“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Dictation. The whole idea of probable realities seems strange or esoteric only because you are not used to following your own thought processes.

(Pause.) You have become so hypnotized by a one-level kind of thought that anything else seems impractical. You concentrate upon those decisions that you make, and disregard the processes involved. This has been carried to an extreme, you see: Often you are so disconnected from those inner workings that your own decisions then appear to come from someplace else. You may be convinced that events happen to you, and are beyond your control, simply because you are so out of touch with yourself that you never catch the moments of your own decisions.

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.

New paragraph (as Seth often declares). When you identify with only one particular level of your thought processes, however, the others — when you sense them — appear alien. You begin to feel threatened, determined to uphold your old ideas of selfhood. Plants grow many leaves. One leaf does not threaten the existence of others, and the plant is not jealous of its own foliage. So there is no need to protect your own individuality because it may send out other shoots into probable realities. This is simply the self growing in different directions, spreading its seeds.

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

(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.

“You are meant to judge physical reality. You are meant to realize that it is a materialization of your thoughts and feelings and images, that the inner self forms that world. In your terms, you cannot be allowed to go into other dimensions until you have learned the great power of your thoughts and subjective feelings. So even when you think you destroy, you destroy nothing. And when you think you kill, you kill nothing. When you imagine that you can annihilate a reality, you can only assault it as you know it. The reality itself will continue to exist.

“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.