“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….”

(“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….

Here I have used the term “spacious” for workings of the mind and intuitions that exist in what you might call an accelerated range of action. The normal intellect, oriented so precisely by beliefs to the inevitability of a one-focused kind of perception, is limited.

(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.

An individual can tune into spacious-mind operation two or three times in a lifetime without realizing it, and have experiences that he finds difficult to interpret later. The affirmation involved is one of transcendence, in which for a time a person affirms his reality in flesh and at the same time states his independence from it (smile) — and realizes that both of these conditions exist simultaneously. A dual perception takes place in which the spacious mind is activated. By “activated” I mean that the physical organism is suddenly aware of [the spacious mind’s] existence.

(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.”

On a neurological basis there are unreleased, latent triggers that can be set off, and when they are, your practical experience with time as you know it will be altered. From your viewpoint the species will then be so different that it will seem to be another one entirely. As Ruburt once suggested, your [modern] system of communications has already expanded the data available to a private conscious mind in a given amount of time, and this on a purely physical level.

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.

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.”