“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In this reality, you very nicely emphasize all the similarities which bind you together; you make a pattern of them, and you very nicely ignore all the dissimilarities. Out of a vast field of perception, you choose to focus your attention upon certain specific areas and to ignore all others, and so there is perfect agreement among you as far as this small area is concerned. The vastness that you do not perceive does not bother you at all, and you do not ask questions about it. And yet it exists.

I have said this before: If you were able to focus your attention upon the dissimilarities, merely those that you can perceive but do not, then you would be amazed that mankind can form any idea of an organized reality. (As Seth, Jane looked at the couch, where Mary and Art were sitting.) I look now between the two of you. When the others look at our friends here on the fancy blue couch, they see a picture of true organization. There is an individual there (pointing), and an individual there, with space between. The picture is equalized. It appears perfect and organized.

However, the space between our two friends is not vacant. You think of it as vacant because you do not perceive what is there. The picture appears to be very organized. As soon as you realize that the picture is not complete, however, then you must begin to ask new questions, and the old idea of the perfect organization is gone.

Now: As you know, you do not perceive the atoms and molecules that swim about the room, nor those that fill the space between our two friends, nor the forces — the field forces — that exist. The couch serves to unite them since they sit upon it. And what do they sit upon? Emptiness that you perceive as solidity.

(Question from a class member: “Do we all create the same organization and see the same couch?”

(To Mary and Art): You each generally agree, I am sure, that you sit upon a couch. You do not perceive the same couch. You only perceive your own idea constructions. You cannot see those of another. Telepathically, you transpose your ideas in line with what you know of the other person’s thinking. You agree that the couch is here. Now it is true that within your physical system — for I know this will come next — you can measure your couch. I expect at any moment that someone will get a ruler and measure it, and then say to me that the couch is so long: How can I say it is not one couch?

There are other root assumptions that you take as a basis of reality. And in other levels of reality, there are other root assumptions. These are the seeming laws by which you govern your experiences. Our note takers are doing very well, considering that the paper is not solid and neither are their pens. It is amazing what you can do with nothing!

You are at the very beginning of any idea of psychology. You simply do not realize what you are now; and as I’ve said before, when you ask me questions about life after death, you automatically transpose — — if you will forgive me — this lack of knowledge into the next realm. Therefore, sometimes I am at a loss to answer your questions. You are learning to know yourselves. At the rate you are going, it will take you some time!

Now when I speak to you I very seldom use such words as “love.” I do not tell you that a God is waiting for you on the other side of a golden door. I do not reassure you by telling you that when you are dead, God will be waiting for you in all his majestic mercy, and that that will be the end of your responsibility. And so as I said last evening, in my latest chapter, I offer no hope for the lazy, for they will not find eternal rest.

Now: There are many words for psychological time. I do not mean my method of meditation alone. I do mean subjective activity on your part, and exploration. Do you follow me? I am glad!

Actually, you are with God now. It is you who do not realize this. You see, you have believed many tales, and symbolically they were very important. As was mentioned earlier, they have their place in your lives and your development, but there are times when you must leave them behind, and you may feel lonesome for a while without them.

Yes, even though someone like myself will come along and take off the comfort blankets — for after a while they hamper your development, where earlier they helped you grow. The fact remains, however: You do not have to die to find God. All That Is, is now, and you are a part of All That Is now. As I have told you often, you are a spirit now. The avenues for development are open now. You can, now, set out to explore environments that are not physical if you want to, but I do not see any rush of students at that invisible door!

Now I am going to close our session, but I would like you all to read carefully a copy of what I have said. And now and then, when you have nothing else to do — nothing better to do — then try, try to sense that lapse in the pulsation of your consciousness. Try to leap that gap!