“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A particular consciousness is a gestalt of these conceptual patterns; but there is nothing to prevent a consciousness from increasing itself by experiencing other conceptual patterns or patterns of perception. This assimilation would increase, not decrease, any given consciousness. We use, or you use, words merely as a convenience. We therefore say that a consciousness is a gestalt of patterns of perception, by which action knows itself. But the patterns of perceptions may grow, and the consciousness reach out. The consciousness has changed. It is no longer the same consciousness, since it has extended itself. Yet it is the same consciousness, on the other hand, because it is that which has extended itself. So words can confuse us.

The self then, being action which has formed itself into gestalts of pattern perceptions, by which it knows itself, this self changes constantly. And within the range of effective perception, starting at any particular point, there are patterns within patterns. For convenience’s sake we will have to limit our discussion to some degree, taking the self as a particular gestalt within, or composed of, a particular range of perception patterns; though in actuality the range may be smaller or larger at any given time.

Action, you may say, is carried away by itself. Reality possibilities are endless. You are familiar with very small portions of reality. Your perception characteristics at this time dictate and limit the aspects of action that you can perceive. You can, however, focus very clearly on other aspects. And particular types of consciousnesses and identities are merely the result of action’s formation into perception patterns with which it can focus upon certain aspects of itself.

The ego, if you recall, is self’s attempt to set itself apart from action, and to see or perceive action as an object. The ego attempts to attain stability and dominance, and resents change. It seeks to limit certain perceptions, to block out many perceptions of which the self is knowledgeable. In this way limitations become fairly rigid.

Basically then there is little difference as to the manner in which normal perceptions or extrasensory perceptions are received. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) If the nature of perception were clearly understood then the nature of reality as you know it would also be understood much more clearly. Only half the process of perception, so-called, is even considered, however. [...]

[...] Its perceptions are of a different nature, varying particularly in scope and depth. [...]

Strong abilities show themselves, and Ruburt’s inner life is a full and rich one, his inner perceptions well-developed. [...]

[...] (Pause.) Returning to the material on perception, there are changes in the positive and negative atomic charges, alterations of movement inside the atoms in the smaller particles (long pause), a change in pulsation rate. (Long pause; eyes closed; smile.) The activity of molecules actually is caused by perceptive qualities. [...]

(Long pause, hand to closed eyes.) Perceptions in general physical terms usually seem to involve information picked up from an arbitrarily designated structure, of an event seemingly occurring in another structure outside of itself. In the entire act of perception, however, there is a oneness and a unity between the seemingly objectively perceived event and the perceiver. [...]

[...] Perception is constant. There is no place where one perception begins and another ends. [...]

[...] Now in many instances of so-called paranormal perception there is what would seem to you a reversal of focus. It seems to you that the burden of perception in on your part as perceiver.

[...] Initially and basically perception is not dependent upon your senses. Any perception is first of all a psychic one that is then translated in ways meaningful to the physical organism. To other organisms in different realities perception would therefore be translated in an entirely different manner.

Relying upon such external perceptions therefore, communication between members of various systems would be relatively impossible. [...] Such contact therefore would always take place beneath so-called normal perception, and even then you would have to translate this inner perception, as you do any into terms you could understand as physical creatures.

We were discussing the nature of perception some while back, and its relation to clairvoyant activities. [...] I told you that any perception alters the perceiver. [...]

[...] Any conceivable method of perceptions is possible to the inner self, latent within it. It can adopt any method of perception it chooses, according to the environment in which it finds itself.

[...] You do not understand as yet the true nature of perception, even as far as the mortal self is concerned, and therefore you can hardly understand the perceptions of the soul. [...] Its methods of perception are the same now as they were before your physical birth, and as they will be after your physical death. So basically the inner portion of you, the soul-stuff, will not suddenly change its methods of perception nor its characteristics after physical death.

So-called extrasensory perception gives you but a crude and distorted idea of the basic ways in which the inner self receives information, but the concepts built around extrasensory perception are at least nearer the truth, and as such represent an improvement over the idea that all perception is basically physical.

[...] No matter what you have been taught, you must understand, for example, that basically speaking, perceptions are not physical in the way the term is usually used. If you catch yourself perceiving information through other than your physical senses, then you must accept the fact that this is the way perception works.

