Note: The introductory text in "Changing Personal Reality" was written by Maude Cardwell, PhD. The Seth quotes provided by Dale Mann.

CHANGING PERSONAL REALITY WITH THE SETH/JANE ROBERTS BOOKS

Beginning in the 1980's when PC's first became popular many Seth readers with computers began saving their favorite Seth passages to disk as a quick reference, and also perhaps to share Seth quotes with their friends. Because these quotes were mainly intended for their own personal use these individuals, including myself, didn't foresee a need to include the book title and page numbers as a normal reference since the quotes were not expected to be published within any other text. Then, by the 1990's two things happened. First most of the Seth/Jane Roberts books had gone out-of-print. Second, along came the World Wide Web.

Seth supporters immediately saw the Internet as an excellent means whereby they could not only get together for online discussions and sharing experiences, but as a place where they could also help develop a Seth interest in newcomers. The main problem was, and remains to be, exactly how to help develop someone's interest in the Seth philosophies when you must point to books that are no longer in print?

That's when Seth students began sharing, by biz@ascordia.com, regular mail, or postings to various Internet sites their personal collections of Seth quotes--quotes which, for the most part, do not contain those customary references I mentioned. These collections or accumulations of quotes can be found in various places on the Internet.

I've never met a Seth student who didn't believe in maintaining the integrity of the Seth material, or one who would in any way try to circumvent the normal revenue process due those on the commercial end. And when the clamoring for Seth books becomes large enough, and loud enough then perhaps someone will respond by putting those wonderful books back into print.

Meanwhile, share your Seth quotes with others--specially with those who have no Seth books of their own. By doing so you're "helping" not hindering, the Seth Project.

--A collection of Seth quotes Table of contents

1. Who is Seth?
2. You Form your own Reality
3. The soul
4. Consciousness
5. Good/Evil
6. Comments on fate
7. Peace
8. Purpose of Being
9. Comments to those with a serious illness
10. Death experiences
11. Reincarnation
12. All That Is
13. Inner Self
14. Dreams
15. Past, Present, Future
16. Ego
17. Blessings

1. WHO IS SETH?

The Seth Material is a system of philosophy presented by Jane Roberts and her husband Robert Butts as a consequence of the trance communications of an entity named Seth. The origin of the material, however, is far less significant than its scope. It has logical consistency, and the validation it receives, as millions of people read and use its ideas in their lives, is growing daily. During our current period of worldwide stress and conflicting ideologies, it makes sense of our situation and gives hope. Between 1963 and 1984, Seth communicated through Jane discourses which have appeared in the twenty volumes that comprise the Seth Material.

Seth: "I have been sent to help you, and others have been sent through the centuries of your time, for as you develop you also form new dimensions, and you will help others. I am in this room [speaking to Robert] although there is no object within which you can place me. You have a vehicle to use, a body that you call your own, and that is all. You are as disembodied as I. I come here as though I appeared through a hole in space and time. What you call emotion or feeling is the connective between us."

"Now, there are no limitations or divisions to the self. You can indeed depend upon seemingly unconscious portions of yourself. The seemingly unconscious portions of your body draws energy from food and molecules, from the air to form your body. All this happens because the inner portions of your being operate spontaneously, joyfully, freely; and all of this occurs because your inner self believes in you, often even while you do not believe in it. The you that you consider yourself to be is never annihilated. Your consciousness is not snuffed out, nor is it swallowed, blissfully unaware of itself, in some nirvana. You are as much a part
of a nirvana now as you ever will be. You are in the process of expanding your psychic structure, of becoming a conscious participant with the soul. You are becoming what your soul is.

"There is nothing in your exterior experience that you did not originate within yourself. Interactions with others do occur, yet none occur what you do not attract or draw to you by your thoughts, feelings, attitudes or emotions. In your terms this applies both before, during and after physical life. In a most miraculous fashion you are given the gift of creating your own experiences. 

"In this physical existence you are learning how to handle the inexhaustible energy that is available to you. Some of your feelings and thoughts are translated into objects. These exist in a medium you call space. Others are translated into events that exist in a medium you call time. Both of the concepts of space and time are illusions. They exist only in the physical realm. Since you are
a part of "being," then you in effect give yourself the life that is being lived through you. While physical, while you are in the flesh, you are a portion of nature therefore, not apart from it. You can not strive to be above nature, and still be yourself.

"Beyond myself there is another self and still another, of which I am aware. And that self tells you that there is a reality beyond human reality and experience that cannot be made verbal or translated into human terms."

2. YOU FORM YOUR OWN REALITY

A. According to Seth we create our own reality--literally--through beliefs we hold. This life is only one of many that we live in a variety of times and places. The experiences--both pleasant and distressful--which we encounter are no more real than a dream and appear within our lives as educational devices to demonstrate the consequences of our actions. Because the essence of the universe is love, we are safe and taken care of now and through eternity. We have on-going access to information about the nature of reality and our personal lives, but we must use our conscious minds to evaluate this information and to make decisions. Finally and perhaps most important, there is no authority superior to each person's essential self; Seth's words are merely an attempt to present us with knowledge that we ignore when it comes from our own inner beings.

B. We are multidimensional beings who inhabit many realms and who exist throughout eternity; developing continually into more creative and fulfilled individuals.

C. The universe is of good intent; evil and destruction do not exist except as a scenario. Evidence of evil in the world appears to our senses in order to let us know the consequences of the beliefs we hold, but mankind will awaken from that sadness as from a bad dream.

D. By acknowledging and, whenever possible, following our impulses, we can discover the purpose of our lives and learn how to act in such a way as to benefit both ourselves and the world.

E. There is no authority superior to the guidance of a person's inner self. Seth's words are merely an attempt to present us with the knowledge that we ignore when it comes to our psyches. The entity is the basic self, immortal, nonphysical and the individual is the portion of the whole self that you manage to express physically. Desire, wish, and expectation rule all actions and are the basis for all realities. You create your own reality, there are no exceptions!

