“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I made the statement that action in the present could alter the past, and now we shall set about explaining the statement.

The past exists as a series of electromagnetic connections, held in the physical brain on the one hand, but it also consists of the same sort of realities retained in the nonphysical mind. These electromagnetic connections can be changed. The present exists as a series of electromagnetic connections in both the brain and the mind, and this is the only reality which you are justified in giving to your present.

In other words the past and the present are real to the same extent. At times in fact the past can become more real than the present, and in such cases past actions are reacted to in the present. You take it for granted that present action can alter the future, but present actions can also alter the past.

The past is no more objective, no more independent from the perceiver, than is the present. These electromagnetic connections which compose the past were largely made by the individual perceiver, and the perceiver of course is always a participator.

The connections therefore can be changed at any time, and such changes are far from uncommon. They happen spontaneously on a subconscious basis a good deal of the time. The past was seldom what you remember it to be, for you have already rearranged it from the instant of any given occurrence.

There is of course a composite past that is composed of such individual electromagnetic connections, and this composite past is not the same past that once existed, in those terms. The past itself is being continually recreated by every individual, as attitudes and associations change. This is an actual recreation, and not a symbolic one. The child is indeed still within the man, but he is not the child that once was, in those terms. For even the child within the man continually changes, and again I am not speaking of symbolic change.

Now. Difficulties are caused when such changes in the past do not occur automatically. Such difficulties as severe neurosis are often caused precisely because the individual has not automatically changed his past. Once more, the only reality that can be assigned to the past is that granted to the symbols and associations and memory images that exist electromagnetically both within the physical brain and within the mind.

But this is the only reality that can be granted to the present. I am speaking now in your terms only, and this point should be clearly understood, for I am simplifying conditions considerably. A change of attitude, a new association, any of innumerable other actions, will automatically set up new electromagnetic connections, and break others. Now part of this we shall explain later, for these changes obviously affect both the future and the past. But the past, again, is continually changed by you, and by every individual. For basically you see, it is not something done and finished with, as is supposed.

And you are more free than you imagine to completely alter many aspects of your own past. If you say that the future is dependent upon the past, therefore, you must also say that the past is dependent upon the future. Once more, the past was never an independent, concrete object existing apart from the perceiving participator; for he made his past, and its only reality exists in the electromagnetic connections within his own organic and psychic structure.

Every action changes every other action. We return to our ABC’s. Therefore every action in the present affects those actions which you call the past. Ripples from a thrown stone go out in all directions.

I am going to go out rather far on the limb right here. Remembering what you now know about the nature of time, you should know that the apparent boundaries between past, present and future are only illusions, caused by the amount of action you can physically perceive. Therefore, it is more than possible to react in the past to an event that has not yet occurred, to be influenced by your own future.

We are not getting involved here in the free will or predestination question, though we have spoken about it, and we shall discuss it thoroughly in connection with time in general. Suffice it to say that it is more than possible for an individual to react in the past to an event in the future which may never occur.

Now. This couple also represented a sort of time projection, for quite literally you could have become what they were. This existed in the present as a probability. You perceived this portion of the probable future in that present, reacted to it; and the probable transformation of yourselves into those images did not occur. Because the past, present and future exist simultaneously however, there is no reason why you cannot react to an event whether or not it happens to fall within the small field of reality which you usually observe and participate in.

In connection with the ring, I pick up an impression of a past event, a gathering in good weather, perhaps summertime, of youngish men and women. An outdoor affair is what I am thinking of, and I believe that it was near water (pause), and that there was a connection with boats.

They do not appear at any rate to be private dwellings, and seem to have a connection with a fairly distant past. An outdoor party then. This could have been in another country, perhaps England, and the ring is somehow connected to this event.