“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

First of all, there are rhythms of consciousness. It is almost true to say that your species could not survive if all of its members were awake at any given time.

Sleeping provides not only a rest from usual activity, but a recharge of energy. Waking life involves the expenditure of energy, so in this way a portion of the species uses energy while the other half is being replenished. In a manner of speaking, the mind sends out electromagnetic patterns that are used almost like aerial bridges, upon which the signals of consciousness travel invisibly through your world. This kind of foundation is continually laid with great diligence by the sleeping portion of the species. The waking portion provides, say, the material supplies that visibly appear as objects or as events. These objects or events must be laid upon that prior framework, however. These “invisible electromagnetic bridges” exist in networks that twine and intertwine, inclining reality to appear in certain fashions.

The preparation of the bridges, again, is an unconscious process, done in sleeping, though some “maintenance” is also carried on beneath usual consciousness, even in the waking members of the species. Other species are also involved, and the same applies. The sleeping-waking division then is not only a human one. It is as if, figuratively speaking, in sleep you build a constant foundation for waking life.

The entire affair masks the fact that in certain terms there is a mass world mind, that has the same responsibility for the body of the earth as a man’s mind does to his own corporeal image.

The alternate wake-sleep patterns of the world then, again, help pace the information. Some of those communications are cellular. You pick up broadcasts from all over, and literally on a million stations. The world mind needs all of that information in order to produce continuous world events. Because of its particular structure the work is divided. The world mind, then, in your terms, could not be conscious all at one time, and the varying graduated waking-sleeping patterns—the overlapping between the extremes you mention—provide overall balance and allow for smooth communications of an inner kind.

In the past, farmers used dreams to plant their crops, and weather dreams were very popular—that is, people actually dreamed about the weather in the past because of their concern and their more intimate relationship with the natural environment. Times of famine were indeed predicted in dreams and guarded against. Kings and courts, chieftains, needed their soothsayers. Even though, now, you rely upon physical communication, portions of the species are still connected through those ancient means—though there is not the same need to become consciously aware of the information.

When man really intensified “rational” thought, and developed the electric light, he lengthened the time of waking consciousness to some extent. Those abilities were concentrated upon. The importance of symbols was minimized, and intuitive thought to some extent, went out of style.

In the past, again, poetry was an important method of communication, but the “rationally” tuned mind suspects it. There is often nothing to be checked in it against physical reality in a concrete manner, for the message is intuitional and internal. People like poetry as a rule in your society only when it is dealing with conventional subjects, or directly with nature, so that in a way, now, the intuitions are used “to a rational end.”

Many are indistinguishable from others in people’s minds, but our books literally do change people’s realities, and ultimately their lives and all of the people with whom they come in contact. In that regard the books are powerful, and their impact cannot be ascertained in mundane ways. You are, then, using your point of power to affect your world—a point you should each remember.