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“You may think of your soul or entity — though only briefly and for the sake of this analogy — as some conscious and living, divinely inspired computer who programs its own existences and lifetimes. But this computer is so highly endowed with creativity that each of the various personalities it programs spring into consciousness and song, and in turn create realities that may have been undreamed of by the computer itself.
Each such personality, however, comes with a built-in idea of the reality in which it will operate, and its mental equipment is highly tailored to meet very specialized environments. It has full freedom, but it must operate within the context of existence to which it has been programmed. Within the personality, however, in the most secret recesses, is the condensed knowledge that resides in the computer as a whole. I must emphasize that I am not saying that the soul or entity is a computer, but only asking you to look at the matter in this light in order to make several points clear.
[... 12 paragraphs ...]
The entity, or the soul, has a far more creative and complicated nature than even your religions have ever granted it.
It utilizes numberless methods of perception, and it has at its command many other kinds of consciousness. Your idea of the soul is indeed limited by your three-dimensional concepts. The soul can change the focus of its consciousness, and uses consciousness as you use the eyes in your head. Now in my level of existence I am simply aware of the fact, strange as it may seem, that I am not my consciousness. My consciousness is an attribute to be used by me. This applies to each of the readers of this book, even though the knowledge may be hidden. Soul or entity, then, is more than consciousness.”
—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part One: Chapter 3: Session 519, March 23, 1970 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“With the little background given so far, we can at least begin to discuss the subject of this book: The eternal validity of the soul. Even when we are exploring other issues, we will be trying to illustrate the multidimensional aspect of this inner self. There are many misconceptions connected with it, and first of all we shall try to dismiss these.
First of all, a soul is not something that you have. It is what you are. I usually use the term “entity” in preference to the term “soul,” simply because those particular misconceptions are not so connected with the word “entity,” and its connotations are less religious in an organizational sense.
The trouble is that you frequently consider the soul or entity as a finished, static “thing” that belongs to you but is not you. The soul or entity — in other words, your most intimate powerful inner identity — is and must be forever changing. It is not, therefore, something like a cherished heirloom. It is alive, responsive, curious. It forms the flesh and the world that you know, and it is in a state of becoming.
Now, in the three-dimensional reality in which your ego has its main focus, becoming presupposes arrival, or a destination — an ending to that which has been in a state of becoming. But the soul or entity has its existence basically in other dimensions, and in these, fulfillment is not dependent upon arrivals at any points, spiritual or otherwise.
The soul or entity is always in a state of flux, or learning, and of developments that have to do with subjective experience rather than with time or space. This is not nearly as mysterious as it might sound. Each of my readers plays a game in which the egotistical conscious self pretends not to know what the whole self definitely does know. Since the ego is definitely a part of the whole self, then it must necessarily be basically aware of such knowledge. In its intense focus in physical reality, however, it pretends not to know, until it feels able to utilize the information in physical terms.
You do have access to the inner self, therefore. You are hardly cut off from your own soul or entity. The ego prefers to consider itself the captain at the helm, so to speak, since it is the ego who most directly deals with the sometimes tumultuous seas of physical reality, and it does not want to be distracted from this task.
Channels, psychological and psychic, always exist, sending communications back and forth through the various levels of the self, and the ego accepts necessary information and data from inner portions of the personality without question. Its position in fact depends in a large manner upon this unquestioning acceptance of inner data. The ego, in other words, the “exterior” self that you think of as your self — that portion of you maintains its safety and its seeming command precisely because inner layers of your own personality constantly uphold it, keep the physical body operating, and maintain communications with the multitudinous stimuli that come both from outside conditions and inside conditions. The soul or entity is not diminished but expanded through reincarnations, through existence and experience in probable realities — something that I will explain later.
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It is only because you have a highly limited conception of your own entity that you insist upon its being almost sterile in its singularity. There are millions of cells within your body, but you call your body a unit, and consider it your own. You do form it, from the inside out, and yet you form it from living substance, and each smallest particle has its own living consciousness. There are clumps of matter, and in that respect there are clumps of consciousness, each individual, with their own destiny and abilities and potentials. There are no limitations to your own entity: therefore, how can your entity or soul have boundaries, for boundaries would enclose it and deny it freedom.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
Now: Often it seems that the soul is thought of as a precious stone, to be finally presented as a gift to God, or considered as some women used to consider their virginity — something highly prized that must be lost; the losing of it being signified as a fine gift to the receiver.
In many philosophies this sort of idea is retained — the soul being returned to a primal giver, or being dissolved in a nebulous state somewhere between being and nonbeing. The soul is, however, first of all creative. It can be discussed from many viewpoints. Its characteristics can be given to some degree, and indeed most of my readers could find out these characteristics for themselves if they were highly enough motivated, and if this was their main concern.
The soul or entity is itself the most highly motivated, most highly energized, and most potent consciousness-unit known in any universe.
It is energy concentrated to a degree quite unbelievable to you. It contains potentials unlimited, but it must work out its own identity and form its own worlds. It carries within it the burden of all being. Within it are personality potentials beyond your comprehension. Remember, this is your own soul or entity I am speaking of, as well as soul or entity in general. You are one manifestation of your own soul. 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.
