“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(As we waited for the session Jane began to enter a transcendent, or enhanced, state of consciousness. I started noting down her experiences, but missed out on some of her descriptions because of the speed with which she talked. Her hands acquired a velvety, luxurious “inner smoothness.” Then she had the feeling of those familiar “giant faces” peering down into our universe — and rather nostalgically, too, she laughed. [See the extensive notes for the 653rd session in Chapter Thirteen, describing her various states of altered perception last April 2. In one of those intervals she’d sensed giants standing about the rim of our world.] Now, Jane said, from their massive viewpoint these observers could see “everything happening at once in our world, from California to Russia — like astronauts looking back at us….”

(“I’d better get back to the session; but I’m up to something,” she continued, pleased. She sat upright in her rocker, listening, making connections. “I’m getting that thrilling sound through my stomach as I hear the cars turn the corner. And those firecrackers sound like ‘wrinkles’ in the air, going out in all directions…. Oh, that traffic’s fascinating — it does things to my head and ears, inside. And when I poured my beer now, just for a second I got that feeling of being giant-sized myself.

(“When I tune into Seth Two,² I become bigger — my perceptive abilities enlarge to take that experience in…. Right now I feel that when I close my eyes the earth, the whole globe, is inside my head. You don’t understand it until you close your eyes. I wish I could put this into words; but you’ve got to realize that events outside the body are the same events as those inside the body — the behavior of its neurons and all of its chemical activities … and because inside and outside are so beautifully synchronized, everything will always agree.

(“Oh, of course!” she exclaimed. “If something dies in your head, a cell maybe, something also dies in the outside world: an insect, a person. There’s an instant correlation that I can’t explain. New births are the same way. The sounds of the firecrackers are the same sounds that events inside the body make. That’s why Seth is right: An outside event is an inside one. But I’ve got to get back to the session….

(“There’s a fantastic richness out there.” Jane nodded toward the open windows. “There’s a fantastic correlation between seasonal variations and the length of thoughts that nobody’s suspected. Thoughts make traces on an interior level. You could make graphs of your thoughts and they’d match up with seasonal changes, with the tides and the phases of the moon. But all of those things that seem to be outside are just the manifestations of our bodily rhythms.”

(10:05. “I do want to have a session, only this is so much fun it makes you feel so great! But I’ll have a cigarette and turn into Seth.” With something of an effort Jane gradually quieted her mood. At the same time, she maintained that tonight’s revelations had taken place for a reason. So they had, as we soon learned.

Ruburt’s perception is highly altered this evening, and this is an example of certain kinds of both affirmation and denial. He has always emphasized his own unique creative and intuitive processes. In so doing, he denied many of the concepts believed in by others. He accepted the belief that any consciousness could be in some kind of direct intimate contact with experiences and realities usually not perceived, but ignored.

The legs run, and leap over areas of ground. They cannot themselves interpret the reality beneath them. The feet are not aware of the ants they crush. They may feel the grass or sidewalk or the road, but the peculiar individual sensate life of the grass itself, or of the ant, escapes the feet, which are involved in their own reality and concerned with these other things only in their relationship to feethood.

Now: Ruburt’s mind is far more aware of other realities than his brain is, but he consciously believes in the greater reality of himself and his perceptions. The brain also possesses this belief, and so it opens itself as much as possible to the mind’s activities. Because it does, certain intuitive psychic and “intellectually spacious” experiences can be physically felt to some extent. The knowledge is interpreted through alterations in body sensation, which give it an important corporeal validity. In such cases high mental and psychic activity is reflected in the body’s experience, providing a beneficial unity.

(10:45.) A certain kind of affirmation of self allows the brain to tune into these more spacious methods of perception that are the natural characteristics of the mind. There are very good reasons why this type of assertion must first occur. The brain (and the entire physical system) is meant to insure your bodily survival and to follow your conscious beliefs about reality. There is always a harmonious unifying connection between your beliefs and activities. Some people feel utterly confident in certain areas and are timorous in others. Some aspects of life may be ignored or even refuted for a time while others are focused upon. The individual will very cleverly and shrewdly go ahead in those areas in which he or she feels safe, often when in the process of altering beliefs. You will not use your spacious mind until you affirm its reality within yourself, and until you are ready to handle the additional data which will then become consciously available to one extent or another. But the spacious mind operates through your creaturehood; in your terms it represents latent abilities of consciousness that can be more or less normal functions.

(11:14. Jane’s delivery had moved right along for the most part. “But I had a hell of a time getting into the session,” she said, “because I was having such a ball with those sounds. I’m glad I did, though….” Her state of altered consciousness lingered. “Right now, even, my voice sounds just great to me, and my hands feel real liquidy, almost like water….”

(The wind had quieted. We didn’t hear firecrackers any longer, just the smoothly rushing traffic sounds. I made Jane a peanut butter sandwich, using whole wheat bread. When she picked it up she said, staring, “It’s almost as if you’ve got to choose between biting into the sandwich, your hand that holds it, or your knee beneath the hand — not because you’re disoriented but because everything’s all one. When you grow aware of that, then you’re confronted with making conscious choices.”

Jet travel scrambles your idea and experience of time, and in so doing alters your concepts of it. But within the mechanisms of the body there are unused and unrecognized triggers that will allow you, as a species, to consciously handle greater perceptions of time just as you now handle greater perceptions of space.

(12:21.) In other terms, the self that you have projected into the future is sending you back encouragement from a probable reality that you still can create. That focused self operates from its present, however, and some day in your own future you may find yourself thinking nostalgically of a moment back in your own past, when you were indecisive and irresolute, but took the proper course.

Chapter Twenty-two of Seth Speaks contains additional material on Seth Two. In the 589th session Seth tells us in part: “…there is the same kind of connection between that personality and myself as the one that exists between Ruburt and myself. But in your terms, Seth Two is far further divorced from my reality than I am from Ruburt’s. You can imagine Seth Two as a future portion of me if you prefer, and yet far more is involved.”