“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Seth had told us last time that he was near the end of the chapter, but we hadn’t realized of course that he was to finish it with a sentence or two in the next session. Nor did we know why he chose this method. It was as though the break between sessions didn’t exist for him.

(Long pause; the pace was still slow at this point.) Consciousness can be turned in many directions, obviously, both inward and outward. You are aware of fluctuations in your normal consciousness, and closer attention would make some of this quite clear. You expand or narrow the scope of your attention constantly. You may focus upon one object almost to the exclusion of everything else at times, so that you literally are not conscious of the room in which you sit.

Now these efforts go on whether you wake or sleep. Once you are aware of these activities, however, it is possible to catch yourself in various stages of consciousness, and even at times to follow your own progress, particularly through dream states. Your body is your most intimate symbol at this point, and again your most obvious.

At one point it will vanish with the other symbols. Now there was a time, speaking in your terms, before the making of symbols; a time so divorced from your idea of reality that only in the most protected areas of sleep does any memory of it ever return. It seems to you that without symbols there would be nonbeing, but this is a natural enough deduction since you are so symbol-oriented.

Actualization does not need to wait for hours or days. Experience is free from a time context. In this realm of consciousness an entire book may be written, or one’s life plans thoroughly scrutinized. Your present time is one of many dimensions that help form this particular stage of consciousness. Therefore your past, present and future exist within it, but only as portions of that interior environment. You have to learn your way about, for the states of consciousness and their environment stretch out in their own way as your world stretches out, say, in space. It is not difficult, however, to be aware of yourself in this stage through giving yourself proper suggestions before sleep. (Pause.) End of dictation. We have a good start….