“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At noontime that Friday, then, Jane told me that she was going into another altered or enhanced state of consciousness. We were eating lunch. She compared her feelings with those heightened perceptions she’d enjoyed so much yesterday and Wednesday in connection with the birth of Politics. Even though her state of awareness was still growing, Jane decided that she wanted to ride downtown with me after we’d finished eating; I planned to pick up one of our typewriters at a repair shop, then buy some groceries. Already she was so “loose” that she noticed an unsteadiness in her walking. “It’s as though the floor’s rising up beneath my feet, supporting my weight, but in a way that I’m not used to,” she said. She was enchanted.

(As I drove east on Water Street, heading for the center of Elmira, Jane exclaimed again and again over the new beauty she was discovering in her world. A bit later I plan to quote from her own notes some of the details of her transcendent perceptions; but by the time I’d secured the typewriter, then driven over to the supermarket at Langdon Plaza, she didn’t think she could get out of the car. Nor did she want to try doing anything that might interrupt the magnificence of her greatly expanded state of consciousness. For all the while she was having the most profound group of experiences in seeing, feeling, and knowing the ordinary physical world about her.

(Jane’s “adventure in consciousness” was so rich,⁵ even from my observer’s viewpoint, that my attempts to describe it seem terribly inadequate by comparison. In this session Seth discusses to some extent the whole subject of her psychic growth.)

Ruburt has allowed a portion of his this-life consciousness to go off on a tangent, so to speak, on another path into another system of actuality (i.e., into his psychic library). His life there is as valid as his existence in your world. In the waking state he is able, now, to alter the direction of his focus precisely enough to bring about a condition in which he perceives both realities simultaneously. He is just beginning, so as yet he is only occasionally conscious of that other experience. He is, however, aware of it now in the back of his mind more or less constantly. It does not intrude upon the world that he knows, but enriches it.

The concepts in “Unknown” Reality will help expand the consciousness of each of its readers, and the work itself is presented in such a manner that it automatically pulls your awareness out of its usual grooves, so that it bounces back and forth between the standardized version of the world you accept, and the unofficial⁷ versions that are sensed but generally unknown to you.

Now as Ruburt delivers this material, the same thing happens in a different way to him, so that in some respects he has been snapping back and forth between dimensions, practicing with the elasticity of his consciousness; and in this book more than in previous ones his consciousness has been sent out further, so to speak. The delivery of the material itself has helped him to develop the necessary flexibility for his latest pursuits.

(At a slower pace:) He is consciously entering into another room of the psyche, and also entering into the reality that corresponds to it. This brings the two experiences together so that they coincide. They are held, however, both separately and in joint focus. As a rule you use one particular level of awareness, and this correlates all of your conscious activities. I told you that the physical body itself was able to pick up other neurological messages beside those to which you usually react.⁸ Now let me add that when a certain proficiency is reached in alterations of consciousness, this allows you to become practically familiar with some of these other neurological messages. In such a way Ruburt is able to physically perceive what he is doing in his “library.”

Ruburt and Joseph chose to specialize, so to speak, in precisely those excursions or explorations that are secondary to others. The focus of each of their consciousnesses therefore was made up of a certain kind of mixture that made such probabilities, in your terms, possible as prime incentives.

(Long pause, eyes closed, at 10:56.) Each person is at his place or her place. You are where you are because your consciousness formed that kind of reality. Your whole physical situation will be geared to it, and your neurological structure will follow the habitual pattern. As you learn to throw aside old concepts you will begin to experience the evidence for other levels of reality, and become aware of other “messages” that you have previously blocked. A certain portion of Ruburt’s training period is over. The entire focus of his personality now accepts the validity of many worlds — and this means in practical terms.

I have told you many times that your consciousness is not stationary, but ever-moving and creative, so that each of you through your life moves through your psyche. Your physical experience is correspondingly altered.

This afternoon, Monday, I decided upon a nap once again, and once again I was aware of myself as the Roman officer; at least I thought I was that individual. I entered into a sequel to the first vision: I felt myself floating face down in the Mediterranean with my hands tied behind my back. I knew that I’d been deliberately thrown into the sea. I cut off my awareness of the experience right there, possibly to avoid undergoing my own death in that life. From the safety of the cot in my studio, I didn’t panic as that other me faced such a life-threatening situation, yet I was disturbed by it — enough so that I repressed conscious recall of the whole episode until the evening after this (715th) session was held. I’m citing it here so that I can present my “first and second Romans,” as I call them, together.

4. Jane’s declaration of the “super-real” aspects of her ecstatic state, that “The world is so much more solid right now,” soon had me hunting for relevant material I remembered Seth giving, but couldn’t place. I found two sources in Seth Speaks. In Chapter 7, see the 530th session for May 20, 1970, at 10:02: “There are realities that are ‘relatively more valid’ than your own … your physical table [for example] would appear as shadowy in contrast … You would have a sort of “supertable” in those terms. Yours is not a system of reality formed by the most intense concentration of energy … Other portions of yourself, therefore, of which you are not consciously aware, do inhabit what you could call a super-system of reality in which consciousness learns to handle and perceive much stronger concentrations of energy….”

5. So far in Volume 2, I’ve mentioned the inner senses (as described by Seth) in Note 5 for Session 709, and Note 6 for Appendix 18. Seth came through with No. 6, Innate Knowledge of Basic Reality, in the 40th session for April 1, 1964: “This is an extremely rudimentary sense. It is concerned with the entity’s working knowledge of the basic vitality of the universe … Without this sixth sense and its constant use by the inner self, you could not construct the physical camouflage universe. You can compare this sense with instinct, although it is concerned with the innate knowledge of the entire universe.”

“He [Ruburt-Jane] has an ability to identify with others, and communicate. He has always been mentally quick and intellectually agile. As a youngster he received the messages from others so quickly that he was diagnosed as having an overactive thyroid gland. Actually, he was receiving “unofficial” messages that are usually neurologically censored. He could not allow them to become conscious in that world….”

11. In Note 5 for Session 692, in Volume 1, I refer to Seth’s term, “species of consciousness,” and the links between his material in that session and this one.