“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The inner self is embarked upon an exciting endeavor, in which it learns how to translate its reality into physical terms. The conscious mind is brilliantly attuned to physical reality, then, and often so dazzled by what it perceives that it is tempted to think physical phenomena is a cause, rather than a result. Deeper portions of the self always serve to remind it that this is not the case. When the conscious mind accepts too many false beliefs, particularly if it sees that inner self as a danger, then it closes out these constant reminders. When this situation arises the conscious mind feels itself assailed by a reality that seems greater than itself, over which it has no control. The deep feeling of security in which it should be anchored is lost.

If you use your conscious mind properly, then, you examine those beliefs that come to you. You do not accept them willy-nilly. If you use your conscious mind properly, you are also aware of intuitive ideas that come to you from within. You are only half conscious when you do not examine the information that comes to you from without, and when you ignore the data that comes to you from within.

Your inner self adopts the physically conscious, physically focused mind as a method of allowing it to manipulate in the world that you know. The conscious mind is particularly equipped to direct outward activity, to handle waking experience and oversee physical work.

Its beliefs about the nature of reality are then given to inner portions of the self. These rely mainly upon the conscious mind’s interpretation of temporal reality. The conscious mind sets the goals and the inner self brings them about, using all its facilities and inexhaustible energy.

When you turn off what you think of as your conscious mind, then another conscious mind clicks into focus. You have more than one conscious mind. [...] When you cease using the conscious mind that you know, there is another one that will take over—you do not sink into a limbo. You are used to thinking of hypnosis in this following manner: You seem to think, most of you, that the conscious mind is blocked out, and then what follows is a murky and a shadowy version of the normal conscious mind—that the subconscious, for example, deals with material that you cannot understand consciously. [...]

[...] Theoretically, you can be aware of more than one consciousness at once. [...] What I objected to in your recording was the implication that once the conscious mind as you know it was quieted there was no other conscious mind to take over, and that the ordinary conscious mind was the only conscious mind that you have. [...]

The facts are that when you close off the conscious mind that you know, another more alert conscious mind takes over; a conscious mind that belongs to you that has far more vision than the one you usually use; a conscious mind that is aware of more than you are usually aware of. [...]

[...] You have not one, but many conscious selves. You have more than one conscious mind. [...] We want you momentarily to stop using one of your conscious minds and learn how to tune into another one of your conscious minds. [...]

(Long pause at 4:06.) It is sometimes fashionable to say that men and women have conscious minds, subconscious minds, and unconscious minds — but there is no such thing as an unconscious mind. The body consciousness is highly conscious (underlined). You are simply not usually conscious of it. [...]

If you tried to hold all of those subconscious memories uppermost in your mind all of the time, then you would literally be unable to think or act in the present moment at all. You do more or less have a certain access to your own subconscious mind, however. It is perhaps easier to imagine a continuum of consciousness, for you have a body consciousness also, and that body consciousness is itself made up of the individual consciousness of each molecule that forms all parts of the body itself.

You know that you have a conscious mind, of course. You also possess what is often called the subconscious, and this merely consists of feelings, thoughts or experiences that are connected to your conscious mind, but would be considered excess baggage if you had to be aware of them all of the time. [...]

You might say that the varying portions of your own consciousness operate at several different speeds. Translations between one portion of consciousness and another goes on constantly, so that information is translated from one “speed” to another. [...] You might well wonder why the body consciousness does not simply rise up and cast off any threatening diseases: why would the body allow certain cells to go berserk, or outgrow themselves? [...]

The conscious mind was [therefore] expected to perform alone, so to speak, ignoring the highly intuitive inner information that is also available to it. [...] Yet any individual knows quite well that intuitive hunches, inspiration, precognitive information or clairvoyant material has often risen to conscious knowledge. Usually it is shoved away and disregarded because you have been taught that the conscious mind should not hold with such “nonsense.” So you have been told to trust your conscious mind, while at the same time you were led to believe it could only be aware of stimuli that came to it from the outside physical world.

[...] The displaced powers of consciousness are still being assigned to the unconscious, and great efforts are being made to reach what seem to be normally inaccessible areas of awareness. [...] It can all be quite conscious, and utilized to enrich the reality that you know. The conscious mind is not some prodigal child or poor relative of the self. [...] You, again, have a conscious mind. You can change the focus of your own consciousness.

