“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

‘Look, do you recall anything about physical birth? About being a child?’ I ask. It occurs to me that maybe they can’t.

Carl nods. At once I realize that somewhere — I don’t understand where — Carl does not own a cycle and that the two of us are man and wife, and have a baby. It is as though I am remembering physical life as a dream, and yet I have the feeling that Carl and I have done this cycle bit before, that we are doing it still in another place and that we will do it even as we are doing it now. The all-at-oneness seems perfectly natural.

This data is often wound by the dream self into a dream drama which informs the subconscious of dangers or of probable success of any given event which is being considered by the subconscious for physical actuality.

Were it not for the experience of this probable self, and for its information given via the dreaming self to the subconscious, then it would be most difficult for the ego to come to any clear decisions in daily life. The ego does not realize the data that is being constantly fed into it. It cannot afford to, generally, since its focused energy must be used in the manipulation of physical actuality.

This probable self has operated in each reincarnation, in each materialization of the personality, and has at its command literally millions of probable situations and conditions upon which to make value judgments. Of itself, however, it does not make the decision as to whether or not a particular event will be made physical. It merely passes on the information that it has received through experience.

The probable self can be reached through hypnosis but only with excellent subjects and operators. Often it will not be recognized, however, for there will be no evidence of its experience in physical reality to back up its statements. Its data will agree when considered within its own framework. Reaching it in this manner would be highly difficult in any case. To my knowledge, it has not as yet been reached through hypnosis. It has been glimpsed but not recognized as a separate part of the self — in dream recordings and analytic sessions.

If you would have some idea of what the probable universe is like, then examine your own dreams, looking for those events which do not have any strong resemblance to the physical events of waking existence. Look for dream individuals with whom you are not acquainted in normally conscious life. Look for landscapes that appear bizarre or alien, for all of these exist somewhere. You have perceived them. They do not exist in the space that you know but neither are they nonexistent, mere imaginative toys of the dreaming mind, without substance.

In sleep, not only do you withdraw from the physical field of actuality but you also enter other systems.

Several of us have had this type of dream. Again, two of Sue’s come closest to being representative. Both also involve projections or out-of-body states, a matter that will be discussed in the next section of this book. The following is from Sue’s notebook.

I lie down on the porch couch and drift into a light sleep. I discover that I can do a peculiar thing to my brain by somehow tightening the muscles on my scalp and then doing something intense with a sound I can ‘hear.’ The sound holds, and I can feel my astral body shudder inside my physical one. It is as though I’m tearing loose from a Jell-o mold. I get out of my body this way, float above the couch and go back in. I try the same technique, tightening the scalp muscles and feel my astral body stir. This time I get out of my physical body and stand staring at it. The experience is so strange that for a moment I think I’m dead, though I know this isn’t true. I know quite clearly that I am out of my body, experimenting and in no difficulty. So I turn, leave my body behind on the couch and walk out the door and down to the dock outside our house.

The others become frantic to get out too. We kick to the wall and push through up the fireplace, one by one, to surface. The instant I yank off my mask, I jolt awake. For some time I am disoriented. I find myself sitting on the dock and do not recall walking there. I’m in my physical body now, yet somehow the physical world around me is incomplete with enormous pieces missing. Finally, my head clears; it had been filled with a peculiar whine. It was as though the world outside of the immediate focus of my eyes was only half-formed; the rest, grayish and swirling.

I get upset at this, when the door opens and in walks my old fifth-grade teacher, confused and dazed. ‘What are you doing here?’ I exclaim, and the ‘man’ explains that the connection touched physical reality in several places. My old teacher does not realize what she is doing or where she is, he tells me. Now I become frantic to leave. I hear a bell tinkling and am pulled out the office door, down the corridor, through the cellar, up the stairs to my bed. I awaken.

This was more than imaginative. You examined one probability and chose another. The individual, then, chooses which probabilities he desires to actualize physically. In one such episode, for example, you followed your present course through; therefore, you are subconsciously aware of your own ‘future’ — since you chose it. There are always new choices, however. You foresaw the future possibilities within the main choice system.

Seth told us that Rob’s doctor probable self was a Doctor Pietra. As mentioned in my earlier book, we tried to contact him — so far, without success. Some years ago, Rob did do some medical artwork and was astonished at his success. He has no conscious knowledge of wanting to be a doctor as a child, but in painting he always emphasized body structure and form.

The ego structure remains, of course. The responsibility of dealing with physical reality remains, but in some respects the nature of this manipulation changes. It becomes more direct. Physical properties are manipulated more and more at a mental level. The ego becomes more like the inner ego and less like its old self, comparatively speaking. It accepts large portions of reality that it previously denied. Structurally, it remains intact, yet it has changed chemically and electromagnetically. Now it is far more open to inner data. Once this freedom is achieved, the ego can never return to its old state.

Emotional charged feeling immediately sets up what you may think of as a tangent. It is expressed in some reality system. This is the inner nature of action. Those thoughts and desires and impulses not made physically real in your terms will be made real in other systems.

Now, the inner self is psychologically influenced by these probable personalities, for they represent a whole personality structure or gestalt with which you are utterly unfamiliar. Your psychologists are dealing with a one-dimensional psychology, at their best.

The majority of events do not ‘solidify’ until the last moment, in your terms. According to your understanding and interpretation of the word events, none are predestined or predetermined by sources outside of yourselves. Your childhood environment, for example, was determined by you before physical birth. Within this framework, you also give yourself the freedom to manipulate and change. The main events of a civilization are chosen by its people, but because a course is begun, this does not mean that it cannot be changed at any point.