Seth Jane Roberts Quotes

Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you how to stop suffering. That is its purpose.

To change the world for the better, you must begin by changing your own life. There is no other way.

First of all, a soul is not something that you have. It is what you are.

There seems to be no unexpressed self in animals, as if they are as fully themselves in flesh as possible, with no lag of consciousness to fill up, while we keep trying to grow into something else.

If toes had eyes, then I could see how my feet know where to go, but toes are blind. And how is it that my tongue speaks words it cannot hear? Because for all its eloquence, the tongue itself is deaf, and flaps in soundlessness.

The interior drama, therefore, is always the important one. The “story of your life” is written by you, by each reader of this book. You are the author. There is no reason, therefore, for you to view the drama and feel trapped by it. The power to change your own condition is your own. You have only to exercise it.

There is no need to justify your existence. You do not need to write or preach to justify yourselves, for instance. Being is its own justification.

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.

Consciousness creates form. It is not the other way around. All personalities are not physical. It is only because you are so busily concerned with daily matters that you do not realize that there is a portion of you who knows that its own powers are far superior to those shown by the ordinary self.

For enjoyment is a weapon. The man who is capable of joy is capable, to a large extent, of changing his world. Joy is not a weak spineless idiot either. Its backbone is stronger than bitterness.

True creativity comes from enjoying the moments, which then fulfill themselves, and a part of the creative process is indeed the art of relaxation, the letting go,

The God concept, of course, originated from mankind’s innate knowledge that consciousness precedes physical construction.

You would be much better off in reading this book if you asked yourself who you are, rather than asked who I am, for you cannot understand what I am unless you understand the nature of personality and the characteristics of consciousness.

if you have the intent to really change your orientation, then the atmosphere will automatically be created in which desired changes occur. End

True spirituality is a thing of joy and of the earth, and has nothing to do with fake adult dignity. It has nothing to do with long words and sorrowful faces. It has to do with the dance of consciousness that is within you, and with the sense of spiritual adventure that is within your hearts.

Magic is the beingness behind and within all things." Jane Roberts via Oversoul Seven's Little Book, The Charmed Life, Oversoul Seven Trilogy

Live every day to its fullest, and do not be a slave to your hopes for the future. If you do not learn to enjoy today you will not enjoy the future no matter what it may bring.

I hope that this book will serve to release the deeply intuitive self within each of my readers, and to bring to the foreground of consciousness whatever particular insights will serve you most. As

you interpret daily life according to your ideas of what is possible or not possible.

Exuberance and joy, however, basically have nothing to do with time or age.

You prefer to identify with the part of you who watches television or cooks or works — the part you think knows what it is doing. But

How many of you would want to limit your reality, your entire reality, to the experience you now know? You do this when you imagine that your present self is your entire personality, or insist that your identity be maintained unchanged through an endless eternity. (10:43.)

You cannot learn about yourself by studying what is expected of you by others — but only by asking yourself what you expect of yourself, and discovering for yourself in what direction your abilities lie. End

The ego is definitely an advancement, but it can be compared to the bark of the tree in many ways. The bark of the tree is flexible, extremely vibrant, and grows with the growth beneath. It is a tree’s contact with the outer world, the tree’s interpreter, and to some degree the tree’s companion. So should man’s ego be. When man’s ego turns instead into a shell, when instead of interpreting outside conditions it reacts too violently against them, then it hardens, becomes an imprisoning form that begins to snuff out important data, and to keep enlarging information from the inner self. The purpose of the ego is protective. It is also a device to enable the inner self to inhabit the physical plane. It is in other words a camouflage. It is the

I have told you that you create your dreams, in actuality, not in theory alone. You create an actuality, a dream universe, as real as the physical universe. It simply cannot be directly perceived within the physical universe.

A new pet given to a bereaved individual has saved more people from needing heart operations than any physician.

My message to the reader will be: “Basically, you are no more of a physical personality than I am, and in telling you of my reality I tell you of your own.” There

mankind has a tendency to project his own guilt and his own errors upon a father-god image, who it seems must grow weary of so many complaints. The

you must stretch your own imagination, rouse yourself from mental lethargy, and be bold enough to discard old dogmatic comfort blankets.

