“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(She saw a structure like a pyramid shape. She had the feeling that “heavier sounds were at the bottom. These formed the base of the pyramid.” She tried several times to explain this to me. It was all important, she said, that the heavier sounds were at the base of the structures. Like the musical scale, she felt that the sounds used in building the pyramids “made steps in the air that you couldn’t see. Certain sounds went up—certain sounds bound things together—they all had purposes....”)

Now I would like you to close your eyes, or leave them open if you prefer. Let various inner sounds, memories of sounds, enter your consciousness, that may or may not be familiar to you. Try to think of the sounds of images. Think specifically of pyramids and see what sounds come to you.

The pyramids exist as other than physical matter, but it is only as physical matter that you perceive them. There are several important issues connected with the pyramids that are not as yet understood. The symbols upon them often were meant to be sounded, the sound setting up reverberations. Some of these would automatically open up many doors, leading to as yet undiscovered secrets—but only for those who understood the use of sound.

I would like both of you at odd moments to look at objects, then try to hear their sound. This will be handy training for some other things to come. This also applies incidentally to various organs of the body, and to the body itself. Then let the sounds evoke whatever naturally comes from them. There is a strange interrelationship between sound and what you think of as time, but a binding one.

To some extent punctuation is sound that you do not hear, a pause that implies the presence of withheld sound. 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. Inner sound deals primarily with that kind of relationship. [...]

Now: Regardless of the language you speak, the sounds that you can make are dependent upon your physical structure, so that human language is composed of a certain limited number of sounds. Your physical construction is the result of inner molecular configurations, and the sounds you make are related to these.

[...] The wind makes certain sounds that are dependent upon the characteristics of the earth. The breath makes certain sounds that are dependent upon the characteristics of the body. [...] You form these keys into certain sound patterns that have particular meanings.

He had always made sounds that communicated emotions, intent, and sheer exuberance. [...] The “O” was perfect, and represents one of his initial, deliberate sounds of verbalized language.

Dictation: The body reacts not so much to physical sound as to the interior sounds into which the physical sounds are translated. As mentioned (in the last two sessions), it also reacts to sounds that have no physical “counterparts.”

These sound values are literally interwoven in an electromagnetic pattern. The sounds weave (gesturing) themselves through, and help form this pattern. The activity of cells within the body also causes what you might call minute explosions of interior sound. (Long pause.) The electromagnetic and inner sound patterns are impinged upon by certain kinds of light. [...]

(Pause at 9:25.) Electrons, atoms, and molecules¹ all have their independent interior sound and light values. There are definite sounds produced when messages leap from your nerve ends.² It is very difficult to explain some of this, but there is “invisible” light, then, and inaudible sound, that affects your body and helps form the pattern about which it constantly emerges.

[...] A mental image then is also a pattern of internal sound with electromagnetic properties imbued with certain light values. In a sense, and a very real one, the mental image is incipient matter; and any structure so composed, combining the electromagnetic sound and light values, will automatically try to reproduce itself in physical existence, or materialization. [...]

Sounds obviously existed before language. There is a pattern of sound beneath all languages, a bed of vocal communication that lies behind all language and alphabet. The vocal sounds of the Sumari language and characteristics as they are presently apparent to you will, hopefully, lead toward these clearly understood but logically unstructured sounds that are recognized by the organism and by the inner self, but ignored by the reasoning conscious mind that focuses upon the logical language.

The body’s feeling, the sound of the words, convey(s) the message. So independently of any language there are sounds that in themselves convey such messages, that act upon the physical system. [...] What is felt by the organism approximates the meaning of the sounds, and to some extent is the meaning of the sounds.

[...] At a certain point sound becomes visual, and light becomes sound. [...] At one level sounds then can be theoretically perceived as light. Vowels and syllables exist as light as validly as they exist as sound.

In your language there are words that sound like the reality they try to represent. [...] When you say it correctly the breath is slowed and leaves your body: hush-sh-sh-sh the sounds finally seem to disappear.

