“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A thought experienced by you is also experienced by your probable selves, you see, in one way or another. They will react in their characteristic way, and experience the thought in their own manner, which may be quite different than your own.

The thought may be rejected, but there will be something to reject. The thought may be relatively meaningless to any given probable self and it may be very fleeting. [...]

[...] In the same way that an idea may appear within your system as a thought, a mental image, a dream picture or as a physical object, so does any action-event appear in many forms.

Earlier I compared your thoughts to viruses (in the last session). [...] Your thoughts direct the overall functioning of your body’s cells, even though you do not consciously know how those cells operate. [...]

[...] Past events do not intrude in this manner unless they are beckoned by the conscious expectations and thoughts that exist within your mind. [...] You will be replenished and renewed as your thoughts motivate joyful body sensations and physical events, or you will be depressed as you bring into your awareness unpleasant past body happenings.

[...] They multiply only in connection with live cells, and are thought of both as living organisms and as complicated proteins. Few scientists would grant thoughts the same kind of validity, though.

[...] She’d picked up the idea of discipline from me, in a most unfortunate way, I thought, considering her most spontaneous nature. [...] She also thought that she personally couldn’t live up to the high quality of the Seth material — her own “mental work,” a good way of putting it. [...]

[...] It’s a thought we’ve had before — but it seems that each thing we’ve accomplished has been in the face of, or in spite of, a barrage of negative thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.

[...] Thought she’d be called a hysterical woman, an exhibitionist, and so on. [...]

In one respect, and in quite a legitimate and objective manner, all thoughts are also projections. [...] Nor are you aware of what happens to these thoughts. You could not retain simultaneously all and exert all the thoughts of your lifetime thus far in any normally conscious way. [...]

[...] This is almost like working backward, for directly beneath the thoughts and impressions of waking consciousness, you will glimpse dream images like those that appear just as you fall to sleep.

It goes without saying that the part that watches also belongs to the self, but it does not belong to the self as the self is thought of in usual psychological terms. [...]

Likewise, our individual “A” cannot rip the thought out of the context of his own inner electrical system. [...] He can send an approximation of it, for the attempt to transmit the thought automatically changes the thought itself. He sends an approximation of the original thought, and this approximation is further changed by “B’s” action as he attempts to receive it. [...]

Creative distortion, in its relationship with action, affects therefore the creation of thoughts. The principle of creative distortions is mainly responsible for the fact that no identical thought is ever transmitted from one individual to another. [...]

The thought received in telepathic communications will not, therefore, be the exact thought that was transmitted, but a close approximation, a creative distortion, actually created by the receiver. [...]

Nor does the receiver receive the thought in the same condition. The thought, the original thought, is retained by A. A, however, forms a thought as nearly identical as his possibilities allow it to be. This he transmits to B. But B can’t receive the thought in its present condition, for the act of receiving a thought also changes it. He forms a thought as nearly identical as possible, and interprets it.

[...] Now in our last session I told you that our imaginary sender “A” does not transmit a given thought. [...] Action, the very action of transmission, alters the nature, the electrical reality of the thought itself. [...]

[...] Action is as valid whether the act is conscious and voluntary, or whether it occurs within a dream or within a thought. [...]

(Jane had had thoughts of death when she came into the hospital a year ago. [...] Also thought women disliked her — feared that she was after their men, and all kinds of things.

(“Years ago in the 1960’s,” Jane said, “I thought I loved you a lot more than you loved me, and that you could get along very well all by yourself.” [...]

(Jane said she thought that if I’d had to choose between painting and her, I’d have chosen painting. [...]

Now you both thought that Ruburt’s symptoms were a solution. You thought they bought you time. [...] Ruburt’s symptoms you thought gave you both time. [...]

[...] He has always thought that you were used, mainly by your mother, but he was afraid that his statements would be misinterpreted because of his own relationship with his parents.

[...] He felt you blamed him for this, and thought it was an undisciplined action on his part, forcing you to make changes you did not want to make.

[...] What can its thoughts do? Where can its thoughts go? Where do its thoughts go? How long can it hold a thought? And later—can a thought be held mentally as an object can be physically? Long before a child learns to place one playblock on top of another, it has already learned to mentally stack one thought upon another, so to speak.

He was, in a fashion only, sexually ambiguous, his mathematics expressing what he thought of as an acceptable male aspect while the artistic levels in his mind, now, he related to his feminine aspects. [...] His creativity showed itself, however, when he allowed himself to play, when he forgot what he thought he should do, and did what he wanted to do. [...]

(As I said to Jane yesterday, now that I’m back painting it seems incredible that I ever left it—even though when I chose to concentrate upon Mass Events this summer I thought that was a good decision also. [...]

You may perceive the thought patterns as quickly flashing sentences or words that are usually seen within your mind or within the other mind, or as black letters that form words. Or you may hear the words and thoughts being expressed, or you may see the earlier mentioned “landscape” in which the thoughts symbolically form into a picture.

[...] You will see your thoughts as clearly as your inner organs. In this case you may perceive them symbolically through symbols you will recognize, seeing jumbled thoughts for example as weeds, which you can then simply discard.

You can request that the thought content of your mind be translated into an intense image, symbolically representing individual thoughts and the overall mental landscape, then take out what you do not like and replace it with more positive images. [...]

It may sound very simplistic to tell you that you must have sunny thoughts as well as rays of the physical sun in order to be healthy — but sunny thoughts are as biologically necessary to your well-being as are the rays of the sun that shines in the sky. Even as infants, then, you are predisposed naturally toward certain feelings, thoughts and attitudes that are meant to insure your healthy survival and emergence into adulthood. [...]