Such an eternity would be dead indeed. In many ways the soul is an incipient god, and later in this book we will discuss the “god concept.” For now, however, we will simply be concerned with the entity or soul, the larger self that whispers even now in the hidden recesses of each reader’s experience. I hope in this book not only to assure you of the eternal validity of your soul or entity, but to help you sense its vital reality within yourself. First of all, however, you must have some idea of your own psychological and psychic structure. When you understand to some extent who and what you are, then I can explain more clearly who and what I am. I hope to acquaint you with those deeply creative aspects of your own being, so that you can use these to extend and expand your entire experience.”
—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part One: Chapter 6: Session 526, May 4, 1970 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“Many individuals imagine the soul to be an immortalized ego, forgetting that the ego as you know it is only a small portion of the self; so this section of the personality is simply projected onward, ad infinitum, so to speak. Because the dimensions of your reality are so little understood, your concepts are bound to be limited. In considering “immortality,” mankind seems to hope for further egotistical development, and yet he objects to the idea that such development might involve change. He says through his religions that he has a soul indeed, without even asking what a soul is, and often he seems to regard it, again, as an object in his possession.
Now personality, even as you know it, constantly changes, and not always in ways that are anticipated — most often, in fact, in unpredictable ways. You insist upon focusing your attention upon the similarities that are woven through your own behavior; and upon these you build a theory that the self follows a pattern that you, instead, have transposed upon it. And the transposed pattern prevents you from seeing the self as it really is. Therefore, you also project this distorted viewpoint upon your conception of the reality of the soul. You think of the soul, therefore, in the light of erroneous conceptions that you hold regarding even the nature of your mortal selves.
Even the mortal self, you see, is far more miraculous and wondrous than you perceive, and possesses far more abilities than you ascribe to it. You do not understand as yet the true nature of perception, even as far as the mortal self is concerned, and therefore you can hardly understand the perceptions of the soul. For the soul, above all, perceives and creates. Remember again that you are a soul now. The soul within you, therefore, is now perceiving. Its methods of perception are the same now as they were before your physical birth, and as they will be after your physical death. So basically the inner portion of you, the soul-stuff, will not suddenly change its methods of perception nor its characteristics after physical death.
You can find out what the soul is now, therefore. It is not something waiting for you at your death, nor is it something you must save or redeem, and it is also something that you cannot lose. The term, “to lose or save your soul”, has been grossly misinterpreted and distorted, for it is the part of you that is indeed indestructible. We will go into this particular matter in a portion of the book dealing with religion and the god concept.
Your own personality as you know it, that portion of you that you consider most precious, most uniquely you, will also never be destroyed or lost. It is a portion of the soul. It will not be gobbled by the soul, nor erased by it, nor subjugated by it; nor on the other hand can it ever be separated. It is, nevertheless, only one aspect of your soul. Your individuality, in whatever way you want to think of it, continues to exist in your terms.
It continues to grow and develop, but its growth and development is highly dependent upon its realization that while it is distinct and individual, it is also but one manifestation of the soul. To the extent that it realizes this, it learns to unfold in creativity, and to use those abilities that lie inherent within it.
Now unfortunately, it would be much easier simply to tell you that your individuality continues to exist, and let it go at that. While this would make a fairly reasonable parable, it has been told in that particular way before, and there are dangers in the very simplicity of the tale. The truth is that the personality you are now and the personality that you have been and will be — in the terms in which you understand time — all of these personalities are manifestations of the soul, of your soul.
Your soul therefore — the soul that you are — the soul that you are part of — that soul is a far more creative and miraculous phenomenon than you previously supposed. And when this is not clearly understood, and when the concept is watered down for simplicity’s sake, as mentioned earlier, then the intense vitality of the soul can never be understood. Your soul, therefore, possesses the wisdom, information, and knowledge that is part of the experience of all these other personalities; and you have within yourselves access to this information, but only if you realize the true nature of your reality. Let me emphasize again that these personalities exist independently within and are a part of the soul, and each of them are free to create and develop.
There is however an inner communication, and the knowledge of one is available to any — not after physical death, but now in your present moment. Now the soul itself, as mentioned earlier, is not static. It grows and develops even through the experience of those personalities that compose it, and it is, to put it as simply as possible, more than the sum of its parts.
Now, there are no closed systems in reality. In your physical system the nature of your perceptions limits your idea of reality to some extent, because you purposely decide to focus within a given “locale.” But basically speaking, consciousness can never be a closed system, and all barriers of such a nature are illusion. Therefore the soul itself is not a closed system. 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 are many matters here very difficult to express in words, for you are so afraid for your sense of identity that you resist the idea that the soul, for example, is an open spiritual system, a powerhouse of creativity that shoots out in all directions — and yet this is indeed the case.
I tell you this, and at the same time remind you that your present personality is never lost. Now another word for the soul is entity. You see it is not a simple matter of giving you a definition of a soul or entity, for even to have a glimpse in logical terms you would have to understand it in spiritual, psychic, and electromagnetic terms, and understand the basic nature of consciousness and action as well. But you can intuitively discover the nature of the soul or entity, and in many ways intuitive knowledge is superior to any other kind.
