“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now, dictation: Consciousness operates with what you may call code (spelled) systems. These are beyond count. Consciousness differentiates itself, therefore, by operating within certain code systems that help direct particular kinds of focus, bringing in certain kinds of significances³ while blocking out other data.

All of the probabilities practically possible in human development are therefore present to some extent or another in each individual. Any biological or spiritual advancement that you might imagine will of course not come from any outside agency, but from within the heritage of consciousness made flesh. Generally, those alive in this century chose a particular kind of orientation. The species chose to specialize in certain kinds of physical manipulation, to devote its energies in certain directions. Those directions have brought forth a reality unique in its own fashion. Man has not driven himself down a blind alley, in other words. He has been studying the nature of his consciousness — using it as if it were apart from the rest of nature, and therefore seeing nature and the world in a particular light.⁶ That light has finally made him feel isolated, alone, and to some extent relatively powerless (intently).

Each system, of course, brings forth its own culture, “technology,” art, and science. The physical body is basically equipped to maintain itself as a healthy long-living organism far beyond your present understanding, medically speaking. The cellular comprehension⁸ provides all kinds of inner therapeutics that operate quite naturally. There is a physical give-and-take between the body and environment beyond that which you recognize; an inner dynamics here that escapes you, that unites the health of plants, animals, and men. In the most simple and mundane of examples, if you are living in a fairly well-balanced, healthy environment, your houseplants and your animals will also be well. You form your environment and you are a part of it. You react to it, often forgetting that relationship. Ideally, the body has the capacity to keep itself in excellent health — but beyond that, to maintain itself at the highest levels of physical achievement. The exploits of your greatest athletes give you a hint of the body’s true capacity. In your system of beliefs, however, those athletes must train and focus all of their attention in that direction, often at the expense of other portions of their own experience. But their performances show you what the body is capable of.

The body is equipped, ideally again now, to rid itself of any diseases, and to maintain its stability into what you would call advanced old age, with only a gradual overall change. At its best, however, the change would bring about spiritual alterations. When you leave for a vacation, for example, you close down your house. In these ideal terms, death would involve a closing down of your [physical] house; it would not be crumbling about you.

Under certain conditions, therefore, the body can maintain itself while the “main consciousness” is away from it. The body consciousness is quite able, then, to provide the overall equilibrium. At certain levels of the sleep state this does in fact happen. In sleepwalking the body is active, but the main consciousness is not “awake.” It is not manipulating the body. The main consciousness is elsewhere. Under such conditions the body can perform tasks and often maneuver with an amazing sense of balance. This finesse, again, hints at physical abilities not ordinarily used. The main consciousness, because of its beliefs, often hampers such manipulability in normal waking life.

(10:24.) Consciousness connected with the flesh, then, has great leeway spiritually and biologically, and can focus itself in many ways with and through the flesh, beside your own particular orientation. There have been highly sophisticated, developed civilizations that would not be apparent to you because the main orientation was mental or psychic, while the physical race itself would seem to be highly undeveloped.

He has put to the test much of what he has learned. His own personality has blossomed in all aspects, especially in terms of relating with others and in personal creativity … He has been testing out our information in the world that he knows. He felt that it was necessary … For how could the self, taught that it was bad, bring forth good?

2. In Personal Reality, see sessions 623–25 in Chapter 5. In Oversoul Seven, see the material in Chapter 12, for example, wherein Jane described not only the airborne movement of objects — rocks — but an “extra tension” in the air itself, “as if a million vowels and syllables rose into the air, all glittering, all … alive; like animals of sound….”

The 699th session, in Volume 1, dealt in part with dream images and subjective dream “photographs.” I used Note 1 for that session to insert one of my favorite Jane poems: My Dreaming Self. She wrote it in 1965, a year and a half or so after beginning the Seth material. Now I can add that at the time Jane actually wrote two poems on dreaming; I’ve been saving the second one for use in Volume 2.