“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You think of space as an emptiness to be filled because on your plane you fill what you call space with camouflage patterns. And I repeat: instead true space, fifth dimensional space, is the vitality and stuff of all existence itself, vital and alive, from which all other existences are woven through means which I have outlined so far in a rather sketchy fashion. Even on your plane quality, which represents a kind of expansion, does not necessarily imply an expansion of space. The universe expands continually in a qualitative manner that has nothing to do with space as it is usually envisioned. And the expansion is more vivid and valid than I can possibly explain to you at this time.

Your own dream world expands constantly. Your ideas expand constantly, but your ideas have nothing to do with space, and the manner in which the universe constantly expands has nothing to do with your idea of space. True space, fifth dimensional space, has abilities of expansion that do not need space, not in your terms.

Even as Ruburt looks out the window, seemingly through empty space at the street, the so-called space simply is not empty, though through the specialized camouflage senses it may appear to be empty. Your outer senses merely equip you to perceive your own camouflage, but to others your camouflage may in some cases appear as empty space, while what is empty to you is filled with activity for them.

The universe is expanding in the way that a dream expands. In other words this expansion has nothing to do with your (underline) idea of space. The expansion, in a most basic manner, is more like the expansion of an idea. It has nothing to do with space or time in the manner in which you are accustomed to think of them. I told you earlier that your scientist’s idea of an expanding universe was in error, although in one important sense the universe was expanding, and this is what I referred to.

[...] It takes up space. [...] The mind takes up no space, it does not have its basic existence in time. The reality of the inner universe does not take up space, nor does it have its basic existence in time. Your camouflage universe, on the other hand, takes up space and has an existence in time, but it is not the real and basic universe, any more than the brain is the mind.

Since I have also said that basically the universe has no more to do with space in your terms than does the dream world, you may deduce a similarity between the medium in which both the basic universe and the dream world may be found. You must understand here that your idea of space is something quite different from the reality of our fifth dimensional space. [...]

[...] This should be considered along with our material on the expanding universe, since dream locations represent, certainly, a reality, even a framework that has no existence in your space; and measured purely along the lines used to measure your space, you would receive no hint at all of their existence or reality. [...]

[...] You cannot feel outwardly, or see or measure, an emotion, and an emotion takes up no space. [...] In value they can be said to expand, yet this very real intensity or value expansion of a feeling takes up no more additional space than it did at its conception.

Consciousness takes up no space in your terms. It forms what space is. When consciousness needs space in which to operate, it creates space. When it is resting it does not need space and it does not create it in these terms. [...] Knowledge within your brain does not take up physical space within your brain. Dreams help form your personality, but they do not take up physical space. Your personality does not take up physical space. What you are exists independently of both space and time. When you are resting between reincarnations, you rest in a dimension in terms of space and time. You come back into space and time if you desire to reincarnate. Where I am, space and time as you define it, do not exist. [...]

[...] You form your ideas of space. [...] Your physical senses form your idea of space. This same so called space within this room also contains me and others like me. Space is your illusion. [...] But more exists within what you call the space of this room, and you do not perceive it. [...]

[...] But it is difficult for me, with Ruburt’s eyes closed, for me to see you as you imagine yourself to be at this particular point in space and time. With Ruburt’s eyes open, I can see you as he sees you as a particular personality in this particular space and time and then, you see, I can place you within your own development. [...]

[...] But they retain enough semblance of permanency so that you can rely upon their position in space, their size and weight and their depth and physical dimension. You can agree as to their placement in space. [...]

[...] While everything seems neat and tidy within those specifications, and whole, you operate with brilliant nonchalance in the theater of time and space. Time and space are each the result of psychological properties. (Pause.) When you ask how old is the universe, or how old is the world, then you are taking it for granted that time and space are somehow or other almost absolute qualities. [...]

Space, again, is a psychological property. [...] The universe did not, then, begin at some specified point in time, or at any particular location in space—for (louder) it is true to say that all of space and all of time appeared simultaneously, and appear simultaneously.

In the beginning, physical space had the qualities that dream space has to you now. [...]

[...] In your range of activity you can adequately identify events, project them in time and space, only by isolating certain portions of much larger and much smaller events, and recognizing a highly specific order of events as real.

[...] Time and space need not be connected, however — that is, the attractions that exist between a reality and any given probability cluster may have nothing to do with time and space at all. [...] You imagine your universe as extending outward in space (and backwards in time). [...]

[...] So far, your ideas of space travel involve that kind of surface navigation. [...] As closely as I can explain it in your terms, your concepts of space travel have you going around space rather than directly through it.

“Effective” space travel, creative space travel on your part, will not occur until you learn that your space-time system is one focus. [...]

Theoretically, a thoroughly educated space traveler in your time, landing upon a strange planet, would be able to adjust his own consciousness so that he could perceive the planet in various “sequences” of time. [...] You have confidence in your ability to move through space, so you might then explore the terrain that you could not see from your original landing point. If you did not understand the change in qualities of space, you might imagine that the whole planet was a giant volcano.

