“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The ego attempts to break down action into smaller and smaller units. The intuitions try to perceive action as a whole. [...] Both the ego and the intuitions, in performing their functions, obviously create action. The self may of course be considered as a gestalt of action, perceived in a different manner by various levels of itself.

Your conception of time is dependent upon your perception of action, and that portion of action which you can perceive and appreciate. There is no doubt here that the intuitions can at times perceive action far more completely than can the intellect. [...]

On one hand, basically, the self is limitless, both electromagnetically and because of the nature of action, which affects all other action. [...] Action cannot remain inactive or motionless, though the motion may not always be apparent.

[...] I did not say that action was not motion. [...] Action is motion, but not necessarily motion that is perceived in physical terms.

(Jerry was convinced by my actions in the argument sequence that I was Billie or controlled by her at that time. Characteristic phrases used, also gestures, actions, way of tossing head. [...]

When we have discussed further the nature of action, then we can delve further into these questions, for they involve thrusts of action, and are intimately connected with energy’s action upon itself.

[...] Ruburt’s feelings and lack of action as far as the publishing house was concerned left much to be desired, and in time his lack of action would have caused an unpleasant reaction on his own part. [...]

Joy is the muscle of action, and without it there would be no action. [...]

I am aware that you would prefer that I continue with my discussion upon action. [...]

This is different however from cause and effect for basically a specific action will not give a specific effect, only. Within your system, you only perceive certain actions out of an endless variety of actions. [...]

[...] Regard the inner senses in connection with the nature of action and electromagnetic reality, for the perceptions of the inner senses are themselves action, and as such they change both the perceiver and the thing perceived. [...]

[...] Suggestion can shape dreams, and the dreams themselves then operate as action. A strong dream can be a more significant psychic action than any physical experience, and it can change the course of the personality completely.

Incidentally, suggestion will reach many aspects of the self, and some which are very distant from the ego, for you are setting into motion psychic action, which is behind all realities. [...]

[...] Your feelings about it are as important as your actions. [...] You can even take it for granted that intellectually you may not know all of the reasons (underlined) for your own actions. [...]

[...] It shows the elements of the society that we have criticized in action. [...]

[...] (Pause.) The word “protection” in this context is interesting, of course, since the disclaimer is supposed to protect Prentice from any court action. [...]

(Long pause.) The disclaimer is also Prentice’s way of allowing itself some freedom thematically, without getting its feet wet in any possible court actions. [...]

[...] Joint action seems the only course, but a joint action in which each individual must actually be forced to act, driven by frenzy, or fear or hatred, incensed and provoked, for otherwise the fanatic fears that no action at all will be taken toward “the ideal.”

Organized action is an excellent method of exerting influence, but only when each member is self-activating; only when he or she extends individuality through group action, and does not mindlessly seek to follow the dictates of others.

[...] It demands much more of its people, however, for in a large manner each must pick and choose from amid a variety of life-styles and beliefs his and her own platform for daily life and action.

[...] Your consciousness is at a point where it is beginning to understand the significance of “predictive action” — and predictive action always involves probabilities.

However, it seems to you that all action in the past is fixed and done, while behavior in the future alone is open to change — so the word “prediction” assumes future action. [...]

(9:34.) Take a very simple action: You stand at a corner, wondering which direction to take. [...]

[...] If you had to stand there and write down all the thoughts and associations connected with each course of action before you made your decision, you might never cross the intersection to begin with. [...]

As a rule you have enough difficulty dealing with the day’s occurrences, much less next week’s, and so in the sequence of events the reality of probable actions is usually hidden from your view. [...] This provides a clear focus in which “present” action can be considered. [...]

[...] Within this the actions and beliefs of one affect all.

[...] In the same way, following your own “trace” experiences and characteristics, you can discover those “probable” abilities that are yours, and uncover to some degree the nature of probable actions open to you for physical materialization.

There are many implications here, and now perhaps you can understand why I gave you the information on the nature of action before I introduced you to the inverted time system. For action is action whether or not you perceive it, and probable events are events whether or not you perceive them as such.

The probable events are experienced in such a way that any given action or probable action is followed through in its various and almost infinite varieties.

[...] As you know, wishes and desires also influence those actions which will be perceived by you as actual events in the physical universe. [...]

[...] Take for example probable event X. This so-called probable event or action will be experienced by the various portions of the self in their own way. [...]

(11:30.) With animals, there are varying degrees of division between the self who acts and the action involved. With the birth of the conscious mind in man, however, the self who acts needed a way to judge its actions. [...]

This is not the case, for your own expectations are the actions which mold what you call the future, and it is never static and never definite; for you can change it at any moment, as any action changes any other action. You are always free to act, but every action changes that which is acted upon, and you constantly change your so-called future; and the events that I see may indeed be changed at any time.

[...] There should be no such word in your vocabulary, for with every moment you change, and every heartbeat is an action, and every action changes every other action.

You have nothing to do with making the movie, nothing to do with the plot or the characters, yet you can see the ending, and from the action you know what the developments will bring. You in no way affected the developments within the action; nor were they predestined, but worked out by the characters involved.