[...] Now I am not speaking merely of abilities loosely called “extrasensory perception.” These experiences seem extraordinary to you only because you have for so long denied the existence of any perception that did not come through the physical senses.

Any perception of any kind instantly alters the electromagnetic and neurological systems of the perceiver. In your terms, physically, that is what perception is—an alteration of neurological structure. The perceiving mechanisms themselves change and are changed by that which they perceive, and I am speaking now of your physical system, and the physical nature of any perception.

[...] (Pause.) Any perception immediately blends, then, with the entire system of the individual. Any perception is action, and it changes that upon which it acts, and in so doing it is itself changed (underlined.) This applies to any perception.

[...] The information then, like any perception, becomes a part of the nervous system’s structure. [...]

It is literally impossible for you, and it is a logistic contradiction to imagine, with your physical structures, that any perception can be received unless the perceiver’s own inner situation is altered. [...]

The soul, however, does not need to follow the laws and principles that are a part of the physical reality, and it does not depend upon physical perception. The soul’s perceptions are of acts and events that are mental, that lie, so to speak, beneath physical events as you know them. The soul’s perceptions are not dependent upon time, because time is a physical camouflage and does not apply to nonphysical reality.

It goes without saying then that the soul does not require a physical body for purposes of perception; that perception is not dependent upon physical senses; that experience continues whether or not you are in this life or another; and also that the soul’s basic methods of perception are also operating within you now even as you read this book. [...]

Now it is difficult to explain to you how direct experience actually works, for it exists — a total field of perception, innocent of the physical clues such as color, size, weight, and sense, with which your physical perceptions are clothed.

At certain depths of sleep, however, the soul’s perception operates relatively unhampered. You drink, so to speak, from the pure well of perception. [...]

[...] They can be used in normal perception or what you call extrasensory perception. I will discuss their basic nature at a later session, and I would like to tie this in with the fetus, since the fetus is highly involved with perceptive mechanisms.

(Earlier this evening I’d mentioned to Jane my long-standing interest in Seth’s statement, years ago, that all ESP perceptions have an electromagnetic basis. [...]

Now: there are electromagnetic structures, so to speak, that are presently beyond your (scientific) instruments, units that are the basic carriers of perception. [...]

[...] As a magnet, you see, will attract with its filaments, so these units attract their own kind and form patterns which then appear to you as perception.

[...] The feeling connected with the back of your head should become stronger as you come back toward the self that you know, and the perceptions that are so familiar. Return gladly to the kind of perception that you always knew. [...]

I would like all of you to give yourself full freedom as far as perception is concerned. [...]

[...] Look in other areas of perception than those you usually pursue. [...]

[...] If we feel new sensations or perceptions all the better. [...]

(Pause.) In your terms, the rhythm of some kinds of consciousness would seem exceedingly slow, so that a century might pass between one perception and the next. Other variations might seem amazingly quick — the perceptions following each other so swiftly that they would indeed escape your (underlined) perception entirely; yet in the wondrous marvels of inner nature, all of these rhythms are connected one to the others, and in a matter of speaking — excuse the pun (amused) — they each balance each other.

It is not so much the actual rhythms that are manifested that make the difference in perception, but the absence of certain other rhythms (intently), upon which perceptions ride.

[...] Now I want you to realize that your perceptions at this point are limited only because you have previously chosen to limit them. [...] Your perception is not ideally limited and it is not practically limited once you realize this. [...]

[...] I want you to realize that you are indeed highly perceptive, that around you and about you in all directions the inner senses reach. [...] You are in the habit of blocking out, and you are now learning to accept them; to open up your perceptions; to open doors that have been closed. [...]

When I use perceptions in your reality then I automatically translate inner data into physical terms, otherwise I am not limited to that kind of perception. [...]

If I wanted to, indeed, but there would be little reason to so limit my own perception of it. Its reality as you know it is a portion of my entire perception of it. [...]

[...] To a large extent it limits perception, and is a protective device. You are learning to handle perception and experience, and time gives it to you in slow and small doses.

(“Our perception of time is limited and we only focus on a fairly small portion of reality. [...] But our next stage is to have a more expanded time value along with the intense perception or reaction the animals have now. [...]

