MASTER EVENTS AND REALITY OVERLAYS

She’s been most intrigued by Seth’s referrals to the concept of “master events” ever since he gave them in the final session for Chapter 8—preparations, she hoped, for his material this evening. She came to play her own conscious part in those preparations, too: Yesterday she’d received many insights from Seth on “master overlays,” and made notes. She typed some of her information after supper tonight, and I’m presenting this in Note 1, just to show how closely at times the body of the Seth material lies to her “ordinary” consciousness.)

Now: Dictation. New chapter (9): “Master Events and Reality Overlays” (all with much humorous emphasis).

Give us a moment…. Master events are those (long pause) whose main activity takes place in inner dimensions. (Long pause.) Such events are t-o-o (spelled) multidimensional to appear clearly in your reality, so that you see or experience only parts of them. They are source events. Their main thrust is in what you can call the vaster dimension of dreams, the unknown territory of inner reality. The terms you use make no difference. The original action, however, of such events is unmanifest—not physical. Those events then “subsequently” show themselves in time and space, with extraordinary results.

They shed their light upon the “facts” of historical time, and influence those events. Master events may end up translated through mythology, or religion or art, or the effects may actually serve to give a framework to an entire civilization. (With much amusement:) In parentheses or brackets or whatever you use: (As indeed occurred in the case of Christianity, as I will explain later.) End of brackets or parentheses.

Now the origin of the universe that you know, as I have described it, was of course a master event. The initial action did not occur in space or time, but formed space and time.

(Pause at 9:31.) I said that in your terms (underlined) all universes were created (underlined) simultaneously—at the same time. The very sentence structure has time built in, you see, so you are bound to think that I am speaking of an almost indescribable past. Also, I use time terms, since you are so used yourselves to that kind of categorizing, so here we will certainly run into our first seeming contradiction (see the last session) — when I say that in the higher order of events all universes, including your own, have their original creations occurring now, with all of their pasts and futures built in, and with all of their scales of time winding ever outward, and all of their appearances of space, galaxies and nebulae, and all of their seeming changes, being instantly and originally created in what you think of as this moment.

Your universe cannot be its own source. Its inner mysteries—which are indeed the mysteries of consciousness, not matter—cannot be explained, and must remain incomprehensible, if you try to study them from the viewpoint of your objective experience alone. You must look to the source of that experience. You must look not to space but to the source of space, not to time but to the source of time—and most of all, you must look to the kind of consciousness that experiences space and time. You must look, therefore, to events that show themselves through historical action, but whose origins are elsewhere. None of this is really beyond your capabilities, as long as you try to enlarge your framework.

I hope, again, to stretch the reaches of both your imaginations and intellects in this book, to give you a feeling for events larger than your usual true-or-false, fact-or-fancy categories. Your existence as a species is characterized far more by your unique use of your imaginations than it is by any physical attributes. Your connections with that unmanifest universe have always helped direct your imaginations, made you aware of the rich veins of probabilities possible in physical existence, so that you could then use your intellects to decide which of the alternate routes you wanted as a species to follow.

In a fashion man also is equipped with the ability to initiate actions on a nonphysical level that then become physical and continue to wind in and out of (pause) both realities, entwining dream events with historic ones, in such a fashion that the original nonphysical origins [are] often forgotten. Man overlays (underlined) the true reality quite spontaneously. He often reacts to dream events as if they were physical, and to physical events as if they were dreams. This applies individually and collectively, but man is often unaware of that interplay.

In the terms of evolution as you like to think of it, ideas are more important than genes (quietly), for we are again dealing with more than the surfaces of events. We are dealing with more than some physical mechanics of being. For one thing, the genes themselves are conscious, though in different terms than yours. Your cultures—your civilizations—obviously affect the well-being of your species, and those cultures are formed by your ideas, and forged through the use of your imaginations and your intellects.

Neither of us had counted the sessions we have for Dreams, but when I made a quick check the next day I was surprised to discover that Jane’s estimate is only two short of the 32 sessions Seth has called book dictation. I’m still busy typing the final manuscript for Mass Events, but we’ve already planned that I’ll be adding several “nonbook” sessions, and excerpts from others, to Dreams when finally I get to concentrate on the production work for it And my own opinion, I explained to Jane, is that Seth is considerably more than halfway through this book, even if we add more extra sessions to it.)

“Sunday, June 8, 1980: As I went about the day, showering, doing my hair, reading the paper, doing my exercises and so forth, I kept getting stuff from Seth on … the next chapter of his book, I think to be called ‘Master Events and Overlays.’ There can be overlays of one civilization onto another, so that a ‘real’ civilization in one sphere of existence can appear as myth in another…. Our civilization appears as myth in other worlds; that kind of thing represents only one kind of overlay.

“I got unclear glimpses of material on Atlantis that I didn’t really get well enough to note down, and about Christianity, as both representing certain (other?) kinds of overlays and as examples of master events.

“I got a definition of master events but forgot some of it … to the effect that master events are spectacular events whose main thrusts are outside of time, but whose actions on or in time [are] extravagant—out of proportion to their actual historical connections. The physical part of [such an] event in history is actually minimal in contrast to its effects … and something about master events touching the worlds of imagination and reason in different ways.

“Master events are actually other wrinkles in probabilities,” Jane said as we talked about this note. “They explain why Christianity has had such far-reaching effects, for almost 2,000 years, when its original experiences were so small in time and space—why we attach so much significance to those desert countries over there even now….”

2. This paragraph of Seth’s at once reminded me of some of his most evocative earlier material on animal consciousness. He gave it in the 832nd session for Chapter 5 of Mass Events (on January 29, 1979), and I quoted it in the Preliminary Notes to the Preface for Dreams: “Nature in all of its varieties is so richly encountered by the animals….”