(Pause.) The biological structure as it existed in the past is therefore affected. Experience is built into the organism that it did not have before, in your terms. It is a sort of reprogramming. It is impossible, of course, for you to examine cellular structure now as it exists in the present and simultaneously as it existed in the past (very positively). Scientifically, you can only probe those effects that appear within your present. When you alter your beliefs today you also reprogram your past. As far as you are concerned the present is your point of action, focus, and power, and from that point of volition you form both your future and past. Realizing this, you will understand that you are not at the mercy of a past over which you have no control.

A new belief in the present, however, can cause changes in the past on a neuronal level. You must understand that basically time is simultaneous. Present beliefs can indeed alter the past. In some cases of healing, in the spontaneous disappearance of cancer, for instance, or of any other disease, certain alterations are made that affect cellular memory, genetic codes, or neuronal patterns in the past.

This is the reason for the results of some experiments being conducted abroad, in which accelerated learning takes place, when under hypnosis or otherwise a present individual is convinced that he or she is, for example, a great painter, or a linguist. The present belief activates “latent” abilities within each person.¹

The present seen before you, with its intimate physical experience, is the result of action in other such presents. [...] There is no need at all for undesirable aspects of your contemporary reality to be projected into the future, unless you use the power of the present to do so.

[...] As it took some time to build up your present image with its unhealthy aspects, so it may take time to change that picture. But concentration upon the present unhealthy situation will only prolong it. [...]

[...] The past as you think of it, and the subconscious, again as you think of it, have little to do with your present experience outside of your beliefs about them. [...] Your present convictions will act like a magnet, activating all such past issues, happy or sad. [...]

All of your physical, mental and spiritual abilities are focused together, then, in the brilliant concentration of “present” experience. [...] If you fully comprehend your power in the present, you will realize that action at that point also alters the past, its beliefs and your reactions.

[...] Again, regardless of what you have been taught, the point of power is in the present; and again, your present beliefs will be used to structure your recollections.

[...] Otherwise you are not trusting them in the present. If you are poor and want to have more money, and try to maintain a belief in abundance — while still faced with the fact of present poverty — you must in your reality make some symbolic move that shows you are willing to accept a change.

Though the past is actually quite as immediate, alive, and creative as the present is, man made certain adjustments, on several layers, that would focus definite distinctions and set past and present experience apart. [...] This was necessary because the particular kind of physical manipulation of corporal existence required instant physical response to immediately present stimuli.

[...] Hunters had to respond at once to the present situation. In time terms, the “present” animal had to be killed for food — not the “past” animal. That animal — the past one — existed as surely as the one presently perceived, yet in man’s context, physical action had to be directed to a highly specific area, for physical survival depended upon it.

[...] They became, while present, biologically invisible. The cells still reacted to these otherwise neglected pulses, as they needed data from both the past and future to maintain the body’s balance in “the present.” [...]

[...] Now the present characteristics usually overshadow the past ones. They are dominant, but the other characteristics are latent and present, built into the pattern. The physical pattern of the present body, therefore, is a genetic memory of the self’s past physical forms, and of their strengths and weaknesses. [...]

[...] There are presently invisible layers within the body, the topmost layer that you see representing, of course, the present physical form. [...]

[...] They are connected electromagnetically to the atomic structure of the present body. [...] Often you can call up a past strength of a previous body, to help compensate for a present weakness. [...]

[...] He picked them up a few minutes earlier but his mind waited for a suitable occasion to transpose the word spacious in connection with the present. The spacious present is an excellent term. In actuality there is only a spacious present, so spacious that it cannot be explored all at once in your terms, hence your arbitrary division of it into larger rooms of past, present and future.

Again, there is only the spacious present. You are in the spacious present now. You were in the spacious present in your yesterday and you still will not have traveled through it in your tomorrow, or in eons of tomorrows.

In your terms, the rate at which you discover the facets and realities of the spacious present becomes your camouflage time. [...] This gives you also the illusion of past and future, and to you it appears that the present is a fleeting, almost ashen illusion in itself, beyond any true remembrance and beyond the reach of any but nostalgic recall. [...]

