“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(For what it is worth, earlier in the afternoon I had been wishing I had a model handy, for I felt like doing some quick sketches as a relief from the constant oil painting. It is difficult for me to get models when I have the time to use them. For some other material on my visions, see the 22nd and 47th sessions, in Vols. 1 and 2.

An emotion obviously does not take up physical space, yet it takes up varying amounts of psychic space according to its intensity. It seems to recede in time and to shrink in psychic space as the intensity of it begins to diminish. An intensive emotion will represent the present in time, a particular instant of now.

Whenever circumstances tend to revitalize such a charged emotion, that particular now will be re-created. The emotion will once again rush into the psychic space which is formed by elements in the personality’s psychological environment. The immediate emotion of any moment, therefore, forms the framework of your present time within the waking state. As the emotion diminishes it takes up less of your psychic space, fills up less of your inner environment, and you seem to yourself to recede from it.

The moment is remembered because the emotions experienced at the time almost completely fill the psychic space, forcing all other experiences out. The stronger the emotion the more vivid the moment becomes, the more totally it is recalled. And even in future years such past instances can be experienced as vividly as any present experience. In other words, to some large extent such a strong emotion unites experience and knocks down the artificial barrier of past, present and future.

Because of the physical structure, experiences within your system have a slow-motion distortion which creates the appearance of time. Time as you know it, waking time, is intimately connected with the emotions and with emotional intensities. Now. There is also a connection here that can be explored most clearly by using color designations.

There are electrical connotations here also that are important, electrical components that compose the emotional experience, and that tend to show themselves in certain auras of color. Within the dreaming state however inner experience is not limited as it is in the waking condition, so that the time barrier can be largely dispensed with. There is an additional psychic space to be filled.

(For some related material concerning time, intensities and moment points, see the following sessions: 149, 150, 151, 152.)

Experiences are more directly felt, although the same sort of differences occur here as far as intensities are involved. In the dream state as in the waking state, experiences vary in their intensity. There is however a more mobile element and an easier movement through experiences. Transitions are more rare in the dream state, since physical time lapses are not necessary.

Spontaneity is more the rule. Images appear and disappear, for there is no necessity to construct them as continuous physical constructions. There is therefore greater opportunity for new creations. These dream experiences take up psychic space, as do waking experiences. Their intensity is immediately felt however without any reliance upon physical time.

They are felt according to their intensity only. You might say, returning to our analogy, that there is more color-mixing within the dream state, and the materials are immediately at hand. Distance is then seen in its true light, not in relation to physical space but in its basic relationship to emotional intensity. As you seem in the waking condition to travel out of an experience, or as you seem to separate yourself from it, then physical time enters into your awareness.

When you directly experience an emotional event, when you are at its heart, so to speak, then you do not seem to experience physical time. Only as you move to the outskirts of the experience does such time realization enter in. The dream experience however is always free of the realization of physical time, practically, for you experience dream events directly from the center of awareness.

You move from the outskirts of one dream into the core of another without a change of intensity, and therefore without the sense of physical time passing. It goes without saying that a sense of time may or may not be interwoven in any given dream sequence, but you as the dreamer are not conscious of the physical hours that pass as you sleep.

(Our bed is in the small back room we usually use for sessions. During break Jane sat on it while she smoked a cigarette. The break was rather long, and Jane had started on her second cigarette. She was still on the bed when Seth came through again. Jane has yet to speak from the prone position for any amount of time. She came close to it this evening, leaning back upon an elbow quite often.

(Her eyes opened soon after she began speaking, and she continued smoking. She was quite restless. Most of the time she spoke from a sitting position. Her eyes closed at times for a sentence or two. They were very dark, and her voice was quiet and fast. Resume at 10:00.)

(Break at 10:26. Jane was well dissociated. It was one of those instances, she said, where she was “totally involved” with the material she was delivering. She felt as though she was inside the material. Her eyes had been open most of the time, and she had been quite restless. Her pace had been fast.

We cannot cover everything I had in mind for this evening, or this session would run well over its ordinary allotted time.

(In the 54th session Seth went into considerable detail in explaining the construction of entities. He could not give us this information earlier, he said, because we would have leaped to the conclusion that he was Ruburt’s [Jane’s] subconscious mind; this is not so. As everything else does, entities constantly change. To quote Seth: “Ruburt is not myself now, in his present life; he is nevertheless an extension and materialization of the Seth that I was at one time... He grew, evolved and expanded in terms of a particular, personal set of value fulfillments... He is now an actual gestalt, a personality that was one of the probable personalities into which Seth could grow. I represent another, I am another.”

(In making up the test, I had unwittingly focused my conscious attention on the calendar side of the paper. This was the first time I had used a test object containing material on both sides of the paper. The makeup of this particular calendar consisted of the days of the month on one side, and a drawing in color on the other.