“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In a manner of speaking (underlined), the physical universe is “transposed” upon another reality that must be its source. The world was and is created in dimensions outside of time, and outside of space as you understand it (intently).

(Pause at 9:30 in an intent delivery.) The grids of perception that compose your world give you the world picture as you (underlined) experience it because your physical senses put you in a certain position within the entire grid. Animals, for example, while part of your experience, are also “tuned into” that grid at another level. The large classifications of mammals, fish, birds, men, reptiles, plants, and so forth, are [each] an integral part of that larger perceptive pattern—and that pattern (underlined) in those terms had to be complete even in the beginning of your time.

(Now Jane paused several times in her delivery—and I had the feeling that Seth was groping for the words that would make his meaning as clear to us as possible.)

These grids of perception “do not exist forever” in your dimension of time, for your dimension of time cannot hold anything that is outside it. Once a world exists, however, it becomes imprinted or stamped upon eternity, so that it exists in time and out of it “at once.”

When you ask: “When did the world begin?” or “What really happened?” or “Was there a Garden of Eden?”, you are referring to the world as you understand it, but in those terms there were earths in the same space before the earth you recognize existed,² and they began in the manner that I have given you in the early chapters of this book. The patterns for worlds—the patterns—continue in your time dimension, though in that time dimension those worlds must disappear, again, to continue “their existence outside of time.” The patterns are filled out again.

(10:03.) In the case of earth the grid of perception is simply used differently, certain areas becoming prominent in some eras, and less prominent in others. Using your idea of time, I can only say that when the entire gestalt of consciousnesses that formed a particular earth have formed its reality to the best of their abilities, fulfilling their individual and mass capacities as far as possible, then they lovingly turn over that grid to others, and continue to take part in existences that are not physical in your terms. And that has happened many times.

Now in a manner of speaking—though I see that little time has passed in this living room where I speak with Ruburt’s permission—we have transcended time to some extent this evening, for in what I have said there are indeed hints and illusions—cadences—that can, if you are ready, give you a feeling for existence as it is outside of time’s context. Even to try and verbally present such material necessitates alterations involving perception, for while that gridwork appears quite stable to your senses, giving you a reliable picture of reality, this is also because you have trained yourselves to pick up certain signals only. Others at other levels are (underlined) available. You can (underlined) tune into cellular consciousness, for example.

(“Last Saturday morning I had what seemed to be two dreams that were identical and side by side, or at the same time. But they weren’t within the other, as in a double dream—”)

You know you can have more than one dream at a time. You can also experience versions of dreams of probable selves, but there will always be some point of contact—that is, there will always be a reason why you pick up such a dream. All of the dreams people have form a mass dream framework. Dreams exist at other levels, and physically of course they affect the body state. In such ways, the world’s actions are worked out in mass dream communications that are at the same time public and private.

(10:25 P.M. “Gee, I have the feeling that we had a fantastic session,” Jane enthused once she’d quickly left her trance state. I agreed. “I’m really making an effort to free myself from what science believes about evolution, or anything like that,” she said. “That’s what I got before the session—about animals reincarnating—and I thought: Oh, no. But it worked out okay.” Neither of us could remember Seth stating flat out in any of his material that animals reincarnate, although he may have done so. “After all of this time,” Jane mused, “he says that….”

In the 4th session for December 8, 1963, the personality Jane and I had been contacting through the Ouija board, Frank Withers, spelled out with the board’s pointer the message that he preferred to be called Seth—and Seth it’s been ever since. Shortly before he announced himself as Seth, I’d asked Frank Withers if people were ever “reborn as animals.” His answer was as direct as possible: “No.” Next I asked him: “Is part of your psyche alive on earth now?” The answer was very strange to us at the time: “Very small part. I hardly miss it. I watch it but I leave it alone. It is a dog fragment.” Frank Withers would not give us the location of this dog: “No.”

When I asked him in the same session about his evocative use of “fragment,” Seth replied: “That is an original term with me, as far as I know.” Within another couple of sessions, however, he began to let “fragment” semantically yield to other terminology as he continued developing his material in ever-deepening discussions of personalities and entities, reincarnation, time, dreams, and other related subjects. I was surprised when he returned to the word here in Dreams. I’ve designed this note to supplement Jane’s writing on fragments in The Seth Material, which Prentice-Hall published in 1970.