“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This afternoon at about 2 PM workmen took down the tree that had partially fallen on March 6. See the 33rd session. It was a very beautiful elm tree that died several years ago, and I was quite attached to it. With a power saw one man cut into the base of the tree; pulling on a rope thrown over a higher branch, two other men pulled it down. When the tree fell its branches seemed to crumple and break as though there was no strength left in them. And as I watched it strike the ground, I felt a wave of sensation sweep over me, the rich tingling, the feeling of perhaps an inner wind that I described first in the 24th session. Even after I had gone back to work I felt at times a residue of this feeling, very faint, in various parts of my body.

Since our imagined experience would depend upon all of the inner senses working together in a complex, near-perfect manner, that I doubt you could achieve at this stage. This experiencing of past, present and future would seem to be unwilled, almost automatic. If you were to have it or one like it, it would seem as if a door suddenly for no reason opened and then just as abruptly closed. This would not be the case however.

(At 9:34 the service truck moved to the back of our house; we could see a man with a flashlight checking wires, etc., but no one knocked on our door. Jane resumed dictation at 9:35. And here again, her first few sentences answered the question in my own mind.)

A point I wanted to add, Joseph. What you actually felt when the tree fell was the pain of the tree, in much muted form. The tree while dead still had consciousness. As a rule you will usually have such experiences to begin with through one inner sense. You are not adept enough yet to recognize inner data from more than one direction at a time.

You may have experiences through all of the inner senses but not at once. This is a great simplification. What I should perhaps add for the sake of clearness is that you will not as a rule be aware of data that comes to you through more than one sense, inner sense, at a time.

This sort of experience will always be shielded from the outer ego of necessity. Even a watered-down version of a direct inner experience is a shock to the outer ego on your plane, since the ego imagines itself and its own perceptions to be supreme. You have no idea, even with what training you have, of how shattering such a complete experience would be to the outer ego, so we will take one inner-sense experience at a time.

You were feeling the echo of distant pain. The experience was of very low volume, had almost dreamlike existence in one dimension only, and represented an echo of anguish heard centuries after the original cry.

To the extent that you are able to allow yourselves to be aware of data received by the inner senses, you are preparing yourself and are that far ahead. You remember, Joseph, the rather frightening sensation you felt during one instance of your use of one inner sense, when you translated inner data into the almost nightmare picture of open mouths that could not scream. This is but a minute instance.

I do not mean to mislead you. Basic reality is not by nature terrifying. It is however vibrant and direct to the extreme, and you must be prepared before you experience such an ultrasonic action. A direct experience of reality involves complete use of all the inner senses to an integrated cognizance field. A very weak analogy can be found if you imagine at one time hearing the most exciting and moving music imaginable, while simultaneously smelling the strongest but not necessarily unpleasant odor, viewing the most emotionally-charged scene while feeling intense and vivid bodily sensations. In normal life you even turn down outer-sense stimuli for the sake of simplicity, and to enable you to focus upon those stimuli close at hand.

As the intense experience of great joy or pain often blots out everything else, so would the direct experience of reality blot out, only completely, the outer ego who experienced it directly. At your level the sieve of the subconscious is a necessity and that is one of the main reasons why Ruburt dissociates during our sessions, even though his experience of inner reality is received secondhanded, so to speak, through me.

Your television repairman has 3 children, a kind heart, and something wrong with his left foot. This is not noticeable but something is wrong with his left foot. One of the bones.

Sleeping with your heads to the north is excellent, on your plane only. Because of magnetic properties your molecules are aligned with greater efficiency. I certainly do not like to go into household matters. A point, however: Your bed should never be in your main room. Not only do you have lack of privacy, one of Ruburt’s squawks, and not only should various biological functions be separated on your plane as I have suggested, but the room itself, while excellent for some purposes involving use of the intellect, is simply not good for sleeping.

I keep them especially for you. One more note before I leave you. Music is somewhat of a conditioning factor as far as Ruburt is concerned. Although he knows nothing of music now, he was once proficient in it. That ability now is channeled into his excellent facility in rhythmic poetry.