“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.

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.

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.

I have explained that these were psychic projections, given physical reality and projected subconsciously into the physical world by you and Ruburt. You then reacted to them in present time, at the time, you understand.

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.