“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

12. I’m not sure how something like naïve realism fits in with out-of-body travel (or “projection”), however. I’ve read nothing about the two together, nor have I yet asked Seth for what will surely be some very interesting material on such a possible relationship. Paradoxically, our perceptions while out-of-body can be more tenuously connected to temporal reality than usual, yet more acute at the same time. I was aware of the accustomed physical world during a projection that’s described in Seth Speaks (see the 583rd session in Chapter 20), and in some other dream-connected out-of-body situations. However, our use of naïve realism must often govern what we allow ourselves to experience while consciousness is separated from the body. I also think that some out-of-body travels, apparently to “alien” nonphysical realities, may actually be based instead upon interior bodily states or events. But there are times when the projecting consciousness, free of frameworks like naïve realism, at least approaches truly different realities, or probabilities. Jane has had some success here; in Chapter 6 of Adventures, see her projection experience involving “Dr. Sam’s house.”

(Any role that consciousness might play in such biochemical processes isn’t considered, of course, nor is there any sort of mystical comprehension of what we’re up to as creatures. No matter how beautifully man works out a hypothesis or theory, he still does so without any thought of consciousness coming first. Through the habitual (and perhaps unwitting) use of naïve realism, he projects his own basic creativity outside of himself or any of his parts. He also projects upon cellular components like genes and DNA¹⁴ learned concepts of “protection” and “selfishness”: DNA is said to care only about its own survival and “knowledge,” and not whether its host is man, plant, or animal. Only man would think to burden such pervasive parts of his own being, and those of other entities, with such negative concepts! Jane and I don’t believe the allegations — in its own terms, how could the very stuff controlling inheritance not care about the nature of what it created? I’m only half joking (is there a gene for humor?) when I protest that DNA, for example, doesn’t deserve to be regarded in such a fashion, no matter how much we push it around through recombinant techniques.¹⁵

Growth in your camouflage universe often involves the taking up of more space. Actually, in our inner universe … growth exists in terms of the value or quality expansion of which I have spoken, and does not — I repeat — does not imply any sort of space expansion. Nor does it imply, as growth does in your camouflage universe, a sort of projection into time.

(I’m projecting my own ideas here, but I think that in all of its complexity DNA has motives for its physical existence [as mediated through Seth’s CU’s, or units of consciousness] that considerably enlarge upon its assigned function as the “master molecule” of life as we know it. Deoxyribonucleic acid may exist within its host, whether man, plant, or animal — or bacteria or virus — in cooperative altruistic ventures with its carrier that are quite beside purely survival ones. Some of those goals, such as the exploration of concepts like the moment point [see Note 11], or probabilities [and reincarnation¹⁶], really defy our ordinary conscious perception. In terms we can more easily grasp, social relationships within and between species may be explored, starting at that biochemical level and working “upward.” Basically, then, an overall genetics of cooperation becomes a truer long-run concept than the postulated deadly struggle for survival of the fittest, whether between man and molecules, say, or among members of the same species. Once again we have consciousness seeking to know itself in as many ways as possible, while being aware all of the time, in those terms, of the forthcoming “death” of its medium of expression, DNA, and of DNA’s host, or “physical machine.”

[...] Seth has explained such a connective as “a psychological extension, a projection of characteristics on both of our parts, and this I use for our communications … it is like a road that must be kept clear of debris.²

[...] The motivating power was always projected outside* (underlined).