One prerequisite for such an intuitive understanding of the soul is the desire to achieve it. If the desire is strong enough, then you will be automatically led to experiences that will result in vivid, unmistakable subjective knowledge. There are methods that will enable you to do this, and I will give you some toward the end of this book.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
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.
[... 4 paragraphs ...]
Now: This discussion is not meant to be an esoteric presentation with little practical meaning in your daily lives. The fact is that while you hold limited concepts of your own reality, then you cannot practically take advantage of many abilities that are your own; and while you have a limited concept of the soul, then to some extent you cut yourself off from the source of your own being and creativity.
[... 3 paragraphs ...]
Now it is nearly impossible to separate a discussion of the nature of the soul from a discussion of the nature of perception. Very briefly let us review a few points: You form physical matter and the physical world that you know. The physical senses actually can be said to create the physical world, in that they force you to perceive an available field of energy in physical terms, and impose a highly specialized pattern upon this field of reality. Using the physical senses, you can perceive reality in no other way.
This physical perception in no way alters the native, basic, unfettered perception that is characteristic of the inner self, the inner self being the portion of the soul that is within you. The inner self knows its relationship with the soul. It is a portion of the self that acts, you might say, as a messenger between the soul and the present personality. You must also realize that while I use terms like “soul” or “entity,” “inner self,” and “present personality,” I do so only for the sake of convenience, for one is a part of the other; there is no point where one begins and another ends.
You can see this easily for yourself if you consider the way in which psychologists use the terms “ego,” “subconscious,” and even “unconscious.” What seems subconscious in one instant may be conscious the next. An unconscious motive may also be conscious at one point. Even in these terms your experience should tell you that the words themselves make divisions that do not exist in your own experience.
You seem to perceive exclusively through your physical senses, and yet you have only to extend your egotistical idea of reality, and you will find even your egotistical self accepting quite readily the existence of nonphysical information.
As it does, so its own ideas of its own nature will automatically change and expand, for you will have removed limitations to its growth. Now any act of perception changes the perceiver, and so the soul, considered as a perceiver, must also change. There are no real divisions between the perceiver and the thing seemingly perceived. In many ways the thing perceived is an extension of the perceiver. This may seem strange, but all acts are mental, or if you prefer, psychic acts. This is an extremely simple explanation; but the thought creates the reality. Then the creator of the thought perceives the object, and he does not understand the connection between him and this seemingly separate thing.
This characteristic of materializing thoughts and emotions into physical realities is an attribute of the soul. Now in your reality, these thoughts are made physical. In other realities, they may be “constructed” in an entirely different fashion. So your soul, that which you are, constructs your physical daily reality for you from the nature of your thoughts and expectations.
You can readily see, therefore, how important your subjective feelings really are. This knowledge — that your universe is idea construction — can immediately give you clues that enable you to change your environment and circumstances beneficially. When you do not understand the nature of the soul, and do not realize that your thoughts and feelings form physical reality, then you feel powerless to change it. In later chapters of this book, I hope to give you some practical information that will enable you to alter practically the very nature and structure of daily life.”
—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part One: Chapter 6: Session 527, May 11, 1970 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
The soul perceives all experience directly. Most experiences of which you are aware come packaged in physical wrapping, and you take the wrapping for the experience itself, and do not think of looking inside. The world that you know is one of the infinite materializations taken by consciousness, and as such it is valid.
The soul, however, does not need to follow the laws and principles that are a part of the physical reality, and it does not depend upon physical perception. The soul’s perceptions are of acts and events that are mental, that lie, so to speak, beneath physical events as you know them. The soul’s perceptions are not dependent upon time, because time is a physical camouflage and does not apply to nonphysical reality.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
Now, each event of which you are aware is already a translation of an inner event, a psychic or mental event that is perceived by the soul directly, but translated by the physically oriented portions of the self into physical sense terms.
It goes without saying then that the soul does not require a physical body for purposes of perception; that perception is not dependent upon physical senses; that experience continues whether or not you are in this life or another; and also that the soul’s basic methods of perception are also operating within you now even as you read this book. It also follows that your experience within the physical system is dependent upon a physical form and physical senses — again, because these interpret reality and translate it into physical data. It also follows that some hints of the soul’s direct experience can be gained by momentarily switching the physical senses off — by refusing to use them as perceptors, and falling back upon other methods. Now you do this to some extent in the dream state, but even then in many dreams you still tend to translate experience into hallucinatory physical terms. Most of the dreams that you recall are of this nature.
At certain depths of sleep, however, the soul’s perception operates relatively unhampered. You drink, so to speak, from the pure well of perception. You communicate with the depths of your own being, and the source of your creativity. These experiences, not being translated physically, do not remain in the morning. You do not remember them as dreams. Dreams, however, may later the same evening be formed from the information gained during what I will call the “depth experience.” These will not be exact or near translations of the experience, but rather of the nature of dream parables — an entirely different thing, you see.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
It exists then, “eternally,” separated from the physical clothing that you need in order to understand it. Physical existence is one way in which the soul chooses to experience its own actuality. The soul, in other words, has created a world for you to inhabit, to change — a complete sphere of activity in which new developments and indeed new forms of consciousness can emerge.