You are imagining a situation in which there is no sound to be heard; whether or not you have ears, there is no sound. Then, imagine that, suddenly, a raindrop falls and makes a first sound... the first sound that can ever be heard. And imagine the impact and the beauty of that sound. Then slowly imagine other sounds appearing in the world, appearing in the same way that a flower might appear, so that sounds begin to be born in the universe. Imagine, then, the joy of hearing that sound in a world that had known none. Whatever sounds, then, that imaginatively come to you, feel the brilliance and miracle of them as they are born out of the silence. And then give thanks for a world of sound, and let yourself revel that you live in this world where sound is a part of your environment and surroundings. [...]

[...] Often, you use sound as a barrier. Also, you use monologs, and set up a barrier of sound to protect yourself from other people. [...] And the more nervous you are, the more frantically you erect this barrier of sound. You use sound as a barrier, therefore, and when you become doubly threatened, then you do not hear the sounds that come from without, but retreat from them. The entire “gestalt of sound” is therefore highly important to you in your “mechanism of survival”. You have used it to protect yourself, either erecting sound yourself to protect you from communications coming from without, or, when this fails, by refusing—refusing to hear. You must, therefore, ask yourself where this charged attitude toward sound originated, and why you use it in such a way. [...]

[...] First, however, you must begin to love sound. [...] “What is there to hear?” “What are they saying?” “How bad is my hearing today?” You must instead sensually enjoy those sounds that come to you, and even imagine sounds when you are alone. Now this will automatically set your inner self toward the anticipation of further sound. [...]

[...] Do not “just listen,” but allow yourself to be open to the different pattering sounds and sound patterns that the rain makes. Become fascinated with the behaviors of sound. Tell yourself that sound is like light; that it is easily available.

As I mentioned (in the last session), inner sounds are extremely important. Each of the atoms and molecules that compose your body has its own reality in sound values that you do not hear physically. Each organ of your body then has its own unique sound value too. When there is something wrong the inner sounds are discordant.

The unharmonious sounds have become a part of that portion of the body as a result of the inner sound of your own thought-beliefs. That is why it is vital that you not reinforce these inner sounds through repeating the same negative suggestions to yourself. Verbal suggestions are translated into inner sound. [...]

The sound of your inner thoughts is the medium that you actually use. [...] The sounds contain within them a built-in impetus toward energy and well-being, as I will explain shortly.

[...] They also have “structures” of sound, light, and electromagnetic properties that you do not perceive. [...]

The same kind of sound built the Pyramids, and it was not sound that you would hear with your physical ears. Such inner sound forms your bone and flesh. The sound exists connected with but quite apart from the mental words you use in thinking.

You know the importance of exterior sound. [...] Now the same is true about what I will call inner sound, the sound of your thoughts within your own head. [...]

[...] It might be noted here that Seth devoted a group of sessions last November, December, and January to some of the meanings and uses of inner and outer sound. That material was new to us, and included information on the Egyptians’ use of “inaudible” sound to help build the Pyramids; according to Seth the Romans also employed such sound in erecting the enormous, truly awesome city of Heliopolis at Baalbek, in what is now the Middle Eastern country of Lebanon. [...]

[...] The sound is formed by your intent, and the same intent — I am putting this simply now — will have the same sound effect upon the body regardless of the words used.

From the sound, the assaulting onrushing sound of traffic, if you listen you can emerge with the prize—perhaps an abstract, with the pulsating sounds transferred to rhythm and color; or perhaps again a portrait, here, of a compulsive personality, driven, and yet behind it all the purpose which is not easily seen, and the reason.

When you are bothered by noise and tumult, by traffic and the sound of neighbors’ voices, by lawn mowers and other irritating sounds, try this: do not fight them. [...]

Various sounds rush at you. From one inharmonious high-pitched yell for example, if you listen, you as an artist can sense the self that was forced to make that sound, perhaps emerge with a prize, an excellent portrait, or simply an unique and individual mouth. [...]

[...] The right ear, the wrong ear, bothers you for you do not want to hear what you consider the bad sounds. [...] And the sounds are somewhat connected with your feeling toward oil paints. [...]

[...] We have been aware of its relation to sound, since we soon learned while in the state that any sound, be it of running water somewhere in the house, or a robin’s call, would momentarily impart an upsurge to the sensation within the body. Thus sound, even though detected by ear, would act also as a stimulus to the body’s detection of the same sound via feeling.

