“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It deals with a different kind of experience than the one with which you are physically familiar, although that experience is also a part of the psyche. Daily life is a focus taken on the part of that portion of the psyche you call you, and there are many other such focuses. The psyche is never destroyed. Nor is that unique individuality of your own ever minimized. The psyche’s experiences straddle your ideas of time, however. It seems to you quite definitely that you come alive and die. At your particular focus of consciousness, no arguments will suffice to convince you otherwise, for you are everywhere presented with the physical evidence of “fact.” Period.

In a strange manner I am telling you that your “life” is simply the only portion of your existence of which you are presently aware. In greater terms, you are alive and dead at the same time, even as I am. My focus, however, is in an area that you do not perceive. Again: Existences are like notes played along certain frequencies. You are tuned in to an earth song, following this analogy, but you are only following your own melody, and usually you are unaware of the greater orchestration in which you also take part.

Last night our friend, Joseph, had a dream experience that intrigued him, and yet seemed highly distorted. He found himself greeting a large number of people. He believed them to be family members, though he only recognized some. His parents, known to be dead, were there. A brother and a sister-in-law, who are alive, were also present. The brother was definitely himself, yet somehow altered in appearance, his features having an Oriental cast. The entire dream was very pleasant, and seemed to be like a home coming.

I often speak of you and the psyche as if they were separate, yet of course this is not the case. You are that portion of the psyche that you presently recognize. Many people say: “I want to know myself,” or “I want to find myself,” when the truth is that few really want to take the time or effort. (Pause.) There is one place to begin, however: Try becoming better acquainted with the self you are now. Stop telling yourself that you do not know yourself.

In Joseph’s dream, his brother’s features had an Oriental cast. Joseph knew that his brother lived as himself, and also as an Oriental, unknown to Joseph in his present life. If Joseph had seen two people — one his brother and one an Oriental — he would not have recognized the stranger, so in the dream his brother’s known appearance dominated, while the Oriental affiliation is merely suggested. In your own lives you will use such psychic shorthand, or utilize symbols in which you try to explain the greater dimensions of one reality in terms of the known one.

You normally organize your experience in terms of time. Your usual stream of consciousness is also highly associative, however. Certain events in the present will remind you of past ones, for example, and sometimes your memory of the past will color present events.

Association or no, physically you will remember events in time, with present moments neatly following past ones. The psyche deals largely with associative processes, however, as it organizes events through association. Time as such has little meaning in that framework. Associations are tied together, so to speak, by emotional experience. In a large manner, the emotions defy time.