“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A new belief in the present, however, can cause changes in the past on a neuronal level. You must understand that basically time is simultaneous. Present beliefs can indeed alter the past. In some cases of healing, in the spontaneous disappearance of cancer, for instance, or of any other disease, certain alterations are made that affect cellular memory, genetic codes, or neuronal patterns in the past.

In such instances there is, as easily as I can explain it, a reaching into deep biological structures as they existed at one time; at that point the probabilities are altered, and the condition erased in your present — but also in your past.

(Pause.) The biological structure as it existed in the past is therefore affected. Experience is built into the organism that it did not have before, in your terms. It is a sort of reprogramming. It is impossible, of course, for you to examine cellular structure now as it exists in the present and simultaneously as it existed in the past (very positively). Scientifically, you can only probe those effects that appear within your present. When you alter your beliefs today you also reprogram your past. As far as you are concerned the present is your point of action, focus, and power, and from that point of volition you form both your future and past. Realizing this, you will understand that you are not at the mercy of a past over which you have no control.

Your consciousness is not a thing that you possess. Your individuality is not a thing with limits. If you ask, “What is my individuality in all of this?” or, “Which ‘I’ am I?” then you are automatically thinking of yourself as a psychological entity with definite boundaries that must be protected at all costs. You may say, “I was born in a house on a certain street in a certain town, and no present belief to the contrary will change that fact.” If, in the present, one past event can be altered within your neuronal structure, however, then basically no event is safe from such change.

[...] The entire psychological impact of the room will have altered. [...] It will attract certain kinds of events rather than others, and it will alter your own psychological structure and hormonal output. You will react to the altered state of the room even in quite physical ways, though its width or length, in inches or feet, may not seem to vary.

I told our good friend Joseph to underline the word “seem” because your instruments would show no physical alteration — since the instruments within such a room would themselves have already altered to the same degree.

You are constantly changing the form, the shape, the contour, and the meaning of your physical body and most intimate environment, although you do your best to ignore these constant alterations. [...]

[...] Your own time structure misleads you into your ideas of the relative permanency of physical matter, and you close your eyes to the constant alterations within it. [...]

(Jane described her altered state of consciousness to me while it was in progress on Monday, of course, then the next morning she wrote as complete an account of it as she could. [...]

[...] The inspiration was now directing my perception so that as I looked around, the world was altered. [...]

(“I felt claustrophobic for a bit … my visual perception was again altered in a strange smoother way, so that everything I saw was an inside that was inside itself, ad infinitum. [...]

(“Each of these ideas came as emotional revelations, accompanied by various bodily sensations and alterations of visual perception. [...]

[...] Every least alteration of psychic and emotional existence immediately alters the nature of the physical environment through instant interaction.

The change itself is the direct reflection of inner psychic and psychological alterations; but you have actually altered the nature of the physical environment and the quality that pervades it. [...]

Thoughts and emotions directly activate the mechanics of physical matter, alter and transform it, maintain it, and also destroy it.

(Even if beta waves, then, seem to be the “official pulses” of our civilization [to use Seth’s phrase from a session that will be quoted in part below], still Jane and I wonder: When aren’t we actually in a state of altered consciousness? For no matter which brain rhythm may predominate at any time, that state is certainly an altered one in relation to the other three. But more than this, why not call all actions of the brain “altered” when compared to Seth’s concept of the individual personality’s whole self or entity?¹

[...] Jane and I have seldom been concerned with trying for strict definitions of qualities like “altered states of consciousness.” All of us experience such altered states of consciousness often throughout each day, so the phrase itself should hardly mean anything mysterious — even though others usually look at Jane or me questioningly if either of us uses it in conversation.

[...] Presumably, however, when speaking for Seth, Jane would show definite changes in all frequency areas in both hemispheres, with the theta and delta ranges altered the most. [...]

[...] You must alter those beliefs. [...]

[...] As long as you belabor the physical condition you are not working at altering the beliefs. [...]

Altering the beliefs automatically changes the reasons. [...]

[...] In certain terms hypnosis is simply an exercise in the alteration of beliefs, and only too clearly shows that sense experience follows expectations.

Even the intimate body experience alters. [...]

[...] For if you altered your beliefs and therefore your private sensations of reality, then that world, seemingly the only one, would also change. [...]

[...] (Suddenly very intense and fast:) At other levels of psychic activity however such knowledge is also available to you, but only when you disconnect your experience from the time-activated neuronal structure — and this you can do through various alterations of consciousness, often quite spontaneously adopted.

Now you can alter your present through altering your past, or you can change your present from the future. [...]

[...] [See the extensive notes for the 653rd session in Chapter Thirteen, describing her various states of altered perception last April 2. In one of those intervals she’d sensed giants standing about the rim of our world.] Now, Jane said, from their massive viewpoint these observers could see “everything happening at once in our world, from California to Russia — like astronauts looking back at us….”

Ruburt’s perception is highly altered this evening, and this is an example of certain kinds of both affirmation and denial. [...]

[...] The knowledge is interpreted through alterations in body sensation, which give it an important corporeal validity. [...]

