You have heard of ghost hunters. I can quite literally be called a ghost writer, though I do not approve of the term "ghost." It is true that I am usually not seen in physical terms. I do not like the word "spirit," either; and yet if your definition of that word implies the idea of a personality without a physical body, then I would have to agree that the description fits me.

I address an unseen audience. However, I know that my readers exist, and therefore I shall ask each of them, now, to grant me the same Privilege.

I write this book through the auspices of a woman of whom I have become quite fond. To others it seems strange that I address her as "Ruburt," and "him," but the fact is that I have known her in other times and places, by other names. She has been both a man and a woman, and the entire identity who has lived these separate lives can be designated by the name of Ruburt.

Names are not important, however. My name is Seth. Names are simply designations, symbols; and yet since you must use them, I shall also. I write this book with the cooperation of Ruburt, who speaks the words for me. In this life Ruburt is called Jane, and her husband, Robert Butts, takes down the words that Jane speaks. I call him Joseph.

My readers may suppose that they are physical creatures, bound within physical bodies, imprisoned within bone, flesh, and skin. If you believe that your existence is dependent upon this corporeal image, then you feel in danger of extinction, for no physical form lasts, and no body, however beautiful in youth, retains the same vigor and enchantment in old age. If you identify with your own youth, or beauty, or intel- lect, or accomplishments, then there is the constant gnawing knowledge that these attributes can and will vanish.

I am writing this book to assure you that this is not the case. Basically you are no more of a physical being than I am, and I have donned and discarded more bodies than I care to tell. Personalities who do not exist do not write books. I am quite independent of a physical image, and so are you.

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.

You have each lived other existences, and that knowledge is within you though you are not consciously aware of it. 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 I begin this book it is late January, in your time, 1970. Ruburt is a slim, dark- haired, quick woman now, who sits in a rocker and speaks these words for me.

My consciousness is fairly well focused within Ruburt's body. It is a cold night. This is our first experience in writing a complete book in trance, and Ruburt was somewhat nervous before the session began. It is not just a simple matter of having this woman speak for me. There are many manipulations necessary, and psychological adjustments. We have established what I refer to as a psychological bridge between us - that is, between Ruburt and myself.

I do not speak through Ruburt as one might through a telephone. Instead there is a psychological extension, a projection of characteristics on both of our parts, and this I use for our communications. Later I will explain how this psychological framework is created and maintained, for it is like a road that must be kept clear of debris. 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 believe firmly that your consciousness is locked up somewhere inside your skull and is powerless to escape it, if you feel that your consciousness ends at the boundary of your body, then you sell yourself short, and you will think that I am a delusion. I am no more a delusion than you are, and that may be a loaded sentence.

I can say this to each of my readers honestly: I am older than you are, at least in terms of age as you think of it.

If a writer can qualify as any kind of authority on the basis of age, therefore, then I should get a medal. I am an energy personality essence, no longer focused in physical matter. As such, I am aware of some truths that many of you seem to have forgotten.

I hope to remind you of these. I do not speak so much to the part of you that you think of as yourself as to that part of you that you do not know, that you have to some extent denied and to some extent forgotten. That part of you reads this book, [even] as "you" read it.

I speak to those who believe in a god, and those who do not, to those who believe that science will find all answers as to the nature of reality, and to those who do not. I hope to give you clues that will enable you to study the nature of reality for yourself as you have never studied it before.

There are several things that I shall ask you to understand. You are not stuck in time like a fly in a closed bottle, whose wings are therefore useless. You cannot trust your physical senses to give you a true picture of reality. They are lovely liars, with such a fantastic tale to tell that you believe it without question. You are sometimes wiser, more creative, and far more knowledgeable when you are dreaming than when you are awake. These statements may seem highly dubious to you now, but when we are finished I hope that you will see that they are plain statements of fact.

What I will tell you has been told before throughout the centuries, and given again when it was forgotten. I hope to clarify many points that have been distorted through the years. And I offer my original interpretation of others, for no knowledge exists in a vacuum, and all information must be interpreted and colored by the personality who holds it and passes it on. Therefore I describe reality as I know it, and my experience in many layers and dimensions.

This is not to say that other realities do not exist. I have been conscious before your earth was formed. To write this book - and in most of my communications with Ruburt -  I adopt from my own bank of past personalities those characteristics that seem appropriate. There are many of us, personalities like myself, unfocused in physical matter or time. Our existence seems strange to you only because you do not realize the true potentials of personality, and you are hypnotized by your own limited concepts.

I am primarily a teacher, but I have not been a man of letters per se. I am primarily a personality with a message: You create the world that you know. You have been given perhaps the most awesome gift of all: the ability to project your thoughts outward into physical form.

The gift brings a responsibility, and many of you are tempted to congratulate yourselves on the successes of your lives, and blame God, fate, and society for your failures. In like manner, 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 fact is that each of you create your own physical reality; and en masse, you create both the glories and the terrors that exist within your earthly experience. Until you realize that you are the creators, you will refuse to accept this responsibility. Nor can you blame a devil for the world's misfortunes. You have grown  sophisticated enough to realize that the Devil is a projection of your own psyche, but you have not grown wise enough to learn how to use your creativity constructively.

