“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This will be the first time Seth has appeared on television since we did some promotional work for The Seth Material after its publication in 1970. At that time Jane spoke for Seth on two occasions from cities in the East. Reactions were excellent; she still receives an occasional call or letter about one of those shows in particular. I might add that since Seth launched “Unknown” Reality in February of this year, Jane and I have fulfilled another television commitment, and that she was the subject of a lengthy radio interview. But the pressures of work, plus our own conservative attitudes about personal publicity, have led us to pass by other such opportunities.

Ultimately your use of instruments, and your preoccupation with them as tools to study the greater nature of reality, will teach you one important lesson: The instruments are useful only in measuring the level of reality in which they themselves exist.¹ Period.

They help you interpret the universe in horizontal terms, so to speak. In studying the deeper realities within and “behind” that universe, the instruments are not only useless but misleading. I am not suggesting that their use is futile, however — merely pointing out the limitations inherently involved.

So-called objective science gives you a picture, a model, that has served well enough in its own fashion, enabling you to travel to the moon, for example, and to advance in a technology that for a time you set your hearts upon. In the framework of objective science as it now exists, however, even the technology will come up against a stone wall. Even as a means, objective science is only helpful for a while, because it will constantly run up against deeper inner realities that are necessarily shunted aside and ignored simply because of its method and attitude.² No objective science or splendid technology alone will keep even one man or woman alive, for example, if that individual has decided to leave the flesh, or finds no joy in daily life.

(Pause.) A loving technology, again, would always add to the qualitative and spiritual deepening of experience. The inner order of existence and true science go together. The true scientist is not afraid of identifying with the reality he chooses to study. He knows that only then can he dare to begin to understand its nature. There are many unofficial scientists, true ones in that regard, unknown in this age. Many are quite ordinary people in exterior terms, with other professions. Yet it is no accident that greater discoveries are often made by “amateurs” — those who are relatively free from official dogmas, released from the pressure to get ahead in a given field — those whose creativity flows freely and naturally in those areas of their natural interest.

Your own science has led you to its logical conclusion. It is not enough, and some suspect that its methods and attitudes have a built-in disadvantage. Physicists are going beyond themselves, so to speak, where even their own instruments cannot follow and where all rules do not apply. Even the prophet Einstein did not lead them far enough. You cannot stand apart from a reality and do any more than present diagrams of it. You will not understand its living heart or its nature.

The behavior of electrons, for example, will elude your technological knowledge — for in deepest terms what you will “perceive” will be a facade, an appearance or illusion. So far, within the rules of the game, you have been able to make your “facts” about electrons work. To follow their multidimensional activity however is another matter — (humorously:) a pun — and you need, if you will forgive me, a speedier means.

(Pause.) The blueprints for reality lie even beneath the electrons’ activity. As long as you think in terms of [subatomic] particles, you are basically off the track — or even when you think in terms of waves. The idea of interrelated fields comes closer, of course, yet even here you are simply changing one kind of term for one like it, only slightly different. In all of these cases you are ignoring the reality of consciousness, and its gestalt formations and manifestations. Until you perceive the innate consciousness behind any “visible” or “invisible” manifestations, then, you put a definite barrier to your own knowledge.

(10:20. “I don’t know what he said about electrons and things like that,” Jane told me as soon as she was out of her hour-long trance state, “but all of this is general and it’s leading up to something more. I carried it as far as I could. Maybe we’ll get more on it after break …”

(I thought it very interesting that Seth had talked about subatomic waves and particles in the last paragraph of his delivery tonight. Such ideas involve the physicists’ ongoing conception of the duality of nature. For instance: Is light made up of waves or particles? A contemporary accommodation, called complementarity, leads experimenters to accept results that show either aspect to be true. As noted in the last session, Jane had attempted to read Einstein’s book on his theories of relativity earlier that day. We had briefly discussed Einstein’s work and some allied subjects before tonight’s session, but I hadn’t asked her to give material on physics through Seth.⁵ In her own way, Jane is quite interested in the field, however, and has done a little work in it with scientists. We may have more to say about those efforts later in “Unknown” Reality.

2. Seth’s material about technology and science leading to inner realities reminds me of two related examples that I’ve become aware of recently through my own reading. The first one involves a more intimate inner reality than the second, yet both pose interesting questions. Each reader can probably give similar illustrations. (However, as I wrote in Appendix 1, “I’m not interested in knocking our technology, but in pointing out coexisting inner factors that I’m sure are just as important.”)

My first example concerns the development of biofeedback machines in the 1960’s. With one of these devices the individual was to learn to control, when necessary, his or her own blood pressure, or any of certain other involuntary body functions. Doubtlessly such self monitoring is an example of the “loving technology” that Seth mentioned in his final delivery for the last Session; yet we now understand that the early claims for biofeedback were considerably exaggerated. Within a more reasonable context the technique will take its place in our medical systems, but in each case what we learn will surely point up the need to understand our individual inner realities; i.e., what caused the high blood pressure, or whatever, in the first place?

My second example grows out of a recent book on astronomy. The author explains the various theories for the origin of our observable universe of planets, galaxies, quasars, and so forth, presenting the evidence for and against each theory. Yet when the question arises as to what prevailed before the advent of our universe (or of whether it has existed “forever”), we are told that science doesn’t deal with ultimate origins and endings; we are referred to the realms of theology and/or philosophy for whatever answers are available.

3. Four little notes, the last two of which are added later from Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality:

“It is very possible that you might end up in what you intend as a space venture only to discover that you have ‘traveled’ to another plane [probability]. But at first you will not know the difference.”

5. In the last session see the material, with notes 1 and 7, on Einstein, as well as Note 5; in the 684th session the material on the multidimensional activities and fluctuations of Seth’s CU’s (or units of consciousness), electrons, and other such phenomena; and in the 681st session the material, with Note 7 especially, on science, probable atoms, and the basic unpredictability behind all systems of reality. In the same session Seth also comments on Jane’s vocabulary, as he does after break tonight.