[...] Now however consider another analogy, where action envelopes and changes within a different dimension. I can look in on it and see its progress, but the action develops as it will, and is free.

“Usual memory is as much a sifting process as it is anything else, in which experience’s intensity varies — sometimes ‘alive’ neurologically and sometimes not — just to focus our consciousness in one probable action or series. (As I type I add: We forget anything not pertinent to our selected series of probable actions. [...]

[...] Past motion and acts still go on, not recurring — it’s hard to explain — but those past actions are still exploring other probabilities, while our nervous structure focuses us in the one (physical) probable reality we’ve chosen. To us those other actions seem terminated … but that’s only because usually we can’t follow them.

“Now, physically, neurological action is a code for other actions that usually can’t be experienced at once because of the selectivity mentioned earlier.²

You perceive portions of such actions consciously, some subconsciously, some with the inner senses, but you do not perceive the whole action. [...] Since you do not perceive whole action that occurs within your own system, you do not understand it. So it should not surprise you that you misinterpret projections of other actions from different systems, when they appear as they sometimes do within your own.

When actions from other systems are projected into your own, your own perceptions distort the true nature of the event. To begin with then, you attempt to understand an action that is poorly perceived. You project upon it your own concepts of space and time, and try to interpret the action in their light.

I want to stress some points mentioned in our last session, to the effect in particular that you perceive only a small portion of any given action even when that action has some of its origins within your own physical field.

[...] We are dealing with energy that is instantly transformed into action without matter.

At deep levels the cells are always working with probabilities, and comparing probable actions and developments in the light of genetic information. [...]

[...] You know this because you have a reasoning mind, but that particular kind of reasoning mind knows what it knows because at deep levels the cells are aware of the nature of probable action. [...]

[...] You are always making choices between probable actions and alternate courses. [...]

For an exercise, keep notes for a day or so of all the times you find yourself thinking of probable actions,² large or small. [...]

[...] Probable actions emerge, then, into matter-systems quite as valid as your own, and quite as consistent. You are used to thinking in single-line thoughts, so you think of events that you know as complete things or actions, not realizing that what you perceive is but a fraction of their entire multidimensional existence.

(9:30.) In greater terms, it is impossible to separate one physical event from the probable events, for these are all dimensions of one action. [...]

[...] There are many such points of fluctuation, but your system of course is not aware of them, nor of the ultimate actions, universes, and systems that exist within them.

[...] In such a case you must realize that you make your own loneliness, and resolve to change through both thought and action. Action is thought in physical motion, outwardly perceived.

[...] From a given field of action, then, you choose those happenings that will be physically materialized.

[...] The occurrence would be an accumulation of energy — turned into action — and be brought about by corollary beliefs.

[...] For you, because of your neurological organization, the present is obviously the only point from which past and future can be changed, or when action becomes effected.

There is of course an important give-and-take between the two frameworks and between mental and physical action. Mental and physical actions each stimulate each other. [...]

Impulses toward action will be naturally rearoused, and desires toward spontaneous action will find more and more release. [...]

Your suggestion about the bathroom (sitting down) is another instance of creative action which takes. [...]

[...] And used as you have just begun using it, it can show you through action some issues most difficult to describe. [...]

[...] Consider art as a natural phenomena constructed by the psyche, a trans-species of perception and consciousness that changes, enlarges and expands life’s experiences and casts them in a different light, offering new opportunities for creating action and new solutions to problems by inserting new, original data. [...]

Again as with master events, we’re dealing with a different framework of action entirely, where the Mona Lisa is “more real” than the physical properties that compose it, which is not to deny the validity of the canvas, say. [...]

[...] I don’t have to “live up” to anything, I don’t have to “make the material work” or prove through my actions that it does because it proves itself in the way that creativity does, by being beyond levels of true-false references. [...]

[...] An individual finds himself with a choice of three actions. [...] The other two actions are experienced also, by the inner ego, but not in physical reality. [...] The probable actions were definitely experienced, however, and such experience makes up the existence of the ‘probable selves’ just as dream actions make up the experience of the dreaming self. [...]

[...] The shaking of a hand may be perceived by you as a simple action. You are not aware of the million small acts which make up this seemingly insignificant action. [...] Now this portion of the self experiences these probable events consciously, with as much rapidity as you subconsciously perceive the million small actions that make up the handshake.”

“Action is action whether or not you perceive it, and probable events are events whether or not you perceive them. [...]

[...] The whole self perceives and is affected by probabilities, then, and perceives these as actions whether or not the ego has chosen to accept any given event as physical. [...]

[...] our discussions are indeed action. Action changes me, and everyone in this room. [...] Actions change us all. [...] I enjoy the actions... [...]

[...] It should be remembered however that hypnotism is also an action, and as such hypnotism will change the personality to some extent, as all action changes and affects other actions.

[...] You must remember that the whole self is more than the sum of its parts; and also, since it is action, it is never the same. [...] For as I have explained action is simultaneous, and time as you think of it is caused by your own physical perception.

(Seth resumed again at 11:10, again in a jocular fashion, after we had been discussing his definition of action, among other things.)