You may see an automobile for example with your eyes, and hear its sound through your ears, but it is also within the human capacity, ideally speaking, to hear the sight of the car, and to see the sound of the car. [...]

[...] Sound, then, can be felt as well as heard, although you might say in such cases that the sound is heard in the depths of the tissues. [...]

Ruburt, in feeling sound, merely experienced the sound from a different perspective. [...]

(The day after this session, Jane greatly enlarged upon her original estimate — three hours — of the time she’d need to interpret the long or slow sounds. [...] Because of our ordinary time sense the sounds were actually so slow to us that they appeared to be motionless, or “dead,” she told me, leading us to speculate that this may be one of the reasons why in usual terms we call inanimate matter — rocks, for instance — “dead.” [...] Then, again increasing her estimate, she said that if “they” tried to communicate with us through sound, through our sensual equipment, “it would take forever.”

10. Sound, and various symbolic attributes of that phenomenon, are uniting factors in back of much of Seth-Jane’s material, and I could list many instances. I’m not referring here only to “outside” developments like Jane’s powerful Seth voice, her speaking and singing in Sumari, or her slow and fast sounds as produced for this session, but to inner, audible and inaudible manifestations or translations of sound.

[...] “You felt sound,” Seth told me. After my initial unease over this new type of experience, I found it most intriguing; I’ve had my own little adventures embodying that feeling perception of sound ever since. In the same session, Seth discussed Jane’s periodic feeling of sound; in her case, she often hears music internally.

[...] By this I mean that although the eyes are for seeing, the ears for hearing, and so forth, the potentials of the physical body include the capacity to hear, for example, through any given portion of the bodily expanse … Sound, then, can be felt as well as heard, although in such cases you may say that the sound is heard in the depths of the tissues; this, however, being an analogy … Ruburt, in feeling sound, merely experienced it from a different perspective.

Underneath this, however, there are basic inner sounds upon which all language is based, in which certain images give forth their own sound, and the two together portray clear, precise meaning.² A long time ago I said that language would be impossible were it not for its basis in telepathic communication³ — and that communication is built up of microscopic images and sounds. [...]

(Pause.) They alter the usual physical response to meaningful sound. [...] The sounds, however, while spontaneous, are not unstructured. They will present a sound equivalent of the emotion or object perceived, an equivalent that is very direct and immediate, and that bears legitimate correspondence with the object or emotion.

[...] From the 600th for December 13: “Each symbol in an alphabet stands for unutterable symbols beneath it … Sound itself, even without recognizable words, carries meaning. Oddly enough, sometimes the given meaning of the word does battle with the psychic and physical meaning of the sounds that compose it … The [Sumari] word ‘shambalina’ connotes the changing faces that the inner self adopts through its various experiences. [...] And from the 602nd for January 5, 1972: “In your language there are words that sound like the reality they try to represent. [...]

(Seth’s remarks about inner sounds were quite interesting in view of an episode that had taken place 10 minutes or so before the session started. As we made ready for it in our living room, Jane became aware of a faint buzzing — a sound I couldn’t hear. [...]

“I say ‘sounds’ — yet these inner body sounds can only be compared to an interior body situation where sound operates as light. [...] Sound has light value, and light has sound value. [...]

“Give us a moment … The movement of the joints makes sound. The sounds are messages. When hormones are released they make sounds. Those sounds are messages.

(10:58.) “Sounds are aware of their own separateness, gloriously unique, yet each one merging into a symphony. Each sound recognizes itself as itself, striking the dimensional medium in which it finds its expression; yet it’s aware of the infinite other multitudinous sounds it makes in other realities — the instruments through which it so grandly plays. [...]

[...] “What I’m getting is a fantastic sound that’s imprisoned in a crystal, that speaks through light, that’s the essence of personality. I’m getting almost jewel-like colored sounds … I’ll see what I can do with it. [...]

Now over a period of time you will all be given a series of sounds or a particular song or chant that will be yours alone and meant to apply to you alone. I suggest that you learn the sounds and say them to yourselves all alone. [...] They may or may not sound like you to you, but I suggest that you pay attention to them and that you use them. [...]

