“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The universe is expanding in the way that a dream expands. In other words this expansion has nothing to do with your (underline) idea of space. The expansion, in a most basic manner, is more like the expansion of an idea. It has nothing to do with space or time in the manner in which you are accustomed to think of them. I told you earlier that your scientist’s idea of an expanding universe was in error, although in one important sense the universe was expanding, and this is what I referred to.

One takes up space in your universe and the other does not. The universe expands in the manner that a dream expands, taking up no camouflage space. This does not mean that there is no growth involved in the expansion of the universe. This does not imply that there is no movement. It simply implies an existence and an expansion of a qualitative manner, beyond your present measurements or complete comprehension.

Your own dream world expands constantly. Your ideas expand constantly, but your ideas have nothing to do with space, and the manner in which the universe constantly expands has nothing to do with your idea of space. True space, fifth dimensional space, has abilities of expansion that do not need space, not in your terms.

Imagine if you can the figures or inhabitants in the painting having psychological reality, all within the set limits prescribed by the given space. Imagine in other words consciousness, growth, reality and expansion, having nothing to do with expansion of space in your terms, but an almost complete freedom of psychological realities, and you will come at least within the realm of understanding what I mean by an expanding universe that has nothing to do with the expanding universe of which your scientists speak.

Therefore the expanding universe implies a universe expanding in a more or less empty space, and this is not true. The phenomena that are given as evidence of this kind of expanding universe are the result of camouflage instruments, distortive ideas of time, and the resulting cause and effect theory.

Their time measurements, based on camouflage to begin with, are almost riotously inadequate and bound to give distortive data, since the universe simply cannot be measured in these terms. The universe was not created at any particular time, but neither is it expanding into nowhere like an inflated balloon that grows forever larger, at least not along the lines now being considered. The expansion is an illusion, based among other things upon inadequate time measurements, upon the limited cause and effect theories; and yet in some manners the universe could be said to be expanding, but with entirely different connotations than are usually used.

I did want to answer Ruburt’s question as to the expanding universe, though we will not go into all the details now. Your camouflage idea of time is no help, and until you realize that time as you think of it does not exist in any real terms, then you will not be able to understand the true nature of your universe.

I suggest you take a break in your expanding universe.

[...] Such a development as we are considering involves instead an expansion or extension; in the same manner that the expanding universe takes up no space, but expands in terms of value fulfillment, so the expanding consciousness would take up no space, but would also expand in terms of value fulfillment. [...]

[...] However, as your expanding universe does not expand in space, so your expanded self will not grow in space to amazing proportions of pounds and tons.

[...] Any particular self theoretically could expand his consciousness to contain the universe and everything in it. [...]

The consciousness, with its source in the inner universe, being not bound by time or space, is in a position to expand along the lines that I have mentioned. [...]

[...] Things, planets, stars, nebulae, come into being in this universe of yours. They are born continually according to your latest theories, and this universe expands—pushed, so to speak, so that its sides bulge, the outer galaxies literally bursting out into nowhere. True fifth-dimensional space, as I have said often, is to the contrary vital energy, itself alive, possessing endless abilities of transformation, forming all existences, forming even the camouflage universe with which you are familiar, and which you attempt to probe so ineffectively.

Now the so-called laws of your camouflage universe do not apply to the inner universe. [...] However, the laws of the inner universe apply to all camouflage universes, and all consciousnesses on any plane must follow the basic laws of the inner universe. [...]

[...] This should be considered along with our material on the expanding universe, since dream locations represent, certainly, a reality, even a framework that has no existence in your space; and measured purely along the lines used to measure your space, you would receive no hint at all of their existence or reality. [...]

This fifth dimensional space, this basic universe of reality of which I speak, expands constantly in terms of intensity and quality and value, in a way that has nothing to do with your idea of space.

Seth’s material in those early sessions, given well over a decade ago for the most part, reflected of course his reactions to current astronomical theory about the state — and fate — of our physical (camouflage) universe. The idea of an infinitely expanding universe, with all of its stars ultimately burned out and all life extinct, is still the view largely accepted today; it’s based on the red shift measurements of some of the supposedly receding galaxies, their apparent brightnesses, the “missing mass” of the universe, and other very technical data. Yet I find it most interesting to note that now some astrophysicists and mathematicians believe our universe may be destined to contract — indeed, to collapse in upon itself — after all. [...] One of these is the discovery of at least some of that missing mass, thus indicating that gravitational fields may exist among the galaxies, and galactic clusters, strong enough not only to halt the expansion of the universe but to pull all matter back together again.

