“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(It was 9:40 by the time Jane finished her dictation. She sat quietly for a few moments. “Now I’m just waiting for Seth,” she told me. Then: “It’s as though I feel a lot of concepts around me right now, and I’m letting him get them organized for me … But now I think I’m about ready….”

Mankind’s consciousness, however, experimented along time-specific lines. As he developed along those lines, various biological and mental methods of selectivity and discrimination were utilized. When in historic terms mankind became aware of memory, and recalled his past as a past in your terms, it was possible for him to confuse past and present. Vivid memories, out of context but given immediate neurological validity, could compete with the brilliant focus necessary in his present.¹

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?

(10:57.) These developments, with others, are already triggering changes in man’s behavior, and inspiring him toward further alterations of consciousness. He now needs a more expansive viewpoint of past and future in order to help him deal with the ramifications of the present as it has evolved through experience.

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.

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

Like a good teacher (humorously), I took his protests into consideration. Later he wrote a statement that came to him. This was his conscious interpretation of the information he had received the night before, translated as best he could in linear terms.

(Loudly:) Period. End of session. I will have some personal recommendations next time. Ruburt’s favorite television programs are good for him, and allow his mind to rest. They are his mental play, and for that reason, important.

(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.