“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Then when we watched the news while eating supper at the coffee table, we soon found the mayhem and related misdeeds recited by the newscasters so depressing that we switched channels to an innocuous Mod Squad show several years old—even though those color backgrounds—Nicaragua, Israel, Russia, etc., were still so fascinating. But I saw similarities of course between those various news events happening in far portions of the earth today, and the thought that the American and European civilizations had existed for so long on the same planet, yet completely unknown one to the other.

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.

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.