“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A steady and dedicated responsibility will best allow you to develop your ability and insure the validity of your communications. I tell you, young man, honestly, that halfway measures are worse than none. The personality with halfway measures is constantly in a state of stress and confusion. Halfway measures therefore are the pitfall.

The validity and quality of any communications will rest primarily with the energy with which you are willing to develop your abilities. Halfway measures will not give you clear reception, nor reliable material. The systems with which we deal are too delicate, too finely balanced, to operate with any efficiency unless there is constant study, application, and devotion to the attempt. I tell you this because you are young, and must make your own decision. Halfway measures are not beneficial to the overall personality. They can lead to difficulties.

Your material has not been coming through clearly for the reasons given. This does not mean that it will not improve, for it will if you persist. The important element is your own intent. You do not have to set about converting others for example, but you do need to devote some large measure of mental and emotional intensity inward. You will have your material on past lives before you leave here.

[...] It is a trite statement, perhaps, but the ruler’s measurements have absolutely nothing to do with the measurements made by the heart, and they can never be used to express the incalculable measurements that are made automatically by the smallest cell.

[...] The rational approach works quite well in certain situations, such as mass production of goods, or in certain kinds of scientific measurements — but all in all the rational method, as it is understood and used, does not work as an overall approach to life, or in the solving of problems that involve subjective rather than objective measurements or calculations.

Important misunderstandings involving time have been in a large measure responsible for many of Ruburt’s difficulties, and also of your own, though they have been of a lesser nature. [...]

The rational mind alone, as it is presently used (because it is a rather artificial construct, a function given prominence), can never understand the dream measurements that you undertook in order to come up with the Brenner dream.⁵

[...] These strips I used as tapes to measure the circumferences of the third finger on both of our right hands. I measured Jane’s above the middle knuckle, and mine above and below the same knuckle.

(At 11:35 Jane’s measurement was 2 ”. The following night, 5/21, the same finger measured 2 ¼” at the same spot, for a difference in circumference of ”.

(My finger measured 2 ” above the middle knuckle; the following night it measured 2 ” at the same spot, for a difference in circumference of ”.

(Below the knuckle the same finger measured 2 ¼” after the session ended. The next night it measured 2 ” plus, at the same spot, for a difference in circumference of a little more than ”.

(To Derek.) Now, as far as proofs are concerned, any of you can measure. Any of you can measure the painting on the wall that is of me in a previous life. You can measure the dimensions. [...] You cannot measure the psychological impact of the painting, however, nor the psychic reality that is within it. Nor can you measure the inner reality that you know is within yourself. [...]

[...] Then you are like the flower who accepts the sunshine, and in accepting the sunshine knows far more about the reality of sun than any scientist who measures the spectrum of light without feeling. [...]

(Carl had a brainstorm; we placed our bathroom scale on the tabletop finally when the pressure was “going good,” and requested A A to continue building up the pressure so that Carl, who was on the side of the table manifesting the pressure at that time, could measure the force he used to get the table back on the floor solidly. A A obligingly built up the pressure again; pressing down, Carl saw that he used a hand pressure of 70 pounds, as measured by the scale, to get all three legs of the table back on the floor, whereas usually gravity would effortlessly draw the legs back to the floor when our fingertips were removed.

[...] Several subsequent pressures were measured by using the scale on the tabletop, ranging from 30 to 50 pounds.

(Needless to say, when Carl or whoever was measuring pressure on the scale, the other three took pains to see that they were not subconsciously exerting a heavy pressure on the other side of the table,thus forcing a stronger response across the tabletop to get the legs back on the floor. [...]

(After hanging upside down for a short but measurable length of time the table again descended. [...]

[...] 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. Measured purely in terms of your camouflage conceptions, many things which you know to exist would seem not to exist.

[...] You have no way of measuring the mind’s expansion, any more than you can measure the expansion of the universe as long as you are thinking in terms of expansion in space. [...]

[...] You cannot feel outwardly, or see or measure, an emotion, and an emotion takes up no space. [...]