On the other hand there are those who stress the great value of the inner self, the emotional being, at the expense of the conscious mind. These theories hold that the intellect and usual consciousness are far inferior to the inner “unconscious” portions of being, and that all the answers are hidden from view. (Pause.) The followers of this belief consider the conscious mind in such derogatory terms that it almost seems to be a supercilious cancer that sprouted like a growth upon man’s psyche-impeding rather than aiding his progress and understanding.

(Pause.) There has been on the one hand a too-great reliance upon the conscious mind — while its characteristics and mechanisms were misunderstood — so that proponents of the “conscious-reasoning-mind-above-all” theories advocate a use of intellect and reasoning powers, while not recognizing their source in the inner self.

(Pause at 10:05.) We are each consciously aware of these transmissions. In the terms usually familiar to you, you think of “the conscious mind.” In those terms, there are many conscious minds. You are so prejudiced, however, that you ignore information that you have been taught cannot be conscious. [...]

These minds all work together to keep you alive through the physical structure of the brain. When you use all of these minds, then and only then do you become fully aware of your surroundings: You perceive reality more clearly than you do now, more sharply, brilliantly, and concisely. [...] You accept as yourself those other states of consciousness native to your other minds. [...]

[...] It is presently in the vogue to say that the conscious mind, as you consider it, deals with survival. [...] In those terms, if you remembered your dreams, and if you benefited consciously from that knowledge, even your physical survival would be better assured.

[...] Perception of any of these takes a consciousness attuned to each. In my “waking” condition, I operate at many levels of consciousness at once, and deal therefore with different systems of knowledge. In my “dream” condition, or rather conditions, I form links of consciousness that combine these various systems, creatively forming them into new versions. “Waking” again, I become consciously aware of those activities, and use them to add to the dimensions of my usual state, creatively expanding my experience of reality. [...]

Now it is here that the seeming division in the self occurs, for in physical life the conscious mind must be connected with the brain, and in terms of time that organ itself must grow and develop. So all of your consciousness cannot be physically aware. The portion that must “wait for” the brain’s development is the part you call in life “the conscious mind.”

[...] While the condition of the body is directed by the conscious mind in life, then, the idea or mental pattern for the body existed before the conscious mind’s connection with the physical brain.

[...] At the event of this mental seeding, the conscious mind, in your terms, is obviously not connected with the brain, which has not yet been formed in flesh. The idea of the body is held and made physical by a conscious mind.

[...] The conscious mind directs the so-called involuntary systems of the body, and not the other way around. No idea slips insidiously past your awareness to affect your involuntary system unless it fits in with your own conscious beliefs. [...]

[...] You can, and in so doing your own consciousness turns around about itself. [...] Existing in such diversified, rich environment-possibilities, the human psyche needed and developed a conscious mind that could make fairly concise and accurate “minute by minute” judgments and evaluations. As the conscious mind grew, now, so did the range of imagination. The conscious mind is a vehicle for the imagination in many ways. [...] In return imagination enriches conscious reasoning and emotional experience.

If you are focusing upon ideas of poverty, illness or lack, for example, your conscious mind also holds latently concepts of health, vigor and abundance. [...] The vast reservoir of energy and potential within you is called into action under the leadership of your conscious mind.

(Slowly:) You have not learned to use your consciousness properly or fully, so that it seems that imagination, emotions and reasoning are separate faculties, or sometimes set against each other. The mature conscious mind, once more, accepts data from the exterior world and from the interior one. It is only when you believe that consciousness must be attuned only to exterior conditions that you force it to cut itself off from inner knowledge, intuitional “voices,” and the depths from which it springs.

[...] It is somewhat fashionable to place feelings above conscious thoughts, the idea being that emotions are more basic and natural than conscious reasoning is. The two actually go together but your conscious thinking largely determines your emotions, and not the other way around. [...] Instead, over a period of time you have been consciously entertaining negative beliefs that then generated the strong feelings of despondency.

