“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The effects continued to flow out of last Monday night’s session. Jane was very intrigued by the material she produced “on her own” after the session, both in the sleep state that night and in the statements she wrote the next day. See Appendix 4. As we made ready for tonight’s session at 9:10, and discussed the information she’d received, she began to feel a continuation of the experience. This time, however, it came through verbally, as dictation, although Seth wasn’t involved. I made notes on most of what she had to say; it’s presented as Appendix 5, and I suggest that the reader review it before continuing with this session.

These became more and more biologically prominent, so that man’s consciousness rode them, or leaped upon them. These particular pulses or messages became the biologically and mentally accepted ones. They were clued into sense perception, then. These pulses or messages became the only official data that, translated into sense perception, formed physical reality. This selectivity gave an understandable line of reference from interior to exterior existence.

While the cells required future and past data, and used it to form from that invisible tension the body’s present corporal reality, the same kind of information could be a threat then to the ego consciousness, which could be overwhelmed. Within the corporal structure, however, there are indeed messages that leap too quickly or too slowly² from your viewpoint to allow for any physical response. In that way cellular comprehension is allowed its free flow; but the selectivity mentioned (in sessions 682–3) bypasses such information, so that it does not conflict with present sense data requiring physical action in time.

The past, in the present, would appear so brilliantly that man could not react adequately in circumstances of time that he had himself created. The future was blocked, practically speaking (long pause), to preserve freedom of action and to encourage physical exploration, curiosity, and creativity. With memory, however, mental projections into the future were of course also possible so that man could plan his activities in time, and foresee probable results: “Ghost images” of the future probabilities always acted as mental stimuli for physical explorations in all areas, and of all kinds.

Recognized concepts of the self are the ego’s interpretation of selfhood. They are projected into concepts of God and the universe. They meet with a certain biological validity because of the selectivity earlier mentioned, whereby only one series of neurological pulses is accepted — and upon these rides the reality of the egotistical self. At one “time” a god interpreted in those terms served as a model for the egotistical behavior of one self toward another self.

Individuation, however, was dependent upon the cooperation of individuals. As the ego learned to feel more secure, the cooperative tendencies broadened so that the growth of nations was possible. It was inevitable, however, that ego consciousness would produce a reality in which it would finally need, in those terms, to accept other data and information that in the beginning it had to ignore.

New paragraph (and more rapidly): As egotistical consciousness expands to include hereto largely neglected data, then it will experience, practically speaking, a new kind of identity; knowing itself differently. Its concepts of godhood will significantly alter, as will the dimensions of emotion. Your heritage includes vastly richer veins of love, yet your concepts of self and godhood have severely limited these. You often seem to hate those with different beliefs than your own, for example, and you have perpetrated cruelties upon others in the name of religion and in the name of science, because your limited ideas about the nature of the self led you to fear your emotions. Often you are afraid that love will overwhelm you, for instance.

(A one-minute pause at 11:20.) While you were so concerned with protecting what you thought of as the boundaries and integrity of one selfhood, as a race you actually arrived at a point where you were beginning to deny your own greater reality. But all of this is part of the experiment upon which the race embarked in your probability.

(11:26. Actually, this was one of those times when it seemed that I could have continued note-taking indefinitely. Seth-Jane certainly appeared able to keep going. Jane had been in trance for an hour and forty-one minutes, but even so she was out of it rapidly. “The trances have changed since he started this book, though,” she said. “Once I get on the right track, Seth just keeps going, and I don’t want to change it or get off … I think it’s a great development. But you know: If you think you’re on to something no one else has, you’re afraid you’ll be called batty by the rest of the world … Seth is a great organizer, though. It’s like there’s a tremendous amount of work being done behind the sessions, so I can get the data — but this isn’t like the channels from Seth [as described in the 616th session in Chapter 2 of Personal Reality].”

(Jane said that I might better ask questions only during break, at least for now. My inquiry about early man hadn’t “seriously” disturbed her; but I’d been correct in feeling that I shouldn’t have interrupted her then. She also talked about possible confusions or conflicts between Seth doing “Unknown” Reality while she was writing her own Adventures in Consciousness. She’s had no trouble, however, and is still enthusiastic about her book; she’s putting Chapter 4 into final form. Adventures is due at her publishers, Prentice-Hall, Inc., in September 1974.

The school and the store were not in the infant’s experience, for in that probability the family moved away. The blur of activity earlier was the result of neurological confusion, and Ruburt switched over unknowingly to an environment still in the same physical block that was meaningful to him, but not shared by the future experience of that infant. You must understand that your own past exists as vitally as does your present — but your probable pasts and presents exist in the same manner. You simply do not accept them in the strands of experience that “you” recognize.⁵

I have my own existence, that is quite different from Ruburt’s, and yet I also have a reality that is connected to his psyche.⁶ Each of you also have the same kind of connection with other “more knowledgeable” portions of yourself, or your greater identity, that are independently themselves and yet also alive in your psyches. They are portions of the “unknown” reality.

Now I am able to obtain information that Ruburt, in his terms, does not have. In other terms he does have it, and so do you, but you have been mentally, spiritually, and biologically prejudiced against it. As a race, you are ready to become more aware of your greater reality, however, and to explore its “unknown” aspects. Period. Hence this book.

You may experience some irritability with some of the concepts in it, simply because you have so schooled yourselves to ignore them. You should also experience an acceleration of consciousness, however, and as you read it, a growing sense of familiarity. The framework of the book itself will lead you, if you allow it, into other strata of your own greater knowledge.

(Jane’s trance had been very deep. Now she was bleary-eyed: “I feel as though I don’t want to think for two weeks …” Seth hadn’t said so during the session, but Jane told me she’d “picked up from him” that she should eat an extra meal a day for a while — usually late at night, as, say, after a session. Also, she should take extra exercise each day, moving as rapidly as she could. She wasn’t under any additional strain while producing “Unknown” Reality, she added, since she wanted to do it, but those simple actions would help refresh her. Her use of energy since starting the book has been lavish. Jane’s comments before tonight’s session about possible instructions from Seth are given in Appendix 5.

(After finishing Personal Reality in July, 1973, Jane and I took quite a bit of time off from our usual Monday–Wednesday session routine while we prepared that book for publication. We developed the habit of watching certain television programs on Wednesday evening, but since we’ve gone back to holding sessions regularly, we haven’t been able to see them. I suggested to Jane that we shift Wednesday night’s session to Thursday night.

(And once more: Many times during the night after this session, Jane discovered herself involved with dictation for “Unknown” Reality, both in the sleep state and out of it.)

1. Once again (I suggested the same reference in Note 2 for Session 683), see sessions 647–48 in Chapter 12 of Personal Reality.

2. See Jane’s own material in Appendix 5. However, while studying Seth in this session — as well as the notes presented during break at 11:26 — it’s a good idea for the reader to keep both appendixes 4 and 5 in mind.