Time does not cause change in matter, appearances to the contrary. I am going to skip a giant step, and say that man himself and all conscious beings produce matter subconsciously.

We are indeed dealing with two entirely different approaches to reality and to solving problems — methods we will here call the rational method and the magical one. The rational approach works quite well in certain situations, such as mass production of goods, or in certain kinds of scientific measurements — but all in all the rational method, as it is understood and used, does not work as an overall approach to life, or in the solving of problems that involve subjective rather than objective measurements or calculations. The magical approach has far greater weight, if you use it and allow yourselves to operate in that fashion, for it has the weight of your basic natural orientation.

It is not correct, therefore, to suppose that your actions in this life are caused by a previous existence, or that you are being punished in this life for crimes in a past one. The lives are simultaneous.

Those who tell you that to be spiritual is not to be physical do not understand the great physical-spiritual nature of your being. They have not dreamed in their minds. They have not sparkled in themselves like stars and so experiencing night they think that existence is dark.

Without a sense of joy and inner accomplishment and development of potential, the personality will not only fail to flourish, but the inner self will refuse to maintain the physical structure adequately. This is extremely important. Superficial measures will not fool the inner self.

When you are overly concerned with physical matters, and even vital physical matters, you pull yourself in. And more ridiculous, you pull up your roots. A tree would never pull up its roots. I am not speaking now of pulling up your roots in terms of moving from one location to another. I am speaking of something akin to cutting off your roots from any nourishment

Two men for example, of precisely the same physical age, of precisely the same physical condition, will be in completely different states of mind, of competence, of effectiveness and of strength, as a direct result of their inner beliefs as to their relative freedom within the framework of the physical system in which they exist. The man who does not realize his basic independence from the physical system will not have the same freedom within it.

The experiment that would transform your world would operate upon the basic idea that you create your own reality according to the nature of your beliefs, and that all existence was blessed, and that evil did not exist in it. If these ideas were followed individually and collectively, then the evidence of your physical senses would find no contradiction. They would perceive the world and existence as good. This

the reason that you exercise is actually more important than the exercises that you do perform. The reason can promote your good health or actually impede it. Thus

The problem is not in the exterior circumstances but in your own mental attitude toward them, and in the habitual patterns of thought that you have subjectively accepted.

It is only the ego that steps from moment to moment, as a man who walks from puddle to puddle. It is only the ego who drowns in time.

Starting over — changing one’s beliefs, is a bold endeavor.

Without constant clairvoyance on the part of every man and woman, existence on your plane would involve such inner, psychological insecurity that it would be completely unbearable. Individuals are always warned of disasters, so that the organism can prepare itself ahead of time. The day of death is known.

The basis and firm groundwork of the material, and its primary contribution, lies in the concept that consciousness itself indeed creates matter, that consciousness is not imprisoned by matter but forms it, and that consciousness is not limited or bound by time or space; time and space in your terms being necessary distortions, or adopted conditions, forming a strata for physical existence.

Our lives, I’ve learned, don’t simply proceed nicely and directly from “birth” to “death.” Instead, I see each one of us as traveling a most curious and branching-out or circuitous route, one that is creative in ways that are both known and, I’m sure now, unknown. Ah,

A simple example can be seen in the transformation of an idea into a painting, that is the transformation of the energy, the psychological energy of an idea into physical materialization. The idea itself, once you have conceived of it, represents an additional energy component that you build up, formulate and manipulate on the psychological level, and then transform; but the idea itself contains energy.

You must again realize that we speak of the self as being so divided only for simplicity’s sake. While the self is whole, it is however compartmentalized for efficiency’s sake, but beneath consciousness the doors are open. Again, the conscious self is most necessary. However it cannot be stressed too strongly that consciousness is merely a state of focus, and not a self. Consciousness is the direction in which the self looks at any given time.

This is your commitment. This is the time for it. If you are to be an entity, as you have chosen to be, then this is your opportunity, and this is your last reincarnation upon this earth. You need power, strength, determination, and joyous spontaneity in your working hours. You also need to influence personally those people in the outside world with whom you come in daily contact, and to extend yourself in using your full abilities of understanding and creativeness in your outside contacts. You need also to expand in the direction in which you are going, in terms of these sessions and psychological time.

