“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The relatively insignificant example of probable events and their interaction just given (in the last session) provides a few important clues to the nature of probabilities in general. An organization is definitely present, but it is not the kind of order you are used to recognizing. This small private experience is repeated endlessly with different variations in all areas of daily living — that is, probable events constantly interact, and (intently) through their interaction you end up with one recognized series of episodes that you accept, called physical reality.

Underneath this recognized order of events, however, there is actually a vast field of ever-occurring action. These fields of probabilities are action sources for your reality; but your world-action is also a source for these other probabilities.

Scientifically, with all of your instruments, you are thus far able to perceive the atom’s presence only in the field of your own system of probability. Since you perceive physically through the body, which is atomically structured, then of course your sense perceptions lead you to block out recognition of other probable stimuli or reactions. In his book Adventures in Consciousness, Ruburt mentions what he calls “prejudiced perception.’’¹ It is an excellent term in this regard.

Give us a moment … Those events then arise into significance³ because of the peculiar kind of organization chosen. Other quite-as-valid events do not seem significant — they do not rise into perception, or reality. They exist, however. In one reality, for example, Joseph’s mother married Mr. Markle. Joseph inherited the home. In that reality Mr. Markle died before Joseph’s mother did, so there was no need for a Joseph, here, to even look for a house; he had one. In that reality Joseph did not marry Ruburt. And in this reality [the one you and Ruburt know] Ruburt instinctively felt apart from that house.

(“Can I ask a question?” I disliked interrupting the flow of material, but this was a good time to mention what had been on my mind since Monday night.)

(“Well, I know you said in the last session [just before 10:33] that from her nonphysical reality my mother isn’t trying to coerce Jane and me into buying Mr. Markle’s house — yet I keep wondering what others will think about the idea of influence being felt in our reality from ‘the other side,’ you might say — ”)

The episode also mirrored his beliefs, for to his way of thinking he would have to relinquish certain freedoms, and this he was not ready to do. The events basically exist at once, though at your level you have to perceive them in time. As your intimate daily reality can be involved with and colored by probabilities, brought into your experience by your own desires and beliefs, so is your mass culture, world history, and species orientation colored by probable events that do not fit into your officially recognized idea of physical reality.

(A one-minute pause.) The greatest scientific discoveries are always “accidents.” They come from intuitional creativity, when suddenly a new kind of significance is seen that was not “earlier” predictable. You accept all data that fit your theories, and ignore clues to the contrary. Yet underneath it all you are significance-making creatures, pattern-formers, immersed in time but basically apart from it, and so new insights come into your awareness and literally change the quality of any given reality at any given time.

(10:34. Jane, in a deep trance, had spoken for over an hour. I told her I thought “Unknown” Reality was excellent. “But I’m out of it on this one,” she said, explaining that she didn’t know it well consciously, had little idea of its structure, and couldn’t particularly say what was to come in it. In contrast, her involvement with Seth’s last book, Personal Reality, had been much more intimate during its production.

(We discussed the general implications of Seth’s material on my mother — that she was not only “alive” after her “death,” but that a portion of her was focused upon Jane and me. Jane had allowed Seth to talk about the whole situation in a more personal way than she usually does; the result is that we already have more data on Stella Butts than on the earlier deaths of Jane’s own parents [in 1971 and 1972], for instance.⁴ We knew that Seth wouldn’t continue describing my mother and her present reality indefinitely; such a study could easily grow into a book by itself. In addition, Jane holds deeply felt convictions about giving material on survival personalities; the information in Appendix 10 has a bearing here. I also think that Seth will be able to say more on the beliefs behind her feelings as this book progresses.

Joseph’s mother is not only alive in another level of reality, but still learning. She is quite aware, therefore, of his decision not to buy the [Markle] house.⁵ In her level of reality, she was aware of the fact that Joseph wanted the house strongly; that one portion of him thought of possessing a large home, even though this would require upkeep and attention that another part of him did not want to provide because he felt it would take too much time from his painting and our work.

The portion that momentarily desired the house immediately attracted the same kind of desire always felt on the part of Joseph’s mother. This, on another level of activity than physical, reactivated old conflicts between them. For a while their desires united them. Now, however, Stella Butts is better able to understand her son’s reactions. Through his decision in this reality, she is finally beginning to glimpse the reasons for his actions in the past, that before were incomprehensible to her.

5. A note added 10 months later: There were many house ramifications to come, though, concerning not only Mr. Markle’s place in Sayre but some here in Elmira, where Jane and I live. In ordinary terms, we could hardly have expected such a mass of “house connections” to develop. The events took place while Seth-Jane was producing Section 6 for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, and are described there in some detail; they also provide nearly ideal links between the two volumes.