“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The rockbed reality is the one in which the perceiver is focused. From that standpoint all others would seem peripheral. Taking that for granted, however, any given reality system will be surrounded by its probability clusters. These can almost be thought of as satellites. Time and space need not be connected, however — that is, the attractions that exist between a reality and any given probability cluster may have nothing to do with time and space at all. The closest probability satellite to any given reality may, for example, be in an entirely different universe altogether. (Pause.) In that regard, you may find brethren more or less like yourselves outside of your own universe — as you think of it — rather than inside it. You imagine your universe as extending outward in space (and backwards in time). You think of it as an exteriorized manifestation, expanding perhaps, but in an exterior rather than an interior fashion.¹

Give us time … Your universe is only one of many. Each one creates probable versions of itself. When you journey on the earth you move around the outside of it. So far, your ideas of space travel involve that kind of surface navigation. Earth trips, however, are made with the recognition of their surface nature.² When you think in terms of traveling to other planets or to other galaxies, though, the same kind of surface travel is involved. As closely as I can explain it in your terms, your concepts of space travel have you going around space rather than directly through it.

(9:40.) Give us time … You are also viewing your solar system through your own time perspective, which is relative. You “look backward into time,” you say, when you stare outward into the universe. You could as well look into the future, of course. Your own coordinates³ close you off from recognizing that there are indeed other intelligences alive even within your own solar system. You will never meet them in your exterior reality, however, for you are not focused in the time period of their existence. You may physically visit the “very same planet” on which they reside, but to you the planet will appear barren, or not able to support life.

In the same way, others can visit your planet with the same results. There is then a whole great inner dimension even to the space that you know, that you do not perceive. There are intelligent beings outside of your own galaxy, “adjacent” to you. Theoretically, you can visit them with some vast improvements in your technology, but great amounts of time would be involved. Others have visited your own planet in that particular fashion. Yours is still a linear technology. Some intelligent beings have visited your planet, finding not the world you know but a probable one.⁴ There are always feedbacks between probable systems. A dominant species in one may appear as a bizarre trace species in another. More will be said about this and your planet later in the book.⁵ The closest equivalent to your own kind of intelligence and being can actually be found not by following the outer skin of space, but by going through it, so to speak.

Give us time … There are, again, inner coordinates having to do with the inner behavior of electrons. If you understood these, then such travel could be relatively instantaneous. The coordinates that link you with others who are more or less of your kind have to do with psychic and psychological intersections that result in a like space-time framework.

(“But not through the earth?” I asked. Whereupon Seth repeated his last sentence three times. That was the answer he wanted to give.)

Now: In the same way you can be allied and in tune with other probabilities that do not coincide with your space-time axis. The exterior universe with its galaxies — as you understand it, and on that level of activity — can be encountered on certain rigid space-time coordinates. You can visit other planets only in your present (underlined). Your present may be the past or the future as far as inhabitants of a given planet are concerned. Your physical senses will only operate in their and your present.

“Effective” space travel, creative space travel on your part, will not occur until you learn that your space-time system is one focus. Otherwise you will seem to visit one dead world after another, blind to civilizations that may exist on any of them. Some of these difficulties could be transcended if you learned to understand the miraculous multidimensionality of even your own physical structure, and allowed your consciousness some of its greater freedom.

Theoretically, a thoroughly educated space traveler in your time, landing upon a strange planet, would be able to adjust his own consciousness so that he could perceive the planet in various “sequences” of time. If you land upon a planet in a spaceship and find volcanoes, you would, perhaps, realize that other portions of that planet might show different faces. You have confidence in your ability to move through space, so you might then explore the terrain that you could not see from your original landing point. If you did not understand the change in qualities of space, you might imagine that the whole planet was a giant volcano.

You do not understand as yet, however, that in a way you can move through time as you move through space — and until you understand that, you will not know the meaning of a true journey, or be able to thoroughly explore any planet — or any reality, including your own.

New paragraph. In class last evening Ruburt “picked up” messages that seemed to be too slow for his neurological structure. He was convinced that it would take many hours of your time in order to translate perhaps a simple clear paragraph of what he was receiving. He experienced some strain, feeling that each vowel and syllable was so drawn out, in your terms of time, that he must either slow down his own neurological workings to try to make some suitable adjustments. He chose the latter. Messages, therefore, perceptions, “came through” at one speed, so to speak, and he managed to receive them while translating them into a more comfortable, neurologically familiar speed.

What he was sensing, however, was an entirely different kind of reality. He was beginning to recognize another synapse [neuronal] pattern not “native”; he was familiarizing himself with perceptions at a different set of coordinate points. Such activity automatically alters the nature of time in your experience, and is indicative of intersections of your consciousness with another kind of consciousness. That particular type of consciousness operates “at different speeds” than your own. Biologically, your own physical structures are quite able to operate at those same speeds, though as a species you have disciplined yourselves to a different kind of neurological reaction. By altering such neurological prejudice,¹⁰ however, you can indeed learn to become aware of other realities that coincide with yours. Period.