“Their time measurements, based on camouflage [physical information] to begin with, are almost riotously inadequate and bound to give distortive data, since the universe simply cannot be measured in those terms. The universe was not created at any particular time, but neither is it expanding into nowhere like an inflated balloon that grows forever larger — at least not along the lines now being considered. The expansion is an illusion, based among other things upon inadequate time measurements, and cause-and-effect theories; and yet in some manners the universe could be said to be expanding, but with entirely different connotations than are usually used.”

[...] The closest probability satellite to any given reality may, for example, be in an entirely different universe altogether. (Pause.) In that regard, you may find brethren more or less like yourselves outside of your own universe — as you think of it — rather than inside it. You imagine your universe as extending outward in space (and backwards in time). You think of it as an exteriorized manifestation, expanding perhaps, but in an exterior rather than an interior fashion.¹

(Slowly:) Your idea of space travel, for example, is to journey over the “skin of your universe.” You do not understand that your system is indeed expanding within itself, bringing forth new creativity and energy (underlined).

The universe expands, as I have said before, as an idea expands; and as sentences are built upon words, in your terms, and paragraphs upon sentences, and as each retains its own logic and continuity and evidence within that framework, so do all the portions of the universe appear to you also with the same cohesiveness (dash) — meaning continuity and order. [...]

(Pause.) It is not just that your view of reality is relative to your position within the universe, but that the universe itself is different according to your position within it, and that spiritual or psychological rules apply. The universe deals with different kinds of order, perceptions, and organizations, each dependent upon the others, yet each separate in its own domain.

The same applies to your universe. [...] I am not speaking merely of hidden variables, in scientific terms, nor am I saying that the universe is an illusion, but a psychological reality in which “objectivity” is the result of psychological creativity.

[...] In other words, such attempts further compound the problem of considering a seemingly objective universe, and describing it in an objective fashion.

If you choose a safe universe then you may indeed find some old habitual ideas, thoughts or beliefs, coming to haunt you. Those belonged to the unsafe universe, and made perfect sense there—and there they still do. When you change your affiliation and find yourself now and then encountering such feelings; and they are always one way or another feelings of insecurity—then admit to yourself that while they made sense in the unsafe universe, they do not belong in the safe one. Literally, such feelings make no sense in a safe universe. [...]

Ruburt’s symptoms made sense in an unsafe universe. [...] Your feelings about Prentice made sense in an unsafe universe, where you had to protect the excellence of your vision from incompetence. You can make that leap into the safe universe—just as Ruburt is. [...]

[...] At the risk of repeating myself, you live in a safe universe (loudly). [...] You cannot live in a safe universe and an unsafe one at the same time. [...]

[...] If you thoroughly understood what that means then you do indeed live and experience a safe universe. Your pendulum will give you the specific reasons for any difficulties, but behind these ever-changing reasons is always the sense of insecurity you feel when you believe the universe is against you to whatever degree. [...]

Think if you will then of the manner in which an idea expands. It expands and grows and you feel its vitality gather, yet when you say it grows and expands, it does not grow and expand, again, somewhere in the space between your ears, to burst apart the bones of the skull. It expands in a way that has nothing to do with space.

[...] You construct the dream universe in the same manner that you construct the physical universe. For various reasons that have been discussed there is no need, in the dream universe, for the permanence of image, or the apparent permanence of image that occurs in the physical universe.

You construct the dream universe, again, on a subconscious basis. The dream universe is as permanent in its way as the physical universe. [...]

As you create physical matter constantly without knowing that you do so, so also you create constantly a dream universe, and this dream universe is as individual as your environment in the physical world. [...]

[...] The appearance of an expanding universe is also caused, therefore, by this distortive boundary effect …

[...] (Several years later, Jane was to list nine such inner senses in Chapter 19 of The Seth Material.) Jane said that upon coming slowly awake from her nap she’d had the very peculiar feeling of ‘growing larger.’ The laughing phrase she used was that she’d felt as ‘big as an elephant.’ Her boundaries of awareness seemed to have expanded. [...]

[...] Jane said it was as though her eyes had actually moved further apart to create this expanded field of awareness, of infinite black. [...]