(9:45.) When your body and mind are working together then the relationship between the two goes smoothly, and their natural therapeutic systems place you in a state of health and grace. I told you earlier (in the 614th session in Chapter Two, for instance) that your feelings follow the flow of your beliefs, and if this does not seem true to you it is because you are not aware of the contents of your conscious mind. [...] You can close the eyes of your conscious mind also, and pretend not to see what is there. It is because you do not trust your own basic therapeutic nature, or really understand the conscious or unconscious mind, that you run to so many therapies that originate from without the self.

The conscious mind can, for instance, see a rose as a symbol of life or death, or joy or sadness, and under certain conditions its interpretation of a simple flower can trigger deep experiences that call up power and strength from the inner resources of being. Since the attributes of egotistical consciousness have been so misinterpreted, you usually consider it only in its analytical breaking-down functions. [...] But the conscious mind is also a great synthesizer. [...]

[...] The aware mind’s great leeway through the intellect, and its connection with the senses, makes it possible for any singly insignificant event to trigger such experience. Intense focus is a characteristic of the conscious mind, and you can call it narrow because it includes only the physical dimension; but within the scope of that corporeal field it has great freedom to interpret the given dimension in any way it chooses.

[...] (See Chapter Five.) The music is a conscious reminder of those deeper inner rhythms, both of sound and of motion. Listening to music that you like will often bring images into your mind that show you your conscious beliefs in different form.

In your present life the conscious mind assesses physical reality and has behind it all the energy, power and ability of the inner self at its disposal. [...] (See Chapter Two.) Because of its character, consciousness, or the conscious mind, cannot be swamped by too much detail, too much information. [...] To a very large extent then conscious beliefs act as great liberators of such inner data, or as inhibitors of it. [...]

The conscious mind is itself developing and expanding. [...] The inner self brings about whatever results the conscious mind desires.

It does not leave the conscious mind at loose ends nor isolate it from the fountains of its own being. Because the conscious mind is part of the inner self, it is obviously made of the same energy, filled with the same vitality, and revitalized by the deep sources of creativity from which all being emerges.

[...] The miraculous constant translation of spirit into flesh is carried on with inexhaustible energy by these inner portions of being, but in all cases the inner self looks to the conscious mind for its assessment of the body’s condition and reality, and forms the image in line with the conscious mind’s beliefs.

(10:00.) Usually when you look into your conscious mind you do so for a particular reason, to find some information. But if you have schooled yourself to believe that such data is not consciously available, then it will not occur to you to find it in your conscious mind. If furthermore your conscious data is strongly organized about a core belief, then this will automatically make you blind to experience that is not connected with it.

As you apprehend them through association you come quite close to examining the contents of your mind in a free fashion. But if you drop the time concept and then view the conscious content of your mind through other core ideas, you are still structuring. [...] Build them up or tear them down, but do not allow yourself to become blind to the furniture of your own mind.

[...] You are consciously aware of these, though often you do not focus your attention upon them. They become invisible, therefore, unless you become aware of the contents of your conscious mind.

Separate portions of your mind can contain such chambers of inactive material. This information will not be a part of the organized structure of your usual thoughts; though the data is consciously available you can be relatively blind to it.

The conscious mind is endlessly creative. This applies to all areas of conscious-mind thinking. [...] The latter are also the result of the aware mind’s capacity to play upon, mix and merge, and rearrange perception and experience.

We have mentioned reincarnation hardly at all (but see the 631st session in Chapter Seven), yet here let me state that the theory is a conscious-mind interpretation in linear terms. [...] On the other hand it is a creative interpretation, as the conscious mind plays with reality as it understands it. [...]

[...] Yet natural grace and natural guilt are given you, and these will also grow more fully into conscious awareness. If you can sit quietly and realize that your body parts are replacing themselves constantly — if you turn your conscious mind into the consideration of such activity — then you can realize your own state of grace. [...]

[...] With the large freedom provided by the conscious mind, however, man could stray from that great inner joy of being, forget it, disbelieve in it, or use his free will to deny its existence.

In physical life, your conscious mind is largely dependent upon the workings of your physical brain. You have a conscious mind whether you are in flesh or out of it, but when you are physically oriented, then it is connected to the physical brain.

First of all, it is within your conscious mind. The pendulum would be a method of allowing you to view conscious material that is not structured to recognized beliefs. [...]

