“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Here I want to include excerpts from three sessions in which Seth explains the difference between a physical event and a probable one, and the relationship between us and probable systems of reality. (Remember, Rob and Dr. Pietra are each individuals. Seth explains this relationship by saying that the two are related, like distant cousins.) He begins with what I think is an excellent description of the whole self or entire identity as it is related to this and other existences.

“Action is action whether or not you perceive it, and probable events are events whether or not you perceive them. Thoughts are also events, as are wishes and desires. The human system responds as fully to these as it does to physical events. In dreams, often portions of probable events are experienced in a semiconscious manner. This amounts to a bleed-through, and I use the term purposely, for your tape recorder can be used as an analogy.

The Difference between Probable Events and Physical Events

“Take, for example, Event X. This probable event will be experienced by the various portions of the self in their own way. When it is experienced by your ego, it is a physical event. When it is perceived by other portions of the self, the ego does not know of it.

“It is actual all the same and is experienced in variation. The whole self perceives and is affected by probabilities, then, and perceives these as actions whether or not the ego has chosen to accept any given event as physical. The time sequence also varies. Past, present, and future are realities only to your ego.

“This system of probabilities is quite as real as the physical system, and you exist in it whether or not you realize it. You simply are not focused within it. You may become aware of it [or of one of your probable selves] while in the dream state occasionally. I have told you that dream images have a definite reality. So do probable events. They simply do not appear concrete to you.

“You may dream of holding an apple, for example, and awaken to find it gone. This does not mean that it did not exist, but in the waking state you do not perceive it. In the same way you do not perceive the actuality of probable events on a conscious basis. A portion of your whole self is quite involved in these probable events, however. The I of your dreams can be legitimately compared to the self that experiences probable events. [That I would consider itself fully conscious and view the waking I as the probable self.]

“The package of experience upon which you can focus is indeed composed of many small packages, but the whole package of reality is much larger than this. A portion of the self can and does experience events in an entirely different fashion [than the ego does] and this portion goes off on a different tangent. For when your conscious self perceives Event X, this other part of the self branches off, so to speak, into all the other probable events that could have been experienced by the ego.

“The ego must choose one event because of its limitations. But this other portion of the self can and does delve into what you could call Event Xl, X2, X3, et cetera. It can pursue and experience all of these alternative events in the same amount of physical time that it takes for the ego to experience Event X alone.

“This is not as farfetched as it might seem. The shaking of a hand may be perceived by you as a simple action. You are not aware of the million small acts which make up this seemingly insignificant action. They exist nevertheless. It does not take you time to perceive them one by one. You perceive them in their completed fashion. Now this 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.”

“These portions of the self simply operate in a different dimension of reality, with different fields of activity. In this particular instance, compare the various portions of the whole self to the various members of a family: The man may work in the city. The woman may work at their home in the country. Of three children, each may attend a different school. They are all members of the same family unit and operate out of the same house. There is no basic reason why any of the children could not spend his days at his father’s office, but he would not be able to understand the events or activities there.

“There is within the family a general realization of the experiences of its members, but these are secondhand except for those events shared by the family as a whole, as a unit. There is also a generalized intuitional knowledge on the part of any portion of the self as to the experiences of the other portions.

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

“Again: probable events are as real as that one event chosen from them to be a physical experience. Take our Event X again. It is only one of numberless probable events. For its purposes, however, the conscious ego chooses Event X. But until this ego experiences the event, it is only one of all the other probable events, different in no way. It becomes actual in your reality only when it is experienced by the physical self. …

“These other probable events become just as ‘real’ within other dimensions. As a sideline, there are some interesting episodes when a severe psychological shock or deep sense of futility causes a short circuit so that one portion of the self begins to experience one of its other probable realities. I am thinking in particular of some cases of amnesia where the victim ends up suddenly in a different town with another name, occupation, and no memory of his own past. In some instances such an individual is experiencing a probable event, but he must experience it, you see, within his own time system.”

Seth has given us more material than this, of course, on probable universes and events. He also discusses probabilities in connection with precognition and time. We haven’t been able to make any conscious contact with Dr. Pietra. As I write this now, we are approaching the autumn months when Seth said contact would again be possible.