“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] They are conscious of themselves, but they are not conscious of themselves in relation to other selves. They are conscious of needs and drives, and of their existence. They are different from the inner ego or director in that the inner ego is conscious not only of itself, but of the outer ego, and is aware of the existence of the outer world, although not too much concerned with it unless the whole self becomes jeopardized through the actions of the outer ego.

When the outer ego, from the surface of its consciousness, reflects the outer world, it sees reflections of the inner ego which are the images within its own eye; and as the self creates matter subconsciously within its own eye, and as the self creates matter subconsciously and not consciously, and as the self creates matter in line with inner and not outer expectations, so then does the ego, in viewing the material universe, come face to face with the face of its own inner ego; and the outer ego cannot escape from this inner self.

The consciousness had its origin in the subconscious, from which it sprang. The consciousness was not at one time the center of the subconscious. [...]

The center of consciousness, that is the center of outward consciousness, the outer ego, is finally chosen by the inner ego after certain portions of the inner self show greater tendencies for objectification; these portions of course grouped around one of the subconscious subpersonalities which then wins out to become the outer ego, the manipulator for and the spokesman for the whole self.

Consciousness predates physical forms. Consciousness predates the physical universe. (Long pause.) Consciousness predates all of its manifestations.

[...] Consciousness built the forms, so life existed within consciousness for all eternity. There was no point in which chemicals or atoms suddenly acquired life, for they always possessed consciousness, which is life’s requirement.

[...] Your own impulses naturally lead you to seek creative fulfillment, the expansion of your consciousness, psychic excursions, and the conscious knowledge and manipulation of your dreams.

[...] What you have in your physical species are the manifestations of inner species of being, or creative groupings originated by consciousness as material patterns into which consciousness then flows. [...]

In Section 4, then, Seth has more to say about CU and EE units, cellular consciousness, ancient man, evolution, space travel, and other seemingly disparate subjects as he continues to develop his thesis that “biologically the species is equipped to deal with different sequences of time while still manipulating within one particular time scheme.” [...] Jane does her own traveling: The “psychic library” she’s learning to visit while in a certain state of altered consciousness is described, and the ways in which the library is related to the birth of her book, Psychic Politics (which is to be published in the fall of 1976).

[...] For instance, he lets his ideas about reincarnation and counterparts lead into another main concept — that of the “families of consciousness,” as he calls them. [...] Thus the combined actions of the families of consciousness make our world as we know it.

Section 6: Reincarnation and Counterparts: The “Past” Seen Through the Mosaics of Consciousness.

One of Jane’s earlier travels through an altered state of consciousness, in September, 1972, resulted in the first session on her unique “slow” and “fast” sounds, then led into information on faster-than-light particles, black holes, white holes, and “dead” holes. [...]

Conscious projections—I should clear this: Projections that are conscious ones—usually occur only to highly creative individuals. Spontaneous projections however do occur constantly to every consciousness. [...]

The consciousness exists however. The consciousness as it reasserts itself within physical reality has no memory of the interval in which it did not physically exist. [...] Dreams allow consciousness to disentangle itself from physical reality. [...]

The amount of focus and the intensity varies according to the individual, but consciousness is never entirely focused within physical reality. Now when conscious projections occur you are taking advantage of these intervals between materializations. [...]

[...] Consciously you do not perceive the intervals (smile, eyes wide open) during which you yourselves simply do not exist as material organisms.

All of these procedures are unnecessary to consciousness itself, however. They are necessary to develop communication between nonphysical consciousness and the physical form which it has adopted. Consciousness, in forming an image, or creating it, then responds to it creatively, setting up frameworks for further creative actions. Consciousness experiences reality directly, but having formed physical matter into a personal image, it must then creatively translate data to that physical brain. [...]

[...] There is no mass creative act, for all portions of consciousness have their part to play in creativity. This is the meaning of action, of consciousness, and of individuality: the freedom to create.

Consciousness itself perceives directly, and these various methods of perception have been adopted to meet varying physical circumstances. [...]