In a manner of speaking, you continually create your soul as it continually creates you.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
Now, the soul is never diminished, nor basically are any portions of the self.
The soul can be considered as an electromagnetic energy field, of 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 as an identity. Look at it this way: The young woman through whom I speak once stated in a poem, and I quote: “These atoms speak, and call themselves my name.”
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
In a larger manner, the identity of the soul can be seen from the same viewpoint. It knows who it is, and is far more certain of its identity, indeed, than your physical self is of its identity. And yet now where in this electromagnetic energy field can the identity of the soul as such be found?
[... 1 paragraph ...]
Now in terms of psychology as you understand it, the soul could be considered as a prime identity that is in itself a gestalt of many other individual consciousnesses — an unlimited self that is yet able to express itself in many ways and forms and yet maintain its own identity, its own “I am-ness,” even while it is aware that its I am-ness may be part of another I am-ness. Now I am sure it may seem inconceivable to you, but the fact is that this I am-ness is retained even though it may, figuratively speaking, now merge with and travel through other such energy fields. There is, in other words, a give and take between souls or entities, and no end of possibilities, both of development and expansion. Again, the soul is not a closed system.
It is only because your present existence is so highly focused in one narrow area that you put such stern limits upon your definitions and the self, and then project these upon your concepts of the soul. You worry for your physical identity and limit the extent of your perceptions for fear you cannot handle more and retain your selfhood.
The soul is not frightened for its identity. It is sure of itself. It ever seeks. It is not afraid of being overwhelmed by experience or perception. If you had a more thorough understanding of the nature of identity you would not, for example, fear telepathy, for behind this concern is the worry that your identity will be swept away by the suggestions or thoughts of others.
No psychological system is closed, no consciousness is closed, regardless of any appearances to the contrary within your own system. The soul is a traveler, as has been said so often; but it is also the creator of all experience, and of all destinations in your terms. It creates worlds as it goes, so to speak.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
Consciousness is not basically built upon those precepts of good and evil that so presently concern you. By inference, neither is a soul. This does not mean that in your system, and in some others, these problems do not exist and that good is not preferable to the evil. It simply means that the soul knows that good and evil are but different manifestations of a far greater reality.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
I want to emphasize again that while all this sounds difficult in the telling, it becomes much more clear intuitively when you learn to experience what you are, for if you cannot travel inside your physical body to find your identity, you can travel through your psychological self.
There are far more wonders to perceive through this inward exploration than you can possibly believe until you begin such a journey for yourself. You are a soul; you are a particular manifestation of a soul, and it is sheer nonsense to think that you must remain ignorant of the nature of your own being. You may not be able to put your knowledge clearly into words, but this will in no way negate the value or the validity of the experience that will be yours once you begin to look inward.
Now you may call this a spiritual or psychological or psychic exploration, as you prefer. You will not be trying to find your soul. In that respect there is nothing to find. It is not lost, and you are not lost. The words you use may make no difference, but your intent does indeed.”
—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part One: Chapter 6: Session 528, May 13, 1970 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“Now, no psychological structure is easy to describe in words. Simply to explain the nature of personality as it is generally known, all kinds of terms are used: id, subconscious, ego, superego; all of these to differentiate the interweaving actions that make up the physical personality. The dreaming self is just as complicated. So you can say that certain portions of it deal with physical reality, physical manipulation, and plans; some with deeper levels of creativity and achievement that insure physical survival; some with communication, with even more extensive elements of the personality now generally unknown; some with the continuing experience and existence of what you may call the soul or overall individual entity, the true mul
The soul creates the flesh. The creator hardly looks down upon its creation. The soul creates the flesh for a reason, and physical existence for a reason, so none of this is to lead you to a distaste for physical life, nor toward a lack of appreciation for those sensual joys with which you are surrounded. Any inner journeys should allow you to find greater significance, beauty, and meaning in life as you know it now; but full enjoyment and development also means that you use all of your abilities, that you explore inner dimensions with as much wonder and enthusiasm. With proper understanding, therefore, it is quite possible for you to become quite familiar now with after-death landscapes and environments and experiences. You will find them to be as vivid as any you know. Such explorations will completely alter somber preconceptions about existence after death. It is very important that you divest yourself of as many preconceptions as possible, however, for these will impede your progress.”
—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part Two: Chapter 10: Session 538, June 29, 1970 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“This is a crossroads that comes, not only to you, but to each individual upon the face of the planet and in every time it comes when an individual realizes that they are using all the resources that they have, and that they are not getting the results that they wanted. It happens when it seems to them the meaning has fled out of the universe. When they look back on their childhood and realize that, in that time, there was great magic and great rejoicing and great freedom and they ask, “Where has it gone?” It is a crisis that comes to each soul born in flesh.
