“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.

The private blueprint, yours at birth, is in certain terms far greater than any one physical materialization of it that could occur in your space and time. This provides you with areas of choice, gives you manipulability, and allows for the myriad of probable activities “possible.” You are the judge and the final word in that regard, so that as your ideas change, as you move toward one probable self and decide upon that as your official³ self, you will always have a rich bank of probable actions to choose from. If only one were provided you would have no choice. The same applies to the species. Now give us a moment …

(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.

Many of your global dilemmas seem so desperate only because in those areas you have gone as far as you can go — without going further. The problems act as stimuli in that regard. This doesn’t mean that you have to experience disasters. They are not preordained. It does mean that you have chosen certain experiences, but that these will automatically lead to further creative development if you allow them to. The idealization is one of brotherhood, in terms of your species. Biologically, in your terms, such “brotherhood” operates instinctively in the cooperation of the body’s cells, as they function together to form the private corporal structure. At your viewpoint you lose appreciation for the great individuality of each cell. You take it for granted that because the cells work so well together, they have no private uniqueness.

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.