The physical organism itself then, even as you know it, exists and moves and reacts and influences, and is influenced by, many fields or planes of actuality; and its existence as you know it in your universe is determined by and dependent upon its existence within other fields, of which man is still intellectually ignorant.

When you do not know what to do, relax and tell yourself that other portions of yourself do know; they will take over. Give yourself some rest. Remind yourself that in many ways you are a very successful person as you are. Success does not necessarily involve great intellect or great position or great wealth; it has to do with inner integrity. Remember that.

When a civilization does not support creativity it begins to falter. When it distrusts its gifted people, rather than encouraging them, a nation is at least in trouble.

It is imperative that we move away from the concept of a self as an indivisible, rigid and limited reality.

Though this book is entitled The Way Toward Health, we are not speaking of physical health alone, but of mental, spiritual, and emotional health as well.

if you did not feel the need to kill animals to gain knowledge, then you would not have wars, either. You would understand the balances of nature far better.

Close your eyes after having read this chapter to this point, and try to sense within yourself the source of power from which your own breathing and life forces come.

come. Some of you will do this successfully at your first try. Others may take longer. When you feel within yourself this source, then try to sense this power flow outward through your entire physical being, through the fingertips and toes, through the pores of your body, all directions, with yourself as center. Imagine the rays undiminished, reaching then through the foliage and clouds above, through the center of the earth below, extending even to the farthest reaches of the universe. Now I do not mean this to be merely a symbolic exercise, for though it may begin with imagination, it is based upon fact, and emanations from your consciousness and the creativity of your soul do indeed reach outward in that manner. The exercise will give you some idea of the true nature, creativity, and vitality of the soul from which you can draw your own energy and of which you are an individual and unique portion. (Humorously): You may take your break.

It goes without saying that some people become ill rather than change their activities and their environments. They may also become ill, of course, to force themselves to make such changes. End

It is not that physical reality is false. It is that the physical picture is simply one of an infinite number of ways of perceiving the various guises through which consciousness expresses itself.

When you consider the soul, however, you usually think of it in such a light — unchanging, a psychic or spiritual citadel. But citadels not only keep out invaders, they also prevent expansion and development. There

There are methods that can be used to discover how different species migrate, for example, and then to duplicate such feats technologically if you want to. These methods do not include dissection, for what you learn that way you will not be able to use (deeper and much louder).

To my great surprise — and slight annoyance — I found that Seth eloquently and lucidly articulated a view of reality that I had arrived at only after great effort and an extensive study of both paranormal phenomena and quantum physics. …” — Michael Talbot, author of The Holographic Universe

When you think of the purpose of your existence, you think in terms of daily waking life, but you also work at your purpose in these other dream dimensions, and you are then in communication with other portions of your own entity, at work at endeavors quite as valid as those you are about in waking life.

I communicate with your dimension, for example, not by willing myself to your level of reality, but by imagining myself there. All of my deaths would have been adventures had I realized what I know now. On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough.

You create your reality according to your beliefs and expectations, therefore it behooves you to examine them carefully. If you do not like your world, then examine your own expectations. Every thought in one way or another is constructed by you in physical terms. Your world is formed in faithful replica of your own thoughts.

There are such subtle qualities affecting the nature of all thought, such emotional gradations, that no one is ever identical — (smile) and incidentally, no physical object in your system is an exact duplicate of any other. The atoms and molecules that compose it — any object — have their own identities that color and qualify any object that they form.

The experiment that would transform your world would operate upon the basic idea that you create your own reality according to the nature of your beliefs, and that all existence was blessed, and that evil did not exist in it. If these ideas were followed individually and collectively, then the evidence of your physical senses would find no contradiction. They would perceive the world and existence as good.

When the outer ego is narrow, and poorly represents these subdominant personalities then they rise up in arms, and when conditions are favorable attempt to express themselves through a momentary weakness on the part of the dominant ego. But without even doing this they may momentarily take over or express themselves through a single function, such as speech or motion, while the outer ego is blissfully unaware.

