“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

1. In Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, I wrote in Note 7 for Session 681 that atoms are “processes” rather than things. The classical conception of the typical atom as being composed of a neat nucleus of indivisible protons and neutrons circled by electrons is largely passé, although for convenience’s sake we may still describe the atom that way. (In those terms, the one exception is the hydrogen atom, which evidently consists of but one proton and one electron cloud, or “smear.”) For the simple purposes of this note, then, I’m leaving out considerations involving quantum mechanics, which concept repudiates the idea of “particles” to begin with. (And surely that notion involves more than a little of the psychic, or “irrational.” What a heretical thought from the scientific viewpoint!) But each atom of whatever element is an amazingly complicated, finely balanced assemblage of forces and particles woven together in exquisite detail—one of the more basic examples of the unending and stupendous creativity, order, and design of nature, or consciousness, or All That Is.

Through their work with particle accelerators, or “atom smashers,” physicists have discovered that protons and neutrons themselves are composed of forces and particles that in turn are almost certainly composed of forces and particles, and so on, in an ever-descending scale of smaller and smaller entities and concepts. Over 100 subatomic particles have been identified so far, and no one doubts now that many more will be found. The existence of a number of still-undiscovered specific particles has been predicted. All of which reminds me that almost 16 years ago, in only the 19th session he’d given us (on January 27, 1964), Seth remarked:

Some of the “particles” the theoretical physicists have discovered—and/or created—in their gigantic particle accelerators have unbelievably short life-spans in our terms, vanishing, it seems, almost before they’re born. I like to think of such research from the particle’s point of view, though, a consideration I haven’t seen mentioned in the few scientific journals I read. Keep in mind that according to the Seth material the merest particle is basically conscious in its own way. Mesons are classes of particles produced from the collisions of protons. Did a meson, for example, choose to participate in an atom-smashing experiment in order to merely peek in on our gross physical reality for much less than the billionth of a second it exists with that identity, before it decays into electrons and photons? From its viewpoint, our reality might be as incomprehensible to it as its reality is to us—yet the two inevitably go together.

The varieties of consciousness—the inner “psychological particles,” the psychic equivalent, say, of the atom or molecule, or proton, neutron or quark—these nonphysical, charmed, strange forms of consciousness that make experience go up or down (all with amusement), and around and around, are never of course dealt with.

The atom, the molecule, the proton and neutron, the electrons, the quarks and other families of particles represent aspects of consciousness itself, which man then projects into the world of physics.

[...] (Pause.) The position of one cannot be ascertained ahead of time with any certainty in your framework of reference, say in the situation of the proton, because the proton is receiving such a barrage of information that is not available to you at a conscious level, and that is not available to your instruments.

[...] In physics, we’re asked to believe that this “extremely dense state” which began to expand was in actuality many billions of times smaller than a proton. (Protons are subatomic components of the nuclei of atoms.) Matter is a form of energy. [...]

(Pause at 10:04.) I am using the term “impulses” for the understanding of the general public, and in those terms molecules and protons have impulses. [...]

[...] In physics it is “known,” for instance, that the proton, an elementary particle in the atomic nucleus, has an exceptionally long life in years — the number one followed by twenty-four [or more] zeros. [...]

[...] Each atom consists of a nucleus of protons, neutrons, and other subatomic particles, around all of which move a complicated system of much lighter electrons. (An atom of hydrogen, however, is made up of but one proton and one electron.) All is in balance: The number of positive charges on the nucleus equals the number of negatively charged electrons. [...]

[...] The atomic nucleus is largely made up of more massive protons and neutrons, but investigation within the nucleus has either uncovered or produced many other subatomic particles as well — over 200 of these, some of them very unstable, are presently known. [...]