Most of my readers are familiar with the term, "muscle bound." As a species you have grown "ego bound" instead, held in a spiritual rigidity, with the intuitive portions of the self either denied or distorted beyond any recognition.

The hour is growing late. Both of my friends must get up early in the morning. Ruburt is working on two books of his own and must get his sleep. Before I end this session I ask you to imagine our setting, for Ruburt has told me that a writer must be careful to set the scene.

I speak through Ruburt twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, in this same large room. The lights are always lit. This evening it is enjoyable for me to look out through Ruburt's eyes at the wintry corner beyond.

Physical reality has always been refreshing to me, and through Ruburt's cooperation and as I write this book, I see that I was correct in appreciating its unique charms. There is one other character to be mentioned here: Willy, the cat, a beloved monster who is now sleeping.

The nature of animal consciousness in itself is a highly interesting subject, and one that we will later consider. The cat is aware of my presence, and has on several occasions reacted rather noticeably to it. In this book I hope to show the constant interactions that occur between all units of consciousness, the communication that leaps beyond the barriers of species; and in some of these discussions, we will use Willy as a case in point.

Since we have mentioned animals, let me say here that they do possess a kind of consciousness that does not allow them as many freedoms as your own. Yet at the same time, they are not hampered in its use by certain characteristics that often impede the practical potential of human consciousness.

Consciousness is a way of perceiving the various dimensions of reality. Consciousness as you know it is highly specialized. The physical senses allow you to perceive the three-dimensional world, and yet by their very nature they can inhibit the perception of other equally valid dimensions. Most of you identify with your daily physically oriented self. You would not think of identifying with one portion of your body and ignoring all other parts, and yet you are doing the same thing when you imagine that the egotistical self carries the burden of your identity.

I am telling you that you are not a cosmic bag of bones and flesh, thrown together through some mixture of chemicals and elements. I am telling you that your consciousness is not some fiery product, formed merely accidentally through the interworkings of chemical components. You are not a forsaken offshoot of physical matter, nor is your consciousness meant to vanish like a puff of smoke. Instead, you form the physical body that you know at a deeply unconscious level with great discrimination, miraculous clarity, and intimate unconscious knowledge of each minute cell that composes it. This is not meant symbolically.

Now because your conscious mind, as you think of it, is not aware of these activities, you do not identify with this inner portion of yourselves. 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 this seemingly unconscious portion of yourself is far more knowledgeable, and upon its smooth functioning your entire physical existence depends.

This portion is conscious, aware, alert. It is you, so focused in physical reality, who do not listen to its voice, who do not understand that it is the great psychological strength from which your physically oriented self springs.

I call this seemingly unconscious the "inner ego," for it directs inner activities. It correlates information that is perceived not through the physical senses, but through other inner channels. It is the inner perceiver of reality that exists beyond the three- dimensional. It carries within it the memory of each of your past existences. It looks into subjective dimensions that are literally infinite, and from these subjective dimensions all objective realities flow.

All necessary information is given to you through these inner channels, and unbelievable inner activities take place before you can so much as lift a finger, flicker an eyelid, or read this sentence upon the page. This portion of your identity is quite natively clairvoyant and telepathic, so that you are warned of disasters before they occur, whether or not you consciously accept the message, and all communication takes place long before a word is spoken.

The "outer ego" and the inner ego operate together, the one to enable you to manipulate in the world that you know, the other to bring you those delicate inner perceptions without which physical existence could not be maintained.

There is however a portion of you, the deeper identity who forms both the inner ego and the outer ego, who decided that you would be a physical being in this place and in this time. This is the core of your identity, the psychic seed from which you sprang, the multidimensional personality of which you are part.

For those of you who wonder where I place the subconscious, as psychologists think of it, you can imagine it as a meeting place, so to speak, between the outer and inner egos. You must understand that there are no real divisions to the self, however, so we speak of various portions only to make the basic idea clear.

Since we are addressing individuals who do identify with the "normally conscious self," I bring such matters up in this first chapter because I will be using the terms later in the book, and because I want to state the fact of multidimensional personality as soon as possible.

You cannot understand yourselves, and you cannot accept my independent existence, until you rid yourself of the notion that personality is a "here and now" attribute of consciousness. Now some of the things that I may say about physical reality in this book may startle you, but remember that I am viewing it from an entirely different standpoint.

You are presently focused entirely within it, wondering perhaps what else if anything there may be outside. I am outside, returning momentarily to a dimension that I know and loved. I am not in your terms a resident, however. While I have a psychic "passport," there are still some problems of translation, inconveniences of entry that I must contend with.

Many people, I hear, have lived for years within New York City and never taken a tour through the Empire State Building, while many foreigners are well acquainted with it. And so while you have a physical address, I may still be able to point out some very strange and miraculous psychic and psychological structures within your own system of reality that you have ignored.