Now this crisis has a meaning and a purpose. It does you no good to avoid this crisis through drugs, through tranquilizers, or through material possessions, for you must face certain facts, and the facts are these. The high and mighty intellect that deals with the world of sense is not all. The validity and the vitality of your existence is far more than this. And when you find your intellect, alone, cannot give you the answers, and that it cannot bring you joy and that it brings you no closer to the fountain of existence, then you begin asking the proper questions. Then you are like the flower who accepts the sunshine, and in accepting the sunshine knows far more about the reality of sun than any scientist who measures the spectrum of light without feeling. Your soul, your inner self, your reality, is experience. It is this upon which you must base your life.
[... 11 paragraphs ...]
Now, consciousness is a quality of the soul. You can turn your consciousness in many directions. It is like a tool that belongs to you, but you are more than your consciousness is. It is a quality inherent in the nature of the spirit or soul, but it is far more.
([Gert:] “Are spirit and soul equitable?”)
When I speak to you, then spirit and soul are equitable.
([Gert:] “Then a consciousness of a person may leave before death, but the soul would be the last thing that leaves the body?”)
[... 1 paragraph ...]
(Rachel asked Seth to define the soul, if it exists.)
I am writing a book called, The Eternal Validity of the Soul. Now, top that one.
([Rachel:] “Are the soul and the entity the same thing?”)
The soul is the breath of the entity.
([Theodore:] “The soul was, before the entity is.”)
The soul composes that of which the entity is made. The soul is the portion of All That Is of which the entity is made.
([Rachel:]“Then consciousness is the feeling of the soul, the light, the understanding of the soul. The consciousness for everything that is around that exists.”)
In certain terms. I agree with what you have said so far, but you have not said enough. The soul uses consciousness. Consciousness is a characteristic of the soul. Consciousness is a method by which the soul understands what it is.”
—The Early Class Sessions: Book 2 Sessions 1/6/70 to 12/29/70; ESP Class Session, November 24, 1970 © 2008 Laurel Davies-Butts
“Now these facts do not deny the validity of the soul, but instead add to it immeasurably.
The soul can be described for that matter, as a multidimensional, infinite act, each minute probability being brought somewhere into actuality and existence; an infinite creative act that creates for itself infinite dimensions in which fulfillment is possible.
The tapestry of your own existence is simply such that the three-dimensional intellect cannot behold it. These probable selves, however, are a portion of your identity or soul, and if you are out of contact with them it is only because you focus upon physical events and accept them as the criteria for reality.
[... 11 paragraphs ...]
Now: The soul is not a finished product.
In fact it is not a product in those terms at all, but a process of becoming. All That Is is not a product, finished or otherwise, either. There are probable gods as there are probable men; but these probable gods are all a part of what you may call the soul of, or the identity of, All That Is; even as your probable selves are all a portion of your soul or entity.”
—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part Two: Chapter 16: Session 565, February 1, 1971 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“Illness and suffering are the results of the misdirection of creative energy. They are a part of the creative force, however. They do not come from a different source than, say, health and vitality. Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you how to stop suffering. That is its purpose.”
—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part Two: Chapter 20: Session 580, April 12, 1971 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“There are indeed. Why should the soul be limited? The soul is not a thing that you have. The soul is not the consciousness that you know. The soul is far beyond the consciousness that you presently experience. It is only your own ideas of a limited self that make you think in terms of such a closed soul. There are no closed systems, and there is no end to the growth of the soul.”
—The Early Class Sessions: Book 4 Sessions 5/25/71 to 1/25/72; ESP Class Session, August 3, 1971 © 2010 Laurel Davies-Butts
“The same applies to each reader of this book. The soul is open-ended, therefore. It is not a closed spiritual or psychic system. I have tried to show you that the soul is not a separate, apart-from-you thing. It is no more divorced from you than — capital — God is.
There is no need to create a separate god who exists outside of your universe and separate from it, nor is there any need to think of a soul as some distant entity. God, or All That Is, is intimately a part of you. “His” energy forms your identity, and your soul is a part of you in the same manner.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
In larger terms, my soul includes my reincarnational personalities, Seth Two, and probable selves. I am as aware of my probable selves, incidentally, as I am of my reincarnational existences. Your concept of the soul is simply so limited. I am not really speaking in terms of group souls, though this interpretation can also be made.
Each “part” of the soul contains the whole — a concept I am sure will startle you. As you become more aware of your own subjective reality you will therefore, become familiar with greater portions of your own soul. When you think of the soul as a closed system you perceive it as such, and close off from yourself the knowledge of its greater creativity and characteristics.
[... 16 paragraphs ...]
All of existence and consciousness is interwoven. Only when you think of the soul as something different, separate, and therefore closed, are you led to consider a separate god — a personality that seems to be apart from creation.
[... 7 paragraphs ...]
Such contacts and knowledge are available to each individual. All That Is speaks to all of its parts, not with sounds, trumpets, and fanfare from without, but communicates its messages through the living soul-stuff of each consciousness.”
—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part Two: Chapter 22: Session 589, August 4, 1971 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“You have been trying to squeeze the soul into tight concepts of the nature of existence, making it follow your limited beliefs. The door to the soul is open, and it leads to all the dimensions of experience.
