“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

These are creative distortions on your part, directly related to specializations of consciousness that cut you off from the greater concourse existing at other levels between the species and the land. Again, consciousness everywhere pervades the universe, and is aware of all conditions. The balance of nature upon your planet is no chance occurrence, but the result of constant, instant computations on the part of each most minute consciousness, whether it forms part of a rock, a person, an animal, a plant. Each invisibly “holds space together,” whatever its station. This is a cooperative venture. Your own consciousness has its particular unique qualities, in that like other comparatively long-lived species, you associate your identity with your form far more rigidly. Other kinds of consciousness “leap in and out of forms” with greatest leeway. There is a biological understanding that exists, for example, when one animal kills another one for food. The consciousness of the prey leaves its body under the impetus of a kind of stimulus unknown to you.

There is consciousness within each conceivable hypothetical point within the universe. There is therefore “an invisible universe” out of which the visible or objective universe springs.

Because each hypothetical, conceivable portion of the universe is conscious, the Planner is within the plan itself in the greatest of terms — perhaps basically inconceivable to you. There is of course no “outside” into which the invisible universe materialized, since all does indeed exist in a mental, psychic, or spiritual realm quite impossible to describe. To you your universe seems, now, objective and real, and it seems to you that at one time at least this was not the case, so you ask about its creation and the evolution of the species. My answer has been couched in the terms in which the question is generally asked.

(9:53.) Give us a moment… You distinguish between consciousness and your own version, which you consider consciousness of self. When I speak of atoms and molecules having consciousness, I mean that they possess a consciousness of themselves as identities. I do not mean that they love or hate, in your terms, but that they are aware of their own separateness, and aware of the ways in which that separateness cooperates to form other organizations.

Instead, consciousness formed matter. As I have said before, each atom and molecule has its own consciousness. Consciousness and matter and energy are one, but consciousness initiates the transformation of energy into matter. In those terms, the “beginning” of your universe was a triumph in the expansion of consciousness, as it learned to translate itself into physical form. The universe emerged into actuality in the same way (underlined), but to a different degree, that any idea emerges from what you think of as subjectivity into physical expression.

The consciousness of each reader of this book existed before the universe was formed—in parentheses: (in your terms)—but that consciousness was unmanifest. Your closest approximation—and it is an approximation only—of the state of being that existed before the universe was formed is the dream state. (Long pause.) In that state before the beginning, your consciousness existed free of space and time, aware of immense probabilities. [...] (Long pause.) Your consciousness is a part of an infinitely original creative process.

[...] Each consciousness that takes a part in the physical universe dreamed of such a physical existence, in your terms, before the earth was formed. In greater terms than yours, it is quite true to say that the universe is not formed yet, or that the universe has vanished. In still vaster terms, however, the fact is that in one state or another the universe has always existed.

I am not saying that the universe is the result of some “psychological machine,” either, but that each portion of consciousness is a part of All That Is, and that the universe falls together in a spontaneous, divine order (intently)—and that each portion of consciousness carries within it indelibly the knowledge of the whole.

Each person is a vital (long pause), conscious portion of the universe. Each person, simply by being, fits into the universe and into universal purposes in a way no one else can. [...] The universe is conscious at every conceivable point of itself. Each being is an individualized segment of the universe; then, in human terms, each person is a beloved individual, formed with infinite care and love, uniquely gifted with a life like no other.

It is of great value, then, that each person remember this universal affiliation. [...] The inner ego (long pause) draws instant and continuous support from the universal consciousness, and the more the exterior ego keeps that fact in mind, the greater its own sense of stability, safety, and self-esteem.

[...] People, however, often identify with their seeming mistakes, forgetting (pause) their abilities in other directions, so that it seems that they are misfits in the universe, or in the world. The conscious mind can indeed have such thoughts because it so often tries to solve all problems on its own, until it begins to feel frightened, overburdened, and a failure in its own eyes.

The inner ego, however, always identifies with its source-identity as a beloved, individualized portion of the universe. It is aware of the universal love that is its heritage.

