“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

He went from place to place, floating bodiless — a tour of consciousness. That same environment exists now, alternately with Ruburt’s present, and as vividly as his present does. It was, however, from his viewpoint, a probable past.⁴

The infant with whom he momentarily identified as the self he is now only opaquely and indirectly shared common experience. This was not simple regression, then. That child grew up in that probability, and Ruburt grew up in this one. (Pause.) He touched upon certain coordinates that were neurologically shared, however, by both: He and the child were familiar with the carriage and the curb, the mother who pushed the carriage, and the house into which Ruburt felt himself, as the child, being carried.

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

As part of the work on this book, Ruburt is just beginning to experiment with the conscious recognition of probable material, and the conscious acceptance of kinds of experience usually tabooed according to the selectivity already mentioned.

(12:19.) In the sleep state after our last session, then, he allowed his consciousness to expand enough so that it became aware of information and experience usually censored automatically through mental and neurological habit. In Adventures Ruburt uses the term “prejudiced perception” — an excellent one — that is applicable here. For you have prejudiced yourself spiritually, mentally, and physically in those terms. In the sleep state Ruburt became unprejudiced, at least to some degree, so that he encountered information that seemed alien or out of context with usual experience.

Your theories of time are connected with your usual neurological pulses. It is one thing to play with concepts of multidimensionality, or probabilities, and quite another to be practically presented with them, even briefly, when your thought patterns and neurological habits tell you that they cannot be translated. So Ruburt felt frustrated, and he told me in no uncertain terms (see Appendix 4) that his consciousness could not contain the information he was receiving.

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.

(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.