If you think, however, that the self as you know it is the end or summation of yourself, then you also imagine your soul to be a limited entity bounded by its present ventures in one life alone, to be judged accordingly after death on the performance of a few paltry years.
In many ways this is a cozy concept, though to some it can be quite frightening with its connotations of eternal damnation. It is far too tidy an idea, however, to hint at the rich embellishments that are at the heart of divine creativity. The soul stands both within and without the fabric of physical life as you know it. You are not separated from the animals and the rest of existence by virtue of possessing an eternal inner consciousness. Such a consciousness is present within all living beings, and in all forms.”
—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part Two: Chapter 22: Session 590, August 9, 1971 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“The body of the earth can be said to have its own soul, or mind (whichever term you prefer). Using this analogy the mountains and oceans, the valleys and rivers and all natural phenomena spring from the earth’s soul, as all events and all manufactured objects appear from the inner mind or soul of mankind.
The inner world of each man and woman is connected with the inner world of the earth. The spirit becomes flesh. Part of each individual’s soul, then, is intimately connected with what we will call the world’s soul, or the soul of the earth.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
So does the human individual rise up in victorious distinctiveness from the ancient and yet ever-new fountains of its own soul. The self rises from unknowing into knowing, constantly surprising itself. As you read these sentences, for example, some of your knowledge is conscious knowing and is instantly available. Some is unconscious, but even the unconscious knowledge is knowing in its own unknowing.
[... 5 paragraphs ...]
Your body does not just happen to be thin or fat, tall or short, healthy or ill. These characteristics are mental, and are thrust outward by you upon your image. I do not mean to be facetious, but you were not born yesterday. Your soul was not born yesterday, in those terms, but before the annals of time as you think of time.
The characteristics that were yours at birth were yours for a reason. The inner self chose them. To a large extent, 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, and the “history” that is a part of you is written within unconscious memory that resides not only within your psyche, but is faithfully decoded in your genes and chromosomes,1 and fulfilled in the blood that rushes through your veins.
You are aware, alert, and participating in many more realities than you know as your soul expresses itself through you. That consciousness of your usual daylight hours, the ego consciousness, rises up like a flower from the ground of the “underneath,” the unconscious bed of your own reality. Though you are not aware of it, this ego itself emerges, then falls back again into the unconscious, from which another ego then rises as a new bloom from the springtime earth.
[... 10 paragraphs ...]
Much is not as yet known. Your psychologists are not able to think in terms of a soul, and your religious leaders are not able, or refuse, to comprehend it psychologically even to its simplest degree. Metaphysics and psychology have not met, in other words.”
—The Nature of Personal Reality; Part One: Chapter 1: Session 610, June 7, 1972 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts
“The stuff of the body should not be considered as some metaphysical result, then, but as a living gestalt of responsive flesh. Your body is composed of other living entities, in other words. Though you organize this living material it has its own right to fulfillment and existence. You are not a soul encased in inert clay.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
There is no difference between the energy that shapes your ideas and the energy that grows a flower, or that heals your finger if you burn it. The soul does not exist apart from nature. It is not thrust into nature. Nature is the soul in flesh, in whatever its materializations. The flesh is as spiritual as the soul, and the soul is as natural as the flesh. In your terms the body is the living soul. Now the soul can live, and does, in many forms — some physical and some not, but while you are material, the body is the living soul. The body constantly heals itself, which means that the soul in the flesh heals itself. The body is often closer to the soul than the mind is because it automatically grows as a flower does, trusting its nature.”
—The Nature of Personal Reality; Part One: Chapter 7: Session 630, December 11, 1972 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts
“A group of cells forms an organ. A group of selves forms a soul. I am not telling you that you do not have a soul to call your own. You are a part of your soul. It belongs to you, and you to it. You dwell within its reality as a cell dwells within the reality of an organ. The organ is temporal in your terms. The soul is not.
The cell is material in your terms. The self is not. The entity then, or greater self, is composed of souls. Because the body exists in space and time, the organs have specific purposes. They help keep the body alive and they must stay “in place.” The entity has its existence in multitudinous dimensions, its souls free to travel within boundaries that would seem infinite to you. As the smallest cell within your body participates to its degree in your daily experience, so does the soul to an immeasurably greater extent share in the events of the entity.
You possess within yourself all of those potentials in which consciousness creatively takes part. The cell does not need to be consciously aware of you in order to fulfill itself, even though your expectations of health largely influence its existence, but your recognition of the soul and entity can help you direct energies from these other dimensions into your daily life.
You, dear reader, are in the process of expanding your psychic structure, [of] becoming a conscious participator with the soul, in certain terms, [of] becoming what your soul is. As cells multiply and grow — within their own nature and the physical framework — so do selves “evolve” in terms of value fulfillment.4
Souls are also creative psychic structures, ever-changing and yet always retaining individual integrity, and all are dependent one upon the other. Souls make up the life of the entity in those terms. Yet the entity is “more” than the soul is. Take a break.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
Now: When you are aware of the existence of the entity and of the soul, you can consciously draw upon their greater energy, understanding and strength.