Instead, on your return you are communicating to the world through your notes — a choice you made consciously, but without being aware of the other contents of your conscious mind, and the “conflicting” beliefs. [...]

[...] When you are examining the contents of your conscious mind, you must learn, or recognize, the emotional and imaginative connotations that are connected with a given idea. [...] At the same time you consciously assure yourself that the unsatisfactory belief is an idea about reality and not an aspect of reality itself.

Because it is intimately connected with other portions of the self it does not basically feel alienated or alone, but proudly acts as the director of the conscious mind’s focus. It is an adjunct of the conscious mind in that respect.

Now we have been speaking of the conscious mind, for it is the director of your activities physically. [...] Using this analogy, portions of the self on the other side of the conscious mind constantly receive telepathic data. [...]

The ego tries to organize all material coming into the conscious mind, for its purposes — the ego’s — are those that have come to the surface at any given time in the self’s overall encounter with physical reality. As I said, the ego cannot keep information out of the conscious mind but it can refuse to focus directly upon it.

Another way to do this is to recognize through examination that the physical effects you meet exist as data in your conscious mind — and the information that formerly seemed unavailable will be obvious. The seemingly invisible ideas that cause your difficulties have quite obvious visible physical effects, and these will lead you automatically to the conscious area in which the initiating beliefs or ideas reside.

[...] The conscious mind is one brilliant segment of your larger consciousness, but it is composed of the same universal energy and vitality that composes all consciousness. [...]

[...] This inner ego or inner self should not be thought of as superior to your ordinary mind. It should not be thought of, really, as something separate from your ordinary mind. Your ego and your ordinary consciousness bring into focus all of your physical experiences, and make possible the brilliant preciseness of physical experience.

[...] You usually think of your conscious mind as your ego. [...]

(4:38.) Your dream, Joseph, as you supposed, represented a state of mind and of confusion. It was not, for example, precognitive, but it did inform you — using images and feelings — of the picture that was sometimes painted in different terms by your conscious thoughts. [...]

One believes that the conscious mind and the intellect have all the answers, but to this school this means that the conscious mind is analytical above all, and that it can find all the answers through reason alone. [...] Intellect and feeling together make up your existence, but the fallacy is particularly in the belief that the aware mind must be analytical above all, as opposed to, for example, the understanding or assimilation of intuitive psychic knowledge.

Your conscious mind, again, is a part of your inner self, and ever-changing. In terms of species consciousness it is a development of great significance. [...] They come naturally up to consciousness. [...]

[...] When this occurs “all by itself” it is an innate reflection of the psyche’s creativity and happens with its own rhythm — connected to seasons of the mind and blood and consciousness and cells in ways that you do not as yet understand. But the whole structure and its subsidiary relationships change together, and the conscious mind is able to assimilate what is happening.

It is just because individuals are not aware of the resiliency of their own consciousnesses that they agree to such proceedings. So patient and therapist share the belief that the conscious mind does not have easy access to the needed knowledge.

(9:50.) Usually when you do examine your conscious mind you do so looking through, or with, your own structured beliefs. The knowledge that your beliefs are not necessarily reality will allow you to be aware of all the data that is consciously available to you. I am not telling you to examine your thoughts so frequently and with such vigor that you get in your own way, but you are not fully conscious unless you are aware of the contents of your conscious mind. I am also emphasizing the fact that the conscious mind is equipped to receive information from the inner self as well as the exterior universe.

[...] In so doing you never think of looking for it in the conscious mind, since you are convinced that all deep answers lie far beneath — and, moreover, that your consciousness is not only unable to help you but will often send up camouflages instead. [...]

I quite realize that many of my statements will contradict the beliefs of those of you who accept the idea that the conscious mind is relatively powerless, and that the answers to problems lie hidden beneath.

Obviously the conscious mind is a phenomenon, not a thing. [...]

(Pause at 10:23.) In periods of conscious “blank spots” or certain fluctuations, these memory systems are often perceived. As a rule the conscious mind with its own memory system will not accept them. When a personality realizes that such other realities exist and that other experiences with consciousness are possible, then he activates certain potentials within himself. These alter electromagnetic connections both within the mind, the brain, and even the perceptive mechanisms. They bring together reservoirs of energy and set up pathways of activity, allowing the conscious mind to increase its degree of sensitivity to such data. The conscious mind is set free of itself. [...]

