“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Each particular “station” of consciousness perceives in a different kind of reality, and as mentioned earlier (in Session 711, for instance), you usually tune in to your home station most of the time. If you turn your focus only slightly away, the world appears differently; and if that slightly altered focus were the predominant one, then that is how the world would seem to be. Each aspect of the psyche perceives the reality upon which it is focused, and that reality is also the materialization of a particular state of the psyche projected outward. You can learn to encounter other realities by altering your position within your own psyche.

If you listen to an FM radio station, there is a handy lock-in gadget that automatically keeps the station in clear focus; it stops the program from “drifting.” In the same way, when you daydream you drift away from your home station, while still relating to it, generally speaking. You also have the mental equivalent, however, of the FM’s lock-in mechanism. On your part this is the result of training, so that if your thoughts or experience stray too far this mental gadget brings them back into line. Usually this is automatic — a learned response that by now appears to be almost instinctive. Period.

You must work from your own subjective experience, so when you find your own finest focus point, that is your clearest reception for your own home station. You may feel that it has a certain position in your inner vision, or in your head, or you may find that you have your own symbol to represent it. You might imagine it, if you want to, as a station indicator on your own radio or television set, but your subjective recognition of it is your own cue.

In our just-previous exercise, when I spoke of having you let your clear perception drop away, and told you to disconnect vision from hearing, you were drifting in terms of your own home station. Your consciousness was straying. This time begin with the point of your own finest focus, which you have established, then let your consciousness stray as given. Only let it stray in a particular direction — to the right or the left, whichever seems most natural to you. In this way you are still directing it and learning to orient yourself. In the beginning, 15 minutes at most for this exercise; but let your awareness drift in whatever direction you have chosen.

Each person will have his or her own private experience here, but gradually certain kinds of physical data will seem to disappear while others may take prominence. For example, you might mentally hear sounds, while knowing they have no physical origin. You may see nothing in your mind, or you may see images that seem to have no exterior correlation, but you may hear nothing. For a while ordinary physical data may continue to intrude. When it does, recognize it as your home station, and mentally let yourself drift further away from it. What is important is your own sensation as you experience the mobility of your consciousness. If ever you grow concerned simply return to your home station, back to the left or right according to the direction you have chosen. I do not suggest that you use “higher” or “lower” as directions, because of the interpretations that you may have placed upon them through your beliefs.

The first journey from one home station to another, unfamiliar one may bring you in contact with various kinds of bleed-throughs, distortions, or static. These can be expected. They are simply the result of not yet learning how to tune your own consciousness clearly in to other kinds of focus. Before you can pick up the “next” station, for example, you may see ghost images in your mind, or pick up distorted versions from your own home station. You have momentarily dispensed with the usual, habitual organizational process by which you unite regular physical sense perceptions, so while you are “between stations,” you may well encounter mixed signals from each. When you alter your conscious focus in such a fashion, you are also moving away from the part of your psyche that you consider its center. You are journeying through your own psyche, in other words, for different realities are different states of the psyche — materialized, projected outward and experienced. That applies to your home station or physical world as well.

Even your home station has many programs, and you have usually tuned in to one main one and ignored others. Characters in your “favorite program” at home may appear in far different guises when you are between stations, and elements of other programs that you have ignored at home may suddenly become apparent to you.

(Pause.) I will give you a simple example. At home you may tune in to religious programs. That means that you might organize your daily existence about highly idealistic principles. You may try to ignore what you consider other programs dealing with hatred, fear, or violence. You might do such a good job of organizing your physical data about your ideal that you shut out any emotions that involve fear, violence, or hatred. When you alter your consciousness, again, you automatically begin to let old organizations of data drop away. You may have tuned out what you think of as negative feelings or programming. These, however, may have been present but ignored, and when you dispense with your usual method of organizing physical data they may suddenly become apparent.

In your home station, events are encountered clearly in space and time. When you move away, however, you may meet events in time but not in space, and reality that you have tried to deny may then appear vividly. If you understand this you can gain immeasurably, for as you move your focus away from your organized reality, other portions of it upon which you have not concentrated will come into view.

This can show you what was missing from your home station if you know how to read the clues. You form your home station according to your beliefs. If you firmly believe, again, that sex is wrong, then your home station may involve you in a life “programming” in which you constantly try to deny the vitality of the flesh. The sight of a nude body might upset you. You might undress in the dark, or think, if you are married, of the sexual act of intercourse as dirty. If you are a man, you might be ashamed of what you consider to be your need.

I have an example in point. A young man I will call Joe wrote Ruburt a letter. He left his home in San Francisco to travel to India to study with a guru. He has been told that sexual desire mitigates against spiritual illumination. His home program involves him with no sex whatsoever. Joe tries desperately to abstain. At the same time, when he meditates and alters his consciousness, he immediately finds himself with a blinding headache, images of nude women, and fantasies of female goddesses out to tempt him from his celibate state.

Joe thinks of such images as very wrong. Instead, they are telling him something — that his home program is impoverished, for he has been denying the reality of his being.³ If he ignores the advice of his psyche, then his journeys into the unknown reality will be highly distorted. Seductive goddesses will follow him wherever he goes.