Seth: "You create your reality according to your beliefs and expectations, therefore you should examine these carefully. If you do not like some aspect of your world, then examine your own expectations."

"Realize that your physical experience and environment is the materialization of your beliefs. If you find great exuberance, health, effective work, abundance, smiles on the faces of those who you meet, then take it for granted that your beliefs are beneficial. If you see a world that is good, people like you, take it for granted again, that your beliefs are beneficial. But if you find poor health, a lack of meaningful work, a lack of abundance, a world of sorrow and evil, then assume your beliefs are faulty and begin examining them."

"Your world is formed in faithful replica of your own thoughts...If you think positive suggestions to yourself about a situation you send telepathic ammunition for positive use. You must learn to erase a negative thought or picture by replacing it with its opposite."

"You should tell yourself frequently 'I will only react to constructive suggestions.' This gives you positive ammunition against your own negative thoughts and those of others."

"A negative thought, if not erased, will almost certainly result in a negative condition. Say to yourself, 'That is in the past. Now in this new moment, this new present, I am already beginning to change for the better.'"

"It does not do to repress negative thoughts, such as fears, angers, or resentment. They should be recognized, faced and replaced. Recognize resentment when it is felt, and then realize that resentment can be dismissed. Initial recognition must be made. Then you must imagine removing the resentment 'by its roots' and replacing it with a positive feeling."

"You must watch the pictures that you paint with your imagination. Your environment and the conditions of your life at any given time are the direct result of your own inner expectations. If you imagine dire circumstances, ill health or desperate loneliness, these will be "automatically" materialized, for these thoughts themselves bring about the conditions that will give them a reality in physical terms. If you would have good health then you must imagine this as vividly as you fearfully imagine ill health."

"You create your own difficulties. This is true for each individual. The inner psychological state is projected outward, gaining physical reality -whatever the psychological state may be....You cannot escape your own attitudes, for they will form the nature of what you see. If changes are to occur, they must be mental and psychic changes. These will be reflected in your environment.  Negative, distrustful, fearful, or degrading attitudes toward anyone work against the self."

"Using your free will, you have made physical reality into something quite different than what was intended. You have allowed the ego to become overly developed and specialized. You were here to work out problems and challenges, but you were always to be aware of your own inner reality, and of your nonphysical existence. To a large extent you have lost contact with this. You have focused so strongly upon physical reality that it become the only reality that you know."

During one ESP Class session, there was a discussion of "possible use of animals to predict earthquakes, and whether people should feel they need to run away from earthquakes".

Seth: "The animals leave! That sounds like good sense to me. Think about it!... Amid the mad scramble, you DO make your own reality. I admit that sounds too simple, but you will not be caught in an earthquake if you do not want to be, and no one dies who has not decided to do so. You make your own reality, or you do not. And if you do not, then you are everywhere a victim, and the universe must be an accidental mechanism appearing with no reason. So that the miraculous picture you have seen of your body came accidentally into creation, and out of some cosmic accident attained its miraculous complexity. And that body was formed so beautifully for no reason except to be a victim. That is the only other alternative to forming your own reality. You cannot have a universe in between. You have a universe formed WITH a reason, or a universe formed WITHOUT a reason. And in a universe of reason, there are no victims. Everything has a reason or nothing has a reason. So, choose your side!"

3. THE SOUL

Seth: "Your soul was not born yesterday, but before the annals of time as you think of time. In your terms, you are its most latest addition. You are apart of the whole soul, but not yet aware of the greater portions of yourself. The characteristics that were yours at birth were yours for a reason. The inner self chose them. The inner self can even now alter many of them. You did not arrive at birth without a history. Your individuality was always latent within your soul.

"The pattern that is you is written first of all in the psyche, and is then faithfully decoded in your genes and chromosomes. Your you is expressed in flesh, but came first from the psyche which is beyond or outside of flesh. You are awake, alert and participating in many more realities than you know, as your soul expresses itself through you. You are a living picture in flesh of yourself or soul. You project what you think you are outward into flesh.

"It is more correct to think of the soul not as something you have rather, what you are. You frequently consider the soul as a finished thing that belongs to you but is not you. In truth your soul is the most intimate, powerful part of your inner self and is forever changing and growing. Your soul is alive, responsive, curious and in a constant state of becoming. The soul portion of you resides in other dimensions beyond the physical level. The soul portion of you is the most highly motivated, most highly energized, most potent consciousness unit know in any universe. Your soul, the soul that you are, that you are a part of, that soul is a far more creative, miraculous phenomenon that you can possibly imagine. Your soul possesses more wisdom, knowledge, information and strength than you can ever be consciously aware of.

"The soul is not something waiting for you at death, nor is it something you must save or redeem. You cannot lose it. It is indestructible. The fulfillment of the soul is not dependent upon arrivals at any points, spiritual or otherwise. Your own personality as you know it, that portion of you that you consider most precious, most uniquely you, will never be destroyed or lost. If you maintain a limited concept of the soul, then you cannot take advantage of its many abilities that are your own, and to some extent you cut yourself off from the source of your own being and creativity. The soul's abilities will continue to operate, but often in spite of what you believe rather than with your conscious cooperation.

"Your inner self knows its relationship with the soul. You think you perceive exclusively through your five physical senses, and yet you have only to extend your ego idea of reality, and you will find yourself accepting quite readily the existence of non-physical information coming from the soul portions of yourself.

"Having become aware of the true nature of the soul you can consciously begin to draw upon its greater energy, strength and understanding. In so doing your ideas concerning your own nature will change and expand, for you will have removed limitations to your growth. The wonderful results will be felt down to the smallest cells of your body and will effect the most seemingly mundane events of your life.