Now: To some extent or another there are counterparts¹² of all realities within your psyche. When you slow down, or quicken your thoughts or your perceptions, you automatically begin to alter your focus, to step aside from your officially recognized existence. This is highly important, for in certain terms you are indeed transcending the time framework that you imagine to be so real.

Certain strains were involved that in one way were as natural as growing pains. This has nothing to do with so-called psychic phenomena, but the natural growth and development of a personality whenever it tries to go beyond its space and time context, and takes on challenges of such a nature.

The more prosaic elements of the personality then take whatever measures seem necessary at the time, while new orientation is tried out. These methods may seem to lead to great distortions, particularly in contrast with the sensed possibilities of development. In one way or another, however, they still provide a framework in which the personality feels itself free to pursue its goals. The built-in impetuses provide clue points. When the new sensed reality is strong enough to provide not only greater comprehensions but also to construct a new framework, then the old framework is seen as limiting, and discarded.

(Then later:) There is far more I could say. The time this evening does not permit it, though I can talk as long as you can write.

“Their time measurements, based on camouflage [physical information] to begin with, are almost riotously inadequate and bound to give distortive data, since the universe simply cannot be measured in those terms. The universe was not created at any particular time, but neither is it expanding into nowhere like an inflated balloon that grows forever larger — at least not along the lines now being considered. The expansion is an illusion, based among other things upon inadequate time measurements, and cause-and-effect theories; and yet in some manners the universe could be said to be expanding, but with entirely different connotations than are usually used.”

At the beginning of Appendix 12, see the longer presentation from the 44th session for Seth’s discussion of “the value climate of psychological reality” — the “medium” that spontaneously contains within it all of our camouflage constructions of space, time, growth, and durability. Note 2 for Appendix 12 also fits in here, especially Seth’s references within it to our endless questions about the beginning and ending of the physical universe.

In scientific terms, it doesn’t seem likely that the conflict between the two views will ever be resolved, or any decision reached that our universe may be an oscillating one, forever contracting and expanding. There are too many variables in measurement and interpretation, including the difficulties the human mind encounters when it attempts to grasp the enormous spans of time and space involved.

2. Just as he talks here about the surface nature of our travel, in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality Seth had a similar observation to make about our ideas of time; see the 688th session after 10:26: “Again, you live on the surface of the moments, with no understanding of the unrecognized and unofficial realities that lie beneath.”

6. In this particular case, subsequent correspondence seemed to confirm that the energy sent out by Jane had indeed been on target; its recipient reported quite beneficial results. I write “seemed to confirm” because we made no attempt to verify any results here except to check the time elements involved. Jane and I do our thing by ourselves. It would take a considerable organization of trained investigators, and much time, to thoroughly study the results of such projections of energy. There could be many reasons why the receiver would benefit from attempts to give that kind of assistance, though; one of them being the simple knowledge that someone else — the “sender,” Jane — cared enough to try to help. But we do think that more than just suggestion is involved.

A few days after the episode Seth describes in this session had taken place, Jane had another experience with such a beam of energy. This time she lay on her side facing north after we’d retired, for she wanted to send help to a very ill person in a small town in Canada. She felt the transmission go out from her forehead in a straight line toward its destination. She was physically uncomfortable as she lay on her left side, however, so after a few moments she turned over. The movement shut off the beam. After she’d settled down on her right side, she felt it go out again — but from the back of her head now, and still traveling truly north to its Canadian goal.

9. With some wonder I can write that our average-sized living room had been more than crowded last night: Well over 30 people were present for ESP class. Very few of them had witnessed one of Jane’s infrequent “long sound” sessions, as we call them, although a fair number had heard us describe the phenomenon at one time or another. Seth had also referred to it. I seldom take notes in class or use a tape recorder, preferring to be free to engage in the class’s spontaneous development. Usually quite a few people will tape a class, yet last night it happened that only two did so. The results were unfortunate, as I’ll explain later.

Jane had to renew her very strict control each time she tried to transmit long data, however; I could see that otherwise she’d slide into an extremely slow delivery. That happened often. Then it would take her many minutes to contend with a single syllable; her tongue worked persistently at the “sal” in “universal,” for example, but even so all that issued from her was an elongated hissing sound based upon the “s” alone.

As the evening passed Jane told class that she’d keep Seth’s “true reality rhythm-speed” to her left and, she hoped, would speak an understandable translation of it, speeded up for our cognition, to her right. “But I keep getting pulled back into a more true expression of Seth’s reality….” She could manage only a few words at a time from the Seth we were used to.

A note added later: Of course, nowhere in the 712th session did Seth come right out and say that in class the night before Jane had tried to express her version of his “own true reality.” Strange it may be, but I didn’t catch this during the session, nor did either of us notice it for some time afterward. And for whatever reasons, with the exception of one rather oblique reference at the end of this (712th) session, Seth himself chose to discuss the whole class adventure from quite a detached viewpoint.