The brain looks out upon the physical universe, and consciousness then reacts, again creatively, to that environment. [...]

According to the intensity of the projection and to the systems visited, the body may become more or less rigid when consciousness returns to it. This is simply a reaction to the returning consciousness. [...] However, the sugar is important in fueling the consciousness on its journey. It also aids in connecting the consciousness to the body.

[...] Here the critical consciousness can be fully alert while the body sleeps. [...] It is beneficial that they be carried out by the conscious wish of the projector. You learn, therefore, to manipulate your own consciousness and to experience its mobility. [...]

[...] With the dream projections, I was more intrigued by the manipulations of consciousness involved (the trick of staying between hallucinations and physical reality) and the methods. These tell far more about how consciousness works, and I was always intrigued by trying to continue normal awareness throughout dreaming.

These chemical excesses are a natural by-product of consciousness that is bound up in physical materialization. [...] Consciousness itself, when physically oriented, burns up the chemicals. [...]

[...] When I used the word “conscious” (or “consciousness”), I meant it as I thought you understood it. I thought that you meant: conscious of being conscious, or placing yourself on the one hand outside of a portion of your own consciousness — viewing it (intently) and then saying, “I am conscious of my consciousness.”

(“What,” I wrote at the time, “would a state other than a conscious one be? [...] But how could the species, or its individual members, not be ‘conscious’? Since I think our collective and individual actions are self-consciously designed for survival, in the best meaning of that word, I’m curious to know in what other state these functions could be performed, for existence’s sake…. [...]

When I use the term time-wise, I refer it to the formation of a structure from which one kind of consciousness then views itself, sees itself as unique, and then tries to form other kinds of conscious structures. A fly is conscious of itself, fulfilled within that reality, and feels no need to form an “extension” of that awareness from which to view its own existence.

The fly is intensely conscious, at every moment engrossed in itself and its environment, precisely tuned to elements of which you are “unconscious.” There are simply different kinds of consciousness, and you cannot basically compare one to the other any more than you can compare, say, a toad to a star to an apple to a thought to a woman to a child to a native to a suburbanite to a spider to a cat. They are varieties of consciousness, each focused upon its own view of reality, each containing experience that others exclude.

While your present conscious beliefs dictate your current experience, and while your physical body wears its solidity only in present time to your senses, beneath this both the ever-changing elements of your body and your consciousness are relatively free in time. They exist in a multidimensionality with which rational consciousness is not yet equipped to deal.

Now: In purely physical terms, what you think of as consciousness of the self arises from a certain peak of intensity reached by the gestalt consciousness of the atoms and molecules, and cells and organs, that compose the body.

[...] (Pause.) In your terms, this action is in the process of automatically changing the nature of rational consciousness — which is, as you think of it, in a state of evolution.

Your consciousness is not a thing that you possess. [...]

[...] At one level, then, the body itself has a picture of reality of its own, upon which your conscious reality must be based — and yet the body’s terms of recognition or knowledge exist in terms so alien to your conscious ones as to be incomprehensible. Your conscious order, therefore, rides upon this greater circular kind of knowledge.

[...] The psyche’s picture of reality, then, would be equally incomprehensible to the conscious mind because of the intense focus upon singularity that your usual consciousness requires.

[...] Death is therefore as creative as birth, and as necessary for action and consciousness, in your terms.

[...] Consciously you are usually unaware of them. [...]

Because of my own writing experience, I’m also well aware of the process involved in translating unconscious material into conscious reality. [...] It was only natural, then, that I found myself comparing my own conscious creative experience with the trance procedure involved in Seth’s book. [...]

I’m personally intrigued, of course, that this book was written through me, without my conscious mind there at every point, anxiously checking, organizing, and criticizing, as it does in my own work. Then, while my creative and intuitional abilities are given a good deal of freedom, the conscious mind is definitely in control. [...]