"You were born into a state of grace. It is impossible for you to leave it. You will die in a state of grace whether or not special words are spoken for you, or water or oil is poured upon your head. You share this blessing with the animals and all other living things. You cannot fall out of grace, nor can it be taken from you. You can ignore it. You can hold beliefs that blind you to its existence. You will still be graced but unable to perceive your own uniqueness and integrity, and blind also to other attributes with which you are automatically gifted."

"You sell yourself short if you believe that you are only a physical organism living within the boundaries cast upon you by time and space....You are a unique individual. You form your physical environment. You are part of all that is. There is no place within you that creativity does not exist."

4. CONSCIOUSNESS

Seth: "Identity and consciousness existed long before your earth was formed....Consciousness is the force behind matter, and it forms many other realities besides the physical one....So much of your energy is used in the physical productions that you cannot afford to perceive any reality but your own."

"Matter is the shape that basic experience takes when it comes into your three-dimensional system. Your dreams, thoughts, expectations, beliefs and emotions are literally transformed into physical matter."

"Every nerve and fiber within the body has an unseen inner purpose. Nerve impulses travel outward from the body, along invisible pathways, in much the same manner that they travel within the body."

"These pathways are carriers of telepathic thoughts, impulses, and desires containing all the codified data necessary for translating any thought or image into physical actuality, altering seemingly objective events."

"This telepathy operates constantly at an "automatic" or subconscious level, providing communication to back up sensory data. Telepathy is the glue that holds the physical universe in position, so that you can agree on the existence and properties of objects."

"The conscious mind was therefore expected to perform alone, so to speak, ignoring the highly intuitive inner information that is also available to it. It was not supposed to be aware of such data. Yet any individual knows quite well that intuitive hunches, inspiration, precognitive information or clairvoyant material has often risen to conscious knowledge. Usually it is shoved away and disregarded because you have been taught that the conscious mind should not hold with such nonsense. However, your conscious mind is meant to look into the exterior world and into the interior one. The conscious mind is a vehicle for the expression of the soul in corporeal terms.

"You must give up any ideas that you have as to the unsavory nature of unconscious activity. You must learn to believe in the goodness of your being. Otherwise you will not explore these other states of your own reality.

"When you trust yourself then you will trust your own dream interpretations -and these will lead you to greater
self-understanding. Your beliefs of good and evil will become much more clear to you, and you will no longer need to project repressed out upon others in exaggerated fashion."

"Many people do not need to listen to my voice because they listen to the voices of the oak trees and the birds, and to the voices of their own being. I am a poor imitation of the voices of your own psyches to which you do not listen. I will be unneeded, and gladly so, when you realize that the vitality and reinforcement and joy are your own, and rise from the fountain of your own beings; when you realize that you do not need me for protection, for there is nothing you need protect yourself against.

"You can become involved now in a new exploration, one in which man's civilizations and organizations change their course, reflecting his good intents and his ideals. You can do this by seeing to it that each step you personally take is 'ideally suited' to the ends you hope to achieve. You will see to it that your methods are ideal. If you do this, your life will automatically be provided with excitement, natural zest and creativity, and those characteristics will be reflected outward into the social, political, economic, and scientific worlds. This is a challenge more than worth the effort...I bid each of you success in that endeavor.

5. GOOD/EVIL

Seth: "You were born with a built-in recognition of your own goodness. You were born with an inner recognition of your rightness in the universe....You are a cooperative species and a loving one. Your misunderstandings, your crimes, and your atrocities, real as they are, are seldom committed out of any intent to be evil, but because of severe misinterpretations about the nature of good, and the means that can be taken towards its actualization.

"....there are certain tendencies, mental stances that you will take about yourself, your body and your life to one degree or another. Many of these will be directly or indirectly connected with old myths and beliefs of your forefathers. Your ideas of good and evil are highly important for instance. (Pause.) Few can escape putting value judgments in these areas. If you consider illness as a kind of moral stigma, then you will simply add an unneeded quality to any condition of ill health."

"Such judgments are simplistic, and ignore the great range of human motivation and experience. If you are bound and determined that "GOD" creates only good, then any physical deficiency, or illness or deformity becomes an affront to your belief, threatens it and makes you angry or resentful."

"Your scientific beliefs tell you that your entire world happened accidentally. Your religions tell you that man is sinful....A generalized fear and suspicion is generated, and life too often becomes stripped of any heroic qualities.

"As long as you believe in the basic evil of man, then you must project upon yourself great punishment. You must see your world destroyed, as so will you have prophets to tell you so, and so they will speak the truth, for they will speak from your own beliefs in the idea of your own evil.

"Now, there will be no holocaust unless you believe that you are so evil that you, as a race must punish yourselves. But there will always be benign old spirits like me that tell you that, although you are bad, you are perfectly bad, and utterly beautiful, and nothing will destroy you unless you are convinced you are, as a race so evil you must be destroyed. And even then, only those who so believe will partake in that probability!

"The prophets speak truly, that speak of doom. They speak truly when they speak from a framework that believes in doom. But that framework is a mere probability that gains its strength only from a belief in evil. So, the prophets felt that belief, and are themselves terrible driven by that belief; and paint dire pictures that reside within the psyche of those who themselves feel
damned.

"There are other directions that your race can take, and I'm trying to point out those directions to you. And if you take those directions, then indeed-in your terms-there will be a birth of a new species-a species that understands its blessed creaturehood, that understands its spirituality, that does not despoil its planet, that purposefully creates the kind of world a sane god would create, a god who has no need for a heaven or a hell!

"Quite simply, a belief in the good without a belief in the evil, may seem highly unrealistic to you. This belief, however, is the best kind of insurance that you can have, both during physical life and afterwards. It may outrage your intellect, and the evidence of your physical senses may shout that it is untrue, yet a belief in good without a belief in evil is actually highly realistic."

