“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In that previous book I discussed the ways in which you form your private experience through your beliefs. You have certain pet ideas, therefore, and you use them to structure your own world view of the reality you know. It is important that you understand what your own beliefs are. Many of them might work quite well “at home,” but when you begin to journey away from that home station you may find that those same ideas impede your progress.

You are familiar with your own view of the world. As you leave your usual orientation, however, altering the focus of your consciousness, you may very well structure your new experience just as you do your physical one. At the same time, you are more free. You have greater leeway. You are used to projecting your beliefs onto physical objects and events. When you leave your home station, those objects and events no longer present themselves in the same fashion.

(Intently:) You often find yourself encountering your own structures, no longer hidden in the kind of experience with which you are familiar. These may then appear in quite a different light. You may be convinced that you are evil simply because you are physical. You may believe that the soul “descends” into the body, and therefore that the body is lower, inferior, and a degraded version of “what you really are.” At the same time your own physical being knows better, and basically cannot accept such a concept.² So in daily life you may project this idea of unworth outward onto another person, who seems then to be your enemy; or upon another nation. In general, you might select animals to play the part of the enemy, or members of another religion, or political parties.

If you are normally capable of dealing with physical reality, you will encounter no difficulties in alterations of consciousness, or leaving your home station. Be reasonable, however: If you have difficulties in New York City, you are most apt to encounter them in a different form no matter where else you might travel. A change of environment might help clear your head by altering your usual orientation, so that you can see yourself more clearly, and benefit. The same applies when you leave your home station. Here the possible benefits are far greater than in usual life and travel, but you are still yourself. It is impossible not to structure reality in some fashion. Reality implies a structuring.

Many people, however, remembering a dark dream, become frightened. You even structure your dreams, of course. For that matter, your dream world is as varied as the physical one. Each physical photographer has an idea of what he wants to capture on film, and so to that extent he structures his picture and his view. The same applies to the dream state. You have all kinds of dreams. You can take what you want, so to speak, from dream reality, as basically you take what you want from waking life. For that reason, your dream snapshots will show you the kind of experience that you are choosing from inner reality.

Next, I ask myself how such a marvelously structured being can think of its image as inferior to anything, especially since we’re far from understanding it even on a “mere” physical basis, let alone from any sort of nonphysical standpoint. Jane’s own abilities, for instance, raise questions about certain biological attributes as well as mental ones; in large part our society still doesn’t want to contend with such challenges at this time.