I hope, quite frankly, to do far more than this. I hope to take you on a tour through the levels of reality that are available to you, and to guide you on a journey through the dimensions of your own psychological structure - to open up whole areas of your own consciousness of which you have been relatively unaware. I hope, therefore, not only to explain the multidimensional aspects of personality, but to give each reader some glimpse of that greater identity that is his own.

The self that you know is but one fragment of your entire identity. These fragment selves are not strung together, however, like beads of a string. They are more like the various skins of an onion, or segments of an orange, all connected through the one vitality and growing out into various realities while springing from the same source.



I am not comparing personality to an orange or an onion, but I want to emphasize that as these things grow from within outward, so does each fragment of the entire self. You observe the outside aspect of objects. Your physical senses permit you to perceive the exterior forms to which you then react, but your physical senses to some extent force you to perceive reality in this manner, and the inside vitality within matter and form is not so apparent.

I can tell you, for example, that there is consciousness even within a nail, but few of my readers will take me seriously enough to stop in midsentence, and say good morning or good afternoon to the nearest nail they can find, stuck in a piece of wood.

Nevertheless, the atoms and molecules within the nail do possess their own kind of consciousness. The atoms and molecules that make up the pages of this book are also, within their own level, aware. Nothing exists - neither rock, mineral, plant, animal, or air - that is not filled with consciousness of its own kind. So you stand amid a constant vital commotion, a gestalt of aware energy, and you are yourselves physically composed of conscious cells that carry within themselves the realization of their own identity, that cooperate willingly to form the corporeal structure that is your physical body.

I am saying, of course, that there is no such thing as dead matter. There is no object that was not formed  by consciousness,  and  each consciousness,  regardless  of its degree, rejoices in sensation and creativity. You cannot understand what you are unless you understand such matters.

For convenience's sake, you close out the multitudinous inner communications that leap between the tiniest parts of your flesh, yet even as physical creatures, you are to some extent a portion of other consciousnesses. There are no limitations to the self. There are no limitations to its potentials. You can adopt artificial limitations through your own ignorance, however. You can identify, for example, with your outer ego alone, and cut yourself off from abilities that are a part of you. You can deny, but you cannot change, the facts. The personality is multidimensional, even though many people hide their heads, figuratively speaking, in the sand of three-dimensional existence and pretend there is nothing more.

I do not mean to underestimate the outer ego. You have simply overestimated it. Nor has its true nature been recognized.

We will have more to say concerning this point, but for now it is enough to realize that your sense of identity and continuity is not dependent upon the ego.

Now at times I will be using the term "camouflage," referring to the physical world to which the outer ego relates, for physical form is one of the camouflages that reality adopts. The camouflage is real, and yet there is a much greater reality within it - the vitality that gave it form. Your physical senses then allow you to perceive this camouflage, for they are attuned to it in a highly specialized manner. But to sense the reality within the form requires a different sort of attention, and more delicate manipulations than the physical senses provide.

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.

If you have a limited conception of the nature of reality, then your ego will do its best to keep you in the small enclosed area of your accepted reality. If, on the other hand, your intuitions and creative instincts are allowed freedom, then they communicate some knowledge of greater dimensions to this most physically oriented portion of your personality.

The fact of this book is proof that the ego does not have the whole kettle of personality to itself; for there is no doubt that it is being produced by some other personality than that of the writer known as Jane Roberts. Since that Jane Roberts has no abilities that are not inherent in the species as a whole, then at the very least it must be admitted that human personality has many more attributes than those usually ascribed to it. I hope to explain what these abilities are, and point out the ways that each individual can use to release these potentials.

Personality is a gestalt of ever-changing perception. It is the part of the identity which perceives. I do not force my perceptions upon the woman through whom I speak, nor is her consciousness blotted out during our communications. Instead there is an expansion of her consciousness and a projection of energy that is directed away from three-dimensional reality.

This concentration away from the physical system may make it appear as if her consciousness is blotted out. Instead, more is added to it. Now from my own field of reality I focus my attention toward the woman, but the words that she speaks - these words upon the pages - are not initially verbal at all.

In the first place, language as you know it is a slow affair: letter by letter strung out to make a word, and words to make a sentence, the result of a linear thought pattern. Language, as you know it, is partially and grammatically the end product of your physical time sequences. You can only focus upon so many things at one time, and your language structure is not given to the communication of intricate, simultaneous experience.

I am aware of a different kind of experience, not linear, and can focus upon and react to an infinite variety of simultaneous events. Ruburt could not express them, and so they must be leveled out into linear expression if they are to be communicated. This ability to perceive and react to unlimited simultaneous events is a basic characteristic of each whole self or entity. Therefore, I do not claim it as some feat that is exclusively my own.

Each reader, being presently ensconced within a physical form, I presume, knows only a small portion of himself - as I mentioned earlier. The entity is the overall identity of which his personality is one manifestation - an independent and eternally valid portion. In these communications, therefore, Ruburt's consciousness expands, and yet focuses in a different dimension, a dimension between his reality and mine, a field relatively free of distraction. Here I impress certain concepts upon him, with his permission and assent. They are not neutral, in that all knowledge or information bears the stamp of the personality who holds it or passes it on.