"Your beliefs generate emotion. It is somewhat fashionable to place feelings above conscious thoughts, the idea being that emotions are more basic and natural than conscious reasoning is. The two actually go together but your conscious thinking largely determines your emotions, and not the other way around. Your beliefs generate the appropriate emotion that is implied.

"The race must learn the value of the individual man. The race is also learning its dependence upon other species, and beginning to comprehend its part in the whole framework in physical reality. Now: some individuals are being reborn at this time simply to help you understand. They are forcing the issue, and forcing the crisis, for you still have time to change your ways. You are working on two main problems, but both involve the sacredness of the individual, and the individual's relationship with others and with all physically oriented consciousness.

"The problem of war will so oner or later teach you that when you kill another man, basically you will end up killing yourself. The over-population problem will teach you that if you do not have a loving concern for the environment in which you dwell, it will no longer sustain you--you will not be worthy of it. You will not be destroying the planet, you see. You will not be destroying the birds or the flowers, or the grain or the animals. You will not be worthy of them, and they will be destroying you. You have set up the problem for yourselves within the framework of your reference. You will not understand your part within the framework of nature until you actually see yourselves in danger of tearing it apart. You will not destroy consciousness. You will not annihilate the consciousness of even one leaf, but in your context, if the problem were not solved, these would fade from your experience.

"The crisis is a kind of therapy...And you need it now, before your race embarks upon journeys to other physical realities. You must learn your lessons now in your own back yard before you travel to other worlds. So you have brought this upon yourself for that purpose and you will learn.

"If you become so frightened of realities that are not your own; if you take upon yourselves tragedies that do not exist in your reality, in your moment, you weaken your position, and you think you are helping. You must operate from strength, not from weakness. When you stand on a firm shore, you can extend your arm to the man that is in quicksand. You cannot help him by leaping into the quicksand with him, for surely both of you will go down, and he will not thank you. Organize your reality according to your strength. Organize your reality according to your playfulness, according to your dreams, according to your hopes, and then you can help those who organize their reality according to their fears."

6. COMMENTS OF FATE

Seth: "If you accept the possibility of the slightest, smallest, most insignificant accident, then indeed you open a Pandora's Box, for logically, there cannot be simply one small accident in that case but a universe in which accidents are not the exception but the rule. A universe in which, therefore, following logic, your consciousness would appear to be an accidental combination of atoms and molecules without reason or cause that will vanish into nonexistence forever even as, indeed, they would have come from nonexistence. Once you accept, you see, that idea, then if you follow your thought completely enough, you must accept the idea of a random accidental universe, in which you are at the mercy of any accident, in which mind or purpose have little meaning, in which you are at the mercy of all random happenings, such as during a flood or earthquake without reason, without
cause, simply at the whim of an accidental happening.

"Now, people oftentimes live through personal disasters-natural disasters-in which they are pitted against nature as they know it, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes. But there are no accidents, so on other levels they chose those circumstances, whether they realize it or not, through their conscious beliefs.

"And if that is the sort of universe in which you believe you live, then it is a dire and foreboding universe, indeed. In such a universe the individual has little hope for he will return to the nonexistence that he came from, the individual has no control over his destiny, and can be swept aside at any point by random fate, over which he has no recourse.

"All of this can be related to ordinary life. Whenever you think that you have a headache, simply because you have a headache; or you bump into a door; or you have an accident simply because you happen to be in a particular place at a particular time; whenever you feel yourself powerless, then you think accidents just happen and that you have no control over them. The only answer is to realize that you form physical events, individually and en mass. And as I have said time and time again, you form the physical reality that you know.

7. PEACE

Seth: "Your civilization is in sad straits -- not because you have allowed spontaneity or fulfillment to individuals, but because you have denied it, and because your institutions are based upon that premise.

"You think that, left alone, the natural inclinations of man would destroy civilization. Then what, indeed, started civilization, if not the natural inclinations of man? What began the cooperation that allows people to unite even in tribes, if not the natural inclinations of man?

"If you learn to trust your being, then you will be able to trust your institutions and your civilizations. You equate spontaneity with irresponsibility; abandon with evil. If you abandon yourselves to yourselves, then what good would seem to spring out of the heavens of your being?

"Your world is not in dire straits because you trust yourselves, but precisely because you do not. Your social institutions are set up to fence in the individual, rather than to allow the natural development of the individual!

"I come here because it is fun. I have fun when I come here. I do not come here because I feel that I have any great responsibility for your beings or welfare. Who am I to set myself against the innate wisdom of your own individual being, or to take upon my invisible shoulders the great privilege or joyful responsibility for your behavior and destiny?"

"There is nothing more stimulating, more worthy of actualization, than the desire to change the world for the better. That is indeed each person's mission...It is not enough to meditate, or to imagine in your mind some desired goal being accomplished, if you are afraid to act upon the very impulses to which your meditations and imaginings give rise.

"Meditation must be followed by action--and true meditation is action....it takes aggressive energy to send forth thoughts and feelings of peace. So your idea of aggression is completely wrong. Aggression is action, and the thoughts of peace radiated outward take aggression and joy and vitality."

"If you do not like the state of your world, it is you yourselves that must change, individually and en masse. This is the only way that change will be effected."

"The responsibility for your life and your world is indeed yours....You form your own dreams and you form your own physical reality. The world is...the physical materialization of the inner selves which you have formed."

"Your must honor yourselves and see within yourselves the spirit of eternal validity. You must honor all other individuals, because within each is the spark of this validity."

"Do not fall into the old ways that will lead you precisely into the world that you fear. There is no man who hates but that hatred is reflected outward and made physical, and there is no man who loves but that love is reflected outward and made physical."

"The human race is a stage through which various forms of consciousness travel....Yours is a training system for emerging consciousness ... you must first learn to handle energy and see through physical materialization, the concrete result of thought and emotion."

