“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:25.) The states of consciousness merge also one into the other, and it is obvious that I am using the terms of depth to make the discussion easier. Starting with the ego or waking consciousness as the outer self focused toward exterior reality, these states are broad, more like plains to be explored. Each one, therefore, opens in great adjacent areas also, and there are many “paths” to be taken according to your interest and desire.

As your ordinary waking state perceives an entire universe of physical data, so each of these other states of consciousness perceive realities as complicated, varied, and vivid. It is for this reason that it is so difficult to explain the experiences possible within any given one. (Long pause.)

A-5 opens up a dimension in which the vital consciousness of any personality can at least theoretically be contacted. This involves communicating not only with past personalities in your terms, but future ones. It is a level of consciousness very seldom reached. It is not, for example, the layer used by most mediums. It is a meeting ground in which personalities from any time or place or probable system can communicate with each other in clear terms understood by all.

(9:35.) At this level, messages literally flash through the centuries from one great man or woman to another. The future speaks to the past. The great artists have always been able to communicate at this level and while living literally operated at this level of consciousness a good deal of the time. Only the most exterior portions of their personalities bowed to the dictates of historical period.

I do not mean to imply, however, that only the great share in this communication of consciousness. (Pause.) A great simplicity is necessary, and out of this, many of the most lowly in men’s terms also share in these communications. There is an unending conversation going on throughout the universe, and a most meaningful one. (Long pause.) Those from both your past and your future have a hand in your present world, and at this level the problems that have been met and will be encountered are being discussed. This is the heart of communication. It is most usually encountered either in a protected deep level of sleep or in a sudden spontaneous trance state. Great energy is generated.

There are other layers of awareness beneath this one, but here there is a much greater tendency for one to merge into the other. In the next level, for example, communication is possible with various kinds of consciousness that have never been physically manifested, in your terms — personalities who do not have a physical reality in either your present or future, yet who are connected with your system of reality both as guardians and custodians.

Almost all experiences from this level will be symbolically represented, for otherwise they would have no meaning to you. The experiences will all have to do in one way or another with nonphysical life, noncorporeal consciousness and forms, and the independence of consciousness from matter. These experiences will always be supportive. Out-of-body experiences will often be involved here, in which the projectionist finds himself in an unearthly environment or one of great beauty and grandeur.

(10:33.) Molecular structures send out their own messages, and unless you are tuned in to perceive them, they may be interpreted as static or meaningless noise. Any one of these levels of consciousness can be covered in a twinkling, and no notice taken of it; or, at least theoretically, you could spend a lifetime exploring any given level.

You may have several quite valid experiences in level four for example, without any awareness of the first three. The stages are there for those who know what they are and how to use them. Many quite spontaneously find their own way. The other adjacent levels on the horizontal line, now, involve you in various alternate realities, each one a greater distance from your own. Many of these involve systems in which life and death as you know it does not occur, where time is felt as weight; systems in which the root assumptions are so different from your own that you would only accept any experiences as fantasy.

For this reason, you are much less apt to travel in those directions. In some there are built-in impediments. Even projection from your universe into a universe of antimatter is most difficult, for example. The electromagnetic makeup even of your thoughts would be adversely affected, and yet theoretically this is possible from one of these adjacent levels of consciousness.

Often you visit such areas of consciousness in the dream state where you fall into them spontaneously, remembering in the morning a fantastic dream. Consciousness must use all of its parts and activities, even as the body must. When you are sleeping, therefore, your consciousness turns itself in many of these directions, often perceiving, willy-nilly, bits and pieces of reality that are available to it at its different stages. This also happens beneath your normal physical focus to some extent, even as you go about your waking activities. The alternate presents of which I spoke are not simply alternate methods of perceiving one objective present. There are many alternate presents, with you focused only in one of them.

You will be able to perceive physical reality because you want to, knowing it to be one of many realities. You will not be forced to perceive it alone, out of ignorance.

(“Now [humorously]: no one asked me what it was like when I go into a trance. To go into a trance is simply to focus intensely in a highly specific area of reality. Therefore, I throw or project a part of what I am here because I am able to utilize greater areas of my personality than those with which you are now acquainted in yourselves. I can do this in a conscious manner, and yet still, as I have mentioned, when I am here I find a difficulty in looking at you and relating to the selves that you think you are within your given moment of time; for I see the composites. So it takes some training on my part to pinpoint you in the time and space with which you are acquainted.

(“To some extent, I serve as a communicator from one level of your selves to other levels of your selves, for I remind you of what you are. You have been much given to thoughts of death this evening. Now, I have been a very lively corpse many times; but then, so have you all. The inner portions of your selves know this well. You have walked away from more graves than you can remember — and will indeed, many of you, walk away from more. Why, then, do you worry about justifying your own existence in this hour?”