“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause.) It might help here if you imagine the psyche again as some multidimensional living television set. In what seems to be the small space of the screen many programs are going on, though you can tune in to only one at a time.

Think again of the psyche in the manner mentioned, taking it for granted that the program now on the screen is a fully dimensioned reality, and that hidden somehow in its very elements are all of the other programs not showing. These are not lined up in space behind the “front” program, but in a completely different way contained within it. The point of any image at any given time in the picture showing might represent, for example, a top hat on a table. Everyone acting in that scene would view the hat and the table, and react accordingly with their own individual characteristics.

Now imagine that the picture on the television screen shows your own universe. Your idea of space travel would be to send a ship from one planet, earth, outward into the rest of space that you perceive on that “flat” screen. Even with your projected technology, this would involve great elements of time. Imagine here, now, that the screen’s picture is off-center to begin with, so that everything is distorted to some extent, and going out into space seems to be going backward into time.

(Pause.) If the picture were magically centered, then all “time” would be seen to flow out from the instant moment⁴ of perception, the private now; and in many ways the mass now, or mass perception, represents the overall now-point of your planet. From that now, “time” goes out in all probable directions. Actually it also goes inward in all probable directions.

(Slowly:) The simple picture of the universe that you see on our screen, therefore, represents a view from your own now perspective — but each star, planet, galaxy or whatever is made up of other reference points in which, to put it simply, the same patterns have different kinds of reality. True space travel would of course be time-space travel,⁵ in which you learned how to use points in your own universe as “dimensional clues” that would serve as entry points into other worlds. Otherwise you are simply flying like an insect around the outside of the television set, trying to light on the fruit, say, that is shown upon the screen — and wondering, like a poor bemused fly, why you cannot. You use one main focus in your reality. In the outside world this means that you have a “clear picture.” (Humorously:) There is no snow! That physical program is the one you are acting in, alive in, and it is the one shown on the screen. The screen is the part of your psyche upon which you are concentrating. You not only tune in the picture but you also create the props, the entire history of the life and times, hyphen — but in living three-dimensional terms, and “you” are within that picture.

There are space-time coordinates that operate from your viewpoint — and space travel from the standpoint of your time, made along the axis of your space, will be a relatively sterile procedure. (In parentheses: Some reported instances of UFO’s happened in the past as far as the visitors were concerned, but appeared as images or realities in your present. This involves craft sightings only.* )

Give us time … When you change your ordinary television set from one station to another you may encounter snow or distortion. If something is wrong with the set you may simply tune in patterns that seem meaningless and carry no particular program. You may have sound without a picture, and sometimes even a picture but sound from another program. So when you begin to experiment with states of altered consciousness you often run into the same kind of phenomena, when nothing seems to make sense.

Nothing exists outside the psyche, however, that does not exist within it, and there is no unknown world that does not have its psychological or psychic counterpart. Man learned to fly as he tried to exteriorize inner experience, for in out-of-body states in dreams he had long been familiar with flight. All excursions into outer reality come as the psyche attempts to reproduce in any given “exterior” world the inner freedom of its being.

(“I get the strangest feeling of ‘folded time’ during the sessions,” Jane continued “I’m caught. I can get more on the book or some on me. I don’t know what to do. I know the book stuff is all right there — but it takes time to get it. It’s too bad I can’t get it instantaneously.⁸ I really want both sets of material, so I guess I’ll wait and see what happens….”

Now: Ruburt was validly involved in the erection of that building, and he did indeed travel through various dimensions in which the objects in one represented something entirely different in another. He used the particular symbols, however, simply to bring the theory home to him, but it represented the fact that any given object in one dimension has its own reality in another. You cannot move through time and space without altering the focus of your psyche. (Intently:) When you so alter that focus, however, you also change the exterior reality that you then experience.

He was determined to find the kind of mate that would best suit him and his own unique characteristics. That intent was in his mind. When that challenge was met he used his will and mobilized all of his power to fulfill his abilities, and to bring about conditions in which he hoped Joseph (as Seth calls me) could also fulfill his. The will, again, operates according to the personality’s beliefs about reality, so its desires are sometimes tempered as those beliefs change. In his own way Ruburt always concentrated upon one challenge at a time — boring in, so to speak, and ignoring anything else that might distract him.

Ruburt does not like [some personal aspects] of his plan on the one hand. On the other it was part of his method, a way of intensifying focus, increasing perception in a small area while also ensuring safety, so that inner excursions would be balanced by [conditions in his exterior environment] … He sees that the challenge has been won, and now it is time to take up the next one, to apply the power of the will to certain physical areas.

You [Joseph]] were determined to find the kind of relationship you have with Ruburt, the kind of bond your parents never had,¹² and you applied the power of your will in that direction. At the same time you were determined to set yourself apart from the world to some extent, while still maintaining and developing an emotional contact with a mate that would be unlike any in your earlier experience. Creativity would have to be involved. You were also intrigued, determined to travel into the nature of reality, and at least glimpse a vague picture of what it could be. In this probability you provided yourself with a background that included sports and the love of the body, knowing [those qualities] would sustain you.

There are times in history when the species deals with different kinds of challenges. In programmed societies where “each man or woman knows his or her place,” then the will knows which directions to follow, though other conditions and prerogatives might be ignored. Actually, in your own society there are many prerogatives….

what time unmanifest