Now: Periods of reverie and creative moments of consciousness both represent excellent entryways into these other areas. In the usual creative state of consciousness, the regular waking consciousness is suddenly supported by energy from these other areas. Waking consciousness alone does not give you the creative state. Indeed, normal waking consciousness can be as afraid of creative states as it is of blank states, for it can feel that the I is being thrust aside, can feel the upthrust of energy that it may not understand.

The various levels of consciousness discussed here may appear to be very divorced from ordinary waking ones. [...] These various stages all represent different attributes and directions inherent within your own soul; clues and hints of them, shadows and reflections appear even in the consciousness that you know. Even normal waking consciousness, then, is not innocent of all other traces of existence, or devoid of other kinds of awareness. It is only because you usually use your waking consciousness in limited ways that you do not encounter these clues with any regularity.

Alternate focus is merely a state in which you turn your consciousness in other than its habitual direction, in order to perceive quite legitimate realities that exist simultaneously with your own. [...] This is something like looking out of the corner of your eye or mind, rather than straight ahead. [...]

Now all of these ideas were quite conscious, but he held each group separately. The conscious mind, again, tries to obtain overall integrity and unity, lining up its beliefs into some kind of consistent system. When opposing beliefs that directly contradict each other are held for any length of time, and little attempt is made to reconcile them, then a “battle” begins within the conscious mind itself.

Because like ideas do attract like, both electromagnetically and emotionally, the conscious mind found itself with two complete contradictory systems of belief, and two self-images. (Pause.) To protect the integrity of the physical structure, Augustus’s conscious mind neatly divided itself up. [...]

[...] When Augustus felt threatened then the conscious mind switched over, accepting as operating procedure the system of beliefs in which Augustus saw himself as all-powerful, secure — but as alien. This part of his beliefs, therefore, and this particular self-image, took over his conscious mind and became what we will here call Augustus Two. [...]

Now this is a split of the conscious mind. [...] When Augustus Two takes over he is quite conscious. [...]

[...] No consciousness, to whatever degree, is fully manifested in matter. There is always constant communication between all portions of the body, but when the conscious mind is diverted that activity often increases. Cellular consciousness at its own level then forms a body dream. These do not involve pictures or words, but are rather like the formations of electromagnetic intent, anticipating action to be taken, and these may then serve as initiators of therapeutic dreams, in which “higher” levels of consciousness are psychologically made aware of certain conditions.

[...] It is the mind, then, as the brain’s nonphysical counterpart, that decides what data will activate the brain in that regard. The so-called ancient portions of the brain (among them the brainstem — limbic system) contain “the mind’s memories.” Generally speaking, this means important data to which, however, no conscious attention need be given.

[...] Follow the dream in your mind. [...] Followed in the same sequence given, the exercise will allow you to make loops with your own consciousness, so to speak, to catch it “coming and going.” [...] — should bring an entirely new sequence of images and thoughts into your mind that were indeed happening at the same time as your daydream about the orange.

[...] Then explore your own conscious sense perceptions of the orange. [...] Then let your own associations flow in your mind. [...]

[...] He said in another class session: “You have more than one conscious mind. [...] … If you consider the conscious mind that you usually use as one door, then you stand at the threshold of this mind and look out into physical reality. But there are other doors … you have other conscious selves. [...]

[...] There is no need to feel that when you block out the ordinary conscious mind, there is only blankness. It is true that when you close one conscious mind—door—there may be a moment of disorientation before you open another.

Seth insists that there is only one way to learn what consciousness is: by studying and exploring our own awareness, by changing the focus of our attention and using our own consciousness in as many ways as possible. He says: “When you look into yourself, the very effort involved extends the limitations of your consciousness, expands it, and allows the egotistical self to use abilities that it often does not realize it possesses.”

“It is also true that you may need to learn the methods by which you can perceive other realities, simply because you are not used to manipulating these other conscious portions of yourself. But these portions are as critical—and even as intellectual—as valid and as real as the consciousness with which you are ordinarily familiar.”