Ruburt makes his verbal knowledge available for our use, and quite automatically the two of us together cause the various words that will be spoken. Distractions can occur, as any information can be distorted. We are used to working together now, however, and the distortions are very few.

Some of my energy is also projected through Ruburt, and his energy and mine both activate his physical form during our sessions, and now as I speak these sentences. There are many other ramifications that I will discuss later.

I am not, therefore, a product of Ruburt's subconscious, any more than he is a product of my subconscious mind. Nor am I a secondary personality, cleverly trying to undermine a precarious ego. I have seen to it in fact that all portions of Ruburt's personality are benefited, and their integrity maintained and honored.

There is within his personality a rather unique facility that makes our communications possible. I will try to put this as simply as possible: There is within his psyche what amounts to a transparent dimensional warp that serves almost like an open window through which other realities can be perceived, a multidimensional opening that has to some extent escaped being clouded over by the shade of physical focus.

The physical senses usually blind you to these open channels, for they perceive reality only in their own image. To some extent, then, I enter your reality through a psychological warp in your space and time. In a manner of speaking, such an open channel serves much as a pathway between Ruburt's personality and my own, so that communication is possible between. Such psychological and psychic warps between dimensions of existence are not infrequent. They are merely recognized as such infrequently and utilized even less so.

I will try to give you some idea of my own nonphysical existence. Let it serve to remind you that your own basic identity is as nonphysical as my own.

That is the end of Chapter One.







While my environment differs in rather important respects from that of my readers, I can assure you, with ironic understatement, that it is as vivid, varied, and vital as physical existence. It is more pleasurable - though my ideas of pleasure have changed some since I was a physical being - being more rewarding and offering far greater opportunities for creative achievement.

My present existence is the most challenging one that I have known, and I have known many, both physical and nonphysical. There is not just one dimension in which nonphysical consciousness resides, any more than there is only one country on your planet or planet within your solar system.

My environment, now, is not the one in which you will find yourself immediately after death. I cannot help speaking humorously, but you must die many times before you enter this particular plane of existence. (Birth is much more of a shock than death. Sometimes when you die you do not realize it, but birth almost always implies a sharp and sudden recognition. So there is no need to fear death. And I, who have died more times than I care to tell, write this book to tell you so.)

My work in this environment provides far more challenge than any of you know, and it also necessitates the manipulation of creative materials that are nearly beyond your present comprehension. I will say more of this shortly. First of all, you must understand that no objective reality exists but that which is created by consciousness. Consciousness always creates form, and not the other way around. So my environment is a reality of existence created by myself and others like me, and it represents the manifestation of our development.

We do not use permanent structures. There is not a city or a town, for example, in which I dwell. I do not mean to imply that we are off in empty space. For one thing we do not think of space as you do, and we form whatever particular images we want to surround us.

They are created by our mental patterns, [just] as your own physical reality is created in perfect replica of your inner desires and thoughts. You think that objects exist independently of you, not realizing that they are instead the manifestations of your own psychological and psychic selves. We realize that we form our own reality, and therefore we do so with considerable joy and creative abandon. In my environment you would be highly disoriented, for it would seem to you as if it lacked coherency.

We are aware of the inner laws that govern all "materializations," however. I can have it night or day, in your terms, as I prefer - or any period, say, of your history. These changing forms would in no way bother my associates, for they would take them as immediate clues as to my mood, feelings, and ideas.

Permanency and stability basically have nothing to do with form, but with the integration of pleasure, purpose, accomplishment, and identity. I "travel" to many other levels of existence in order to fulfill my duties, which are primarily those of a teacher and educator, and I use whatever aids and techniques serve me best within those systems.

In other words, I may teach the same lesson in many different ways, according to the abilities and assumptions that are inherent in any given system in which I must operate. I use one portion of myself from many personalities that are available to my identity in these communications, and in this book. In other systems of reality, this particular Seth personality that I, the larger Seth identity adopt here, would not be under stood.

All systems of reality are not physically oriented, you see, and some are entirely unacquainted with physical form. Nor is sex, as you understand it, natural to them. Therefore I would not communicate as a male personality who has lived many physical existences, though this is a legitimate and valid portion of my identity.

In my home environment I assume whatever shape I please, and it may vary, and does, with the nature of my thoughts. You, however, form your own physical image at an unconscious level in more or less the same manner, but with some important differences. You usually do not realize that your physical body is created by you at each moment as a direct result of your inner conception of what you are, or that it changes in important chemical and electromagnetic ways with the ever-moving pace of your own thought.

Having long ago recognized the dependence of form upon consciousness, we have simply been able to change our forms entirely so that they more faithfully follow each nuance of our inner experience.

This ability to change form is an inherent characteristic of any consciousness. Only the degree of proficiency and actualization varies. You can see this in your own system, in a slowed down version, when you observe the changing forms taken by living matter through its "evolutionary" history.

