“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(There are four recognized [electrical] brain waves, and in speed they range upward from 0 to 26 and more Hertz units, or cycles per second. These rhythms can vary somewhat, and are best thought of as areas of activity. Brain waves overlap. Very simply, delta brain waves are connected with dreamless sleep, theta with creativity and dreams, alpha with a relaxed alertness and changing consciousness; beta — the fastest — with concentration, and with an intense focus upon all of the challenges [and anxieties and stresses, many would say] faced in the ordinary daily world.

(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

The beta waves quicken. They seem to be the official pulses of your civilization, giving precedence to official reality, but you have little idea that the psyche is inherently able to seek its conscious experience from all of the known ranges, according to the kind of experience chosen at any given “time.”

Beta was not meant to carry the full weight of conscious activity, however, although its accelerating qualities can lead to initiations into “higher” realms of consciousness, where indeed the brain waves quicken. The other patterns (delta, theta, and alpha) are highly important to physical and mental stability, being very interwound with cellular consciousness. In cases usually called schizophrenic, the beta acceleration is not supported by the stabilizing attributes of the other known frequencies.

A kind of inverted beta pattern, difficult to describe, often appears suddenly in the midst of the other ranges, driving through them, accelerating consciousness to a high degree of creativity. The brain waves as they are known are separately registered segments of a greater “whole” kind of consciousness, and your machines are just as segmented, perceiving only those patterns [they were designed to recognize]. Other activity escapes them. They cannot note the rapidity with which you move through all of the known patterns constantly. This behavior can be learned by anyone willing to take the time and effort. Some courage would also help.

Each beta wave rides atop the other patterns. In normal sleep, the “conscious” wave rides beneath the others, with the face of consciousness turned inward, so to speak. All the recognized characteristics of consciousness are “inverted,” probing other realities than the one you know. They are quite effective and lightning fast. In sleep the beta waves are not turned off — the “conscious” part of you, with its beta rhythms, is elsewhere.

In an ideal society, each brain wave would be utilized purposefully. You would go to sleep to solve certain problems … There is an overall general difference, nationally speaking — that is, people of various nations do differ to some extent in their prevalent brain frequencies … All in all, however, the beta has predominated, and has been expected to solve many problems unsuited to its own characteristics.