In your terms other universes, with all of their own space and time structures, were created simultaneously, and exist simultaneously. The effect of looking outward into space, and therefore backward into time, is a kind of built-in convention that appears within your own space-time picture. [...]

[...] You must look not to space but to the source of space, not to time but to the source of time—and most of all, you must look to the kind of consciousness that experiences space and time. [...]

[...] The initial action did not occur in space or time, but formed space and time.

[...] Those events then “subsequently” show themselves in time and space, with extraordinary results.

As your perceptive mechanisms insist that objects are solid, for example, so they insist that such a thing as space exists. Now what your senses tell you about the nature of matter is entirely erroneous, and what they tell you about space is equally wrong — wrong in terms of basic reality, but quite in keeping of course with three-dimensional concepts. (Humorously): In out-of-body experiences from the living state, many of the problems are encountered, in terms of space, that will be met after death. And in such episodes, therefore, the true nature of time and space becomes more apparent. After death it does not take time to go through space, for example. Space does not exist in terms of distance. [...]

[...] Now theoretically, this center could be in the middle of your present living room, in physical space, but the distance between you and the members of your family still living — sitting perhaps, thinking of you or reading a paper — would have nothing to do with space as you know it. [...]

[...] They do not take up space, so the question, “Where does all this happen?” is meaningless in basic terms.

[...] Your entire concept of space is so distorted that any true explanation is highly difficult. [...]

You have learned how to make roads through space, but not through time on a conscious level. There are intersections in time and space however that you have not recognized. [...] You think of time as moving toward something, and of space as relatively stable.

Space and time are constructions of ideas. They do not appear physically, as say a table or a chair, yet they seem to define both a table and a chair, in that you cannot easily conceive of a piece of furniture, for example, existing except in the medium of space and time.

The ideas of space and time are constructed in different ways in various systems. [...] You find it exceedingly difficult to consider existence at all without space or time, yet basically consciousness is independent of both.

The ideas of space and time emerge only when consciousness adopts camouflage, only when it becomes wedded, in other words, with a physical-type existence. Time and space are both creations of consciousness, in other words, and vehicles of its expression.

These points impinge upon what you call time, as well as space. There are certain points in time and space, therefore, (again in your terms), that are more conducive than others, where both ideas and matter will be more highly charged. [...]

Other kinds of consciousness coexist within the same “space” that your world inhabits. [...]

Your space is filled with these subordinate points, and as you will see later, these are important in allowing you to transform thoughts and emotions into physical matter. [...]

[...] “My space is filled. [...]

What your senses show to be empty, you term space, and you think of matter rather paradoxically as filling up space, and yet as being where space is not, so-called space and so-called material are energy, and the true properties of energy are very difficult to explain to you, because all your concepts are so limited.

[...] Even space, as you think of it, does not exist. Fifth dimensional space is something else again. The appearance of space is a distortion of your own perception, and that is all.

Incidentally, in the same manner that psychological experience exists, and does not take up space, in this same manner do psychic gestalts of intelligence exist, more or less within your plane and yet not visible to your senses. [...]

I do want you to have some breathing space also. [...]

In waking life you perceive only certain portions of events that fall within your space-time continuum. [...] You may for example see in the past, present and future, objects that in your time will take up any given space. Often such a dream will be considered meaningless because at your “fact level,” past, present and future objects cannot appear at once in the same space.

(9:15.) The earth-tuned consciousness must deal within the space-time context, for only inside this framework can it clearly perceive events. In the dream state consciousness ignores space-time relationships to a large degree, and yet it is still firmly based upon the body’s corporeal mechanism. [...]

Space itself accelerates in ways that you do not understand. [...] Any point in space is also a point in what you think of as time, a doorway that you have not learned to open.¹

(Very intently:) The space is not the same, or identical, in any case. It only appears to be so to you.

(“Is it space as we know space here on earth?”)

Space.

(“Does your space contain time as we know it?”)

Space.

Even the duration of an event or object in space or time is determined by the intensity of the thoughts or emotions that gave it birth. Duration in space is not the same as duration in time, however, though it may seem that this is the case. [...] An event or object that exists briefly in space may have a much greater duration in time. It may have far greater importance and intensity, existing in your memory, for example, long after it has disappeared in space. [...]

Space and time are both root assumptions, which simply means that man accepts both, and assumes that his reality is rooted in a series of moments and a dimension of space. [...]

(9:40.) If the doll sat on a bureau and this is also vividly recalled, then the space in which the doll sat still carries the impression of the doll, though other objects may be placed there. You react, therefore, not only to what is visible to your physical eyes in space, or to what is directly in front of you in time, but also to objects and events whose reality is still with you, though they may seem to have disappeared.

[...] Since we occupy two apartments in order to have enough living and working space, we had room to take in a couple who had been flooded out. [...]

