I bow to the pencil, the pencil maker, the tree that gave its wood, the graphite that fills its core, and the mind that conceived pencil. I bow to all the teeth and jaws that have chewed pencils out of boredom or nervousness.

Seth, the “personality” who speaks through author-medium Jane Roberts, offers one of the more novel interpretations of the Second Coming: that the personality known as Christ was, in fact, three men — Jesus, John the Baptist, and Saul or Paul — whose lives became confused in history and merged. There are reasons the Christ entity did not come as one person. For one, the full consciousness of such an entity would be too strong for one body. For another, the entity wanted a more diversified environment. In any event, the third personality of Christ, whose return has been prophesied as the “Second Coming” (Matthew 24) will emerge soon. It will not, Seth says, signal the end of the world, as the prophecies have maintained. Also, the “new religion” following the Second Coming will not be Christian, in our terms, although the Christian personality will originate it. A new era will, however, begin — not a heaven on earth but a more sane and just world, in which “man is more aware of his relationship with his planet and of his freedom within time.” Seth says:

I sit in my home and write. Through a window, the sun shines warm and bright upon me. I feel relaxed, sensual, good in the radiance of the sun. I move into another room to get a book. The sun cannot reach me through the walls, and these rooms are darker and colder. If windows did not exist in this building that is my home, the sun would not brighten my life while I was indoors. These windows are, in effect, a channel for the sun. A channel is that by which something passes or is transmitted. The rocky river bed allows the rain waters to flow together on their passage to the sea. We are all channels, we are all vehicles through which love and wisdom (or negativity and ignorance) can pass. A meal prepared for friends, a poem, a painting, a greeting are some of the ways we channel the gifts that make us who we are. I have frequently heard “channel” used in an esoteric, awesome way, a channel being a unique someone who possesses difficult-to-attain knowledge of the most secret wisdoms of the universe. We all have this knowledge. We all manifest our awareness of these secrets in different and unique ways. Some of us write about psychic phenomena and some of us drive a bus. Some of us publish a magazine and others help a plant or baby to grow. Ad infinitum. WE ARE ALL CHANNELS, and what we know, what we feel, who we are, determine what we channel. Every day numerous messages channel through us, and the effects of our behavior, our transmission, is powerful and influential.

“We’re asking people not to go to work today,” one of us said. “We’re asking people to protest nuclear weapons. Sit down with us.”