“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We will call the world as you physically experience it, Framework 1. In Framework 1, you watch television programs, for example. You have your choice of many channels. You have favorite programs. You follow certain scenes or actors. You watch all of these dramas, hardly understanding how it is that they appear on your screen to begin with. You are certain, however, that if you do buy a television set it will perform in an adequate fashion, whether or not you are familiar with electronics. Period.

You switch from channel to channel with predictable results. The programming for Channel 9, for example, does not suddenly intrude on Channel 6. Even the actors themselves, taking part in such sagas, have but the remotest idea of events that are involved in order that their own images will appear on your television screen. Their jobs are to act, taking it for granted that the technicians are following through.

Now somewhere there is a program director, who must take care of the entire programming. Shows must be done on time, actors assigned their roles. Our hypothetical director will know which actors are free, which actors prefer character roles, which ones are heroes or heroines, and which smiling Don Juan always gets the girl — and in general who plays the good guys and the bad guys.

Television interacts with your lives, but it does not cause your lives. It does not cause the events that it depicts. With your great belief in technology, it often seems to many people that television causes violence, for example, or that it causes a love of overmaterialism, or that it causes “loose morals.” Television reflects. In a manner of speaking it does not even distort, though it may reflect distortions. The writers and actors of television dramas are attuned to the “mass mind.” They are not leaders or followers. They are creative reflectors, acutely aware of the overall, generalized emotional and psychic patterns of the age.

They also make choices as to which plays they will take part in. [Each has his or her] own favorite kind of role, even if the role be that of a maverick. To the actors, of course, their roles become strong parts of their personal experiences, while those who observe the plays take part largely as observers.

Actors visit casting agencies so that they know what plays need their services. In your dreams you visit “casting agencies.” You are aware of the various plays being considered for physical production. In the dream state, then, often you familiarize yourself with dramas that are of a probable nature. If enough interest is shown, if enough actors apply, if enough resources are accumulated, the play will go on. When you are in other than your normally conscious state, you visit that creative inner agency in which all physical productions must have their beginning. You meet with others, who for their own reasons are interested in the same kind of drama. Following our analogy, the technicians, the actors, the writers all assemble — only in this case the result will be a live event rather than a televised one. There are disaster films being planned, educational programs, religious dramas. All of these will be encountered in full-blown physical reality.