(10:25.) Such beings, with their multiple presents, may or may not be aware of your particular system. Their multiple present may or may not include it. You may be a part of their multiple present without even being aware of it. In much more limited terms your probable realities are multiple presents. [...]

Now the consciousness of such beings would also contain the consciousness of large numbers of probable selves and systems, experienced quite vividly and clearly as multiple presents. These multiple presents can be altered at any of an actual number of infinite points; infinity not existing in terms of one indefinite line, but in terms of numberless probabilities and possible combinations growing out of each act of consciousness.

[...] Now the behavior of atoms and molecules is involved here, for again these are only present within your universe during certain stages. [...]

[...] The alternative present is the moment in which you make that choice. Having made it the present is changed, and quite clearly you perceive exactly the way it is changed and what actions and events will flow from the change into the future that belongs to that particular alternate present.

[...] In this case it will lead you not into a deeper examination and perception of the present moment, but instead into an awareness and recognition of what I will call alternate present moments.

ALTERNATE PRESENTS AND MULTIPLE FOCUS

[...] It is as if in your terms, you see, you could go back to a period of this life where you should have acted in a different way and didn’t. Well you have the opportunity now to go back into that existence and make it different in the present. Because you can change—now this is in our physical terms—you can change what we would think of as the past through actions in our present. [...]

“The past in our terms doesn’t cause present behavior, because you can go back now into that past and change it in our present. [...]

(Continuing chatter about going from present to past—changing past and its affect upon the present. [...]

(Pause.) In certain terms time intervals are jumped, as when a “past” smell or sight is suddenly perceived with present vividness, though you would say it has already occurred in the past. Under particular conditions a memory may suddenly become more real than the event of the present moment, and so rush again into your current experience as validly as when it was first lived, and even seem to blot out the occurrences of the moment.

[...] In your present existence however you will utilize only those psychological characteristics that you believe you possess. [...]

The “you” that you presently conceive yourself to be represents the emergence into physical experience of but one probable state of your being, who then directs corporeal life and “frames” and defines all sense data. [...]

All of this happens through the window of your present. In terms of energy, again, the vitality of your entity impinging into three-dimensional reality forms a particle that is your present being. [...] Each of your “presents” becomes charged, filled with potentiality; and your entity, itself conscious energy, is also enriched by your various experiences, by the combined and magnified power of its own “past.”

[...] Your beliefs and actions in your present alter “their” experiences, as each of them, in their presents, change yours. [...]

[...] In the present then each person has unlimited opportunity to draw upon the entity’s energy, and the understanding and powers of all of its parts. [...]

[...] Her present impaired condition is certainly generating powerful physical and psychic conflicts and challenges, and it’s my personal assessment that she’s dealing with these in her own unique way. [...] And I still implicitly believe the quotation Seth gave on April 16, 1981, over a year ago now: “In that larger picture there are no errors, for each action, pleasant or not, will in its fashion be redeemed, both in relation to itself and … to a larger picture that the conscious mind may not be able presently to perceive.”

[...] Given our present ideas about the limitless nature of consciousness, we think our joint quest has been underway since before our births—by choice—and we expect it to continue for the rest of our physical lives. [...] To me, redemption means a continuous search or journey, then, involving whatever events and interchanges we choose to create, for whatever purposes, along the way—and truly, I think, some of those purposes will involve things “the conscious mind may not be able presently to perceive.” [...]

[...] For Seth, basically there is no time, only a great “spacious present” that’s a manifestation of a sublime, indescribable All That Is. Our gross physical senses, and indeed our very bodies, insist upon interpreting the spacious present in linear terms, however—through the inevitable processes of birth, aging, and death—so to help us get his point here Seth advances his ideas of reincarnational selves and counterpart selves in ways we can understand sensually.

In other words the past and the present are real to the same extent. At times in fact the past can become more real than the present, and in such cases past actions are reacted to in the present. You take it for granted that present action can alter the future, but present actions can also alter the past.

[...] This existed in the present as a probability. You perceived this portion of the probable future in that present, reacted to it; and the probable transformation of yourselves into those images did not occur. Because the past, present and future exist simultaneously however, there is no reason why you cannot react to an event whether or not it happens to fall within the small field of reality which you usually observe and participate in.