First of all, to me the term “unconscious” is a poor one, barely hinting at an actual open psychic system, with deep intertwining roots uniting all kinds of consciousness; a network in which we are all connected. [...] I also believe that this open system contains other kinds of consciousness beside our own.

Because of my own experiences, particularly with out-of-body states, I’m convinced that consciousness is not dependent upon physical matter. Certainly physical expression is my main mode of existence right now, but I don’t take this to infer that all consciousness must be so oriented. [...]

[...] The perception of consciousness is not limited however. I have told you for example that trees have their own consciousness. The consciousness of the tree is not as specifically focused however as your own. To all intents and purposes the tree is conscious of 50 years before and 50 years hence.

[...] Consciousness had first to create the void, or the dimension in which the system could exist, and also to endow that void with all the probabilities for development that have come about in your time, and are to come about.

[...] As your own universe was formed by entities that you do not presently understand, so the discards of your own consciousness form realities for entities that are scarcely aware of your existence.

[...] You are not at the top nor at the bottom of the heap of consciousness, so to speak. [...]

The conscious mind however is (underlined) evolving, in your terms. [...] Creativity as you understand it is the three-dimensional aspect then of greater abilities that belong to our consciousness innately, whether it is consciously materialized or not (period).

The expansion of consciousness is large enough to become a different kind of consciousness (dash)—if it as allowed freedom. [...]

[...] He was never meant to give his entire conscious concentration to (in quotes) “psychic” work. The freedom of his own creative work will enhance those abilities, but also free him for some further expansions of consciousness that are meant to follow. [...]

Most individuals dwell focused so rigidly in your particular area of space and time that the greater dimensionality of the entity is unknown to them at a conscious level. [...]

For one thing, while pain is unpleasant it is also a method of familiarizing the self against the edges of quickened consciousness. Any heightened sensation, pleasant or unpleasant, has a stimulating effect upon a consciousness to some degree. [...] This acquiescence to even painful stimuli is a basic part of the nature of consciousness, and a necessary one.

[...] It is only when action becomes compartmented, so to speak, in the development of highly differentiated consciousness, that such refinement occurs. I am not here saying that unpleasant stimuli will not be felt as unpleasant, and reacted against, by less self-conscious organisms. I am saying that less self-conscious organisms will rejoice even in their automatic reaction against such stimuli, because any stimuli and reaction represents sensation, and sensation is another method by which such action knows and expresses itself.

On a very basic level, as consciousness with a self (but no conscious “I” exists in the most minute division of consciousness), all action and all sensations and all stimuli are instantly and automatically and joyfully accepted, regardless of their nature. [...]

Even a quick and automatic rejection or withdrawal from such stimulus is in itself a way by which consciousness knows itself. [...]

[...] Consciousness is far too varied. [...] Your system presents a rather abrupt, explosive entrance into largely organized consciousness, but on an individual basis.

Each epoch that ever existed within your planet in one way you see still does exist, and any consciousness that was involved with it still exists. Each consciousness retains memory of all its experiences, of each gestalt of which it has been part, and of the errors and of the successes in which it has been involved.

[...] There was constant conscious communication between these three portions of the one entity, though they were born and buried at different dates. Yet the race called up these personalities, so to speak, from its own psychic bank, from the pool of individualized consciousness that was available to it.

Not one portion of consciousness is lost in this process, you understand. [...]

(9:35.) Like a true absent-minded professor, the conscious self forgets all this, however, so when tragedy appears in the script, difficulty or challenges, the conscious self looks for someone or something to blame. Before this book is done I hope to show you precisely how you create each minute of your experience so that you can begin to exert your true creative responsibility on a conscious level — or nearly so.

[...] Creativity and consciousness are never linear achievements. [...]

[...] By the end of our book, however, I hope you will realize the eternal validity of your own consciousness, and the impermanence of those physical aspects of your environment, and of your universe, that now seem so secure. [...]

If you think strongly of being in another location, a pseudoimage of yourself will be projected out from you to that place, whether or not it is perceived and whether or not you yourself are conscious of it, or conscious in it. [...]