An emotion obviously does not take up physical space, yet it takes up varying amounts of psychic space according to its intensity. It seems to recede in time and to shrink in psychic space as the intensity of it begins to diminish. [...]

[...] The emotion will once again rush into the psychic space which is formed by elements in the personality’s psychological environment. [...] As the emotion diminishes it takes up less of your psychic space, fills up less of your inner environment, and you seem to yourself to recede from it.

Now, before we plunge into the nature and characteristics of dream reality, let us briefly consider the relationship between emotions, space, and distance as they occur within the waking conditions.

[...] That which appears ahead of you in distance, and has not yet been experienced, under usual circumstances has not yet entered the psychic space of inner environment. [...]

You conceive of action in terms of time, since within the physical field a given action appears to actually take up time, almost in the same way that a chair seems to take up space. The chair of course does not take up space, but is part of what you call space. [...]

We have been speaking of the electric reality and actuality of thoughts and emotions, and of dreams, and of all such experiences which appear to be purely psychological in origin, and take up no space in your physical universe.

Depths are contained within this system that are not depths in terms of space, but rather definite depths and dimensions in terms of varying intensities. [...]

[...] Within the electrical system, intensity is also responsible for the potentiality, duration and electrical mass, which is a mass of a different sort; a mass that takes up no space, and is not made of matter as you know it, but mass whose thickness is one of varying electrical intensities which form a definite shape, a separate field more or less, an electrical coded counterpart for physical matter.

[...] Your ideas and experiences with space and matter, however, are determined by your own sense apparatus. What is matter to you might be “empty space” for beings equipped in an entirely different fashion. [...] The greater inner reality of the psyche, however, is as extensive as outer space seems to be.

[...] By its nature, however, that precise specialization and tuning of consciousness in to space and time largely precludes other less-specialized encounters with realities. Dreams often present you with what seems to be an ambiguity, an opaqueness, since they lack the immediate impact of psychological activity with space and time. [...] The lack of normal time and space intersections means that you cannot share your dreams with others in the way that you can share waking events. [...]

[...] In your limited space travel you take for granted the fact that different conditions will be met from those encountered upon your planet.

Events as you understand them are only intrusions of multidimensional activities into space and time. [...]

[...] You know that space is filled with all kinds of inhabitants, and we will compare these space inhabitants to probable events. [...] Some space inhabitants would not be able to land under those conditions at all. [...] To land their own rocket ships, space travelers must enter your atmosphere and use its conditions while maintaining their own integrity. [...]

[...] They must fall into the proper time and space slots. [...]

Physical events imply the collection of basically nonphysical forces into an organization that exists initially outside of the time-space context. [...]

[...] That is, these psychological activities “explode” into physical events by virtue of a transformation and a charge that allows purely mental acts to “break the time-space barrier” and emerge as realities in a physical world. [...]

[...] In waking life, if you want to disconnect yourself from an event or place, you try to move away from it in space. [...] In physical reality you can move fairly freely through space, but you do not travel from one city to another, for example, unless you want to. [...] This is so obvious that its significance escapes you: but it is intent that moves you through space, and that is behind all of your physical locomotion. [...]

This inner space does not “displace” normal space, or knock it aside. [...]

In a dream, attempt to expand whatever space you find yourself in. [...] Unless you are working out ideas of limitations for your own reasons, you will find that you can indeed expand inner space. [...]

(Long pause.) The properties of inner space, therefore, are endless. [...] You can walk out of that dream house into another environment; and theoretically at least you can explore that world, and the space within it will expand. [...]

[...] In space travel for example, you are not going to be seen flying through the air like some gray-haired eagle. Your journey will simply not be through space, since space is a camouflage.

[...] The growth of an idea takes up no space. I have explained that the expanding universe theory contains gross error, since the universe, the real universe, is expanding; but it is expanding in terms of value fulfillment and has nothing to do with expansion in space.

[...] I have mentioned earlier that in a dream experience, as far as the senses are concerned you may visit a particular location, experience a certain time duration; and yet the location does not exist and cannot be found in your space, and though you experience, say, five hours time in your dream, this perhaps takes up merely a flash of clock time, and the physical body does not age during the psychological dream experience in any proportion to the actual psychological reality involved. You are free of space, and to a large degree of time, in the sleeping state, because you are not using your energies to transform ideas into durable physical camouflage patterns.

[...] The web exists both in time and space, as all physical constructions do. That is why I have said that your universe does not exist in the same fashion as the web, simply because it is not bound by space or time. [...]

I will go into this in a later chapter, but in a very real manner, space as you perceive it simply does not exist. Not only is the illusion of space caused by your own physical perceptive mechanisms, but it is also caused by mental patterns that you have accepted — patterns that are adopted by consciousness when it reaches a certain stage of “evolution” within your system.

Now your ideas of space are highly erroneous. [...]

[...] There is no space between my environment and yours, for example, no physical boundaries that separate us. [...]

Your planetary systems exist at once, simultaneously, both in time and in space. [...]