“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane described her altered state of consciousness to me while it was in progress on Monday, of course, then the next morning she wrote as complete an account of it as she could. This took over six thousand words — and even while typing she found herself reliving portions of the experience to some moderate degree….

we look out upon a universe,

(1. Seth deals with cellular memory to some extent in the 638th session in Chapter Ten; also see the 632nd and 637th sessions. Among other material covering altered states of consciousness on Jane’s part, refer to her Introduction, as well as the notes for the 639th session in Chapter Ten, and the 645th session in Chapter Eleven. By the looks of things, she’ll have more such episodes that we can add to later chapters. She plans to study all of her experiences with various stages of consciousness in her book, Aspect Psychology.

(2. There are clear connections between the “massive” portions of Jane’s latest psychic adventure and her first encounters with Seth Two in April, 1968; she goes into those experiences in some detail in Chapter Seventeen of The Seth Material. There is more on Seth Two in Chapter Twenty-two of Seth Speaks. In Chapter One of The Seth Material, she describes her first “trip” through an altered state of consciousness — and how it resulted in the production of her manuscript, The Physical Universe as Idea Construction. See the notes preceding the 633rd session in Chapter Eight.

Dictation. (Quietly:) Your attitudes toward sleep, dreams, or any alterations of consciousness are all colored to some extent then by beliefs concerning good and evil in your Western society. These emerge from the old Puritan work ethic: “The devil finds evil work for idle hands.”

This kind of thinking by itself brings about an overall attitude in which rest is frowned upon, and dreams are considered suspect. Daydreaming and even mild alterations of consciousness take on moral connotations. Such ideas are mirrored in your society in innumerable fashions, and in areas in which values of good and evil are not apparent. Active sports are considered good, however, but often contrasted to passive intuitive activities which are then seen as bad.

Young people are urged to tackle life aggressively, but in the usage of the term this means competitively. It also implies, and of course, promotes, the direction of individual consciousness in an exterior fashion only. Not only is consciousness to be focused to the external reality, but within those limits it is still further harnessed toward certain specific goals. Other inclinations are frowned upon.

Such individuals are trained to consider any alterations of consciousness, any seemingly “passive” endeavor as dangerous to one degree or another. An artist will be tolerated — only if his work sells well, for example, in which case it will be thought that the artist is simply trickier than most in discovering a way of making money.