[... 9 paragraphs ...]
Your body is the basic product of your creativity on a physical level. From its integrity all other constructions in your lifetime must come. Your greatest artistic endeavors must arise out of the soul-in-flesh. You create yourselves on a daily basis, changing your form according to the incalculable richness of your multitudinous abilities. So out of the soul’s resplendent psychic richness do you spring with your free will and desire. You in turn create other living creatures. You also produce forms of art — fluid living constructs that you do not understand, in terms of societies and civilizations — and all of these flow through your alliance with flesh and blood.”
—The Nature of Personal Reality; Part One: Chapter 9: Session 637, January 31, 1973 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts
“Philosophies that teach denial of the flesh must ultimately end up preaching a denial of the self and building a contempt for it, because even though the soul is couched in muscle and bone it is meant to experience that reality, not to refute it.
[... 4 paragraphs ...]
You attempt then to further banish the characteristic enjoyment of your own creaturehood, denying the lusty spirituality of your flesh and the strong present corporeal leanings of your soul. You will try to rid yourself of very natural emotions, and so be cheated of their great spiritual and physical motion. On the other hand, some leaders may give little consideration to such issues, but still be deeply convinced of the misery of the human condition, focusing upon all the “darker” elements, seeing the world’s destruction ever closer to hand without really examining the beliefs that arouse such constant feelings.”
—The Nature of Personal Reality; Part Two: Chapter 12: Session 647, March 12, 1973 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts
“Some individuals find themselves with memories of other lives, which are other days to the soul. Such persons then become aware of a greater consciousness reaching over those gaps, and realize that earthly experience can contain [among other things] a knowledge of existence in more than one body. Inherently then consciousness, affiliated with the flesh, can indeed carry such comprehensions. The mind of man as you know it shows at least the potential ability for handling a kind of memory with which you are usually not acquainted. This means that even biologically the species is equipped to deal with different sequences of time, while still manipulating within one particular time scheme. This also implies a far greater psychological richness — quite possible, again, within corporal reality — in which many levels of relationships can be handled. Such inner knowledge is inherent in the cells, and in ordinary terms of evolution is quite possible as a “future” development.”
—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two; Section 4: Session 708 September 30, 1974 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“Other concepts are really not basically workable even in your own physical reality. A rigid, dogmatic concept of good and evil will force you to perceive physical existence as a battleground of opposing forces, with the poor unwary soul almost as a buffer. Or you will think of the poor soul as a blackboard eraser, slapped between two hands — one good and one evil.
Upon the blackboard, in this homey analogy, would be written the soul’s earthly experiences. With the eraser the “evil hand” would try to rub out all of the good, and at the same time the “good hand” would be trying to erase all of the evil. In such a case all of your experience becomes suspect. You will have a tendency to consider the body with its natural appetites wrong, and deny them, while at the same time the physical part of you will look upon your “good intents” as wrong, and infringements upon its own existence.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
You often find yourself encountering your own structures, no longer hidden in the kind of experience with which you are familiar. These may then appear in quite a different light. You may be convinced that you are evil simply because you are physical. You may believe that the soul “descends” into the body, and therefore that the body is lower, inferior, and a degraded version of “what you really are.” At the same time your own physical being knows better, and basically cannot accept such a concept.2 So in daily life you may project this idea of unworth outward onto another person, who seems then to be your enemy; or upon another nation. In general, you might select animals to play the part of the enemy, or members of another religion, or political parties.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
When you begin to leave your home station and alter your focus, however, you leave behind you the particular familiar receptors for your projections. Using the Ouija board or automatic writing, you may find yourself immediately confronted with this material that you have suppressed in the past. When it surfaces you may then project it outward from yourself again, but in a different fashion. Instead of thinking you are in contact with a great philosopher or “ancient soul,” you may believe that you are instead visiting with a demon or a devil, or that you are possessed of an evil spirit.”
—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two; Section 5: Session 719 November 11, 1974 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“You think that the soul is a white wall with nothing written upon it, and so your idea of sacrilege is to shit upon it, not realizing that the shit and the soul are one, and that the biological is spiritual; and that, again — if you will forgive my homey concept — flowers grow from the shit of the earth. And in a true communion, all things of this life return to the earth, and are consumed and rise up again in a new life that is never destroyed or annihilated, though always changing form.
So, when you shrink from such words or such meanings, why do you shrink? Because you do not trust the biology of your being or the integrity of your soul in flesh. You are people. You are made of the stuff of the earth, and the dust from the stars has formed into the shit that lies in piles — warm piles that come from the beasts and the creatures of the earth. And that shit fertilizes the flowers and the ground, and is a part of it.
Your soul and your flesh are wedded together. One is not “better” than the other. Both are good. Both are, and you are both. The heritage of the earth, in your terms, is ancient and yet ever new, and when you write your letters (to correspondents) you write … with your intelligence and your wit. Yet if it were not that you shit once or twice a day, you would not be writing any letters!”