Now, in primary constructions, a consciousness, usually fully aware and alert, adopts a form — not his “native” one — and consciously projects it, often into another level of reality. [...]

[...] The whole consciousness is not present. [...]

(9:55.) All of these forms are called secondary constructions, for as a rule full consciousness of the personality is not in them. [...]

I am speaking now of the consciousness within each physical particle regardless of its size; of molecular consciousness, cellular consciousness, as well as the larger gestalts of consciousness with which you are usually more familiar.

[...] The rock is composed of atoms and molecules each with their own consciousness. This forms a gestalt-rock-consciousness.

[...] These units of which we spoke earlier are basically animations rising from consciousness.

You could compare these units, simply for an analogy, to the invisible breath of consciousness. [...]

Psychically, your world is composed of the contents of its consciousness. [...] So at any given time there is a world consciousness, a perfect jigsaw of awareness in which each identity, however large or small, has its part.

[...] There are also inner earthquakes of consciousness from which the physical ones emerge — storms of mind or being, eruptions in which one segment of the world consciousness, repressed in one area, explodes in another.

If you could orbit your planet in a different kind of craft, you could view the psychic contents of the world, seeing the world consciousness shining far more brilliantly than any lighted city. [...] So does consciousness form its own kind of inner structures from which, again, the physical ones emerge. [...]

(All emphatically and joyously:) In your terms, the world is intensely different from one moment to another, with each smallest portion of consciousness choosing its reality from a field of infinite probabilities.³ Immense calculations, far beyond your conscious decisions as you think of them, are possible only because of the unutterable freedom that resides within minute worlds inside your skull — patterns of interrelationships, counterparts so cunningly woven that each is unique, freewheeling, and involved in an infinite cooperative venture so powerful that the atoms stay in certain forms, and the same stars shine in the sky.

Once scientists theorized the ether as the medium in which the physical universe existed.¹ Framework 2 is the psychological medium in which the consciousness of the world exists. [...] It is, however, as I use it, a term meant to express the ordinarily conscious directive portion of the self. It is your conscious version of what you are — an excellent description, if I do say so myself (with amusement). [...] It is the you you identify with, so it is as aware of your dreams, for example, as you are, and it is quite conscious of the fact that its existence rests upon knowledge that it does not itself possess.

As you have an ego, fully conscious, directed toward the physical world, you also have what I call an inner ego, directed toward inner reality. You have, in other words, a portion of yourself that is fully conscious in Framework 2. The ego in your ordinary world, which again we will call Framework 1, is uniquely equipped to deal with that environment. [...]

The inner ego is fully conscious. [...] The unconscious, so-called, is — and I have said this before² — quite conscious, but in another realm of activity. [...]

[...] In very simple terms, if you want to pick up a book, and then do so, you experience that event consciously, though you are quite unaware of all of the inner events that occurred to bring the motion about. [...]

The ego is only one layer of the self that has self-consciousness. Being self- conscious, the ego attempts to be conscious only of itself. Self-consciousness results in an intense, but necessarily limited focus. [...] It depends upon some sort of inner psychological decision as to what will be considered self, and therefore accepted by consciousness, and that which will be considered notself, and not accepted by consciousness.

Now, my dear friends, your self-consciousness is the self-consciousness of the ego which you know, and which you consider your self. But where this self -conscious self ends, another self-conscious self begins. The two selves, being self-conscious selves, cannot be aware of any reality but their own.

There are other self-conscious portions of the self however, with which the ego is not at all familiar, but of which the subconscious has intuitive knowledge. These self-conscious portions of the self exist in different reality systems. Before we go into our Dr. Instream material, let me remind you however that there is a whole self, composed of these various self-conscious selves, and that a portionof the self is indeed aware of the unity that exists to form the whole psychological gestalt.

They cannot be consciously aware of each other. [...] Other portions of the self, also self- conscious, interpret what they perceive in terms of themselves.