“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause.) The unknown reality is a variation of the one that you know, so that many of its features are latent rather than predominant in your own private and mass experience. Any encounter with such phenomena will then include a bringing-into-focus of elements that are usually not concentrated upon. Your consciousness must learn to organize itself in more than one fashion — or rather, you must be willing to allow your consciousness to use itself more fully. It is not necessarily a matter of trying to ignore the contents of the world, or to deny your physical perception. Instead, the trick is to view the contents of the world in different fashions, to free your physical senses from the restraints that your mental conventions have placed upon them.

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.

In order to begin, you must first become familiar with the working of your own consciousness as it is directed toward the physical world. You cannot know when you are in focus with another reality if you do not even realize what it feels like to be in full focus with your own. Many people phase in and out of that state without being aware of it, and others are able to keep track of their own “inner drifting.” Here, simple daydreaming represents a slight shift of awareness out of directly given sense data.

You must learn to use this mechanism consciously for your own purposes, for it is extremely handy. Many of you do not pay attention to your own experience, subjectively speaking, so you drift in and out of clear focus in this reality, barely realizing it. Often your daily program is not nearly as clear or well-focused as it should be, but full of static; and while this may annoy you, you often put up with it or even become so used to the lack of harmony that you forget what a clear reception is like. However, in this world you are surrounded by familiar objects, details, and ideas, and your main orientation is physical so that you can operate through habit alone even when you are not as well focused within your reality as you should be.

Sit with your eyes open easily, letting your vision take in whatever is before you. Do not strain. On the other hand, do explore the entire field of vision simultaneously. Listen to everything. Identify all the sounds if you can, mentally placing them with the objects to which they correspond even though the objects may be invisible. Sit comfortably but make no great attempt to relax. Instead, feel your body in an alert manner — not in a sleepy distant fashion. Be aware of its pressure against the chair, for example, and of its temperature, of variations: Your hands may be warm and your feet cold, or your belly hot and your head cold. Consciously, then, feel your body’s sensations. Is there any taste in your mouth? What odors do you perceive?

Take as much time as you want to with this exercise. It places you in your universe clearly. This is an excellent exercise to use before you begin — and after you finish with — any experiment involving an alteration of consciousness.

When you are using this exercise following any experiment with an alteration of consciousness, then end it here and go about your other concerns. You may also utilize it as an initial step that will help you get the feeling of your own inner mobility. To do this proceed as given, and when you have the moment’s perception as clearly as possible, then willfully let it go.

Let the unity disappear as far as your conscious thought is concerned. No longer connect up the sounds you hear with their corresponding objects. Make no attempt to unify vision and hearing. Drop the package, as it were, as a unified group of perceptions. The previous clarity of the moment will have changed into something else. Take one sound if you want to, say of a passing car, and with your eyes closed follow the sound in your mind. Keep your eyes closed. Become aware of whatever perceptions reach you, but this time do not judge or evaluate. Then in a flash open your eyes, alert your body, and try to bring all of your perceptions together again as brilliantly and clearly as possible.

When you have done this often enough so that you are intimately aware of the contrast, you will have a subjective feeling, a point of knowing within yourself, that will clearly indicate to you how your consciousness feels when it is at its finest point of focus in physical reality.

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.

Do not be impatient. As you continue with this exercise over a period of time you will be able to go further away, orienting yourself as you grow more familiar with the feeling of your mind. Gradually you will discover that this inner sense data will become clearer and clearer as you move toward another “station.” It will represent reality as perceived from a different state of consciousness.

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.

(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.

This is most apparent with those who use the Ouija board or automatic writing as methods to alter consciousness.

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.