“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You might feel as if you are crossing your wires, so to speak, or stretching vaguely sensed psychic muscles. The purpose is not so much the perfect execution of such exercises as it is to involve you in a different mode of experience and of awareness that comes into being as you perform in the ways suggested. You have been taught not to mix, say, waking and dreaming conditions, not to daydream. You have been taught to focus all of your attention clearly, ambitiously, energetically in a particular way — so daydreaming, or mixing and matching modes of consciousness, appears passive in a derogatory fashion, or nonactive, or idle. (Louder:) “The devil finds work for idle hands” — an old Christian dictum.

First of all, the various kinds of organizations used by the psyche can be compared at one level, at least, with different arts. Music is not better than the visual arts, for example. A sculpture cannot be compared with a musical note. I am not saying, then, that one mode of organization is better than another. You have simply specialized in one of the many arts of consciousness, and that one can be vastly enriched by knowledge and practice of the others.

I will suggest many exercises throughout this book. Some of them will necessitate variations of normal consciousness. I may ask you to forget physical stimuli, or suggest that you amplify them, but I am nowhere stating that your mode of consciousness is wrong. It is limited, not by nature, but by your own beliefs and practice. You have not carried it far enough.

I said that there were different kinds of knowledge; so will these exercises bring you in contact with knowledge in another way. Done over a period of time, they will open up alternate modes of perception, so that you can view your experience from more than one standpoint. This means that your experience will itself change in quality. Sometimes when you are awake, and it is convenient, imagine that your present experience of the moment is a dream, and is highly symbolic. Then try to interpret it as such.

— natural mode of operation. [...]

You and Ruburt have had the feeling many times — but what we are trying to do is change over completely from one mode of operation to another, and to construct, say, new inner blocks of meaning that will give rise to the next era.

[...] You must begin to change your mode of thinking, but it will automatically change as you remember what I said about creativity, and stop worrying, both of you. Creative thought is the mode of thought that most clearly approximates Framework 2’s mode of organization, and the nature of the universe. [...]

[...] The methods, the ways, the beliefs, the modes of travel to a destination create the destination itself. (Over a one-minute pause.) It is impossible for you to operate without beliefs in your present mode of existence (another minute), “for beyond” those glittering packages of beliefs, however, there exists the vast reservoir of sensation itself, the land that does indeed exist “beyond beliefs.” [...]

[...] He has become more determined than ever to change his mode of thought and to rid himself of the physical symptoms.

The feeling even astonished you, so by contrast it should show you your own mode of thought habitually, and by implication suggest Ruburt’s. The experience should have been illuminating.

[...] The mode of orientation is simply not the same.

The portions of the self kept in protective custody develop certain characteristics just to get by—modes of behavior that perhaps serve to take off some of the pressure, while ever seeking ways to escape the situation. [...]

[...] These are part of the modes of behavior adopted by the portion of the self held in custody, so to speak. [...]

[...] And yet I must contend with modes of thought that are habitual to you, and those modes make it difficult for you to combine various elements of speculation.

[...] And soon Ruburt’s own mental mood will grow quite substantially better, so that good moods become the natural and accepted mode of operation. [...]

(Without a break Jane went from her Seth trance into another very creative mode of consciousness. [...]

[...] Man was growing more and more aware of the ego, of a sense of power over nature, and many of the later miracles are presented in such a way that nature is forced to behave differently than in its usual mode. [...]

Man desired in one way to step out of himself, out of the framework in which he had his psychological existence, to try new challenges, to step out of a mode of consciousness into another. [...]

[...] Those meanings and precepts flowed through the entire society, and served as the basis for all of the established modes of knowledge, commerce, medicine, science, and so forth.

[...] Illness is often another mode of expression, but nowhere does science mention that illness might have its purpose, or its groups of purposes, and I do not mean that the purposes themselves are necessarily derogatory. [...]

[...] There are other things you do not understand that I cannot explain to you, simply because they would be too alien now for your regular mode of thought….

[...] Jane did well, abruptly coming out of her exercise mode, and the girls didn’t notice anything. [...]

[...] And the mode of communication must be set up between us if what I want to say will be said. [...]

[...] Seth had discussed her father’s laxness, and her mother’s drive toward purpose, power, and control, and how Jane had felt that she must make a choice between the two modes of behavior. [...]

[...] When I asked her if she wanted to be buried or cremated, she expressed no strong wish for either mode, but finally chose cremation — maybe because I said what would I do if I wanted to move out of town a few years after she’d been buried. [...]

[...] Various so-called esoteric traditions provide certain methods that allow an individual to set aside accepted modes of perception, and offer patterns that may be used as containers for these other kinds of knowledge. [...]

[...] Freewheeling basis would pertain to John’s interpretation, he said, of the changed mode of operation by which the pharmaceutical industry attempts to sell its products and its image.