“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The approach that you use in the production of art is instinctively “magical.” It is quite natural for children to play creatively with the various states of their own consciousnesses, to explore the “us-ness” of a seemingly single identity. They play at being historic known characters. They play at being trees or animals or stars. They play at being all of those things. They understand the multiplicity that resides within the idea of single personhood.

From their parents they learn to pare down the dimensions of their own practically accepted personhood. To that extent they cut themselves off from large portions of their own subjectivity. The “us-ness” of a single identity is experienced less and less. It exists, nevertheless. (Long pause.) I told you that at certain levels contradictions would certainly seem to appear, but the us-ness of the self represents an important psychic characteristic. The child’s explorations of its environment are in a fashion quite different from its later adolescent explorations of the world. A child’s curiosity goes out in all directions. In a fashion it psychologically multiplies itself as it goes. Its consciousness spreads out to include all that it perceives, while still retaining a sense of its own singularity.

(9:13.) A child may think “We will go to sleep now”—meaning quite happily that (pause) its own single consciousness also participates in the conscious life and activities of everything else in its environment, so it and the creatures of the night, say, sleep together, and waken together to greet the dawn. In such a way the child actively participates in the consciousness of nature—and I am not speaking of an imaginative or symbolic participation alone, but of an awareness of the multiplicity within itself and of other creatures.

(A note: as of now my original single and/or double spaced typewritten record of the Seth material is 4,636 pages long. [...]

[...] Development comes not from a series of actions strung out along a single line, one before the other in lengthwise fashion. [...] To make this clearer, I have said that action exists within limitless perspectives, and that you are mainly familiar with it as it is materialized along a single line of continuity within the physical system. You experience action then as if you were moving along a single line, each dot on the line representing a moment of your time. [...]

[...] In the dream universe, in all systems of such nature, development is achieved not by traveling your single line, but by delving into that point that you call a moment. [...]

[...] No single time or space dimension could contain that creativity. No single historic past could explain what you are now as an individual or as a member of a species. [...]

You may consider past, present and future then as a single-line delineation of experience in your terms, the line however continuing indefinitely. [...] The single line is merely the surface thread along which you seem to travel. [...]

[...] You would not therefore be forced to follow any particular thread in a single-line fashion.

[...] Working like crazy, really on a creative ‘high.’ Just before supper time I’d been writing about the single yet double universe of self and soul, and the last line had quoted the mortal self:

a single double song

of our single universe, and break

(First Question: “Are you saying there are two objects in the envelope?” Answer: “Or represented on a single object.” Only one item comprised the envelope object, but we don’t know how particularly to break down this single item to comprise two objects. [...]

Or represented on a single object.

[...] As you are given many lives in which to develop and fulfill your abilities, so has the species in those terms been allotted more than the single line of historical development with which you are presently acquainted. [...]

[...] But because their purpose was so single-minded — the avoidance of violence — rather, say, than the constructive peaceful development of creative potential, their experience was highly one-sided. [...]

[...] They would appear as incomprehensibly vast as your single planet would appear to a single fly, who set out to examine it. [...]

[...] In a way, singling out particular attitudes or habits can at times be helpful, for it gives him particular issues to deal with. [...]

History, as you know it, represents but one single light upon which you focus. [...]

(Jane wrote an intuitive dissertation on the wonderworks idea as soon as she received the title; this took up two single-spaced typewritten pages. [...]

The plays seem to be taking place one before the other, and so these communications seem to intensify the false idea that time is a series of moments, passing in a single line from some inconceivable beginning to some equally inconceivable end.

The word “result,” you see, automatically infers cause and effect — the cause happening before the effect, and this is simply one small example of the strength of such distortions, and of the inherent difficulties involved with verbal thought, for it always implies a single-line delineation.

[...] Add to that list the belief that the great artist or writer concentrates upon his or her art so intensely and single-mindedly, and single-heartedly, that the focus itself forces the artist or poet to use those abilities to their utmost, or that great genius demands one-sided vision and a denial of the world. [...]

[...] She’s also been very active in her ESP class this month, with extensive singing in Sumari — which is her own musical trance language¹ — and with long sessions via Seth in each class; the transcripts of some of the latter have run to five or six single-spaced typewritten pages. [...]

“Imagine past, present, and future then as a single-line delineation of experience in your terms; the line, however, continuing indefinitely. [...] The single line [representing physical experience] is merely the surface thread along which you seem to travel. [...]

[...] You would not be forced to follow any particular thread in a single-line fashion.

[...] It is almost impossible to speak of a single, simple action, though I may do so for convenience’s sake.

Our next session then will be concerned further with the nature of action, and I will speak concerning the complexity of what may appear to be a single action.

[...] When Jane and I received the transcript of his material at next week’s class, we saw that it ran to five single-spaced typewritten pages. [...]

[...] She left Jane a single red rose, and wrote a nice note. [...]

As Jane commented afterward, LeRoy Guy said not a single word to us about his reaction to Seth, although I’d watched him pay the same rapt attention to that personality as had many others. [...]