[...] The present exists as a series of electromagnetic connections in both the brain and the mind, and this is the only reality which you are justified in giving to your present.

The past, and every moment of the past, are being constantly changed from the operation point of the present. In your terms, the present becomes the past, which is again changed at every considerable point from the latest-present — you may put a hyphen between the last two words, so that the meaning is clear. [...]

[...] Her latest-present is beginning to show signs of a deterioration. She wants a turning-off point from which to construct other realities, so it is not so much that the latest-present is deteriorating as much as the fact that she is purposely letting her attention wander, and allowing the latest-presents (with the hyphen) to diminish in strength and vitality. [...]

When you change the past from each point of the latest-present, you are also changing events at the most microscopic levels. [...]

Think of the present as a pool of experience drawn from many sources, fed, in your terms, by tributaries from both the past and the future. [...] For example: If you constantly focus on the belief that your early background was damaging and negative, then only such experiences will flow into your present life from the past. [...] (See the 644th session in Chapter Eleven.) From the present you have hypnotized yourself, viewing the past not as it was to your experience, but as it appears now in the light of your current beliefs.

[...] The one suggestion that can break through is this: “I create my reality, and the present is my point of power.” [...] If you truly understand your power of action and decision in the present, then you will not be hypnotized by past events.

Dictation: Any good demonstration of hypnosis will clearly show that the point of power is in the present, and that beliefs dictate your experience.

I do not want to go into the complicated reasons why your civilization chose such beliefs, but you are everywhere presented with their effects. [...] Children also know that the present is the point of power, and that precept is a biological truth, for the physical body in your terms cannot act in the future or in the past, but only in its contact with the present moment.

Now: the present is the point of power. [...]

[...] Animals know that the present is the point of power, of course. [...]

A hundred and forty-five B.C., a hundred and forty-five A.D., a thousand years in your past and a thousand years in your present—all exist now. Therefore the past existences are present existences. You exist in other words in several guises or reincarnations, at one time within the spacious present. [...]

[...] In a basic manner, as you know, the past, present and future exist at once in the spacious present.

Past experience does not cause present experience. You are forming both past, present and future experience simultaneously. [...]

When I speak of levels of the subconscious, I do so only for simplicity’s sake, since there is after all no top or bottom to the mind, but only a present point of focus from which viewpoints may be taken, and new perspectives formed. It is theoretically possible, for example, to change the focus, to delve downward as it were two lives back, and look upward from that perspective to the present.

The personal present subconscious could be compared, using this analogy, with the topmost layer of soil dealing with the present seasons. [...]

There are of course peculiar sets of associations that have been collected in this existence only, but even among associations that seem to be from this existence there are those associations, usually key associations, from previous existences which merge with those of the present.

Now the brain would have to sort out this information so that the physically attuned mechanism was clearly able to maintain its temporal present. When man first developed the pause of reflection, as mentioned earlier in this book (see sessions 635–36 in Chapter Nine), he did undergo initial disorientation before he learned to distinguish a vividly remembered event of the past from a presently experienced one. [...] To utilize future probable events, the physical brain would be forced to enlarge its function while keeping the individual in clear relationship with the present moment of power, or corporeal effectiveness. Affirmation always involves the acknowledgement of your power in the present. [...]

Now you can alter your present through altering your past, or you can change your present from the future. (See sessions 653–54 in Chapter Fourteen.) Even these manipulations must take place in your practical-experienced present, however. Many people have at one time or another changed their present behavior in response to the advice of a “future” probable self, without ever knowing they have done so.

[...] Events in distant places then become present knowledge. [...]

[...] The top of the mountain represents the present to you, and the tiers of rock beneath stand for the past. [...] The rocks themselves still exist in the geologists’ present time, or they could not make such an examination. [...]

The knowledge of probabilities⁴ brings forth present time and reality. Voices speak through the genes and chromosomes that connect the future and the past in a balance that you call the present form. [...]

[...] The tree knows its present and future history,⁷ in your terms, but it understands a future that is not preordained. It feels its own power in the present as it constructs that future. [...]