“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A part of the whole self is quite aware of the probabilities. Now. This is a portion of the self that exists as a perceiving participator, in the dimension which we discussed in our last session. This is fairly difficult material, and so I am giving it to you carefully.

This event X becomes real then, in your terms, only when it is experienced or perceived by our conscious self. What about all of these other probable events, however? The only difference between them and event X is that event X was perceived and experienced by our conscious individual. In other words, were it not for this perception of the event X, it would still be as valid, or as invalid, as real or as unreal, as all the other probable events that were not perceived.

This leads us then to an obvious conclusion: if event X were not perceived it would still be a probability only. By the same token, if our individual chose to perceive and experience, say, event Y, then event Y would be the reality, and event X would still be unreal.

As I have explained the ego to you, within your system it can only perceive in terms of continuity, in a straight-line fashion so to speak, one event after the other. It can only choose to experience one event out of all the probable events at a time. The ego is however the only portion of the self that is, in the main, limited to follow experience along these lines.

The package of experience that you can focus upon and make sense of, is indeed composed of many small packages, but the whole package of reality is actually much larger than this. There is however a portion of the self that can and does experience events in an entirely different fashion, and this portion of the self goes off on a different tangent. For when our individual perceives event X, this other portion of the self branches off, so to speak, into all the other probable events that could have been just as easily experienced by the ego.

This is not as far-fetched as it might seem, for again, you perceive now more than you realize; although you may not be consciously aware of this, it still falls within the framework of your associated experience. The mere shaking of a hand may be perceived by you as a simple action. You are not consciously aware of the million small actions which make up this seemingly insignificant act.

These actions exist nevertheless. It does not take you time to perceive them one by one. You perceive them in their completed fashion. Now this other portion of the self experiences these probable events, consciously, with as much rapidity as you subconsciously perceive the million small actions that make up the handshake.

The man may work in a city. The woman may work in their home in the country. Of three children, all three may attend different schools. They are all still part of the same unit. They all operate out of the same house. There is no reason why any of the children could not spend his day at the office with the father of the family, basically speaking, but he would not be able to understand or perceive many of the events that occurred there.

Some experiences or events will be perceived by all layers of the self, though in their own fashion, and experienced as a unit. There are few of these, but they are extremely vivid, and serve as the family’s joint experiences serve to reinforce the identity of the whole psychological structure.

The imagination can vaguely perceive, of course, some probabilities, but the physical organism can directly experience but one of these within physical time, and in terms of continuity. The probable events however are precisely as real as that one event which is chosen from them to be a physical experience. And these events therefore become “real”, in quotes, within other dimensions. As a sideline here, there are some interesting episodes, not at all understood, when a severe psychological shock, or even a deep sense of unendurable futility, will cause a short circuit, so to speak, so that one portion of the self becomes aware, and begins to experience reality as it exists for another portion of the self.