[...] The molecules and atoms and even smaller particles, all contain their separate consciousness. [...] Now, although the cells maintain individuality and do not lose any of their abilities, in this formation into cells there is actually a pooling of individual consciousness of atoms and molecules into, and to form, an individual cellular consciousness. Here the consciousness of each individual molecule or atom, by this psychic gestalt, gains immeasurably. The combination of individual consciousness into a combination forms a new, enlarged, more powerful cellular consciousness that is capable of much more experience and fulfillment than would be possible for the isolated atom or molecule.

The physical body is therefore an attribute of consciousness. The atoms and molecules possess a self-consciousness to some degree, as well as a generalized consciousness. [...] The generalized consciousness which you call the subconscious, is composed of the combination of generalized consciousness from the individual cells and molecules, but now we come down to the source of the self-aware conscious individual behind or within each molecule. [...]

Our next rule, or law, of the inner universe is of course consciousness. Everything that exists on any plane and under any circumstances contains consciousness, condensed knowledge, and even self-awareness to some degree.

It would seem, therefore, that what you call consciousness might be the result of this combination. That is, it would seem that self-consciousness was the result of this combination. Each cell, however, has its own consciousness, and when I speak of consciousness as being an attribute of cellular life, I speak only for convenience, since actually cellular life is an attribute of consciousness.

[...] These all correlated with the multitudinous kinds of consciousnesses that had clamored for release, and those consciousnesses were spontaneously endowed by All That Is with those forms that fit their requirements. You had the birth of individualized consciousness as you think of it into physical context. Those consciousnesses were individualized before the beginning, but not manifest. But individualized consciousness was not quite all that bold. [...]

The first “object” was an almost unendurable mass, though it had no weight, and it exploded, instantaneously beginning processes that formed the universe—but no time was involved. [...] In your terms this was a physical explosion—but in the terms of the consciousnesses involved in that breakthrough, this was experienced as a triumphant “first” inspirational frenzy, a breakthrough into another kind of being (most intently).

[...] What’s he trying to do, I asked Jane—combine something like science’s theoretical “big-bang” origin of the universe, all of those billions of years ago, with creationism’s theory of a recent spontaneous, divine creation of that same universe? [...] [Here we go again, I speculated, back to struggling with that contradictory notion of “simultaneous time.”] How does Seth’s instantaneous “beginning processes that formed the universe”—with no time involved—square with fossils in the earth? Isn’t he saying that the universe grew/evolved through a series of dream states?

“Imagine a body with a fully operating body consciousness, not diseased or defective, but without the overriding ego-directed consciousness that you have. [...] Their main points of consciousness were elsewhere, their primary focuses scarcely aware of the bodies they had created. [...]

When the physical origin of your universe is finally discovered, your scientists will be no better off than they are now. [...] The physical universe, and everything in it, is the result of consciousness. It did not evolve consciousness. To the contrary, consciousness not only created the physical universe, but continues to do so.

Now, this constant creation of the physical universe is not maintained through some localized subconscious that exists somewhere between two ears, behind the forehead. [...] It is a gestalt, maintained and formed by the cooperating, generalized consciousness of each atom and molecule of which the physical body is composed.

You will remember that we said that atoms and molecules contained consciousness, a generalized consciousness first of all, in which data is suspended in condensed mental genetic code, and also a self-consciousness to some limited degree.

I also mentioned that chemicals alone, in whatever form and with whatever mixtures, will not give you consciousness. The fact is that this statement that I have just given you is true and false, in that chemicals alone will give you consciousness, simply because we know now that every molecule exists on your plane is there as the physical materialization of conscious energy.

It also “stamps” or “impresses” the universe with its own imprint. No portion of the universe is inactive or passive, regardless of its seeming organization or its seeming lack of organization. Each consciousness, then, impresses the universe in its own fashion. Its very existence sets up a kind of significance, in whose light the rest of the universe will be interpreted. The universe knows itself through such significances. Each consciousness is endowed with creativity of a multidimensional nature, so that it will seek to create as many possible realities for itself as it can, using its own significance as a focus to draw into its experience whatever events are possible for it from the universe itself. It will then attract events from the universe, even as its own existence imprints the universe as an event with the indelible stamp of its own nature.