"To pursue certain goals, you pretend that they did not exist. Now, however, your global situation as a race requires the new acquisition of some ancient arts. These can help you become aware again of those inner idealizations that form your private reality and your mass world. These arts are useless if they are not practiced, useless in that they lie ever latent, that they are not brought out into the exterior framework of your world. To use these arts requires first of all the knowledge that beneath the world you know is another; that alongside the focus of consciousness with which you are familiar there are other focuses quite
as legitimate.

8. THE PURPOSE OF BEING

Seth: "Your spirit joined itself with flesh, and in flesh, to experience a world of incredible richness, to help create a dimension of reality of colors and of form. Your spirit was born in flesh to enrich a marvelous area of sense awareness, to feel energy made into corporeal form. You are here to use, enjoy, and express yourself through the body.

"You are here to aid in the great expansion of consciousness. You are not here to cry about the miseries of the human condition, but to change them when you find them not to your liking through the joy, strength and vitality that is within you; to create the spirit as faithfully and as beautifully as you can in flesh."

"In the most basic sense, the purpose of life is being - as opposed to not being. In your system of three-dimensional reality you are learning about mental energy (also called thought energy or psychic energy) and how to use it."

"Knowledge about mental energy and its use is learned by constantly transforming your thoughts and emotions into physical form (your physical reality) and by then perceiving and dealing with the matter and events that are formed."

"From doing this, you are supposed to get a clear picture of your inner development as it is reflected by the exterior environment. You participate in physical reality so that you can operate and experience within this dimension. Here, you can develop your abilities, learn, create, solve problems and help others."

9. COMMENTS TO THOSE WITH A SERIOUS ILLNESS

Seth: "If you cut your finger, it is no accident. If you stub your toe, it is no accident. If you come down with the flu, or with a virus, it is no accident. If you have a chronic physical difficulty, it is no accident. If you are creative, it is no accident. If you get good news, it is no accident. If lovely things happen to you, it is no accident either.

"You form your reality, and this applies all the way up or down the scale, from the consciousness you now have to the tiniest molecule in the tiniest eyelash on your body. It is only when you are not willing to face consciously your own beliefs, and face them through and make distinctions, that seemingly unconscious accidents occur: when all of a sudden you are not as quick as you should be; or, when all of a sudden, your reactions are not as good; when a car comes that should not be there. Each of you have your own ways, and an event that seems horrendous from the outside-from the inside, from your private viewpoints, may be something else entirely.

"You can rid yourself of any illness when you realize that you create and draw such illness to yourself. What you fear most, you draw to yourselves. Now, if you decide to leave this world, that is your right; go in joy and vitality, but go because you know you decided to leave, and not as a victim of a disease that has been given a name. On the other hand if you decide you want to continue to live, then live in your full glory and strength. If you decide to live, then tell yourself you want to live and know the reasons, and your body will repair itself in joy and glory. You are not a victim!

"While such situations as illness are chosen by the personality, the individual is always left to work out its own solution. Complete recovery, illness, or early death are not preordained on the part of the entity [or whole self]. The general situation is set up in response to deep inner involvements. The problem is a challenge set up by the entity for one of its own personalities, but the outcome is up to the personality involved. One does not choose illness per se for a lifetime situation.

"The inner self, as distinguished from the more accessible sub consciousness, is aware of the situation and finds release through frequent inner communications where successes are remembered and re-experienced. The dream state becomes an extremely vivid time, for such experiences assure the personality of its larger nature. It knows it is more than the self that it has for a time chosen to be. You need to learn the power of thought and emotion. Once you realize that your thoughts form reality, then you are no longer a slave to events.

"True self-knowledge is indispensable for health and vitality. The recognition of the truth about the self simply means that you must first find out what you think about yourself subconsciously. If it is a good image, build upon it. If it is a poor one, recognize it as only the opinion you have held of yourself and not an 'absolute state.'"

"You are not your emotions. They flow through you, you feel them and then they disappear. When you try to hold them back they build up."

"You must learn to trust your own spontaneous nature. Your nervous system knows how to react. It reacts spontaneously when you allow it to....In spontaneity there is a discipline that utterly escapes you, and an order beyond any that you know. Spontaneity knows its own order."

"All of nature is spontaneous. Our bodies will be healthy automatically if we do not project false ideas upon them. ... Physical symptoms are communications from the inner self, indications that we are making mental errors of one kind or another. Do not forget that you are a part of the inner self. ... search yourself for the inner problem represented by the symptoms, and measure your progress as the symptoms subside."

10. DEATH EXPERIENCES

Seth: "According to what you have been taught, you are composed of physical matter and cannot escape it, and this is not so. The physical matter will disintegrate but you will not. I can assure you that death is another beginning. You have lived before and you will live again, and when you are done with physical existence, you will still live. I want you to feel your own vitality. Feel it travel through the universe and know that it is not dependent upon your physical image.

"I am life and I am death. Now when death can talk about death, that is your answer. Only the living are so mute. Think of your definitions. In certain terms, you are all dead and have been for centuries. In other terms you are not yet born and centuries will come before you walk upon the surface of the earth. Yet you are alive, and you take it for granted that I am dead, and so, what a delightful game we play!

"Life implies death, and death implies life--that is, in the terms of your world. You could not die unless you were the kind of creature who was born, nor could you have a present moment as you consider it. Your body is aware of the fact of its death at birth, and of its birth at its death, for all of its possibilities for action take place in the area between. Death is therefore as creative as birth, as necessary for action and consciousness, in your terms.

"Here time as you think of it has little meaning. You could compare the two different time experiences in this way: In your dimension it is as if remembered events were like pieces of furniture, all arranged in one room, in a given order. Living in that room, you can find your way between various pieces easily. You then move out into a larger and different kind of room, and here the furniture may be rearranged in any fashion, arranged and rearranged to your heart's content. You may form different combinations from it and use it for different purposes as you might visit a new residence and move some of your belongings there before you officially make it your own. There will be guides to help you and you will hardly notice that you have entirely moved in, for you will feel so at home. Shortly, training periods will begin. It will become your turn then to help others and be their source of strength.

