“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This frequently happens in the dream state, although such a performance can be achieved in varying altered states of consciousness. At such times consciousness simply puts itself in a different relationship with time and space. The physical body cannot follow, however. It is by altering its own relationship with the physical universe that consciousness can best understand its own properties, and glimpse from another vantage point that physical universe, where it will be seen in a different light. Operating outside the body, consciousness can better perceive the properties of matter. It cannot (intently) experience matter, however, in the same fashion as it can when it is physically oriented.

From your ordinary point of view the traveling consciousness is off-focus, not locked into physical coordinates in the designated fashion. The so-called inner world can be at least theoretically explored, however, in just such a way. Consciousness “unlocks” itself for a while from its usual coordinates. When this happens the out-of-body traveler is not simply out of his or her corporal form. The person steps out of usual context. Even if an individual leaves the body and wanders about the room no more than a few feet away from where the body is located,³ there are alterations, dash — the relationship of consciousness to the room is different. The relationship of the individual to time and space has altered. Time out of the body is “free time” by your standards. You do not age, for example, although this effect varies according to certain principles. I will mention these later.⁴

Any discussion of the unknown reality must necessarily involve certain usually dismissed hypotheses about the characteristics of consciousness itself. The world as you know it is the result of a complicated set of “codes” (as given at the beginning of the last session), each locked in one to the other, each one in those terms dependent upon the others. Your precise perceived universe in all of its parts, then, results from coded patterns, each one fitting perfectly into the next. Alter one of these and to some extent you step out of that context (underlined). Any event of any kind that does not directly, immaculately intersect with your space-time continuum, does not happen, in your terms, but falls away. It becomes probable in your system but seeks its own “level,” and becomes actualized as it falls into place in another reality whose “coded sequence” fits its own. Period.

(Pause at 10:10.) When consciousness leaves the body, therefore, it alters some of the coordinates. There are various questions involving the nature of perception that then occur, and these will be discussed somewhat later (but see Note 4). Consciousness is equipped to focus its main energy, in your terms at least, generally within the body, or to stray from it for varying amounts of time. Theoretically, your human consciousness can take many different roads while still maintaining its physical base. In far-past historical times, different kinds of orientation were experimented with (as by the “sleepwalkers” described in the last session, for instance). Your own present private experience can give hints and clues about such other cultures, for those abilities reside within the natural framework, now, but are underdeveloped.

Dictation: We will be discussing alternate methods of orientation that consciousness can take when allied with flesh, trying to give the reader some personal experience with such altered conditions, along with a brief history of some civilizations that utilized these unofficial orientations as their predominant method of focus.