“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Dictation. Initially, however, before the birth of images and words — as you understand them (underlined) — the world existed in different terms from those you know. Images as you consider them had not taken the form that you recognize. It seems to you that visually, for example, the natural world must be put together or perceived in a certain fashion.

Whatever your language, you perceive trees, mountains, people, oceans. You never see a man merge with a tree, for example. This would be considered an hallucinatory image. Your visual data are learned and interpreted so that they appear as the only possible results of those data. Inner vision can confound you, because in your mind you often see images quite clearly that you would dismiss if your eyes were open. In the terms of which we are speaking, however, the young species utilized what I have called the “inner senses” to a far greater degree than you do. Visually, early man did not perceive the physical world in the way that seems natural to you.

You will have to give us time… (Pause, one of many.) When a man’s consciousness, for example, blended with that of a tree, those data became “visual” for others to perceive. When a man’s consciousness merged with an animal’s, that blending became visual data also.

In a manner of speaking, the brain put visual information together so that the visual contents of the world were not as stationary as they are now. You have learned to be highly specific in your physical sight and interpretations. Your mental vision holds hints as to data that could be, but are not visually, physically perceived. You have trained yourselves to react to certain visual cues which trigger your mental interpretations, and to ignore other variations.

(Pause.) A musician writing a symphony, however, does not use all of the notes that are available to him. He chooses and discriminates. His discrimination is based upon his knowledge of the information available, however. In the same way, your languages are based upon an inner knowledge of larger available communications. The “secrets” of languages are not to be found, then, in the available sounds, accents, root words or syllables, but in the rhythms between the words; the pauses and hesitations; the flow with which the words are put together, and the unsaid inferences that connect verbal and visual data.

Visual data as you perceive them amount to visual language; the images perceived are like visual words. An object is presented to your visual perception so that you can safely perceive it from the outside. Objects as you see them are also symbols.

In a manner of speaking he approached other thresholds of perception, and with my help translated those data into the material given. He felt as if he had been on a long journey — and he was, though it was not a conscious one in the terms you recognize. The training that connects your visual and verbal culture prevents full translation, but Ruburt was putting together, with my help, information not usually available. There are gaps in your awareness that are actually filled with data, and Ruburt was letting these pool up, so to speak. He will become more proficient, but for that reason I will now end the session.