[...] Neither event had made as much of an impression on her as tonight’s experience, for she hadn’t sensed the odd, infinite black within the expanded area of the skull. [...]

But the legs do walk, and the dream universe does exist. As the entity expands and originates new personalities, and these personalities then become independent individuals, so do the individuals create dream or so-called dream realities and individuals of the dream universe, which are independent.

The same sort of psychic agreement holds the dream universe together as holds the physical universe together. If a man could actually focus his concentration upon those hidden, feared, mainly unknown, unrecognized elements in the physical universe upon which men simply cannot agree; if he could focus upon the dissimilarities rather than the similarities in the physical universe, he would wonder what gave anyone the idea that there was even one physical object upon which men could agree.

[...] Even those who are familiar with our material, and know the various means by which individuals create a fairly cohesive body of physical data and call it the physical universe, even these persons will say that while they agree that the individual creates the physical universe with the cooperation of others, that universe has a unity and permanence and recognizable form that the dream world does not have.

[...] Certain symbols are constructed into realities in the dream universe, then, in much the same manner that certain ideas are constructed into matter in the physical universe.

[...] You make your own camouflage universe as I have told you. [...] Something that was not there suddenly is there, and in your physical universe. [...]

This sixth inner sense is concerned with the entity’s innate working knowledge of the basic vitality of the universe, without which no manipulation of vitality stuff would be possible. As, for example, you could not stand up straight in your physical universe without first having among other things an innate sense of balance.

[...] It was as though, she said, her boundaries of awareness had expanded. It was not that she felt thickheaded, but as though the skull itself was literally expanding. [...]

[...] They hadn’t made such an impression on her either time, because although she had felt the expanding of the skull, she had experienced nothing like the strange infinite black within this expanded area.

Concentrating upon your own camouflage universe, you are able to distinguish only the distortive pattern, and from this pattern you deduce your ideas of cause and effect, past, present and future, and ideas of an expanding universe that floats …

Yet even these camouflage patterns must follow the basic rules of the inner universe, and reflect them, even if in a distortive manner. [...] So are all the other basic laws of the inner universe followed on every plane, and reflected from the most minute to the most gigantic spectrum.

If you will remember what I have said about the way in which the universe expands, that has nothing to do with space, then you may perhaps perceive, though dimly, the existence of a psychic pyramid of interrelated, everexpanding consciousness that creates simultaneously and instantaneously universes and individuals that are given, through the gifts of personal perspectives, duration, intelligence, psychic comprehension, and eternal validity.

[...] As an idea expands, changing a world but taking up no space, and unperceived by your scientific instruments, so does the ultimate and instantaneous absolute gestalt, which you may if you prefer call God, exist and expand.

[...] These distortions however are necessary frameworks for existence of the inner self in the material universe.

[...] But so-called hard facts, that may seem opposed to symbols and myths, are not necessarily untrue, since they may be necessary distortions without which the inner self could not survive in the material universe.

(I am not sure that Seth’s statement on page 150 constitutes a distortion, when he mentions that a communication between our universe and the universe of negative matter is possible. In the 63rd session, again, he deals with the two companion universes to ours, calling them a beforeimage and an afterimage, and lumping them under the general terms of negative or antimatter. In the 63rd session Seth states that our universe and the two universes comprising the universe of negative matter can never meet. [...]

It will be found in some important respects that the dream universe, which began even then, has somewhat the same relationships to the physical universe, but on a psychic level, that the physical universe has to the universe of negative matter. [...]

This inwardness is so adaptive and self-generating, seeking all outlets and possibilities, that it not only in your case formed a physical universe, but found new ways, operating through the new physical universe, to construct an additional field or plane within and completely through, or on the other side of while yet within the physical universe; this being your dream world, which is made possible because of the physical mechanisms and involvements themselves.

[...] Nor could I have even begun this explanation of the relationship and growth of the physical universe, the universe of negative matter, and the dream universe at a much earlier date. [...]

Your own universe expands as an idea expands, in ways that have nothing to do with space.

I have mentioned that what I call the dream universe is indeed composed of molecular structure, and that it is a continuing reality, even though your own awareness of it is most usually limited, for quite necessary reasons, to the hours of your own sleep. There is a give and take here, for if you give the dream universe much of its continuing energy, much of your own energy is derived from it. There is, between the physical field and the dream universe, an interdependence that is not at all unusual, for all fields are indeed dependent one upon the other.