—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two; Appendix 24: (For Session 725, ) © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“Usually you think in terms of a hypothetical whole self or consciousness, emerging at birth and disappearing at death. There are, however, learned arguments in which professors debate such questions. Some astrologers use the time of conception in their calculations, while others prefer the date of birth. Various religions have decided that the “soul” enters the fetus at its conception, while others argue that consciousness cannot be considered a human soul until some time later, just prior to birth.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
Give us a moment … In the first place, again, the self or soul in this case is not a thing of measurement — nor is it necessarily some thing that suddenly arrives and then disappears.
[... 6 paragraphs ...]
To a certain extent what you are was latent in the fetus, but there is no one point when “the full awareness of the soul enters into the flesh.” The process is gradual. In physical terms it begins before your own parents are born.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
You grant soulhood only to your own species, as if souls had sizes that fit your own natures only. You preserve these ideas by thinking of animals as beneath you. Then, however, you must wonder when the soul enters the flesh, or when the alien fetus becomes one of your own, and therefore blessed by the gods and granted the right to life.
But all things have consciousness, and in those terms possess a soul-nature. There are no gradations as to soul. Soul is the life within everything that is. Of course the fetus “has a soul” — but in the same way, if you think in those terms, then each cell within the fetus must be granted a soul. The course of a cell is not predetermined. Cells are usually very cooperative, particularly as they form the structures of the body.3
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
As an example, it appears to you that animals do not reflect upon their own reality. Certainly it seems that a cell has no “objective” knowledge of its own being, as if it is without knowing what it is, or without appreciation of its own isness. You are quite wrong in such deductions. Nor are there necessarily gradations in which one kind of consciousness progresses in rigid terms from a lower to a higher state. Any cell has practical use of precognitive abilities,4 for example, that quite escape you, yet many of you assign such abilities to “higher” souls. Each kind of life has its own qualities that cannot be compared with those of others, and that often cannot be communicated.
Now: All of this may seem to have little to do with the nature of reincarnation, as you think of it, or with counterparts as I have explained them. Yet it is vital that you throw aside old concepts of the self and of the soul before you can begin to understand the freedom of your own selfhood.
[... 8 paragraphs ...]
The soul is not a unit that is definable. It is instead an undefinable quality. It cannot be broken down or built up, destroyed or expanded, yet it can change affiliation and organization, and its characteristics, while ever remaining itself.
The soul within the fetus cannot be destroyed by any kind of abortion, for instance. Its progress cannot be charted, for it will always escape such calculations. Its history is in the future, which always creates the past.”
—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two; Section 6: Session 730 January 15, 1975 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“As I have certainly hinted, the body is a miraculous organism, and you have barely learned the most simple of its structures.1 You do not understand the properties of soul or body, yet the body was given to you so that you could learn from it. The properties of the earth are meant to lead you into the nature of the soul. You create physical reality, yet without knowing how you do so, so that the wondrous structure of the earth itself is meant to lead you to question your own source. Nature as you understand it is meant to be your teacher. You are not its master.
[... 12 paragraphs ...]
The infinite ranges possible to human capabilities would be explored — and those who chose that route said, quote: “We will trust that our creativity will find its own way, and if there are nightmares we will waken from them. We will even learn from them. We will dare to push aside the dimensions of being into those realms in which only the gods have gone before — and through our utter vulnerability to experience, discover the divinity that gives our humanity its meaning. And through the compassion that we have learned, will we be able to understand the divine errors6 that gave us the gift of our birth. Souls and molecules each are learning, each are forming realities, each are a part of a divinity in which each counterpart has a part to play.”
[... 12 paragraphs ...]
They represent a present unique beyond telling, alive in each consciousness, more important than you recognize. There are no real rules to be followed that will bring you into such an encounter with the present moment of reality — only a trust in the nature of your being. And that trust is within you whether or not you recognize it, for it gives you your present experience; and no matter how your mind questions, it rides securely in the great creativity of the soul.
That soul constantly creates the body, and each individual on the face of the earth at any given time places his or her trust in that reality. That feeling of certainty is the same that any plant knows. Any idea, creative insight, or dream, rides upon the same sure thrust.”
—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two; Section 6: Session 733 January 27, 1975 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
“Instead, previous to psychology’s entrance, before psychology mapped the acceptable or forbidden, the dangerous or safe compartments of the self, man used the word “soul” to include his own entire complexity. That word was large enough to contain man’s experience. It was large enough to provide room for conventional and unconventional, bizarre and ordinary states of mind and experience. It was roomy enough to hold images of reality that were physically perceived or psychologically perceived.
[... 4 paragraphs ...]
It was an attempt to fit man within the picture of evolution, and to manufacture a creature whose very existence was somehow pitted against itself. Evolutionary man, with Darwinian roots, could not be a creature with a soul. It had to have hidden in its psychological roots the bloody remnants of the struggle for survival that now cast it in its uneasy role. There is no doubt that the church cast the soul in a position of stress, caught as it was between its heavenly source and original sin — but there was a sense of psychological mobility involved, one that saw continued existence after death.”
—The Magical Approach; Session Fourteen September 29, 1980 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts
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