“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The idealizations themselves are made of “conscious” stuff. These are not inert data,¹ then. The nature of probabilities determines the framework in which these fulfillments can take place, and “frames” living developments. The structure of probabilities provides on the one hand a system of barriers, in which practical growth is not chosen or significant; and on the other hand it insures a safe, creative, rich environment — a reality — in which the idealization can choose from an almost infinite variety of possible actions those best suited to its own fulfillment.

(9:27.) In simple terms, you will not try to achieve something that you believe impossible within your concepts of reality. The conscious mind, with its normally considered intellect, is meant to assess the practicality of action within your world. You will literally see only what you want to see.² If the race believed that space travel was impossible, you would not have it. That is one thing; but if an individual believes that it is literally impossible for him to travel from one end of the continent to another, or to change his job, or perform any act, then the act becomes practically impossible. The idealization of motion, however, in that person’s mind, or of change, may be denied expression at any given time — but it will nevertheless seek expression through experience. This applies in terms of the species as well as individuals. Because you are now a conscious species, in your terms, there are racial idealizations that you can accept or deny. Often at your particular stage of development as a race, these appear first in your world as fiction, art, or so-called pure theory.

Thoughts have their own kind of structure, as cells do, and they seek their own fulfillment. They move toward like thoughts, and you have as a species an inner mass body of thought. Privately your thoughts are expressions of your idealizations; and while expressing those inner patterns they also modify and creatively change them. Each cell in your body is to some extent altered with each thought that you think. Each reaction of the cells alters your environment. The brain then responds to the alteration. There is a constant give-and-take. As the cells respond at certain levels to ever-changing streams of probabilities, so do your thoughts. Your body responds as you think it should, however, and so your conscious beliefs about reality have much to do with those probable experiences that you accept as a part of your intimate living.

(9:45. A pause lasting well over a minute.) Your current decisions to accept one specific line of consciousness as real, and to ignore others, makes such concepts difficult to understand. You train yourselves — biologically, even — to inhibit certain stimuli, yet often the body itself responds to the very stimuli that you consciously ignore. By opening up your minds to new kinds of significances, however, you can begin to glimpse other orders of events⁴ with which you are quite intimately concerned.

Often, for instance, you handle probabilities very well, while remaining consciously blind to them because of your concepts. Even then, however, on other levels your unconscious reaction will follow your own conscious intents. You may make a move in physical life, for example, seemingly for one reason. You may also be unconsciously reacting to quite pertinent data regarding the probable actions of others. Because you do not really fully accept the fact that you can so react, you may block this unofficial information on the one hand, even while on the other you take it into consideration. You are far more aware than you realize of the probable future in areas with which you are concerned. This is true on all levels. If your purposes do not involve illness, for instance, and yet if you believe in contagion, you will automatically avoid circumstances that can lead to epidemics. In terms of probabilities that particular kind will not enter your experience.

Consciousness, by its nature, continually expands. The nature of consciousness as you understand it as a species will, in one way or another, lead you beyond your limited ideas of reality, for your experience will set challenges that cannot be solved within your current framework. Those problems set by one level of consciousness will automatically cause breakthroughs into other areas of conscious activity, where solutions can be found.

In other terms, however — social terms — you have yet to achieve the same kind of spiritual brotherhood possessed by your cells; and so you do not understand that the experience of your world is intimately connected with your own private experience. If you burn your finger it hurts immediately. Your body instantly begins a cooperative venture, in which adjustments are made so that the wound begins to heal. If a portion of the race is hurt it may take a while before “you” feel the pain, but the entire unconscious mechanism of the species will try to heal the wound. Consciously you can facilitate that development, and admit your brotherhood with all other living beings. The healing will take place far quicker if you do. A biological brotherhood exists, an inner empathy on cellular levels, connecting all individuals of the species with one another. This is the result of a biological idealization. It exists in all species, and connects all species.

The race suffers when any of its members die of starvation or disease, even as a whole plant suffers if a group of its leaves are “unhappy.” In the same way all members of the species are benefited by the happiness, health, and fulfillment of any of those individuals who compose it. Man can be aware of the vast medium of probabilities in which he exists, and therefore consciously choose those best suited to those idealizations that point toward his greatest fulfillment. One part of the species cannot grow or develop at the expense of the other portions for very long.

If you can, find a photograph of yourself as a member of a class — a graduation picture, perhaps, or a photograph of club members. Examine what you see there. Then contemplate what is not seen. Imagine the emotional reality of each person present, in the time that the photograph was taken. Then try to feel the emotional interactions that existed between the various individuals. Take your time. When you are finished, try to get a glimpse of those intimate relationships that each person had with other persons not present in the picture, but contemporary. Let your mind, after that, follow through by imagining contacts involving family interactions reaching back through time prior to the taking of the photograph. Then think of all of the probable actions that were either accepted or discarded, so that in time terms these people assembled (for the photograph).

1. Jane referred to the concept of living information from another angle in her quoted material at the beginning of the 694th session, in Section 2. Also see Seth’s material on units of consciousness at 10:06 in the 682nd session, in Section 1.

In Personal Reality, too, Seth tells us: “Information does not exist by itself. Connected with it is the consciousness of all those who understand it, perceive it, or originate it. So there are not records in terms of objective, forever-available banks of information into which you tune. Instead the consciousness that held, or holds, or will hold the information attracts it like a magnet … The information itself wants to move toward consciousness. It is not dead or inert. It is not something you grab for, it is also something that wants to be grabbed, and so it gravitates to those who seek it. Your consciousness attracts the consciousness that is already connected with the material.” See the notes following the 618th session, in Chapter 3 of Personal Reality.