“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

That inner, all-pervasive existence becomes known to the extent that you grow more responsive to your own inner environment. This does not mean that you become entirely self-centered, blind to the rest of the world. It does not mean that you must meditate for hours, or study your own thought processes with such vigor that you ignore other activities. It simply means that you are aware of your own life as clearly as possible — in touch with your thought processes, aware of them but without overdue concern or overanalysis. They are as much a part of your inner environment as trees are of your exterior world. There are different species of selves in the same fashion. There are different species of worlds.

In a probable reality, a Ruburt and a Joseph now live there. In the world that you recognize as official, however, they moved into the hill house. To some extent both of them are aware of the inner processes involved in the final decision. I do not mean that they are simply familiar with the exterior thought processes involved, such as: “The hill house is better constructed,” or “It has a fine view.” I am speaking of deeper mechanisms of consideration (pause), in which correlations are made between interior and exterior realities. (Pause.) It is obvious that when you move from one place to another you make an alteration in space — but you alter time as well, and you set into motion a certain psychological impetus that reaches out to affect everyone you know. (Long pause.) When a house is vacant all of the people in the neighborhood send out their own messages. To a certain extent any given inhabited area forms its own “entity.” This applies to the smallest neighborhood⁴ and to the greatest nation. Such messages are often encountered in the dream state. Empty houses are psychic vacancies that yearn to be filled. When you move, you move into other portions of your own selfhood.⁵

(The tenor of Seth’s material tonight led me to think that he was close to finishing “Unknown” Reality, but since Jane evidently didn’t feel that way I said nothing about it. Resume at 10:29.)

In fact, you move into new areas of the self all of the time. The species is now entering such a phase, a period in which it will come more into its own. Mankind will be entering its own new house, then — but the physical changes will be the results of interior ones, and alterations in main lines of probabilities.

Theories of probabilities will be seen as practical, workable, psychological facts, giving leeway and freedom to the individual, who will no longer feel at the mercy of external events — but will realize instead that he (or she) is their initiator.

If they become ill, they will do so knowing they choose the condition in order to emphasize certain areas of development, or to minimize others. They will be aware of their options, comma, consciously. The great strength and resiliency of the body will be much better understood; not because medical science makes spectacular discoveries — though it will — but because the mind’s alliance with the body will be seen more clearly.

Atlantis is a land that you want to inhabit, appearing in your literature, your dreams, and your fantasies,⁸ serving as an impetus for development. It is real and valid. In your terms it is not “yet” physical fact, but in some ways it is more real than any physical fact, for it is a psychic blueprint.⁹

It carries also, however, the imprint of your fears, for the tales say that Atlantis was destroyed. You place it in your past while it exists in your future. Not the destruction alone, but the entire pattern seen through the framework of your beliefs. Beside this, however, many civilizations have come and gone in somewhat the same manner, and the “myth” [of Atlantis] is based somewhat then on physical fact in your terms.¹⁰

(Loudly and with amusement:) I have plenty of comments about your personal situations, but I wanted to get back into the book first.

(End at 11:10 P.M. Jane’s trance had been excellent. “You don’t have to put this in,” she said, “but I feel like I do every once in a while — I really let it out — I feel relieved and ready to collapse.

(“I don’t know why, but I sometimes think that it’s a tremendous strain to do this — have these sessions, and so forth — but I’m determined to explore this reality as much as I can, to get all I can out of it. Then sometimes I think there’s nothing to it. Everyone has their hassles, so why should I have any more — or less? I really think I have less trouble than a lot of people.”

(I read to Jane the few paragraphs of material Seth had given on Atlantis. Both of us thought it quite sensible, although it brought up questions I’ll get to shortly. I’ll have to admit that we cringe a bit when Seth talks about cultish concepts like Atlantis. We always think that such beliefs, while serving a variety of quite legitimate creative and psychic purposes, are very likely to be more mythic than physically factual. The word “physically” is important here. From these remarks it’s easy to see that we feel much more comfortable with the ideas about Atlantis that Seth advanced in this session. “He’s got more on it, too,” Jane said now, but she didn’t go back into trance.

(Questions of reincarnation enter in also. Seth has connected himself with Atlantis only once, but he did so very definitely; from the 588th session for Chapter 22 of Seth Speaks: “I was … born in Atlantis.” Jane and I felt those same uneasy twinges then, too, but chose not to explore them at that time.

(After this evening’s session, however, we decided we’d like to know why in Seth’s view Atlantis had moved from its long, if uneasy residence in our “historical past” forward into a future probable reality. We resolved to ask him to explain — but strangely enough, I note later, a month passed before we got around to a session on the subject. By then, Seth had been through with “Unknown” Reality for three weeks. Now I refer the reader to Note 11 for quotations from the session, the 747th, in question.)

“Now I am going to say good evening shortly, but remember — you call this your universe and your reality, and it is indeed, for you form it. Within you also is the knowledge of other great experiments that are being tried, just as other probable systems are aware of the experiments you are involved with. I am speaking in your terms only, which means that to some extent I am hedging — but other civilizations have gone your route. Some have failed, but the inhabitants of some earths have succeeded very well.

“As you think of it, your future is not set. You can follow any road you choose, but — until you realize that as individuals you each form your own personal life, and have a part in the mass creation of reality — there is much learning ahead for you. This is a lesson you are meant to fully understand within physical reality.

“Because you cannot follow a thought, you wonder where it has gone; has it fallen off some invisible cliff in your mind? But because you can no longer hold that thought in consciousness does not mean it no longer exists, that it does not have a reality of its own, for it does indeed. And if a world escapes you — if you cannot follow it and think it has been destroyed — then the same thing applies to the world as to the thought. It continues to live.

11. I found it quite difficult to extract from the 747th session the material I wanted for this note on Atlantis, so interwound is it with closely related information on early man and animal kingdoms, the expanding-universe theory, archaeology, Jane’s other work, All That Is, and so forth. (Some of those topics have been discussed in earlier sessions or notes, but no such references are given here, nor is any new backup material offered.)

“Those species did not vie for domination of the earth, but simply shared the same general environment with the more sophisticated groupings beyond their own perimeters. There were many highly technical human cultures, but in your terms not on a global scale. The legend of Atlantis is actually based upon several such civilizations. No particular civilization is the basis, however. Apart from that, the legend as picked up, so to speak, by Plato (see Appendix 14) was a precognition of the future probability, an image of an inner civilization of the mind actually projected outward into the future, where it would be used as a blueprint, dash — the lost grandeur, as, in other terms, Eden became the lost garden of paradise.

“Ruburt has implied in [his novel] The Education of Oversoul Seven that some archaeological discoveries about the past (underlined) are not discovered in your present because they do not exist yet. Now such concepts are difficult to explain in my kind of prose, and in your language. But in certain terms, the ruins of Atlantis have not been found because they have not been placed in your past yet, from the future.

“In your terms, from your present you ‘plant’ images, tales, legends, ‘at any given time,’ that seem to come from the past, but are actually like ghost images from the future, for you to follow or disregard as you choose.

“In that kind of framework, how can I explain an Atlantis? It exists both in your past and future, a probable world that some of you will choose from a model placed in the past of your future — partially based upon fact, in your terms, but with its greatest validity lying in its possibilities.”