“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This idea reminded me of one I’ve mentioned rather often to Jane lately about watching the news on TV—a recent habit that it seems we’ll soon dispense with. But I found it at least roughly reminiscent of Seth’s idea of simultaneous time to watch the color broadcasts from different areas of the world each day, and then to mentally hold all of those actions, especially the backgrounds, in mind at once, visualizing them as simultaneous happenings at different places on the planet.

(I think that at first Jane decided not to have a session tonight, since she asked me if I’d “rather work for an hour.” But she changed her mind, obviously; then at 9:25 she told me she knew what Seth was going to talk about: “The horizontal consciousness.”)

Such people were using their consciousness in a certain fashion. Because of their isolation, they were often quite specialistic. Racial traits and characteristics were exaggerated by your standards because of the necessary inbreeding. These groups originated back in their own nearly forgotten past as wandering tribes came together, and joined for their own support and protection.

The creation of your particular variety of cultural reality is quite complex and its own unique achievement. Those people had only to deal with their own enclosed civilization, for the conscious mind, in the terms of this discussion, now, could not extend itself to the extent that is now habitual. It could not bear the brunt of communication beyond its own confines. Its focus was sharp and clear, and contained.

Groups of people learned how to get along together. They developed arts and sciences, religions—yet it was as if no other people existed. They had only themselves to take into consideration. The grandeurs and disasters of such civilizations were contained. No great idea would spread from civilization to civilization; no war would leap from land to land. This does not mean that there were not similarities in religious concepts or art forms or whatever, for each level of consciousness has its own characteristics, which will show in all of its works.

Since then, and accelerating in your time, physical methods of transportation and communication have become the main pedestals upon which civilizations rest. Consciousness has become more horizontal in that respect. It must take in and assimilate the existing data from a far vaster amount of space than before.

You are aware of what is happening across the world, say, this evening. You watched the events on television. You must react, then, to events that your forefathers would never have been aware of in the same fashion. Your living room reaches out horizontally in space as far as your consciousness is concerned. There is no isolation in that old manner. This means that consciousness must, and is, learning new manipulations. People are forced to look beyond their own families, cities, and even countries, to that clearly illuminated arena of the world.

(9:48.) A ruler cannot make his decisions based upon national events only, but he must take international ones into mind, and in a more direct fashion, say, than even 10 years ago. Disasters are no longer localized or contained. The private consciousness is forced to contend with world events in a way that is completely new in historical terms. It is a time of turmoil—but it is a time of turmoil partially because consciousness has been willing to extend itself in that particular fashion.

The learning process is indeed being accelerated, though the barrage of stimuli can be most disconcerting. It is the official line of consciousness that has become horizontal, yet in so doing it has also opened up questions to which it would have been blind otherwise—and because of its focus your news events, of course, show only one side of the picture.

That picture, however, provides a kind of exaggeration, throwing back a mirror to the official line of consciousness that it must find most distasteful. Such communications, however, in the overall have great potential, for even unwillingly they stress the unity of the planet—and consciousness itself strains to solve problems on a different basis than before.

In those ancient times, mentioned earlier, one civilization cared not a whit about any other whose existence was known. One did not depend upon the other. It now becomes apparent that a war, or near-war in one country is a threat to all others, and man’s consciousness at the level we are discussing is struggling to attain a planetary concern, a sense of life’s balances.

The official line of consciousness does stress its own philosophies. No television picture is showing you the silent afternoons spent by an artist who will be called great tomorrow, or stresses the vitality of life that is responsible for the existence of the television sets to begin with. These things, unfortunately, you must remember for yourself.

There were wars before, and threats and disasters, but people in countries that were safe were not daily confronted with those other realities, so consciousness has taken upon itself this additional opportunity and burden, in that each person, largely speaking, is far more aware of events in other corners of the world—natives in deepest bush country have transistors.

This barrage is meant to push consciousness in its official stance nearly to desperation, so that it opens other doorways of awareness, and extends itself into the intuitional realms, giving itself greater insight, and providing “an extra band” of communication—the merging of man’s innate “psychic” abilities with his normally attuned consciousness. The effort then is meant to release another kind of intelligence for which man is innately equipped.

I have one point I forgot to make. In certain terms, Ruburt was in contact with your parents the other afternoon. Their images, however, were creative constructions, but the communication itself was valid. Unfortunately, it was also an example of what happens when the official line of consciousness steps into the dream state, as Ruburt realized your father was dead, and at that level then decided he could not be here.