Now the sounds and the chanting of the Sumari as you presently understand it, has many purpose. [...] Meanings in sounds that your atoms and molecules understand and react to and dance to and combinations that are there for you to open individually. [...]

[...] Also, you knew very well that the Sumari were coming home and so you approximated in  your own terms the sound of the Sumari as it presently exists. [...]

It is indeed, but I never was able to do so and at one time when I was pope I used to try very hard, and it always sounded terrible and even the altar boys drowned me out. [...]

Let us see how far you are able to follow and where the sounds lead you and where you were lead by what was within the sounds, for the sounds are a cordella and I am a Sumari cordella. This evening the sounds had many meanings and they were to be deciphered by each of you personally. [...]

[...] Let yourselves go and follow the sounds. [...]

[...] Beside that there are significances in the vowels and syllables and sounds that will be explained to you as you learn what they are through experience. [...]

Sound is itself a symbol. 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. The thought unspoken has a “sound” that you do not hear, but that is very audible at another level of reality and perception.

(11:00.) Trees as they stand are a sound that, again, you do not perceive. In your dreams and particularly beyond those dreams that you recall, are areas of consciousness in which these sounds are automatically perceived and translated into visual images. [...] Given certain sounds, you could recreate your universe as you know it unconsciously, and any one multidimensional symbol can contain all the reality that you know. [...]

[...] Now these people moved mass with sound, and, as I told you earlier, actually conveyed matter through a high mastery of sound. [...]

Certain sounds, again, were utilized to indicate amazing distinctions in terms of size, shape, direction, and duration both in space and time. Sounds automatically produced brilliant images, in other words. [...]

[...] These people reacted to sounds that are not audible to your ears. [...]

[...] A line was not simply a visual line, but according to an almost infinite variety of distinctions and divisions, it would also represent certain sounds that would be automatically translated.

Verbal sounds were often stereotyped simply because the effect of sound was understood in its effects upon the body. [...] Sound was used to locate one also, and to break someone down. [...]

The pyramids, the huge boulders etched out (I think Seth refers here to Baalbek; I didn’t interrupt to ask), all of this was done in one way or another through the use of, a knowledge of, both coordination points in space (described by Seth in his own book) and the use of sound. (Also described to some degree.) There were instruments that released sound, and directed it in the same way, say, that a laser beam does with light.

In some respects the overenthusiastic use of the sound was responsible for the flood mentioned in the Bible, and other literature. [...] The use of sound was important at various times in irrigating dry areas, quite literally by pulling water from a distance. [...]

[...] Literally, the sound traveled further often than was intended, causing consequences not planned upon. [...] Sound was also used after irrigation to speed up the flowering of plants, and to facilitate transplantation to other areas. [...]

The sounds used in the language have their own importance, and will be in their own way representative or suggestive of feelings that have been largely unconscious, generally speaking. The feelings however are the tail end of inner cognizance, and we will use the sounds to carry us further and further into those inner landscapes where both objects and their representatives must finally desert us.

[...] Sound itself, even without recognizable words, carries meaning. Oddly enough, sometimes the given meaning of a word does battle with the psychic and physical meaning of the sounds that compose it.

[...] It is hidden within all languages, whether or not they sound at all similar, for it is based upon the immaculate integrity of feeling, for which sound is only a dim representation.

Instead the relationship between objects will be stressed through sound. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

(To Arnold.) I want you personally to consider what I said about sounds on the other side of silence. [...]

Now what I am saying sounds extremely simple, easy, and it would make very uninteresting prose but the reality that exists within my words is vital and the reality that you can experience if you follow my words is vital. [...]

I say “sounds”—yet these inner body sounds can only be compared to an inner body situation where sound operates as light. [...] Sound has light value, and light has sound value. [...]

[...] The movement of the joints makes sound. The sounds are messages. When hormones are released they make sounds. Those sounds are messages.

[...] As inappropriate as this might sound, thoughts of your own fortunate financial situation help you increase that abundance—but it also helps to increase the abundance of others.

[...] In any body difficulty, the light and sound frequencies become out of tune, so to speak. [...]