The dream universe has molecular construction, but this molecular construction takes up no space as you know it. The dream universe, while composed of molecules, is not composed of matter as you know it. The dream universe consists of depths and dimensions, expansions and contractions, that are more clearly allied, perhaps, to ideals that have no need for the particular kind of structure with which you are familiar.

This involves, simply, a quickening of experience and action relatively unhampered by the sort of time necessities inherent within the physical universe. [...] This is not to say that structure does not exist within the dream universe, for structures of a mental or psychic nature do exist. But structure is not dependent upon matter as in the physical universe, and the motion of molecules is more spontaneous, and an almost unbelievable depth of experience is possible within what would seem to you a fraction of a moment.

[...] As the personality on your plane actually changes, expands and grows to its potentialities, as it presents at various times varied images to the world (such as — if you’ll forgive me for using cliches — a smiling face, a sorrowful face), but is still basically the same personality, so on another level does the entity present at various times a varied appearance and speak in a different voice. As the smiling and sorrowful faces also express and expand the personality, so, too, do the various reincarnated personalities express and expand the entity as a whole.

Without the stages of childhood, adulthood and old age, the personality could not expand to its fullest degree, and without various incarnations, the entity cannot expand…

[...] The mental enzymes act upon the vitality, which is, as I told you, the structure of the universe itself. [...] The mental enzymes are the tools, and the vitality is the actual material that forms the universe as a whole, the apparent divisions within it, the apparent boundaries between the systems and the diverse materials within each division. [...]

Introduction to the Interior
Universe

[...] This colossus exploded, and the still expanding universe we see today is the aftermath of that event. One variation of the theory considered a pulsating universe that results from the repeated collapsing and expanding of all matter-energy.

I would like this evening to speak more concerning the interrelationship of various units; for when I speak of the interrelationship of universes, remember that these universes are also units, or if you prefer, systems.

The system exists basically, again, not in space, nor does it expand in space as you conceive it. It exists and expands in terms of depths that take up no space, in terms of value fulfillment.

It goes without saying however that the characteristics of any system or unit that I have given here must apply to the dream universe, and to your own universe. [...]

Dreams are such connectives, for you see that this preliminary material is very much to the point as far as our dream universe is concerned, and is itself a connective to that discussion. [...]

Philip should read the sessions dealing particularly with the laws of the universe, that is with the inner laws of the universe, appreciating then the facts that this universe within all universes is spontaneous while having durability. It would be backtracking to repeat that long discussion, but as the inner universe has as its attributes spontaneity and durability, and as the spacious present is simultaneous while containing within it all pasts and all presents and all futures, and as Philip understands the meaning of expansion in terms not of time or of space but of value fulfillment, so will he intuitively then grasp that no contradiction occurs with actual reality when I say that there is no beginning and no end.

[...] The universe and all planes and universes of existence, come indeed from what you may call energy, vitality, idea; or despite Ruburt’s stubborn blocking, from a personality essence or psychic gestalt which you may refer to as God if you prefer. [...]

There is a constant, ever-enfolding and ever-expanding reality. The pyramids of psychic gestalts of which I have spoken represent in your terms all beginnings and all endings, which again expand into new beginnings and new forms.

Before any universe as you know it, or as I know it, existed, there was first a striving. [...]

In those terms, therefore, the universe either had “a Creator,” or it had none; or it came into being as stated in the Big Bang theory, and is either constantly expanding or it is not. [...]

[...] Since your universe springs from an inner one, and since that inner one pervades each nook and cranny of your own existence, you must look where you have not before — into the reality of your own minds and emotions. You must look to the natural universe that you know. You must look with your intuitions and creative instincts at the creatures about you, seeing them not as other species with certain habits, not as inferior properties of the earth, to be dissected, but as living examples of the nature of the universe, in constant being and transformation.

You must study the quality of life, dare to follow the patterns of your own thoughts and emotions, and to ride that mobility, for in that mobility there are hints of the origin of the universe and of the psyche. The poet’s view of the universe and of nature is more scientific, then, than the scientists’, for more of nature is comprehended.

Now: The last two sessions, more or less on evolution, can be included in this book, and serve as the opening sessions of a new chapter, entitled: “The Universe and the Psyche.”