Now, we can also take several forms at one time, so to speak, but you can also do this although you do not generally realize it. Your physical form can lie sleeping and inert upon the bed while your consciousness travels in a dream form to places quite distant. Simultaneously you may create a "thought form" of yourself, identical in every respect, and this may appear in the room of a friend quite without your conscious awareness. So consciousness is not limited as to the forms it can create at any given time.



Practically speaking, we are rather more advanced along these lines than you, and when we create such forms we do so with complete awareness. I share my field of existence with others who have more or less the same challenges to meet, the same overall pattern of development. Some I have known and others I have not. 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.

We do feel an equivalent of what you call emotions, though these are not the love or hate or anger that you know.  Your feelings can best  be described as the three- dimensional materializations of far greater psychological events and experiences that are related to the "inner senses."

I will explain these inner senses to you later, at the end of this chapter. Suffice it here to say that we have strong emotional experience, although it differs in a large measure from your own. It is far less limited and far more expansive in that we are also aware and responsive to the emotional "climate" as a whole. We are much freer to feel and experience, because we are not so afraid of being swept away by feeling.

Our identities do not feel threatened, for example, by the strong emotions  of another. We are able to travel through emotions in a way that is not now natural to you, and to translate them into other facets of creativity than those with which you are familiar. We do not feel the need to conceal emotions, for we know it is basically impossible and undesirable. Within your system they can appear troublesome because you have not  yet learned how to  use them. We aronly now  learning their full potential, and the powers of creativity with which they are connected. Since we realize that our identity is not dependent upon form, therefore, of course, we do not fear changing it, knowing that we can adopt any form we desire. We do not know death in your terms. Our existence takes us into many other environments, and we blend into these. We follow what rules of form exist within these environments. All of us here are teachers, and we therefore adapt our methods, also, so that they will make sense to personalities with varying ideas of reality.

Consciousness is not dependent upon form, as I have said, and yet it always seeks to create form. We do not exist in any time framework as you know it. Minutes, hours, or years have lost both their meaning and their fascination. We are quite aware of the time situations within other systems, however, and we must take them into account in our communications. Otherwise what we say would not be understood.

There are no real barriers to separate the systems of which I speak. The only separation is brought about by the varying abilities of personalities to perceive and manipulate. You exist in the midst of many other systems of reality, for example, but you do not perceive them. And even when some event intrudes from these systems into your own three dimensional existence, you are not able to interpret it, for it is distorted by the very fact of entry.

I told you that we do not experience your time sequence. We travel through various intensities. Our work, development, and experience all take place within what I term the "moment point." Here, within the moment point, the smallest thought is brought to fruition, the slightest possibility explored, the probabilities thoroughly examined, the least or the most forceful feeling entertained. It is difficult to explain this clearly, and yet the moment point is the framework within which we have our psychological experience. Within it, simultaneous actions follow "freely" through associative patterns. For example, pretend that I think of you, Joseph. In so doing I immediately experience - and fully - your past, present, and future (in your terms), and all of those strong or determining emotions and motivations that have ruled you. I can travel through those experiences with you, if I choose. We can follow a consciousness through all of its forms, for example, and in your terms, within the flicker of an eye.

Now it takes study, development, and experience before an identity can learn to hold its own stability in the face of such constant stimuli; and many of us have gotten lost, even forgetting who we were until we once more awakened to ourselves. Much of this is quite automatic to us now. In the infinite varieties of consciousness, we are still aware of a small percentage of the entire banks of personalities that exist. For our "vacations" we visit amid quite simple life forms, and blend with them. To this extent we indulge in relaxation and sleep, for we can spend a century as a tree or as an uncomplicated life form in another reality. We delight our consciousness with the enjoyment of simple existence. We may create, you see, the forest in which we grow. Usually however we are highly active, our full energies focused in our work and in new challenges.

We can form from ourselves, from our own psychological entireties, other personalities whenever we wish. These, however, must then develop according to their own merit, using the creative abilities inherent in them. They are free to go their own way. We do not do this lightly, however.

Each reader is a portion of his or her own entity, and is developing toward the same kind of existence that I know. In childhood and in the dream state, each personality is aware to some extent of the true freedom that belongs to its own inner consciousness. These abilities of which I speak, therefore, are inherent characteristics of consciousness as a whole and of each personality.

My environment, as I told you, changes constantly, but then, so does your own. You rationalize away quite legitimate intuitive perception at such times. For example, if a room suddenly appears small and cramped to you, you take it for granted that this change of dimension is imaginative, and that the room has not changed regardless of your feelings.

The fact is that the room under such conditions will have changed quite definitely, and in very major respects, even though the physical dimensions will still measure the same. The entire psychological impact of the room will have altered. Its effect will be felt by others beside yourself. It will attract certain kinds of events rather than others, and it will alter your own psychological structure and hormonal output. You will react to the altered state of the room even in quite physical ways, though its width or length, in inches or feet, may not seem to vary.

I told our good friend Joseph to underline the word "seem" because your instruments would show no physical alteration - since the instruments within such a room would themselves have already altered to the same degree.

