“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now the universe speaks in many voices, and it can indeed speak through a leaf if you have the wits to listen. Then you can learn much. It can speak in the silence of a room if you have the wits to realize that beneath sound there is what our friend, the physicist over here, might call antisound. That beneath the sounds that you hear there are other sounds, and I do not simply mean beneath the range of your hearing. At times you fill the atmosphere, as you think of it, with questions and with noise and you demand answers. Yet all the time far more important messages are there for you if you would once forget your questions and simply listen. Concepts that you have not thought of are there for you.

What is the meaning of existence? I can verbalize some answers for you, and I try to do so, but through direct experience and through opening yourselves up you will receive direct knowledge even though you may not be able to verbalize it later. And you will not get such knowledge by asking goodies of the universe like, what was I before? There is nothing wrong and much good to understand and receiving such information, but this is not all you should be concerned with. In the silence of your own thoughts, listen. As I have told you before, look where there seems to be nothing. Between sounds, between objects, not in your thoughts but between your thoughts, and there you will find answers but not to questions that you postulate in a demanding manner. And this is what I want you to do for the following week.

(To Arnold.) I want you personally to consider what I said about sounds on the other side of silence. You forgot to tell him that.

You can be alone in the silence, fairly isolated, and yet filled with conflict if it is within you. [...] This does not mean that silence at times is not preferable to noise. [...]

[...] You understand that from a given point of silence, sound begins and grows louder. What you do not understand is that from that given point of silence, which is your point of non-perception, sounds also begin that grow deeper and deeper into silence, yet still have meaning and as much variety as the sounds that you know, and these are also symbols. [...]

[...] To some extent, then, language is as dependent upon the unspoken as the spoken, and the rhythm of silence as well as of sound. In that context, however, silence involves merely a pause of sound in which sound is implied but withheld. [...] Language is meaningful only because of the rhythm of the silence upon which it rides.

[...] Frank was doing construction on the porches then, too, and I was worried about the Gallery-of-Silence people bugging Prentice and me. [...]

Listen to the silence between words and feel the feelings that are between your own thoughts and recognize the difference between what you feel and what you tell yourselves you feel and then you can begin to proceed. [...]

[...] You both did wonder about the Silence Gallery affair, and decided not to mention it [to Jim Poett]. The call [which was action, a creative synthesis of your joint feelings], gave you information you didn’t have before—that The Voice [as an entity] knew of the Silence Gallery in a confused way. [...]

[...] The friend, also a reporter, mentioned the Middle of Silence people to Jane, which she didn’t like, although she learned things. [...]

[...] I can assure you that death is another beginning, that when you are dead, you are not silenced. For is this silence? [...]

A spoken language is, again, dependent upon all other languages that could possibly be spoken, and thus its sounds rise into prominence and order because of the silences and pauses between them; so your waking consciousness is dependent upon what you think of as sleeping or dreaming consciousness. [...]

The creative impulses are behind your languages, yet often you use the languages to silence rather than free inner communication. [...]

[...] My eye troubles started the same spring that Seth started dictating it; I was doing James; Frank L. was building the porches; and the Gallery of Silence people were bugging us. [...]

(Seth has always cautioned us against being too self-righteous; warned us against considering silence, seriousness, or piety as synonymous with goodness or “truth.” [...]

[...] He would force himself to devote all his energies in that direction, to silence for example any stray temptations to go out into the yard in working time, to visit friends. [...]

[...] I sat in silence for several minutes because I didn’t know what to do; I seemed to be neutralized by the conflicting feelings washing over me. [...]

[...] He could not silence all of its objections.

[...] The sounds are significant because of their placement within the pauses or silences. So the portions of your psyche that you recognize as yourself are significant and intimate and real, because of the inner pauses or silences that are not actualized, but are a part of your greater being.

Now imagine a composition in which the pauses and the silences that you do not hear are sounded — and the notes that you hear are instead the unheard inner structure.

[...] I can assure you that death is another beginning, and that when you are dead, you are not silenced. For is this voice that you hear now, silence? [...]

[...] After some period of silence I say good evening to you all. [...]

[...] We sat in silence. [...]

All was silence. [...]

[...] There is also a symbolism here with the parting of the waters, a silence and abeyance, a hush. [...]

[...] Now, the very sound of my voice, as our dear friend knows, assaults the silence of the room and yet it is creative. And the vitality that sweeps through this form assaults the silence and yet it is creative. [...]

[...] The dashes indicate either two words used together, or one word separated by a silence in the middle.

[...] Look where space seems empty, and listen in the middle of silence. [...]