"Now the new body is, of course, not a new one at all, but simply a body not physical in your terms, one that you use in astral projections, one that gives the vitality and strength to the physical body that you know. Your flesh is embedded in it now. When you leave the physical body, the other body is quite real to you and seems physical, although it has many more freedoms.

"First of all, there are verbal difficulties having to do with the definition of life. It appears to you that there is living matter and nonliving matter, leading to such questions as: "How does nonliving matter become living?"

"There is no such thing, in your terms, as nonliving matter. There is simply a point that you recognize as having the characteristics that you have ascribed to life, or living conditions---a point that meets the requirements that you have arbitrarily set.

"This makes it highly difficult in a discussion, however, for there is no particular point at which life was inserted into nonliving matter. There is no point at which consciousness emerged. Consciousness is within the tiniest particle. There was no point at which consciousness was introduced, because consciousness was the illumination from which the first cells emerged.

"There is a design and a designer, but they are so combined, the one within and one without, that it is impossible to separate them. The Creator is also within its creations, and the creations themselves are gifted with creativity and that each contains an infinite capacity for development---and that each is innately blessed.

"In the dawn of physical existence, men knew that death was merely a change of form."

"What you call death is rather your choice to focus in other dimensions and realities. You do not acquire a 'spirit' at death. You are one, now! You adopt a body as a space traveler wears a space suit, and for much the same reason."

11. REINCARNATION

"You are not any of those past selves, even though they are a part of the history of your being. They are themselves in their own space and time. You are as different from those reincarnational selves, therefore, as you are from your parents, though you share certain backgrounds and characteristics. So you can theoretically expand your consciousness to include the knowledge of your past lives, though those lives were yours and not yours. The next step is taken when identity is able to include within itself the intimate knowledge of all incarnations. Yet in this state, the independence of the various reincarnated selves is not diminished as each separate identity then seeks to know and experience its other portions, then All That Is learns Who and
What It Is. Action never ceases its exploration of itself."

"In each life you choose and create your own settings or environments; and in this one you chose your parents and whatever childhood incidents that came within your experience. You wrote the script. Like a true absent minded professor, the conscious self forgets all this, however, so when tragedy appears in the script, difficulty or challenges, the conscious self looks for someone or something to blame."

"...When consciousness splits off from itself, the 'original' is not less, but a new synthesis occurs. Such psychological births take place often in one life, quite escaping your notice. ... The self is quite able to keep track of its own journeys into various realities and times, and feels no confusion. ..."

"Reincarnation involves the historical periods that you recognize, and the seemingly sequential progress of events. Your reincarnational selves more or less belong to the same probability, translated into historical terms. Since all time is simultaneous, however, all frameworks of historical nature are being formed at once. In those terms you are born in the past with your knowledge of the future held in unconscious abeyance, and you are born in the future convinced that your knowledge of the past comes only from history books."

"The entire complex social world rests however on strong probable relationships, and the power behind cavitations rests upon a great unconscious rapport, and is built upon, in any given present, future and past, personal and social relationships." 

12. ALL THAT IS

Seth: "If you prefer, you can call the supreme psychic gestalt God, but you should not attempt to objectify him. What you call God is the sum of all consciousness, and yet the whole is more than the sum of Its parts."

"(It) is not one individual, but an energy gestalt. (It) is a psychic pyramid of interrelated, ever expanding consciousness, that creates simultaneous and instantaneously, universes and individuals that are given duration, psychic comprehension, intelligence and eternal validity. Its energy is so unbelievable that is does indeed form all universes; and because its energy is within and behind all universes, fields and systems, it is indeed aware of each sparrow that falls, for it is each sparrow that falls."

"Dimly remembered through what you would call history, there was a state of agony in which the powers of creativity and existence were known, but the ways to produce them were not known. All That Is existed in a state of being, but without the means to find expression for Its being. All That Is had to learn this lesson, and could not be taught. From this agony, creativity was originally drawn, and its reflection is still seen. All That Is retains the memory of that state, and it serves as a constant impetus toward renewed creativity. Desire, wish and expectation, therefore, rule all actions and are the basis for all realities. Within the dreams of All That Is, potential beings had Consciousness before any beginning as you know it."

"All That Is saw an infinity of probable, conscious individuals. These Probable individual selves found themselves alive within a God's dream And they clamored to be released into actuality. All That Is yearned to release them and sought within itself for the means to do so. Finally, with love and longing It let go of that portion of itself, and they were free. The psychic energy exploded in a flash of creation."

"All That Is loves all that It has created down to the least, for It realizes the dearness and uniqueness of each consciousness which has been wrest from such a state of agony. It is triumphant and joyful at each development taken by each consciousness, and It revels and takes joy in the slightest creative act of each of Its issues."

"All individuals remember their source, and now dream of All That Is as It once dreamed of them. And they yearn toward that immense source...and yearn to give it actuality through their own creations."

"The connections between you and All That Is can never be severed, and Its awareness is so delicate and focused that its attention is indeed directed with a prime creator's love to each consciousness."

"All That Is knows no other. It does not know whether or not other psychic gestalts like Itself may exist. It is constantly searching."

"There are answers to some questions that I cannot give you about the origin of All That Is, for they are not known anywhere in the system in which we have our existence."

"All portions of All That Is are constantly changing. All That Is is constantly seeking to know Itself, for seeking itself is a creative activity and the core of all action."