You are constantly changing the form, the shape, the contour, and the meaning of your physical body and most intimate environment, although you do your best to ignore these constant alterations. On the other hand, we allow them full rein, knowing that we are motivated by an inner stability that can well afford spontaneity and creation, and realizing that spiritual and psychological identity are dependent upon creative change.

Our environment therefore is composed of exquisite imbalances, where change is allowed full play. Your own time structure misleads you into your ideas of the relative permanency of physical matter, and you close your eyes to the constant alterations within it. Your physical senses confine you as best they can to the perception of a highly formalized reality. Only through the use of the intuitions and in sleep and dream states, as a rule, can you perceive the joyfully changing nature of your own, and any, consciousness.

One of my duties is to enlighten you on such matters. We must use concepts that are at least fairly familiar to you. In doing so, we therefore use portions of our own personalities, with whom you can to some extent relate.

There is no end to our environment. In your terms there would be no lack of space or time in which to operate. Now this would put tremendous pressure on any consciousness without proper background and development. We do not have one simple, cozy universe in which to hide. We are still alert to other quite alien systems of reality that flash on the very outskirts of consciousness as we know it. There are far more various kinds of consciousness than there are physical forms, each with its own patterns of perception, dwelling within its own camouflage system. Yet all of these have inner knowledge of the reality that exists within all camouflage and that composes any reality, by whatever name it is called.

Now, many of these freedoms are quite natural to you in the dream state, and you form dream environments often to exercise such potentials. Later I will have at least some remarks to make concerning the ways that you can learn to recognize your own feats, to compare them with your proficiency in daily physical life.

You can learn to change your physical environment, therefore, by learning to change and manipulate your dream environment. You can also suggest specific dreams in which a desired change is seen, and under certain conditions these will then appear in your physical reality. Now often you do this without realizing it.

Whole consciousness adopts various forms. It need not always be within a form. All forms are not physical ones. Some personalities, therefore, have never been physical. They have evolved along different lines, and their psychological structures would be alien to your own. To some extent I also travel through such environments. Consciousness must show itself, however. It cannot unbe. It is not physical, it must therefore show its activation in other ways. In some systems for example, it forms highly integrated mathematical and musical patterns that are themselves stimuli for other universal systems. I am not very well acquainted with these, however, and cannot speak of them with any great familiarity.

If my environment is not a permanently structured one, then as I have told you, neither is your own. If I am aware of communicating now through Ruburt, in different ways each of you telepathically communicates to and through other personalities, though with little knowledge of your accomplishment.

The senses that you use, in a very real manner, create the environment that you perceive. Your physical senses necessitate the perception of a three-dimensional reality. Consciousness is equipped with inner perceptors, however. These are inherent within all consciousness, regardless of its development. These perceptors operate quite independently from those that might be assumed when a given consciousness adopts a specialized form, such as a physical body, in order to operate in a particular system.

Each reader, therefore, had inner senses, and to some extent uses them constantly, though he is not aware of doing so at an egotistical level. Now, we use the inner senses quite freely and consciously. If you were to do so, then you would perceive the same kind of environment in which I have my existence. You would see an uncamouflaged situation, in which events and form were free and not stuck in a jellylike mold of time. You could see, for example, your present living room not only as a conglomeration of permanent-appearing furniture, but switch your focus and see the immense and constant dance of molecules and other particles that compose the various objects.

You could see a phosphorescent like glow, the aura of electromagnetic "structures" that compose the molecules themselves. You could, if you wished, condensyour consciousness until it was small enough to travel through a single molecule, and from the molecule's own world look out and survey the universe of the room and the gigantic galaxy of interrelated, ever-moving starlike shapes. Now all of these possibilities represent a legitimate reality. Yours is no more legitimate than any other, but it is the only one that you perceive.

Using the inner senses, we become conscious creators, cocreators. But you are unconscious cocreators whether you know it or not. If our environment seems unstructured to you, it is only because you do not understand the true nature of order, which has nothing to do with permanent form, but only appears to have form from your perspective.

There is no four o'clock in the afternoon or nine o'clock in the evening in my environment. By this I mean that I am not restricted to a time sequence. There is nothing preventing me from experiencing such sequences if I choose. We experience time, or what you would call its equivalent nature, in terms of intensities of experience

-  a psychological time with its own peaks and valleys.

This is somewhat similar to your own emotional feelings when time seems speeded up or slowed down, but it is vastly different in important ways. Our psychological time could be compared in terms of environment to the walls of a room, but in our case the walls would be constantly changing in color, size, height, depth and width.

Our psychological structures are different, practically speaking, in that we consciously utilize a multidimensional psychological reality that you inherently possess, but are unfamiliar with at an egotistical level. It is natural, then, that our environment would have multidimensional qualities that the physical senses would never perceive.

