“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

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.

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.

(Break at 10:01. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her eyes had been frequently open. She had smoked and her pace had been a little slower, with pauses. She said Seth was going on with this material when he abruptly realized what time it was.

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.

Now please give us a moment and we shall see what we can do. These are impressions.

Cowardly—I do not know to what this word refers. Yellow. A connection with music. Large shapes in the foreground.

(It will be remembered that Jane and Seth noted many valid emotional connections pertaining to the test object in the 219th session. We feel that with practice Jane and Seth will be able to pick such charges up regardless of what individuals they are attached to, or directed at.