It is important that you understand that time puts limitations and barriers in the way of perception. [...]

[...] Since you are learning and can only handle so many perceptions, you have forgotten that you have created the road. [...]

It is even possible for the physical individual to train himself to change the nature of his own perception of such objects. It is not a question of the car having certain properties, being real to one perceptive view and therefore necessarily unreal to another. [...]

[...] Practically speaking these capacities have been overlooked in human development simply because the ego hit upon the present method of perception, and clung to it.

Since perceiving an action is itself an action, the perceiving must because of its nature to some extent distort the object of perception.

These various conceptions of the automobile would also apply of course to the perception of any physical beings within the car; that is, their reality would also be perceived differently, according to the perspective systems which viewed them.

The other, older perceptive mechanisms still linger on however. [...] Indeed the ego is almost entirely formed by the physical senses method of perception. Other layers of the self biologically respond to the older, more generalized but less limited perceptive mechanisms.

[...] The brain’s necessary focus required more specific, less diffused and more concentrated methods of perception.

[...] These images also color physical perception. [...]

[...] (Long pause) They seem to lead into your past, but these lifelines are spirals, and only the limitations of physical perception lead you to think of them in that manner.

[...] Many individuals use the spacious mind and its perceptions, taking it for granted without realizing how different their own perception is from that of others.

[...] But within the mechanisms of the body there are unused and unrecognized triggers that will allow you, as a species, to consciously handle greater perceptions of time just as you now handle greater perceptions of space.

[...] [See the extensive notes for the 653rd session in Chapter Thirteen, describing her various states of altered perception last April 2. In one of those intervals she’d sensed giants standing about the rim of our world.] Now, Jane said, from their massive viewpoint these observers could see “everything happening at once in our world, from California to Russia — like astronauts looking back at us….”

(“When I tune into Seth Two,² I become bigger — my perceptive abilities enlarge to take that experience in…. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

[...] You may also use images, but these are familiar images, born of the educated and hence prejudiced physical perceptions. [...]

[...] Perception of any of these takes a consciousness attuned to each. [...]

[...] You comprehend what it is apart from your physical perception of it. [...]

[...] Drop the package, as it were, as a unified group of perceptions. [...] Become aware of whatever perceptions reach you, but this time do not judge or evaluate. Then in a flash open your eyes, alert your body, and try to bring all of your perceptions together again as brilliantly and clearly as possible.

[...] It is not necessarily a matter of trying to ignore the contents of the world, or to deny your physical perception. [...]

[...] This tones your entire physical and psychic organism, bringing all of your perceptions together so that your awareness opens fully. [...]

[...] If you find yourself being more concerned with one particular perception, then make an attempt to bring the ignored ones to the same clear focus. [...]

[...] The physical senses force you to translate experience into physical perceptions. The inner senses open your range of perception, allow you to interpret experience in a far freer manner and to create new forms and new channels through which you, or any consciousness, can know itself.

[...] If your perceptive mechanisms were primarily set up as a result of intuitive association rather than time sequence, then you would perceive all of these chairs at one time; or seeing one, you would be aware of the others. So environment is not a separate thing in itself, but the result of perceptive patterns, and these are determined by psychological structure.

[...] Your physical senses necessitate the perception of a three-dimensional reality. [...]

Creation and perception are far more intimately connected than any of your scientists realize.

(Pause at 9:30 in an intent delivery.) The grids of perception that compose your world give you the world picture as you (underlined) experience it because your physical senses put you in a certain position within the entire grid. [...] The large classifications of mammals, fish, birds, men, reptiles, plants, and so forth, are [each] an integral part of that larger perceptive pattern—and that pattern (underlined) in those terms had to be complete even in the beginning of your time.

[...] Here’s the note Jane wrote this morning and inserted in Volume 77, where I’m keeping a few sheets of paper to record the next session: “Something from Seth over the weekend—only got a little—something about earth’s grid of perception being so constructed that…. [...]

[...] (Pause.) The world as you know it exists as it does because you are yourself a living portion of a vast “conscious grid” of perception.

[...] Otherwise there would have been vast holes in that grid of perception that makes possible the very sensations of physical life.

I’ve experienced odd perceptions in relaxed states. They involve what I’ll call innocent perceptions, to show their lack of sophistication. [...]