Now, I project a portion of my reality as I dictate this book to an undifferentiated level between systems that is relatively clear of camouflage. It is an inactive area, comparatively speaking. If you were thinking in terms of physical reality, then this area could be likened to one immediately above the atmosphere of your earth. However I am speaking of psychological and psychic atmospheres, and this area is sufficiently distant from Ruburt's physically oriented self so that the communications can be relatively understood. It is also in a way distant from my own environment, for in my own environment I would have some difficulties in relating information in physically oriented terms. You must understand that by distance I do not refer to space. Creation and perception are far more intimately connected than any of your scientists realize. It is quite true that your physical senses create the reality that they perceive. A tree is something far different to a microbe, a bird, an insect, and a man who stands beneath it. I am not saying that the tree only appears to be different. It is different. You perceive its reality through one set of highly specialized senses. This does not mean that its reality exists in that form in any more basic way than it exists in the form perceived by the microbe, insect, or bird. You cannot perceive the quite valid reality of that tree in any context but your own. This applies to anything within the physical system that you know.

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. The physical senses force you to translate experience into physical perceptions. The inner senses open your range of perception, allow you to interpret experience in a far freer manner and to create new forms and new channels through which you, or any consciousness, can know itself.

Consciousness is, among other things, a spontaneous exercise in creativity. You are learning now, in a three-dimensional context, the ways in which your emotional and psychic existence can create varieties of physical form. You manipulate within the psychic environment, and these manipulations are then automatically impressed upon the physical mold. Now our environment is in itself creative in a different manner than yours. Your environment is creative in that trees bear fruit, that there is a self- sustaining principle, that the earth feeds its own, for example. The naturally creative aspects are the materializations of the deepest psychic, spiritual, and physical inclinations of the species, set up in your terms eons ago, and a part of the racial bank of psychic knowledge.

We endow the elements of our environment with an even greater creativity that is



difficult to explain. We do not have flowers that grow, for example. But the intensity, the condensed psychic strength of our psychological natures forms new dimensions of activity. If you paint a picture within three-dimensional existence, then the painting must be on a flat surface, merely hinting at the complete three-dimensional experience that you cannot insert into it. In our environment, however, we could actually create whatever dimensional effects we desired. All of these abilities are not ours alone. They are your heritage. As you will see later in this book, you exercise your own inner senses, and multidimensional abilities, more frequently than it might seem, in other states of consciousness than the normal, waking one.

Since my own environment does not have easily defined physical elements, you will be able to understand its nature by inference, as I explain some related topics throughout this book.

Your own physical environment appears as it does to you because of your own psychological structure. If you gained your sense of personal continuity through associative processes primarily, rather than as a result of the familiarity of self moving through time, then you would experience physical reality in an entirely different fashion. Objects from past and present could be perceived at once, their presence justified through associative connections. Say that your father throughout his lifetime has eight favorite chairs. If your perceptive mechanisms were primarily set up as a result of intuitive association rather than time sequence, then you would perceive all of these chairs at one time; or seeing one, you would be aware of the others. So environment is not a separate thing in itself, but the result of perceptive patterns, and these are determined by psychological structure.

So if you want to know what my environment is like, you will have to understand what I am. In order to explain, I shall have to speak about the nature of consciousness in general. In doing so I shall end up telling you much about yourself. The inner portions of your identity are already aware of much that I will tell you. Part of my purpose is to acquaint your egotistical self with knowledge that is already known to a larger portion of your own consciousness, that you have long ignored.

You look out into the physical universe, and interpret reality according to the information received from your "outer senses." I will stand, figuratively speaking, in physical reality and look inward for you, and describe those realities of consciousness and experience that you are presently too fascinated to see. For you are fascinated with physical reality, and you are in as deep a trance now as the woman is through whom I write this book.

All of your attention is focused in a highly specialized way upon one shining, bright point that you call reality. There are other realities all about you, but you ignore their existence, and you blot out all stimuli that come from them. There is a reason for such a trance, as you will discover, but little by little you must wake up. My purpose is to open your inner eyes.

My environment includes, of course, those other personalities with whom I come in contact. Communication, perception, and environment can hardly be separated. Therefore the kind of communication that is carried on by myself and my associates is extremely important in any discussion of our environment.

In the following chapter I hope to give you an idea, quite simply, of our existence, the work in which we are involved, the dimension in which we exist, the purposes that we hold dear; and most of all, of those concerns that make up our experience.







Now I have friends even as you do, though my friends may be of longer standing. You must understand that we experience our own reality in quite a different manner than you do. We are aware of what you would call our past selves, those personalities we have adopted in various other existences.

Because we use telepathy we can hide little from each other, even if we wished to. This, I am sure, seems an invasion of privacy to you, and yet I assure you that even now none of your thoughts are hidden, but are known quite clearly to your family and friends - and I may add, unfortunately, to those you consider enemies as well. You are simply not aware of this fact.

This does not mean that each of us is like an open book to the other. Quite the contrary. There is such a thing as mental etiquette, mental manners. We are much more aware of our own thoughts than you are. We realize our freedom to choose our thoughts, and we choose them with some discrimination and finesse.

The power of our thoughts has been made clear to us, through trial and error in other existences. We have discovered that no one can escape the vast creativity of the mental image, or of emotion. This does not mean that we are not spontaneous, or that we must deliberate between one thought or another, in anxious concern that one might be negative or destructive. That, in your terms, is behind us.

