“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Excerpts from “The Physical Universe
as Idea Construction”
My First Glimpse into the Interior Universe

But then, as I returned, the intensity of the experience began to fade. The miracle began to withdraw. Three hours in all had passed. I was left with a pile of scribbled notes, written and titled automatically: “The Physical Universe As Idea Construction” — all that was physically salvaged from that remarkable experience. And I knew beyond all doubt that those ideas had been given to me initially in the forgotten dream of the night before.

In The Seth Material, I included only a few brief quotes from “The Physical Universe As Idea Construction,” but here I will go into that manuscript somewhat more thoroughly, since it is so close to the “raw form” that erupted from that experience and represents, in embryo, I believe, the material that Seth would later be giving us. The manuscript itself consisted of approximately forty pages of scribbled notes written during the height of the experience. Later I wrote fifty more pages as I tried to recapture the feelings and insights I’d had at the time.

Following are excerpts from “The Physical Universe As Idea Construction.” In the original manuscript, this entire portion came to me as definitions.

Idea constructions are transformations of ideas into physical reality.

Space is where our own idea constructions do not exist in the physical universe.

The physical body is the material construction of the entity’s idea of itself under the properties of matter.

The individual is the part of the entity or whole self of which we are conscious in daily life. It is that part of the whole self which we are able to express or make “real” through our idea constructions on a physical level.

Personality is the individual’s overall responses to ideas received and constructed. It represents the emotional coloration of the individual’s ideas and constructions at any given “time.”

Emotions are the driving force that propel ideas into constructions.

Instinct is the minimum ability for idea constructions necessary for physical survival.

Learning is the potential for constructing new idea complexes from existing ideas.

Idea complexes are groups of ideas formed together like building blocks to form more complicated constructions in physical reality.

Environment is the overall idea constructions with which an individual surrounds himself.

Physical time is the apparent lapse between the emergence of an idea in the physical universe (as a construction) and its replacement by another.

The past is the memory of ideas that were but are no longer physical constructions.

The future is the apparent lapse between the disappearance of one idea construction and its replacement by another in physical reality.

Aging is the effect upon an idea construction of the properties of matter of which the construction is composed.

Growth is the formation of an idea construction toward its fullest possible materialization following the properties of matter.

Sleep is the entity’s relative rest from idea construction except the minimum necessary for physical survival.

The physical universe is the sum of individual idea constructions.

Memory is the ghost image of “past” idea constructions.

Each evolutionary change is preceded and caused by a new idea. As the idea is in the process of being constructed onto the physical plane, it prepares the material world for its own actuality and creates the prerequisite conditions.

Evolution is energy’s movement toward conscious expression in the physical universe, but it is basically nonphysical. A species at any given time is the materialization of the inner images or ideas of its individual members, each of whom forms their own idea constructions.

At no point can we actually say that one construction vanishes and another takes its place, but artificially we adopt certain points as past, present and future, for convenience. At some point, we agree that the physical construction ceases to be one thing and becomes another, but, actually, it still contains elements of the “past” construction and is already becoming the “next” one.

Though the construction of an idea seems to disappear physically, the idea which it represents still exists.

Sleep is the entity’s rest from physical idea construction. Only enough energy is used to keep the personal image construction in existence. The entity withdraws into basic energy realms and is comparatively free from time since idea construction is at a minimum level. The entity is in contact with other entities at a subconscious area.

Each material particle is an idea construction formed by the individualized bits of energy that compose it.

Each entity perceives only his own constructions on a physical level. Because all constructions are more or less faithful reproductions in matter of the same basic ideas (since all individuals are, generally speaking, on the same level in this plane), then they agree sufficiently in space, time and degree so that the world of appearances has coherence and relative predictability.

All physical matter is idea construction. We only see our own constructions. So-called empty space is full of constructions not our own that we cannot perceive. Our skin connects us to other physical constructions, and through it we are involved in the complicated fabric of continuous matter. The action of each one of the most minute of these particles affects each other one. The slight motion of one grain of sand causes a corresponding alteration in the distribution of the stars and in all matter’s fabric, from an atom in a man’s skull down to the slightest variation in a microbe’s action.

All matter is idea construction, woven together; each construction is individual and yet cohesive to the whole. The smallest particle is necessary to the whole, forming part of matter’s design.

This rough diagram “came” with the above material. It was supposed to represent the energy of the entity as it flowed outward through the subconscious to the conscious, in order to construct the physical image and environment in response to the self’s idea of what it was.

Here are some further excerpts from “Idea Construction.”

The ability of the entity to transform energy into an idea and then to construct it physically determines the entity’s place on the physical evolutionary plane. Simple organisms are capable of “picking up” fewer communications. Their range is less, but the vitality and validity of their constructions is excellent. In simple organisms such as the paramecium and amoeba, the few sharp ideas received are constructed almost simultaneously, without reflection. The organism needs no other mechanism to translate ideas. What it has is sufficient.

More complicated organisms — mammals, for example — have need of further mechanisms to construct ideas because they are able to perceive more of them. Here memory is an element. Now the organism has a built-in ghost image of past constructions by which to perfect and test new ones. Reflection of some sort enters into the picture, and with it the organism is given more to do. Slowly, within its range of receptivity, it is given some choice in the actual construction of ideas into physical reality.

The reflection is brief, but for a moment the animal partakes of a new dimension. The shadow of time glimmers in his eyes as the still imperfected memory of past constructions lingers in his consciousness. As yet, memory storage is small, but now the instantaneous construction is no longer instantaneous, in our terms. There is a pause: the organism — dog or tiger — can choose to attack or not to attack. The amoeba must construct its small world without reflection and without time as we know it.

Entities with still broader range need more complicated structure. The scope of their receptivity is so large that the simple autonomic nervous system is not enough. The amoeba constructs each idea it receives, because it is able to receive so few. All must be constructed to ensure survival. With man, the opposite becomes true. He has such a range of receptivity that it is impossible for him to construct all of his ideas physically. As his scope widened, a mechanism was necessary that would allow him to choose. Self-consciousness and reason were the answers.

He learned continuity. And with his focused memory at his command, man’s ego was born, which could follow its own identity through the maze of blazing impulses that beset him, could recognize itself through the pattern of continuing constructions and could separate itself from its action in the physical world. Here you have the birth of subject and object, the I AM who is the doer or constructor, and the construction itself.

This new dimension enabled the species to manipulate and recognize its own constructions and freed it to focus greater energy in projecting some ideas over others. In other words, conscious purpose became possible, physically. Somewhere along the line, however, man began to divorce himself almost completely and artifically from his own constructions. Hence his groping, his sense of alienation from nature, his search for a Cause or Creator of a creation he no longer recognized as his own.