“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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

When man, speaking in your terms of history, began to experiment with memory, there were innumerable instances where the emerging ego consciousness did not distinguish clearly enough between the past and present, as you understand them.

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.

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.