“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In the same way in the midst of life, you dwell with so-called ghosts and apparitions, and for that matter you yourselves appear as apparitions to others, particularly when you send strong thought-forms of yourself from the sleep state, or even when unconsciously you travel out of your physical body.

There are obviously as many kinds of ghosts and apparitions as there are people. They are as alert or as unalert to their situation as you are to your own. They are not fully focused in physical reality, however, either in personality or in form, and this is their main distinction. Some apparitions are thought-forms sent by survival personalities out of lingering deep anxiety. They portray the same compulsive-type behavior that can be seen in many instances in your ordinary experience.

(The combination of) thought, emotion, and desire creates form, possesses energy, (and) is made of energy. It will show itself in as many ways as possible. You only recognize the physical materializations, but as mentioned earlier in this book, you send pseudoforms of yourself out from yourself of which you are not aware; and this is completely aside from the existence of astral travel or projection, which is a much more complicated affair.

You appear in astral form in realities that are comparatively more advanced than your own. You are usually recognized because of your disorientation. You do not know how to manipulate. (Humorously): You do not know the customs. But whether you have a physical form or not, if you have emotions or feelings, these will take form. They have a reality. If you think strongly of an object, somewhere it will appear.

(9:55.) All of these forms are called secondary constructions, for as a rule full consciousness of the personality is not in them. They are automatic projections.

Now, in primary constructions, a consciousness, usually fully aware and alert, adopts a form — not his “native” one — and consciously projects it, often into another level of reality. Even this is a rather complicated endeavor, and one seldom used for purposes of communication.

There are other much easier methods. I have explained to some degree the way images are constructed out of an available field of energy. You perceive only your own constructions. If a “ghost” wants to contact you therefore, he can do so through telepathy, and you can yourself construct the corresponding image if you desire. Or the individual might send you a thought-form at the same time that he telepathically communicates with you. Your rooms are full now of thought-forms that you do not perceive; and again, you are as much a ghostly phenomenon now as you will be after death. You are simply not aware of the fact.

You ignore certain temperature variations and stirrings of air as imagination, that are instead indicative of such thought-forms. You thrust into the background telepathic communications that often accompany such forms, and you turn aside from all clues that other realities exist quite validly with your own, and that in the midst of one existence you are surrounded by intangible but valid evidence. The very words “life” and “death” serve to limit your understanding, to set up barriers where none intrinsically exist.

Some dead friends and relatives do visit you, projecting from their own level of reality into yours, but you cannot as a rule perceive their forms. They are not more ghostly, or “dead,” however, than you are when you project into their reality — as you do, from the sleep state.