“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.

(“Right now I feel a BIG SETH around,” she smiled, “and I’m trying to get him down to session size. If he came through like he is now, his voice would be so strong it would drown out everything else in the world. I know that’s an analogy, of course. And now I feel, strongly enough to mention it, that my legs are growing down through the floor and my head’s growing up toward the ceiling….”

The mind can interpret the experiences that the legs and the feet have, however, and by imaginatively using that sensual data can perceive the ant’s reality to some extent. Now when the mind races and runs, it sometimes has great difficulty interpreting its activities to the brain, which is usually concerned with other realities only to the extent that they impinge upon it.

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.

In the same way you also carry within you structures not yet fully used; those organizations point — in your terms now — toward future evolution. Use of the spacious mind involves these. Individuals through all the ages have experienced this other kind of awareness, though never to its fullest form.

(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….”

(She became really absorbed in the texture of the bread, the feel of it in her mouth. “When I break this bread apart,” she said, “I know it makes sounds I don’t hear, so I substitute the sound of that car turning the corner just now. I feel a strong correlation between the bread going down my throat and the traffic….”

Now: When utilized properly and fully in your terms of time, the spacious mind will vastly enrich the dimensions of the species, bringing the body into a greater harmony than now possible.

You have to handle and assimilate information now available as to happenings in other places that, in previous centuries, no ordinary individual would have been aware of. Events in distant places then become present knowledge. Time intervals between an episode and your knowledge of it are shortened, though the event may occur on the other side of the world.

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.

Now the brain would have to sort out this information so that the physically attuned mechanism was clearly able to maintain its temporal present. When man first developed the pause of reflection, as mentioned earlier in this book (see sessions 635–36 in Chapter Nine), he did undergo initial disorientation before he learned to distinguish a vividly remembered event of the past from a presently experienced one. The growing consciousness had to make such distinctions for practical behavior. To utilize future probable events, the physical brain would be forced to enlarge its function while keeping the individual in clear relationship with the present moment of power, or corporeal effectiveness. Affirmation always involves the acknowledgement of your power in the present. In greater terms, denial is the surrendering of that power. Affirmation then is the acquiescence to your ability, as a spirit within flesh, to form the physical reality of your creaturehood.

Now you can alter your present through altering your past, or you can change your present from the future. (See sessions 653–54 in Chapter Fourteen.) Even these manipulations must take place in your practical-experienced present, however. Many people have at one time or another changed their present behavior in response to the advice of a “future” probable self, without ever knowing they have done so.

Now: Say that at a certain stage you have some decisions to make and do not know which way to turn. You may sense that you are in danger of swerving from your purpose, yet for other reasons feel strongly inclined to do so. In a dream or in daydreaming, you may suddenly hear a voice, mentally, that tells you in no uncertain terms to go ahead with your initial intent. Or in some other way you may receive the same information — through an urge, or a vision, or simply by suddenly knowing what to do. This happens in your present.

You may think, “I am glad I did that,” or, “Knowing what I know now, how lucky I am that I made that decision.” And in that moment you are the future self that “once” spoke encouragingly to the person of the past. The probable future has caught up with the practical present.

As for the war in Vietnam: over 500 American military prisoners were released by North Vietnam following the January, 1973, cease-fire. Officials now fear that a good number of these men will come to believe that their suffering was futile because of the war’s unpopularity in the United States. There have been suicides among them (as of July), and many have undergone at least temporary stress reactions since their release from prison.