“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

INNER STORMS AND OUTER STORMS. CREATIVE “DESTRUCTION.” THE LENGTH OF THE DAY AND THE NATURAL REACH OF A BIOLOGICALLY-BASED CONSCIOUSNESS

(Pause at 10:32.) Next chapter [Eighteen]: “Inner Storms and Outer Storms. Creative ‘Destruction.’ The Length of the Day and the Natural Reach of a Biologically-Based Consciousness.”

First sentence: Your reality exists independently of your physically oriented consciousness, but while you are a creature your awareness must be interpreted through your neurological structure and your corporeal aliveness. There are indeed various kinds of memory, so that the right information can be at your fingertips when you need it. Other data will seldom be required consciously, yet it must always be available to unconscious portions of the self. Biologically the reach and capacity of your physically oriented consciousness is directly connected with the length of your days and nights, and of course with the seasons. Physically speaking, there are chemical interactions when thought occurs, and memories ride on the chemicals’ smooth flow. With the precise night and day schedule that it possesses, your planet would, in those terms, give birth to a creature consciousness uniquely suited to fit it. In other terms, the night and day represent the innate rhythms of your consciousness physically materialized through natural phenomena, for you are not yet equipped to perceive longer-duration days. Your nervous system would find great difficulty in a rhythm in which a day was stretched out to be three or four times as long, for instance.

(10:44.) The rhythms of your body and of your consciousness follow the patterns of your planet. The planet itself is composed of atoms and molecules, each with their own kind of consciousness, however; and in the gestalt and cumulative cooperative organization of their nature the physical structure is formed — out of consciousness.

Beliefs are the formations of self-conscious minds, even as buildings are at another level.

Beliefs direct, generate, focus, and harness feelings. In this context then feelings are being compared to mountains, lakes, and rivers. Ideas and beliefs bring about those obviously man-made structures that imply self-conscious minds and the ocean of interrelated social events.

(Pause at 11:38.) You do not need a self-conscious mind to feel, and in the “past,” earthquakes represented the feeling-patterns of species in the same way — unstable conditions of consciousness that in themselves initiated natural phenomena, further altering the state of consciousness and the conditions of species as well.

In your terms consciousness is wedded with matter, and any of its experiences are physically materialized through that interaction. There are great correlations between thunderstorms and psychic storms, for example, and between unstable electromagnetic properties of both feeling and thought, the brain’s ability to handle these, and its need to rid itself of excesses. You do not simply react to the weather. You help form it, even as you breathe the air and then send it outward again. The brain is a nest of electromagnetic relationships that you do not understand. In certain terms it is a controlled storm.

(11:45.) From it spring ideas that are quite as natural as lightning. When lightning strikes the earth, it changes it. There are also changes that come about through the impact of your thoughts upon the atmosphere. The great overall inner trust with which you were born forms the basis for the encompassing reliability of the physical earth. Your body dwells in the earth as you dwell in your body. You were born with a faith in your existence that automatically directed the proper functioning of your personal corporeal self. This provided the necessary stabilizing properties upon which your consciousness could play, and through which it could effectively and creatively operate. The smallest atom has its own kind of built-in integrity, upon which all of its organizations and alterations are based, so generally there is a gestalt kind of permanence within the body of the earth.

(Long pause at 11:54.) Yet with all of this there is always change, as with the experience of time in a linear fashion any event must “knock out” another one. In terms of your focus a given occurrence “takes time.” You know that many events occur that you do not consciously perceive, but take on the word of others. In your terms, therefore, change is apparent. The body is altered.

Now: On other than conscious levels, simply as creatures, you are well aware of impending storms, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and so forth.

Many additional issues operate, however, that have to do with any given personal reaction. Here other psychological conditions enter in. People live in regions threatened by earthquakes with clear conscious knowledge of them. Regardless of what they might say, they need and enjoy the constant stimuli and excitement; the very unpredictable nature of the circumstances arouses them to action. There are many different attitudes and characteristics that apply, so that it is difficult to make generalizations, but there are always reasons why any individual is involved in a disastrous natural catastrophe.

(Pause.) In many cases a near-conscious realization of the circumstances occurs beforehand. In other cases the body’s foreknowledge is reflected in dreams, and so alters daily life that an escape takes place. Some people change their plans and leave town a day before a disaster comes about. Others stay.

None of this is accidental. Unconscious material is admitted into consciousness according to those beliefs an individual holds about himself, his reality, and his place in it. No one dies in a disaster who has not chosen to do so. There is always some conscious recognition, however, though the individual may play tricks with himself and pretend it is not there. Even animals sense their dying ahead of time, and on that level man is no different.

(12:23.) Those who want to use their unconscious precognition of such an event will take advantage of it — save themselves, and choose not to be involved. If they do not believe in such advance warnings and deny themselves conscious knowledge, yet still believe in their overall security, they will unconsciously act without knowledge of their reasons. There will be others who are a part of the calamity for their own reasons.

They may not consciously accept such information, but if they knew how to examine themselves, they would discover that their beliefs added up to precisely the given kind of situation. (Pause.) An illness of a severe nature may be used by an individual to put him or her into the most intimate contact with the powers of life and death, to initiate a crisis in order to mobilize buried survival instincts, to vividly portray great points of contrast and summon all of his or her strength.

So can a catastrophe be used consciously or unconsciously, according to the individual.