Man will not learn the basic nature of reality by studying the physical universe alone, nor will he learn it by studying the personality as it operates within the physical universe alone. The nature of reality can only be approached by an investigation of reality as it is directly experienced in all levels of awareness: reality as it appears under dream conditions, under other conditions of dissociation, and as it appears in the waking condition.

and I hope to show you how to ask the proper questions; for in the questions you will find the answers, and in the answers you shall be yourselves; and knowing yourselves fulfill your purpose and expand the limitations of your own consciousness until you can search out the past and the present and see yourselves as you are, and know that you are more than you think you are, and fulfill those abilities which you have partially developed in past lives.

You are each born with the conscious knowledge of what has come before. Your brain is far from an empty slate, waiting for the first imprint of experience; it is already equipped with complete "equations", telling you who you are and where you have come from. Nor do you wipe that slate clean, symbolically speaking, before you write your life upon it. Instead, you draw upon what has gone before: the experiences of your ancestors, back through time immemorial.

Your camouflage and your world is created by conscious focusing and unconscious concentration. Only by turning your head away for a moment can you see what is beneath the seemingly solid pattern. By plunging into our ocean of value climate you can dive beneath your camouflage system and look up to see it, relatively foundationless, floating above you, moved, formed and directed by the shifting illusions caused by the wind of will, and the force of subconscious concentration and demand.

(In the 44th session, Seth began a list of qualities and attributes which are included in the spacious present. To date there are eleven of these: Value climate of psychological reality; energy transformation; spontaneity; durability; creation; consciousness; capacity for infinite mobility; law of infinite changeability and transmutation; cooperation; arrival and departure, meaning physical birth and death; and quality depth, the perspective in which an idea can expand, replacing our time and space.)

We communicate telepathically, but then again, telepathy is the basis for your languages, without which their symbolism would be meaningless. Because we do communicate in this manner, this does not necessarily mean that we use mental words, for we do not. We communicate instead through what I can only call thermal and electromagnetic images that are capable of supporting much more meaning in one “sequence.” The intensity of the communication is dependent upon the emotional intensity behind it, although the phrase “emotional intensity” may be misleading.

Your Godliness speaks through your creaturehood. It is not debased and no entities took upon themselves the disreputable descent into matter. Your souls are not slumming. You are not the garbage heap of the universe. You are yourselves becoming and you are creating, in your way, a unique reality in which, in your terms, each moment is miraculous; in which your own identities are forever original and unduplicated..." "You are not cosmic princesses and princes who come down here to immerse yourselves in lives of sorrow and degradation; who wear physical bodies of great weight, gross and sinful. You are spirits who express yourselves through the miraculous joy of flesh. Who bring to the Universe a reality unknown, in your terms. Who wear as your badge of identity, joy and exultation; and those that tell you that physical life is evil, do not know what they are speaking." "As I have told you before, those who speak to you in terms of guilt; ignore them. Those who tell you that to be spiritual is not to be physical do not understand the great physical-spiritual nature of your being. They have not dreamed in their minds. They have not sparkled in themselves like stars and so experiencing night they think that existence is dark." "Open up your eyes and perceive your reality and that will lead you to other realities. You have legs; use them. You have consciousness; use it. You have minds; use them, and use your joy and smile. You know what I am about to do now, but for you, listen to the vitality of your own being. Be alert to your own identity and let it ring throughout the reality of your own being and it will lead you to what you want to do and don't fear shadows.

Intellectual truth alone will not make you free, though it is certainly a necessary preliminary. If this were the case your walls would fall away, since intellectually you understand their rather dubious nature. Since feeling is so often the cohesive with which mind builds, it is feeling itself which must be changed if you would find freedom from your particular plane of existence at your particular time. That is, to some extent a change in feeling will allow you to see variants. Since feeling is a cohesive, to change it completely would hardly be of any advantage since your world of present existence would fall apart.

This sense of continuity in individual environment is a result of the individual’s characteristic way of constructing basic psychological structures into physical structures. The basic psychological structures available have definite solidity, depth, mass, et cetera, in the psychological perspective, and they may be formed into numberless gestalt patterns, which are then constructed physically. The variations of construction are endless. There is nothing to force an individual for example to form psychological gestalts of hate and fear from the basic structure of consciousness survival. To do so represents an inability to perceive clearly the nature of the basic structure, and such an inability often carries over into habit so that other basic structures are also misinterpreted. A setting—right in one small area of psychological perspective can, therefore, result in a beneficial turnabout in the manipulation of other basic structures, even though they seem unrelated.

vehemence, however, that she broke through the barriers

The assembly-line time and the beliefs that go along with it have given you many benefits as a society, but it should not be forgotten that the entire framework was initially set up to cut down on impulses, creative thought, or any other activities that would lead to anything but the mindless repetition of one act after another (intently). In

we human beings have the blessed creative capacity to do so much better. So why don’t we?” 2.

