“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.

In any system the idealization has already accepted certain kinds of events as significant, and has rejected other (quite-as-probable events) as nonsignificant. This simply provides a workable focus in which achievement and experience can happen.

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.

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 …

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.

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).

Biologically, there were illnesses avoided, deaths that could have occurred but did not. In space there were endless varieties of probabilities and decisions. People could have moved and did not, or others did move, and so came into that particular space area. There were an infinite number of ideas behind all of those decisions. You form your own experience. In greater terms, therefore, those people decided to be at that particular time and place, so that the photograph is the result of multitudinous decisions, and represents a focus of experience, rising from myriad probabilities. The picture of the world represents in a greater dimensional fashion the same kind of focus. Your most intimate decision affects the species. You are the creator of yourself in space and time. You also have your hand in the larger creativity of mankind’s experience.