"You, as a consciousness, seek to know yourself and become aware of yourself as a distinct individual portion of All That Is. You automatically draw on the overall energy of All That Is, since your existence is dependent upon it. The portion of All That Is that is aware of itself as you, that is focused within your existence, can be called upon for help when necessary. This portion of All That Is looks out for your interests and may be called upon in a personal manner. A psychic gestalt may seem impersonal to you, but its energy forms your person."

"When a race is in deepest stress and faced with great problems, it will call forth someone like Christ. It will seek out and indeed from itself produce the very personalities necessary to give it strength."

13. INNER SELF

Seth: "The ego at any give time in this life is simply the part of the inner self that surfaces in physical reality; a group of characteristics that the inner self uses to solve various problems."

"Each of you exists in other realities and other dimensions, and the self that you call yourself is but a small portion of your entire identity."

"Within the self that you know is the prime identity, the whole self. This whole self has lived many lives and adopted many personalities. Personality may be somewhat molded by the circumstances that are created for it by the whole self but the prime identity uses the resulting experience."

"Your prime identity is an energy essence personality which is composed of energy gestalts. As each individual consciousness grows, out of its experience it forms other 'personalities' or fragments of itself. These fragments are entirely independent as to action and decision, while constantly in communication with the whole self of which they are a part. These 'fragments' themselves grow, develop, and may form their own entities or 'personality gestalts.'"

"You have constant contact with the other parts of your whole self, but your ego is so focused upon physical reality and survival within it that you do not hear the inner voices. No individuality is ever lost. It is always in existence."

"There is an inner ego, an inner self which organizes 'unconscious' material. As the outer ego manipulates within the physical environment, so the inner ego or self organizes and manipulates within inner reality."

"It is this inner self, out of massive knowledge and the unlimited scope of its consciousness, that forms the physical world and provides the stimuli to keep the outer ego at the job of awareness. The inner self organizes, initiates, projects and controls the transformation of psychic energy into matter and objects."

"The individual inner self, through constant effort of great intensity, cooperates with other entities like itself to form and maintain the physical reality that you know."

"The inner self has a virtually infinite reservoir from which to draw knowledge and experience. All kinds of choices are available, and the diversity of physical matter is a reflection of this deep source and variety."

"Having determined upon physical reality as a dimension in which it will express itself, the inner self, first of all, takes care to form and maintain the physical basis upon which all else must depend -- the properties of the earth that can be called the natural ones."

"It is the daily ego's ignorance and limited focus that makes it view so-called unconscious activity as chaotic. The waking ego (dealing with physical reality) cannot know all the unconscious material directly. The daily ego is simply not conscious enough to be able to contain the vast knowledge that belongs to the inner conscious self from which it springs. The outer ego is spoon-fed, being given only those feelings and emotions, only that data, that it can handle. This data is presented in a highly specialized manner, usually in terms of information picked up by the physical senses."

"The inner self is not only conscious, but conscious of itself, both as an individuality and as an individuality that is a part of all other consciousness. It is continually aware of both this apartness and unity-with. The outer ego is not continuously aware of this fact. It frequently forgets its 'whole' nature."

"When it becomes swept up in a strong emotion it seems to lose itself. When it most vigorously maintains its sense of individuality, it is no longer aware of unity-with. If the ego were aware of the constant barrage of telepathic communications that do impinge upon it, it would have a most difficult time retaining a sense of identity."

"You must learn to listen to the voice of the inner self and work with it. You may also simply ask the inner self to make the answers to problems available on a conscious basis."

14. DREAMS

Seth: "Humanity dreams the same dream at once, and you have your mass world. The whole construction is like an educational play in which you are the producers as well as the actors. There is a play within a play within a play. There is no end to the "within" of things. The dreamer dreams, and the dreamer within the dream dreams. But the dreams are not meaningless, and the actions within them are significant. The whole self is the observer and the participator in the roles. "

"When you dream of others, they know it. When they dream of you you know it."

"Throughout the ages, some have recognized the fact that there is self-consciousness and purpose in dream and sleep states, and have maintained, even in waking life, the sense of continuity of the inner self. To such people it is no longer possible to completely identify with the ego consciousness. They are too aware of themselves as more. When such knowledge is gained, the ego can accept it, for it finds to its surprise that is is not less conscious, but more, and that its limitations are dissipated."

"A man's thoughts and dreams are more far reaching than he knows. They exist in more dimensions; they affect worlds of which he is unaware. The are as concrete, in effect, as any building....The dream world is constructed within a field that you cannot physically perceive, but it has more continuity than the world you know."

"When you are manipulating within physical reality, you have a fairly simple set of rules to serve you. Within dream reality there is greater freedom...Each dream begins with psychic energy which the individual transforms into a reality which is just as functional and real as physical reality."

"Through our dreams we change physical reality, and our physical daily experience alters our dream experience. There is constant interaction. Our consciousness is simply directed in a different kind of reality when we dream, a reality as vivid as waking life."

"On one level the personality attempts to solve problems through dream construction....Dream action CAN be turned toward fulfilling constructive expectations, which will effect a change for the better!"

"Dreams can be utilized creatively to improve health, gain inspiration, restore vitality, solve problems and enrich family relationships. You can have a pleasant and joyful dream that will completely restore your good spirits and vitality."

"In our dream life we also visit other levels of existence, and gain needed skills."

"The ego is not present in dream reality. The waking consciousness is not the ego. The ego is only that portion of waking consciousness that deals with physical manipulation. Waking consciousness can be taken into the dream state, but the ego cannot, as it would falter and cause failure there. When you take your consciousness into the dream state, you will meet with various conditions, some you can manipulate, some you cannot. Some dream locations will be of your own making, and others will be strange to you because they belong to other dimensions of reality."

"As the personality is changed by any experience, it is changed by dreams. We may forget our dreams, but they are always part of us. The dreams experience is felt directly by the inner self. Dreams have their own actuality, they not only exist independent of the dreamer, but they also have tangible form, though not in the form of matter as you are familiar with it. They are forever contained as electrically coded data within the cells of the physical organism."