BIOLOGICALLY VALID THOUGHTS, ATTITUDES, AND BELIEFS

— and we will begin Chapter 2, to be titled: “Biologically Valid Thoughts, Attitudes, and Beliefs.”

(I asked Jane if she thought the sessions served as a balance to those sinful-self, very restrictive ideas — that when she gave up on the sessions that other self was free to exert its power and beliefs. She didn’t know, but I thought it a valid idea. [...]

(She was so much in pain that I ended up giving her at least ten minutes of what I thought were good suggestions. [...]

[...] Both of us have had the thought at times, but Frank’s spontaneous remark hit the mark just right.

(9:45.) You operate as if your thoughts were secret, though you should know by now that they are not. Not only are your thoughts apparent through telepathic communications, for example, but without your conscious awareness they also form what you may call pseudo-images “beneath” the range of physical matter as you normally perceive it in some cases, or “above” this same range.

In this manner of speaking, your thoughts then follow laws. Their behavior follows laws, and their activities, that you do not understand, though you call your thoughts your own. [...]

(The alpha technique is thought to have many medical potentials, although it isn’t really known how the state is produced. [...]

For our guest: you should tell yourself frequently, “I will only react to constructive suggestions,” for this gives you some protection against your own negative thoughts and those of others. [...] A negative thought, if it is not erased, will almost certainly result in a negative situation, a momentary despondency, a headache, according to the original intensity of the thought.

[...] Quite literally, you see what you want to see, and you see your own thoughts, your own emotional attitudes, materialized in physical form. [...] Now if you would change an individual, change your thoughts toward him, and changes will appear in the sense data world.

If you imagine dire circumstances, ill health or desperate loneliness, these will be automatically materialized, for these thoughts themselves bring forth the conditions that will give them reality in physical terms. [...]

Here, often, and for various reasons, you find a hidden and distorted sense of power that says, “I am so powerful that I could kill you with my thought, and yet I refuse to do so.” No one, and no one thought, is that powerful. If thoughts alone could kill, you would not have the overpopulation problem!

Many such philosophies make you cower at the idea of entertaining “negative” thoughts or emotions. [...] If you believe that all such thoughts are wrong you will inhibit them and feel all the more guilty — which will generate aggressiveness against yourself and further deepen your sense of unworthiness.

[...] Many who say they believe in the power of thought are so afraid of it that they inhibit it in themselves, avoiding any that appear negative or harmful. [...] Thoughts can kill, these people think — as if the individual against whom such an impulse was directed had no protective life-giving energies of his or her own, and no natural defense.

(The last in the series took place last night, and since it dealt with extreme situations concerning my own death, Jane and I thought it wise to inquire into it. I had thought of next Monday’s session as being soon enough at first, but by now the dreams were on my mind enough so that we thought of an unscheduled session. [...]

[...] At the same time, Bill looked up at me and I thought he was smiling; or at least he didn’t appear to be worried.

[...] I also realized that I could move more easily on this slippery roof than I had thought possible.

You are responsible for your thoughts. However your spontaneous thoughts are not nearly as destructive as he imagines, and in overinhibiting them, he also inhibits purely spontaneous, joyful thoughts. [...]

Because Ruburt is at times so literal, he then did become bothered by thoughts of setting himself up, or thoughts of misrepresentation; and all of this because of the interpretation of the word spirit, or spiritual, and highly colored interpretations at that. [...]

He is reacting in an exaggerated manner to a truth—and the truth is that thoughts cause reality. [...] He takes it for granted that natural thought, left alone, will be destructive and hurt others.

As I mentioned earlier (in the 616th session), you are also sending your own telepathic thoughts outward. [...] A family can constantly reinforce its joy (louder), gaiety, and spontaneity by concentrating on ideas of vitality, strength and creativity; or it can let half of its energy slip away (deeper) by reinforcing resentments, angers and thoughts of doubt and failure.

Because you do not understand that your thoughts create illness you will continue to undergo it, however, and new symptoms will appear. [...] When you are in the process of changing beliefs — when you are beginning to realize that your thoughts and feelings cause illness — then for a while you may not know what to do.

But here you become involved with one of the most meaningful aspects of the nature of personal reality, as you test your thoughts against what seems to be. There may be a time before you learn how to change your thoughts effectively, but you are engaged in a basic meaningful endeavor.

You think a thought and because you cannot follow it you think it disappears and you wonder where it has gone; has it fallen off some invisible cliff within your mind? But, because you cannot follow the thought, and no longer perceive it, because you can no longer hold it in consciousness, does not mean that that thought no longer exists and does not have a reality of its own, for it does indeed. And if a world escapes you and you cannot follow it and you think it has been destroyed, then the same thing applies to the world as to the thought. [...]

[...] You are meant to realize that physical reality is a materialization of your thoughts and feelings and images. [...] You cannot be allowed, in your terms, to go into other dimensions until you understand the power of your thought and subjective feelings. [...]

[...] If you are in the habit, for example, of deep negative thought then you will attract to yourself negative feelings and experience deep depression. [...]

[...] It is true that thoughts form reality, but the thoughts are like passengers, riding atop of emotional feelings, or feeling-tones. The feelings obviously help form the thought. [...]

It is the feeling-tone even more than the thoughts that dictate overall activity. The feeling-tone will of itself alter the nature of the thoughts. (Leaning forward for emphasis.) The feeling, rather than the thought of confidence, is what he needs now, and his alpha experiences are leading him in that direction.

Far beneath however, at any given time in your terms, there is a dominant, characteristic, unique feeling-tone that pervades the personality and colors all of the other activities, feelings and thoughts. [...] Feelings and thoughts exist in the ground of the basic feeling-tone.