“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“February 26, 1974. I’m getting something like this … that data comes through to us multidimensionally, then is sifted through neural connections, where it’s transformed into time-segmentation or strung-out experience. Next it flows into our probable (physical) reality (which itself changes all the ‘time.’) We inherently possess separate pockets or pools of experience (biologically valid among the cells’ characteristics), sidepools where information collects for processing before flowing into the ‘official pool of consciousness.’

“Usual memory is as much a sifting process as it is anything else, in which experience’s intensity varies — sometimes ‘alive’ neurologically and sometimes not — just to focus our consciousness in one probable action or series. (As I type I add: We forget anything not pertinent to our selected series of probable actions. The psyche knows its own parts. Seth says so in his books, but we ask the psyche the wrong questions.)

“In these side pockets, memory, so-called, is not so structured. Its ever-present living elements are apparent; and its growth. Its material is ever-fresh. Here the past still happens. Usually we experience it through neurological connections; that’s when it seems vivid or alive, but actually it’s that way all the time. Past motion and acts still go on, not recurring — it’s hard to explain — but those past actions are still exploring other probabilities, while our nervous structure focuses us in the one (physical) probable reality we’ve chosen. To us those other actions seem terminated … but that’s only because usually we can’t follow them.

“These ‘past’ probabilities are not fleshed out in our terms, but they’re brilliantly focused in their own life. In the Saratoga experience¹ I felt ghostly because there I was a future probability … At certain levels of consciousness, through bypassing direct neurological activity and impact, you can then glimpse other portions of your own probable experience — both in the future and the past.

“Using these side pockets or pools where data are still unprocessed, in our terms, you can pick up several other strands of your own consciousness ‘at once,’ though retention may be difficult. Explaining the experience to the normal consciousness automatically helps expand it (the normal consciousness), so that each time the process becomes easier. Until, with practice, experience and data from several areas can be held simultaneously. The difficulty then is a translation in linear terms, hence Ruburt’s trouble in the Saratoga episode.”

“While doing it, I felt mildly exhilarated. My consciousness gets a smooth feeling at such times, an easiness. Yet I was also aware of the same kind of reluctance I’d felt in the sleep state last night; as if I was trying to do something … difficult, or translate information that was more distant than usual from our ordinary concepts. I almost felt stubborn, like a reluctant child, wanting to do the thing but not wanting to make the effort at the same time. The easiness won over, though.