“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The race was dealing with the creation of a new world of physical experience. To do this particular kind of experiment, it was necessary that physical manipulation be concentrated upon. Ghost images from the future were one thing, inspiring mankind. Had such data instantly appeared before him, however, man would have been deprived of the physical joys, endeavors, and challenges that were so basic to the experiment itself. Do you want to rest your hand?

(Pause at 10:37.) Its focus in the present is now secure. That focus finally brought about, in your terms, an expansion of consciousness, and one that early man did not have to handle. In your terms, time now includes more space, and hence more experience and stimuli. Again speaking historically, in the past the private person in any given hour was aware at once only of those events happening in his immediate environment. He could respond instantly. Events were, to that extent now, manageable. And rest your hand if you want to.

In a waking state, Ruburt found himself in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where he grew up, in what seemed to be a kind of mental projection. (See Jane’s notes at the beginning of the last session.) Everything was gray. The immediate nature of full-blast sense data was missing. Vision was clear but spotty, highly selective. Motion was, however, the strongest sense element. Ruburt was bodiless on the one hand, and on the other he perceived some of the experience through the eyes of an infant in a carriage.

The child was himself in the past on the one hand, and yet he was a probable future self in that past. (Pause.) From the standpoint of Ruburt’s official mental focus, and from the standpoint of the neurologically accepted present, that past environment had to remain off-center, or blurred. He could experience it only by sidestepping officially accepted neurological activity. He visited a store that is not at that location “anymore,” and here the sense data were somewhat clearer. He had no conscious memories of the store’s interior, yet it was instantly apparent to him — the dark oiled floor, spread with sawdust. Even the odors were present.