Modern medical science largely considers the human body to be a kind of mechanical model, a sort of vehicle like a car that needs to be checked by a garage every so often. As an automobile is put together at an assembly line, so the body is simply seen as a very efficient machine put together in nature’s “factory.” If all the parts are in their proper places, and functioning smoothly, then the machine should give as excellent service as any well-running automobile — or so it seems. All

The basic idea is that the senses are developed, not to permit awareness of an already existing material world, but to create it. …

The main point I want to make in this chapter is that you are already familiar with all conditions you will meet after death, and you can become consciously aware of these to some extent.

you are as much a ghostly phenomenon now as you will be after death. You are simply not aware of the fact.

You do not understand this point clearly at all, but your social organizations, your governments — these are based upon imaginative principles. The basis of your most intimate experience, the framework behind all of your organized structures, rests upon a reality that is not considered valid by the very institutions that are formed through its auspices.

If you want to know what you think of yourself, then ask yourself what you think of others, and you will find your answer.

You have to trust your own abilities, and not doubt them because someone else does. If we do carry out our present plans, you’ll have to hold your own sense of integrity in the face of skepticism

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. The responsibility for your life and your world is indeed yours. It has not been forced upon you by some outside agency. You form your own dreams, and you form your own physical reality. The world is what you are. It is the physical materialization of the inner selves which have formed it.

If you identify with your own youth, or beauty, or intellect, or accomplishments, then there is the constant gnawing knowledge that these attributes can and will vanish.

You are what you are, and you will be more. Do not be afraid of change, for you are change, and you change as you sit before me. All action is change, for otherwise there would be a static universe, and then indeed death would be the end.

it is important that you understand the different ways of relating to reality, and how those ways create the experienced events. You

For all actions merge one into the other, and none are truly independent; and all units merge one into the other, and all boundaries shift, and are arbitrarily chosen. Boundaries are the results of the limitations of perception, for a unit seems to end where perception of it ceases.

consider merely that all types of awareness are trance states... consciousness is the direction in which the self looks.

usual. She walked to the couch and sat down, her eyes closed once again. She spoke rather slowly. The following is my reconstruction of the brief and somewhat enigmatic session.) There is no necessity for taking notes. There is something here that you

The physicists have their hands on the doorknob. If they paid more attention to their dreams, they would know what questions to ask.

Now, if you find yourself with a headache, say immediately, ‘That is in the past. Now in this new moment, this new present, I am already beginning to feel better.’ Then immediately turn your attention away from the physical condition. Concentrate upon something pleasant, or begin another task.

which you are part. It is a field of concentrated action when you consider it in this light — a powerhouse of probabilities or probable actions, seeking to be expressed; a grouping of nonphysical consciousnesses that nevertheless knows itself

What I have said about viruses applies to all biological life. Viruses are “highly intelligent” — meaning that they react quickly to stimuli. They are responsive to emotional states. They are social. Their scale of life varies considerably, and some can be

No person dies without a reason.2 You are not taught that, however, so people do not recognize their own reasons for dying, and they are not taught to recognize their own reasons for living — because you are told that life itself is an accident in a cosmic game of chance.

The body itself singlemindedly seeks health." —TPS3 Deleted Session October 13, 1975

The point of power is in the present. Whenever possible, minimize the importance of a problem. Forget a problem and it will go away. Dumb advice, surely, or so it seems. Yet children know the truth of it. Minimize impediments in your mind and they do become minimized. Exaggerate impediments in your mind and in reality they will quickly adopt giant size.

There are many truths you know that you are not aware of. Be still and listen to your inner voice. You are too busy with exterior things. If there is one thing only I could tell you it would be this. Be still—listen—listen to the voices within you that you have not listened to. You have lived many lives. Some of you will live more lives in this reality. You have gained much wisdom, but you do not listen.