Seth and The Telepathy Tapes: Parallels of the bridge personality to The Telepathy Tapes
The concept of a bridge personality, as illustrated by Seth, finds a powerful echo in the phenomenon observed in The Telepathy Tapes, where nonverbal autistic children and their facilitators co-create a merged identity in what might be termed a psychological “third space,” neither wholly child or facilitator, but a blend of both, that acts like a bridge between the participants. Parents and teachers report a focusing of consciousness and blending of identity that takes place between them and the non-speaking children during telepathic communication. As Casey from Georgia put it: “I’m like a lightning rod. Like I ground his energy. We’re merging our energy together, our consciousness together, our higher selves together. I don’t know what we’re doing, but that was the way they told me.”
To the extent that their selves are merged together, a new psychological structure is formed between the non-speakers and their parents or teachers, though in this case there is no need to add personality elements to the bridge structure, as there was with Seth, since there is no great psychological chasm to be spanned between the communicants.
In both cases, however, communication is not a simple matter of transmitting messages from one mind to another, but a dynamic, creative process in which two (or more) consciousnesses enter into deep, psychic resonance.
In The Telepathy Tapes, the spelling board becomes more than a practical tool; it evolves, like the letter board (Ouija board) Jane and Rob used in the early Seth sessions, into a symbolic portal into the psychological third space. This is neither wholly the child’s nor the facilitator’s domain, but a shared psychic territory arising from mutual trust, focused attention, and the willingness to stretch ordinary boundaries. Communication in this context is unmistakably telepathic. The child and facilitator both describe entering each other’s minds – not as an act of dominance or invasion, but as a mutually agreed-upon blending of awareness.
Take the case of Caroline and her son Kyle. When Kyle wants to communicate telepathically, Caroline reports that she can sense him trying to come to her mentally; she can feel an invisible pressure or energy impinging upon her – like the feeling of being stared at – that makes her take notice. “That’s my cue to empty out and have nothing in my internal dialogue,” she explained. “And if I’m quiet and I’m receptive, then that’s when he will give me a stream of words…”
Jane too could feel Seth’s presence before a session. She described the sensation as a subtle awareness, a feeling of Seth’s presence becoming closer and more tangible as the session time approached. “I could feel him around when I was doing the supper dishes,” Jane said during a break in one session, “And I could feel him around more and more after that…” Those capable of this two-way telepathy agree that emptying out is key. They describe a state where they’re not thinking of anything, attuned only to bodily awareness, which helps them move into a deeper field that some describe as a waking dream. Jane would deliberately allow herself to relax deeply, letting herself slip into a state she described as a “light trance” or a dissociated state. Rather than actively pursuing Seth’s consciousness, Jane adopted an attitude of passive openness, trusting in the natural flow of the process.
Caroline explained what it’s like to receive a telepathic download by comparing it to normal language. If someone were to use the word “Christmas” in normal conversation, for instance, it would just be a word, but if they communicated it telepathically, it would contain everything: the whole concept of Christmas – the brightly decorated tree, the presents, the family gatherings, the complete embodiment of the experience.
Jane often experienced this sort of whole-concept communication from Seth. “When all this started [in late 1963] about speaking in trance,” Jane recounted, “I used to feel that there was just one word available at a time, with nothing before it or after it – but now I sense whole blocks of material there just waiting to be given.” Sometimes, though, a concept would just be too large, difficult, or foreign to Jane’s experience for her to be able to take it in, and Seth would have to break the ideas down into individual words for understanding to occur. “This is one of the difficulties with our sessions,” Seth observed, “that you cannot take in concepts directly. That is, you cannot experience them directly, and I must cut them down, dimensionally speaking, in order that you can perceive them in your more limited dimension.” With difficult material, Rob noted, Jane “could feel Seth trying to get the material through without overloading her, she could feel him trying to get her to use the right words. It was as though, she said, Seth was stretching her brain in an effort to get the material through.” As Seth himself commented one night: “If I speak slowly it is simply because I am casting about in his mind for what I can find of help.”
In The Telepathy Tapes, many of the parents and teachers remarked that children could sometimes anticipate their questions or finish their sentences before they were voiced. Sometimes the facilitator received flashes of emotion or intent from the child before a single letter was pointed out on the board. In these moments, identity becomes somewhat fluid: self and other overlap, yet without losing their distinctness.
This interplay is governed by what Seth called mental etiquette. There is a tacit respect for privacy – a mutual understanding that telepathic entry into another’s mind is never coerced, but is permitted through trust. In fact, the children in The Telepathy Tapes will only open themselves to telepathic connection with those whose intentions are clearly rooted in love, respect, and genuine goodwill. If the facilitator’s motives are self-serving or insincere, the psychic connection will simply not form, or will quickly dissolve (which also helps explain the experimenter effect). The psychological third space is sustainable only so long as both participants honour each other’s psychic boundaries and intentions. This mirrors Seth’s frequent remarks about the telepathic realms after death, where transparency is the norm – there is no hypocrisy, and genuine respect for each being’s inner reality is essential.
Seth, then, as a bridge personality, was not so much a separate being entering Jane from the outside, but a co-created field – an active, conscious interface formed by Jane’s psychological makeup, her deeper inner self (Ruburt), the larger Seth entity, and Rob Butts’ supportive role. Seth drew upon his own reincarnational experience in physical reality to better attune to Jane’s world, just as the facilitator in The Telepathy Tapes tunes to the child’s unique psychic frequency. Both Jane and the facilitator act as sensitive mediums, while Seth and the non-speaking child play the part of translators or guides, each adapting the material for shared understanding.
The actual process in both scenarios is profoundly telepathic and collaborative. Jane’s light trance state is analogous to the heightened attunement facilitators sometimes report with their nonverbal partners. In both situations, language is only the visible tip of a much deeper exchange. Unspoken thoughts, feelings, and intentions often surface in both minds at once. The communication flows in both directions: just as the child might receive the facilitator’s intentions, or a mother sense her son’s initiation of a telepathic exchange, Jane was consciously aware of Seth’s presence, energy, and thoughts before entering trance and speaking the words for him.
These parallels point to a larger reality about the nature of consciousness and communication. True connection, especially across profound boundaries – whether neurological, dimensional, or psychological – relies on a cooperative relationship, and a willingness to enter into a field where identity becomes more flexible and consciousness itself is shared.
Ultimately, the comparison between The Telepathy Tapes and the Seth sessions suggests that all communication, at its core, is a kind of shared mind. When boundaries are honoured and trust is present, telepathy arises not as an anomaly, but as an extension of the fundamental relatedness of consciousness. In this view, bridge personalities and third spaces are not rare exceptions, but natural capacities of mind, inviting us to explore a more expansive vision of what it means to truly connect.