Jane Roberts - Seth Speaks; The Eternal Validity of the Soul

For Everyone

Seth Speaks

Introduction

This book was written by a personality called Seth, who speaks of himself as an "energy personality essence" no longer focused in physical form. He has been speaking through me for over seven years now, in twice weekly trance sessions.

My psychic initiation really began one evening in September, 1963, however, as I sat writing poetry. Suddenly my consciousness left my body, and my mind was barraged by ideas that were astonishing and new to me at the time. On return to my body, I discovered that my hands had produced an automatic script, explaining many of the concepts that I'd been given. The notes were even titled The Physical Universe as Idea Construction.

Because of that experience, I began doing research into psychic activity, and planned a book on the project. In line with this, my husband, Rob, and I experimented with a Ouija board late in 1963. After the first few sessions, the pointer spelled out messages that claimed to come from a personality called Seth.

Neither Rob nor I had any psychic background, and when I began to anticipate the board's replies, I took it for granted that they were coming from my subconscious. Not long after, however, I felt impelled to say the words aloud, and within a month I was speaking for Seth while in a trance state.

The messages seemed to begin where Idea Construction left off, and later Seth said that my expansion of consciousness experience had represented his first attempt at contact. Since then, Seth has delivered a continuing manuscript that now totals over six thousand typewritten pages. We call it the Seth material, and it deals with such topics as the nature of physical matter, time, and reality, the god concept, probable universes, health, and reincarnation. From the beginning, the obvious quality of the material intrigued us, and it was for this reason that we continued.

Following the publication of my first book in this field, letters came from strangers asking for Seth's help. We held sessions for those most in need. Many of the people involved couldn't attend, since they lived in other parts of the country, yet Seth's advice helped them, and the information he gave by mail concerning individual backgrounds was correct.

Rob has always taken verbatim notes of the Seth sessions, using his own shorthand system. Later in the week he types them and adds them to our collection of Seth material. Rob's excellent notes point up the living framework in which the sessions take place. His support and encouragement have been invaluable.

To our way of thinking, we have kept over six hundred appointments with the universe though Rob would never describe it that way himself. These appointments are kept in our welllighted, large living room, but in deeper terms they take place within the spaceless area of human personality.

I do not mean to imply that we have any cornerstone on truth, or give the impression that we wait breathlessly for the undistorted secret of the ages to gush forth. I do know that each individual has access to intuitional knowledge and can gain glimpses of inner reality. The universe speaks to each of us in this regard. In our case, the Seth sessions are the framework in which this kind of communication takes place.

In The Seth Material, published in 1970, I explained these events and gave Seth's views on a variety of subjects with excerpts from the sessions. I also described our encounters with psychologists and parapsychologists, as we tried to understand our experiences and place them within the context of normal life. The tests we conducted to verify Seth's clairvoyant abilities were also described. As far as we are concerned, he came through with flying colors.

It was extremely difficult to choose a few excerpts on any given topic from Seth's growing body of work. As a result, The Seth Material necessarily left many questions unanswered and many topics unexplored. Two weeks after it was finished, however, Seth dictated the outline for this present manuscript, in which he would be free to state his ideas in his own way, in book form.

Here is a copy of that outline, which was given to us in Session 510, January 19, 1970. As you'll see here, Seth calls me Ruburt, and Rob, Joseph. These names represent our entire personalities as distinguished from our present physically oriented selves.

I am working on some other material just now that you will be given, and so you must bear with me for a few moments. For example, I would like to give you some idea of the contents of my own book. Many issues will be involved. The book will include a description of the way in which it is being written, and the procedures necessary so that my own ideas can be spoken by Ruburt, or for that matter translated at all, in vocal terms.

I do not have a physical body, and yet I will be writing a book. The first chapter will explain how and why.

(By now [Rob wrote in his notes] Jane's pace had slowed considerably, and her eyes were often closed. She took many pauses, some of them long.)

The next chapter will describe what you may call my present environment; my present "characteristics," and my associates. By this I mean those others with whom I come in contact.

The next chapter will describe my work, and those dimensions of reality into which it takes me, for as I travel into your reality I also travel into others, to fulfill that purpose which is mine to fill.

The next chapter will deal with my past in your terms, and some of those personalities that I have been and have known. At the same time I will make it clear that there is no past, present, or future, and explain that there is no contradiction even though I may speak in terms of past existences. This may possibly run two chapters.

The next chapter will give the story of our meeting you (to me), Ruburt and I, from my viewpoint of course, and the ways in which I contacted Ruburt's inner awareness long before either of you knew anything about psychic phenomena, or my existence.

The next chapter will deal with the experience of any personality at the point of death, and with the many variations on this basic adventure. I will use some of my own deaths as examples.

The next chapter will deal with existence after death, with its many variations. Both of these chapters will bear on reincarnation as it applies to death, and some emphasis will also be given to death at the end of the last incarnation.

The next chapter will deal with the emotional realities of love and kinship between personalities with what happens to these during succeeding incarnations, for some fall by the wayside and some are retained.

The next chapter will deal with your physical reality as it appears to me and others like me. This chapter will contain some rather fascinating points, for not only do you form the physical reality that you know, but you are also forming other quite valid environments in other realities by your present thoughts, desires and emotions.

The next chapter will deal with the eternal validity of dreams as gateways into these other realities, and as open areas through which the "inner self' glimpses the many facets of its experience and communicates with other levels of its reality.

The next chapter will deal further with this subject, as I relate the various ways that I have entered the dreams of others, both as an instructor and as a guide.

The next chapter will deal with the basic methods of communication that are used by any consciousness, according to its degree, whether or not it is physical. This will lead up to the basic communication used by human personalities as you understand them, and point out these inner communications as existing independently of the physical senses, which are merely physical extensions of inner perception.

I will tell the reader how he sees what he sees, or hears what he hears, and why. I hope to show through the entire book that the reader himself is independent of his physical image, and I hope, myself, to give him some methods that will prove my thesis to him.