It is true that his beliefs are also responsible for the fact that he can experience such alterations to begin with. While his beliefs are partially responsible for his astonishing facility, once in various altered states he is in a kind of free-wheeling situation as far as physical reality is concerned. [...]

(Long pause at 9:42.) In certain terms alterations of consciousness involved you in experiences of an angular nature, where perception uses physical reality as a basis, but forms angles from it. [...]

[...] As Seth comments in the 742nd session for April 16, 1975, in Section 6: “It is obvious that when you move from one place to another you make an alteration in space — but you alter time as well, and you set into motion a certain psychological impetus that reaches out to affect everyone you know … Such messages are often encountered in the dream state. [...]

[...] Jane does her own traveling: The “psychic library” she’s learning to visit while in a certain state of altered consciousness is described, and the ways in which the library is related to the birth of her book, Psychic Politics (which is to be published in the fall of 1976).

One of Jane’s earlier travels through an altered state of consciousness, in September, 1972, resulted in the first session on her unique “slow” and “fast” sounds, then led into information on faster-than-light particles, black holes, white holes, and “dead” holes. [...]

(9:35.) Now: in a manner of speaking, of course, the same (alteration of approach) applies to Ruburt’s condition. [...]

What we want is an altered approach to life itself, to one that follows the kind of natural approach to living that children unerringly possess, but to one that is also enriched with experience that a child does not possess. [...]

[...] If you turn your focus only slightly away, the world appears differently; and if that slightly altered focus were the predominant one, then that is how the world would seem to be. [...] You can learn to encounter other realities by altering your position within your own psyche.

[...] This is an excellent exercise to use before you begin — and after you finish with — any experiment involving an alteration of consciousness.

When you are using this exercise following any experiment with an alteration of consciousness, then end it here and go about your other concerns. [...]

[...] When you alter your conscious focus in such a fashion, you are also moving away from the part of your psyche that you consider its center. [...]

[...] And when you pluck a finger into the air, then you disturb and change and alter other realities that you cannot see nor touch, and other realities in which a finger, as a finger, does not exist. One thought sends out ripples that change and alter. [...] That does not reach out and change and grow and alter worlds of which you have no knowledge. [...]

[...] Each move that you make is not multiplied a million times, not simply multiplied, but it reaches out and changes and alters and affects these other realities and it becomes a new action. [...]

[...] Even then, the smallest consciousness within its own terms of value fulfillment can emerge, can change, can alter, can develop. [...]

[...] In that case your own personality structure was altered by the information that flowed through you, and it became a part of your earth life heritage. [...]

[...] In changing them it of necessity is part of the awareness of the very cells it alters.

[...] Anything that an observer learns from looking at the painting is always living knowledge, that alters his own makeup.

[...] (Eyes open.) The woman’s death was foremost as far as probabilities were concerned, and yet at many points at the time of our session she could have altered those probabilities.

Therefore the probability is already altered. Whether or not our Jesuit even knew of Ruburt’s impressions, that probability was altered. Knowing the impressions alters the probability further, and taking the steps that I have given still further changes the probabilities. [...]

The two lads involved may very well cause an accident in any case, unless actions of their own alter their reactions. [...]

It goes without saying that such an accident would be the result of psychic and psychological forces operating within those involved, and by altering the set as has been done, the previous “results”, in quotes, need not occur.

(Before tonight’s session I read to Jane this question: “In the 462nd Session, page 232, you say [meaning Seth] that any perception, however slight, alters every atom within our physical structure. Not to be nitpicking, but others as well as ourselves are sure to want to know just what you mean by this alteration.”

[...] (Pause.) Returning to the material on perception, there are changes in the positive and negative atomic charges, alterations of movement inside the atoms in the smaller particles (long pause), a change in pulsation rate. [...]

[...] Remember also in your terms that the seemingly independent perceived event and its nature is changed and altered by your own perception of it.

[...] To some very valid extent in our sessions, changes occur then within Ruburt’s physical organism (pause), for in responding to my communications, electromagnetic alterations are therefore in inevitable. [...]

[...] In fact, that consciousness of self in any person is dependent upon the constant, miraculous cooperations that exist between the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds.³ The inner intent always forms any exterior alteration. [...] When they form living creatures they become a physical basis for species alteration. [...]

Give us a moment … In a way you are all your own mutants, creatively altering cellular formations. [...] In many cases these images can be altered, but not with the technology that you have.

[...] Species were thought to change, and “mutants” form, because of a previous alteration in the environment, to which any given species had to adjust or disappear. [...]

[...] Inside all physical organisms, therefore, there is a thrust for development and change, even as there is also a pattern of stability within which such alterations can take place.

[...] He is not inhibiting worry, hiding it, but trying to alter the reaction itself—a big difference. [...] He only has to be reasonably proficient in altering his beliefs. [...]

[...] When consciousness alters its direction it automatically alters the physical system. [...]

The chemicals you see alter the system that you inhabit, as well as your own perceptions of it. [...]

Now in the drug situation the state of consciousness desired is brought about by altering chemical properties. [...]

He has finally decided to gain weight, and this in turn will alter his physical image and his conception of it for the better. [...]

[...] The larger variety simply of electromagnetic ranges makes for alterations in both your mental and physical states. [...]