“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

4. In this book there are many examples of various kinds of altered states of consciousness on Jane’s part. In addition to Seth’s volume, these sometimes resulted in very creative products of her “own”: Some of the psychic experiences connected with her book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time, which she began in November, 1972, are described in the 639th session in Chapter Ten. And in the 653rd session in Chapter Thirteen, we go into those involved with the writing of her long poem, Dialogues of the Speakers, on April 2, 1973.

The brain to some extent keeps the mind to a three-dimensional focus. It orients you toward the environment in which you must operate, and it is because of the mind’s allegiance with the temporal brain that you perceive, for example, time as a series of moments.

(10:01. Jane said she had been really out during her trance, and that now she felt “almost drunk with exhilaration.” The times noted as she delivered the material show that she’d marched along at a good pace. “On the one hand,” she continued, looking a little bleary, “I could go way under and deliver the book until morning; or I could just go to bed and conk right out.” She was quite curious about the reasons behind these feelings.

(Seth was quite correct. Talk about seeing the proverbial light — suddenly I saw the belief that had been right there all the time…. Remember that Jane and I had spent the weekend visiting my mother and brother, et al.)

Hinged to this is the belief that this felt lack of communication is wrong, and that for anything wrong you should be punished. In taking dictation for this book you are helping us communicate with many people, while at the same time you feel that you cannot communicate with your own parent.

Now at various times you made those conscious choices. They escaped your notice but they existed as conscious points of awareness and choice. Now do you have any questions?

(10:40. “No, I’d just like time to think about all of this.”)

Now: Ruburt has recently been in the process of recognizing some beliefs that he wants to get rid of. He has been loosening them so that they rattle around within his consciousness. He is becoming aware of them. They are not as invisible as they were. He is facing many of them for the first time.

I will from time to time give subsidiary material for Ruburt and also for you, implementing a chapter in the book for your personal use. It is vital that you realize you are working with beliefs in your mind — that the real work is done there in the mind — and not look for immediate physical results.

Few beliefs are intellectual alone. When you are examining the contents of your conscious mind, you must learn, or recognize, the emotional and imaginative connotations that are connected with a given idea. There are various ways of altering the belief by substituting its opposite. One particular method is three-pronged. You generate the emotion opposite the one that arises from the belief you want to change, and you turn your imagination in the opposite direction from the one dictated by the belief. At the same time you consciously assure yourself that the unsatisfactory belief is an idea about reality and not an aspect of reality itself.

(Pause at 11:23.) Quite deliberately you use your conscious mind playfully, creating a game as children do, in which for a time you completely ignore what seems to be in physical terms and “pretend” that what you really want is real.

As it took a while for the unsatisfactory beliefs to become materialized, so it may be a time before you see physical results; but the new ideas will take growth and change your experience as certainly as the old ones did. The process of imagining will also bring you face to face with other subsidiary ideas that may momentarily bring you up short. You may see where you held two quite conflicting ideas simultaneously, and with equal vigor. In such a case, you stalemated yourself.

You may believe that you have a right to health, and yet with equal intensity believe that the human condition is by nature tainted. So you will try to be healthy and not healthy at the same time, or successful and not successful, according to your individual system of beliefs — for later in the book you will see how your beliefs will generally fall into a system of related ideas.

(The next morning Jane told me that she and/or Seth “worked on the book all night. Each time I woke up, dictation, or stuff like that, was going on. It was pretty insistent — almost unpleasantly so at times….” She’s experienced such effects before in connection with the book. They aren’t a nightly occurrence by any means, but I suggested she tell herself upon retiring that she wouldn’t be aware of such activity during sleeping hours. We planned to ask Seth about it also.)