“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.

To become familiar with the “unknown” reality you must to some extent grant that it exists, then, and be willing to step aside from your usual behavior. All of the methods given are quite natural, inherent in the body structure, and even biologically anticipated. Your consciousness could not leave your body and return to it again unless there were biological mechanisms that allowed for such a performance.

I have said (as at 9:48) that the body can indeed carry on, performing necessary maintenance activities while the main consciousness is detached from it. To some extent it can even perform simple chores. (Pause.) In sleep, in fact, it is not at all necessary that the main consciousness be alert in the body. Only in certain kinds of civilizations, for that matter, is such a close body-and-main-consciousness relationship necessary. There are other situations, therefore, in which consciousness ordinarily strays much further, returning to the body as a home station and basis of operation, relying upon it for certain kinds of perception only, but not depending upon it for the entire picture of reality. Physical life alone does not necessarily require the kind of identification of self with flesh that is your own.

(Slowly at 11:43:) While your consciousness is so engaged, your body consciousness performs many functions that are impossible for it during your waking hours. The greatest biological creativity takes place while you sleep, for example, and certain cellular functions¹⁰ are accelerated. Some such disengagement of your main consciousness and the body is therefore obviously necessary, or it would not occur. Sleeping is not a by-product of waking life.

(With many pauses:) Give us a moment … Such a performance actually means that physical reality clicks off and on.¹¹ In your terms, it exists only in your waking hours. The inner work that makes it possible is largely done in the sleep state. The meeting of body consciousness and your main consciousness requires an intense focus, in which the greatest manipulations are necessary. Perceptions must be precise in physical terms. To some extent, however, that exquisite concentration means that certain limitations occur. Cellular comprehension is not tuned into by the normally conscious self, which is equally unaware of its own free-wheeling nature at “higher” levels. So a disengagement process must happen that allows each to regenerate. The consciousness then leaves the body. The body consciousness stays with it.