"The dream universe possesses concepts which will someday completely transform the physical world, but the denial of such concepts as possibilities delays their emergence."

"There are also shared or "mass" dreams. In these mankind deals with problems of his political and social structure. In these man dreams individually and collectively of ways in which change about could occur. These dreams actually help bring about the resulting change. The very energy and direction of these dreams will help change the situation. The solutions reached are not always the same as those he accepts in the physical world."

"The energy behind a 'bad dream' is the energy of hidden fears, which could be formed by anyone, since there are fears in anyone. ... Fear directs your conscious energy into the realm of reality of that fear, and you then must deal at that level. The words 'May peace be with you' will get you through any difficulty in other layers of reality."

15. PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

Seth: "Your idea of space and time is determined by your neurological structure. The camouflage is so craftily executed and created by the inner self that you must, by necessity, focus your attention on the physical reality which has been created."  

"Time as you experience it is an illusion caused by your own physical senses....The apparent boundaries between past, present and future are only illusions caused by the amount of action you can physically perceive, and so it seems to you that one moment exists and is gone forever, and the next moment comes and like the one before also disappears."

"Everything in the universe exists at one time simultaneously. The first words ever spoken still ring through the universe, and in your terms, the last words ever spoken have already been said."

"The past, present and future only appear to those who exist within three-dimensional reality. The past exists as a series of electromagnetic connections held in the physical brain and in the nonphysical mind. These electromagnetic connections can be changed."

"The future consists of a series of electromagnetic connections in the mind and brain also. In other words, the past and present are real to the same extent. You take it for granted that present action can change the future, but present actions can also change the past."

"The past is no more objective or independent from the perceiver than is the present. The electromagnetic connections were largely made by the individual perceiver. The connection can be changed, and such changes are far from uncommon. These changes happen spontaneously on a subconscious basis."

"The past is seldom what you remember it to be, for you have already rearranged it from the instant of any given event. The past is being constantly re-created by each individual as attitudes and associations change. This is an actual recreation, not a symbolic one. The child is indeed still within the man, but he is not the child that 'was', for even the child within the man constantly changes."

"Every action changes every other action. Therefore, every action in your present affects actions you call past. It is possible to react in the past to an event that has not occurred, and to be influenced by your own future."

"It is also possible for an individual to react in the past to an event in the future, which in your terms, may never occur." "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."

"On a subconscious level, you react to many events that have not yet occurred as far as your ego's awareness is concerned. Such reactions are carefully screened out and not admitted to consciousness. The ego finds such instances distracting and annoying, and when forced to admit their validity, will resort to the most far fetched rationalizations to explain them."

"No event is predestined. Any given event can be changed not only before and during but after its occurrence. The individual is hardly at the mercy of past events, for he changes them constantly. He is hardly at the mercy of future events, for he changes these not only before but after their happening. An individuals future actions are not dependent upon a concrete finished past, for such a past never existed."

"The past is as real as the future, no more or less. There is a part of you that is not locked within physical reality, and that part of you knows that there is only an Eternal Now. The part of you that knows is the whole self, your inner and outer ego (all that you are)."

16. EGO

Seth: "The ego is a jealous god, and it wants its interests served. It does not want to admit the reality of any dimensions except those within which it feels comfortable and can understand. It was meant to be an aid but it has been allowed to become a tyrant. Even so, it is much more resilient and eager to learn than is generally supposed. It is not natively as rigid as it seems. Its curiosity can be of great value."

Seth asks "Why is it so difficult for you to learn what freedom is? ...I ask you, how far do you think a flower would get if in the morning it turned its face toward the sky and said, "I demand the sun. And now I need rain. So I demand it. And I demand bees to come and take my pollen. I demand, therefore that the sun shall shine for a certain number of hours, and that the rain shall pour for a certain number of hours... and that the bees come - bees A, B, C, D, and E, for I shall accept no other bees to come. I demand that discipline operate, and that the soil shall follow my command. But I do not allow the soil any spontaneity of its own. And I do not allow the sun any spontaneity of its own. And I do not agree that the sun knows what it is doing. I demand
that all these things follow my ideas of discipline.?

"And who, I ask you, would listen? For in the miraculous spontaneity of the sun, there is discipline that utterly escapes you, and a knowledge beyond any that we know. And i9n the spontaneous playing of the bees from flower to flower, there is a discipline beyond any that you know, and laws that follow their own knowledge, and joy that is beyond command. For true discipline, you see, is found only in spontaneity. Spontaneity knows its own order."

"In the spontaneous working of your nervous system, what do we find? We see here the head of "the Dean" that rests upon his shoulders, and the intellect that demands discipline. And yet all of this rests upon the spontaneous workings of the inner self, and the nervous system of which the intellect knows little. And without that spontaneous discipline, there would be no ego to sit upon the shoulders and demand discipline... "

17. BLESSINGS

Seth: "Now I bless you, but the blessings must come from yourselves. The real blessings must come from yourselves. You must realize that you are one with All That Is, and within you is the only one who can give blessing, and you must be willing to accept the blessing that only you can give, and the joy that only you can give to yourselves and to one another.

"There should never be a word in any language that means repentance. There should only be a word that means, I bless; for when you bless, you do not need to repent. For when you accept a blessing, there is nothing to repent. Love of All That Is requires simply that you become open as air, for when you are open as air then joy of all that is flows through you indiscriminately, and there is nothing to repent. You only need repentance when you do not know joy. For within joy and within all that is there is only glory, consciousness and song. There is only blessedness.

"When you berate yourself for your sins, then you do not realize what joy is. Do you berate a flower that has one crooked stem? So in yourselves, know spontaneity and in spontaneity you will find joy. Spontaneity has its own discipline. You do not need to enforce discipline upon it."