was a Lumanian, and was later born in Atlantis.

Using your historical reference, I returned at the time of the cavemen, operating as a Speaker.  Now I have always been a Speaker, regardless of my physical occupation.  I have been a spice merchant in Denmark, where I knew Ruburt and Joseph.  In several lives I was black — once in what is now called Ethiopia, and once in Turkey.

My lives as monks followed my experience as a pope, and in one of these, I was a victim of the Spanish Inquisition.  My experience in female lives varied from that of a plain Dutch spinster to a courtesan at the time of the biblical David, to several existences as a humble mother with children.

In this chapter, Seth is quoted during the August 2, 1971 session:
 

The following paragraphs will be written by another personality, who stands relatively in the same position to me as I stand to the woman through whom I am now speaking.

(Pause at 11:51.  I now watched a transformation begin to take place in Jane, as our familiar Seth retreated and Seth Two began to come to the fore.  At the same time I knew that subjectively Jane was experiencing the feeling of a "cone" or "pyramid" coming down on the top of her head.  Jane has often told me that whereas she feels Seth come to her in a very warm and alive and friendly manner, she feels her consciousness going out of herself to meet Seth Two — "up the invisible pyramid like a draft up a flue."  She doesn't know where she goes or how she gets back.  Her body seems to be left behind.)


We are the voices who speak without tongues of our own.  We are sources of that energy from which you come.  We are creators, yet we have also been created.  We seeded your universe as you seed other realities.

We do not exist in your historical terms, nor have we known physical existence.  Our joy created the exaltation from which your world comes.  Our existence is such that communication must be made by others to you.

Verbal symbols have no meaning for us.  Our experience is not translatable.  We hope our interest is.  In the vast infinite scope of consciousness, all is possible.  There is meaning in each thought.  We perceive your thoughts as lights.  They form patterns.  (Each syllable was so carefully and separately pronounced.)

Because of the difficulties of communication, it is nearly impossible for us to explain our reality.  Know only that we exist.  We send immeasurable vitality to you, and support all of those structures of consciousness with which you are familiar.  You are never alone.  We have always sent emissaries to you who understand your needs.  Though you do not know us, we cherish you.

Seth is a point in my reference, in our reference.  He is an ancient portion of us.  We are separate but united.  Always the spirit forms the flesh.

A note from Mark Russell Bell: Learning about different cases of transcendental communication presents readers with different articulations of the truths being conveyed.  As reported in a previous article, Paulina Peavy on a 1958 Long John Nebel radio broadcast is heard to channel the following statements:

. . . We are universal beings. We do not place upon ourselves labels as do you to call ourselves John Doe forever for we now, hold your hats — for we have found perpetuity of life.  And it would be very droll if we called ourselves Paulina Peavy for the rest — from now on.  Therefore, we come and many times when you hear one voice you hear a multitude of us.  For we are in a world whereby we have thoughts simultaneously with uncountable legions of us.  We do not give Paulina personal names for us.  She has a name which is her name when she speaks to us. We do not use your names in our world.


We are your elders.  We ages ago were like you, as you.  We have progressed by many eons of time beyond your station and now we exist as a perfected—you would say—seed.  When you see us and we are able to reduce our high frequency waves to come into your sight in your skies; and you see us as flying saucers, we are showing you our planetary form for we are a single cell with one eye.  The original eye.  Out of that single cell we mutate into creature form as you take your birth.


We have never departed you and your world.  And the world is not as you think you see it with your two outer eyes.  You might say the world, id (or "ID"), an atomic nature of matter.  We do not see skies like you see skies.  We see into the eye of the atom.  Even the eye of the atom that you smash.  And you know that when you smash an atom you see volumes of infinity emerging from that microscopic eye.  We indwell, ourselves, our eye — we are interspacial beings coming out, emerging or slowing up our molecular rate that you might perceive us.

For more information about previous blog articles about this subject see "Channeling Cases - Articles and Videos Links Index".  The Jane Roberts/'Seth' case is also a subject of the preceding article.