The uncertainty principle, or the principle of indeterminacy (advanced by Heisenberg in 1927, and part of the theory of quantum mechanics), sets definite limits to the accuracy possible in measuring both the motion and position of atoms and elementary particles simultaneously; more importantly to my mind, for the purposes of this note, the uncertainty principle maintains that there is an interaction between the observer (with his instruments) and the object or quality being measured.

[...] Now, it is true that within your physical system—for I know this will come next from our friend Florence—you can measure your couch. I expect at any moment anyone will get a ruler and measure it and then say to me that the couch is so long—how can you say it is not one couch? However, within your physical system the instruments themselves are distorted and, of course, they will agree with what they measure. [...]

[...] Now it is true that within your physical system — for I know this will come next — you can measure your couch. I expect at any moment that someone will get a ruler and measure it, and then say to me that the couch is so long: How can I say it is not one couch?

However, within your physical system the instruments themselves are distorted, and of course they will agree with what they measure. [...]

Even these, however, act as automatic learning devices, and left alone they themselves trigger the necessary creative procedures that would begin corrective measures. When the belief in the Sinful Self is held, however, the very corrective measures themselves are often not trusted.

[...] The possible diversity and the vast assortment of the creative ventures possible mean that he had accepted certain measures of uncertainty. [...]

There are all kinds of like suggestions, all meant as preventive measures, but based upon the idea that ill fortune can be most likely expected, and means must be taken to avoid it. In many ways, and important ones, the two of you managed to avoid many complications encountered by others because of such measures. [...]

[...] A simple enough suggestion, it seems, a preventive measure. [...]

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 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.

[...] The camouflage effect surrounding a plane, and apparent in your universe, can be measured. But it must be recognized first as a camouflage distortion, and then translations of the camouflage measurements must be made.

[...] I don’t have to take stern measures—for—automatically I use my spontaneity judiciously! [...]

“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 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 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. [...] But again, these ideas aren’t based on the kind of thinking Seth espouses (that consciousness comes first, that its creations are continuous), but upon other quite complicated camouflage observations and measurements. [...]

The more prosaic elements of the personality then take whatever measures seem necessary at the time, while new orientation is tried out. [...]

[...] There are too many variables in measurement and interpretation, including the difficulties the human mind encounters when it attempts to grasp the enormous spans of time and space involved.

(Recently Jane had been reading an essay in which entropy, the mathematical measure of unavailable energy in a thermodynamic system, was discussed. [...]

An idea contains in itself an energy that you cannot presently distinguish or measure, an energy transformed into a form unperceived by the outer senses. [...]

[...] Your lack of success lately with psychological time has been to a large measure caused by too great a conscious concentration upon the task. [...]

[...] I then cut narrow strips of paper and had Bill measure and mark the circumference of each finger, planning to check these measurements when the sensation had passed. [...]

(Since my hand phenomena had disappeared by now, I was curious to check the measurements of my fingers now against those Bill had made earlier. [...] My second finger, wherein I had been most strongly aware of the feeling of enlargement, had measured 2 ” at the time; its circumference now checked out at 2 ”, for a shrinkage of th of an inch.

[...] It seemed that I watched the girl struggling with the window for some seconds—certainly long enough for the vision to have definite, measurable duration. [...]

These measures, incidentally, will refresh you both and are always excellent provisions against rigidity in any form. [...]

[...] A point here involving Ruburt’s hands and his mother’s sweaters: he knew that knitting was a therapeutic measure suggested in the past to exercise his mother’s hands. [...]

[...] Natural guilt was meant as a preventive measure. [...]

[...] Once more, it was meant as a preventive measure. [...]

[...] These measures will dissipate lingering ghost images and associations. [...]

[...] Somewhat later a few adjustments may be of help, simply as a physical measure of correcting any misalignments that have not been corrected otherwise. [...]

[...] Such measures alone can make up for any mistakes you see that might be made. Without them no other correct measures are enough. [...]