Our psychological structure does mean that we can communicate in far more various forms than those with which you are familiar, however. Pretend, for example, that you meet a childhood friend whom you have long forgotten. Now you may have little in common. Yet you may have a fine afternoon's discussion centered about old teachers and classmates, and establish a certain rapport.

So, when I "meet" another, I may be able to relate to him much better on the basis of a particular past life experience, even though in my "now" we have little in common. We may have known each other, for example, as entirely different people in the fourteenth century, and we may communicate very nicely by discussing those experiences, much as you and your hypothetical childhood friend established rapport by remembering your past.



We will be quite aware that we are ourselves, however - the multidimensional personalities who shared a more or less common environment at one level of our existence. As you will see, this analogy is a rather simple one that will do only for now, because past, present, and future do not really exist in those terms.

Our experience, however, does not include the time divisions with which you are familiar. We have far more friends and associates than you do, simply because we are aware of varying connections in what we call for now "past" incarnations.

We have of course therefore more knowledge at our fingertips, so to speak. There is no period of time, in your terms, that you can mention, but some of us have been from there, and carry within our memories the indelible experience that was gained in that particular context.

We do not feel the need to hide our emotions or thoughts from others, because all of us by now well recognize the cooperative nature of all consciousness and reality, and our part in it. We are highly motivated. Could spirits be anything else?

Simply because we have at our command the full use of our energy, it is not diverted into conflicts. We do not fritter it away, but utilize it for those unique and individual purposes that are a basic part of our Psychological experience.

Now, each whole self, or multidimensional  personality, has its own purposes, missions, and creative endeavors that are initial and basic parts of itself and that determine those qualities that make it eternally valid and eternally seeking. We are finally free to utilize our energy in those directions. We face many challenges of quite momentous nature, and we realize that  our purposes are not only important in themselves, but for the surprising offshoots that develop in our efforts to pursue them. In working for our purposes, we realize we are blazing trails that can also be used by others.

We also suspect - certainly I do - that the purposes themselves will have surprising results, astounding consequences that we have never realized, and that they will merely lead to new avenues. Realizing this helps us keep a sense of humor.

When one has been born and has died many times, expecting extinction with each death, and when this experience is followed by the realization that existence still continues, then a sense of the divine comedy enters in.

We are beginning to learn the creative joy of play. I believe, for example, that all creativity and consciousness is born in the quality of play, as opposed to work, in the quickened intuitional spontaneity that I see as a constant through all my own existences, and in the experience of those I know.


We enjoy a sense of play that is highly spontaneous, and yet I suppose you would call it responsible play. Certainly it is creative play. We play, for example, with the mobility of our consciousness, seeing how "far" one can send it. We are constantly surprised athe products of our own  consciousness,  of the dimensions of reality

through which we can hopscotch. It might seem that we use our consciousness idly in such play, and yet again, the pathways we make continue to exist and can be used by others. We leave messages to any who come by, mental signposts.

We can be highly motivated therefore, and yet use and understand the creative use of play, both as a method of attaining our goals and purposes and as a surprising and creative endeavor in itself.

Now, in my work as a teacher I travel into many dimensions of existence, even as a traveling professor might give lectures in various states or countries. Here, however, the resemblance ends, largely, since before I can begin to work I must set up preliminary psychological structures and learn to know my pupils before teaching can even begin.

I must have a thorough knowledge of the particular system of reality in which my pupil operates, of his or her system of thought, of the symbols that are meaningful. The stability of the pupil's personality must be correctly gauged by me. The needs of that personality cannot be ignored but must be taken into consideration.

The pupil must be encouraged, but not overly extended while development continues. My material must be presented in such a way that it makes sense in the context in which the pupil understands reality, particularly in the early stages. Great care must be utilized, even before serious learning can begin, that all levels of the personality develop at a more or less constant rate.

Often the material I present will initially be given without any sign of my presence, seemingly as a startling revelation. For no matter how carefully I present the material, it is still bound to change past ideas that are strongly a part of the pupil's personality. What I say is one thing, but the pupil of course is thrust into psychological and psychic behavior and experience that may seem quite alien to him on a conscious level.

The problems  vary according  to the system in  which my  pupil has  his or her existence. In your system, for example, and in connection with the woman through whom I now write this book, initial contact on my part was made long before our sessions began.

The personality was never consciously aware of the initial meeting. She simply experienced sudden new thoughts, and since she is a poet, these appeared as poetic inspirations. At one time some years ago, at a writers' conference, she became involved in circumstances that could have led to her psychic development before she was ready. The psychological climate at that time, of those involved, initiated the conditions, and without realizing what she was about our friend [Jane] went into a trance.

I had known of her psychic gifts since her childhood, but the insights necessary were channeled through the poetry until the personality attained the necessary background that was needed in this particular case. In the affair just mentioned, therefore, I was informed and saw to it that the episode ended and was not pursued.

It was hardly an accidental performance, however. Quite without knowing it, the personality decided to try its wingsfiguratively speaking.  As a part  of my work, therefore, I have been coaching the young woman in one way or another since her childhood - and all of this as a preliminary to the serious work that began with our sessions.