“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Today I looked over a Time-Life book on the ancient civilizations of the Americas—the Aztecs, Incas, Mixtecs, etc, and once more was impressed by their amazing abilities as far as architecture, carving, weaving, astronomy, etc., went. I described what I’d read to Jane, and later she looked at some of the material. We discussed the amazing facts that the American civilizations had existed for centuries concurrently with the European and Far Eastern ones, but with each totally isolated from the other. They might as well have existed on different planets.

(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.”)

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.

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.

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 afternoon I was wondering how Jim Poett was making out—not when the article will be published [in the Village Voice], but what he thinks of what he’s doing.”)

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.