[...] You imprint the universe with your own significance, and using that as a focus you draw from it, or attract, those events that fit your unique purposes and needs. In doing so, to some extent you multiply the creative possibilities of the universe, forming from it a personal reality that would otherwise be absent, in those terms; and in so doing you also add in an immeasurable fashion to the reality of all other consciousness by increasing the bank of reality from which all consciousness draws.

[...] In ways most difficult to describe, you encounter the universe in a more direct fashion, using inner senses that are far more ranging. Using your own indestructible validity as “bait,” you go forth to draw from the universe the raw material of experience. You are yourself, yet at that level you are also a part of that universe from which that self springs, and its power and vitality are your own, to be uniquely focused. [...]

[...] But let us forget that term for a moment and consider association, with which you are already familiar, since your stream of consciousness operates in that fashion. By its very nature each consciousness is a particular, peculiar, and unique focus of awareness which will experience any possible realities through its own characteristics.

[...] The electric universe, of which you know so little, is a reality, and yet it is also a symbol of another reality. For behind even this electrical universe there is a reality which cannot be explored in terms of speech; for all consciousness, while having an electric reality, has a reality beyond even this.

Many sessions ago I used the analogy of air within your physical field, comparing it with the vitality of the universe, in that you are not as a rule conscious of air. [...] And also, that most inaccessible, most inward and seemingly most mysterious portion of the inner universe, which you seek, is so a part of you that you are unaware of it even though in it you have your very existence.

It is the vitality of the universe, and all universes, which causes the electrical reality, and the vitality of the universe, composing everything that is, cannot be touched. [...]

When I speak of the electrical universe, indeed this represents but one more facet of reality. But all of these universes are indeed one. [...] Here is the secret, if you could but see it: Even though the electrical universe might seem to you far divorced from what you know, nevertheless you dwell within it. [...]

The conscious mind does not even know, and cannot of itself command, the legs to walk across the floor. Is it any wonder, then, that the conscious mind does not know how it creates the dream universe?

You create this universe individually and collectively, man and all other beings within it, in the same manner that you create your dreams. The only difference is that your conscious energies are focused upon only one rather minute aspect of creation, and all other larger fields of activity are closed off by the outer senses, simply so that the bulk of your attention be momentarily fixed upon one small area.

They will then think that there is no real comparison to be made between the two, since each individual dream world would be a conglomeration of diverse individualistic symbols, even if they were projected into a type of universe of which the conscious mind was ignorant.

The same sort of psychic agreement holds the dream universe together as holds the physical universe together. If a man could actually focus his concentration upon those hidden, feared, mainly unknown, unrecognized elements in the physical universe upon which men simply cannot agree; if he could focus upon the dissimilarities rather than the similarities in the physical universe, he would wonder what gave anyone the idea that there was even one physical object upon which men could agree.

[...] As your own universe was formed by entities that you do not presently understand, so the discards of your own consciousness form realities for entities that are scarcely aware of your existence.

[...] I told you, for example, that dream reality consisted of more than you knew, and that the dream universe continued whether or not you perceived it. [...] You are not at the top nor at the bottom of the heap of consciousness, so to speak. [...]

[...] The perception of consciousness is not limited, however. I have told you, for example, that trees have their own consciousness. The consciousness of a tree is not as specifically focused as your own, yet to all intents and purposes, the tree is conscious of fifty years before its existence, and fifty years hence.

Now: The planetary system of which we spoke in our last session was the first one within your universe, when you are speaking in terms of time. It is very difficult to explain to you that the universe that you see, the stars and planets that you view, are one-dimensional, comparatively speaking. [...]

[...] As your own universe was formed by entities that you do not presently understand, so the discards of your own consciousness form realities for entities that are scarcely aware of your existence.

[...] I told you that dream reality consisted of more than you knew, and that the dream universe continued whether or not you perceived it. [...] You are not at the top nor at the bottom of the heap of consciousness, so to speak. [...]

[...] The perception of consciousness is not limited however. I have told you for example that trees have their own consciousness. The consciousness of the tree is not as specifically focused however as your own. To all intents and purposes the tree is conscious of 50 years before and 50 years hence.

Any consciousness is therefore innately aware of its basic identity. [...] This system spoken of earlier, the sun and original 9 planets, in your terms, have long ago passed into and formed other universal systems. [...]

Your scientists consider themselves quite rational, yet many of them, at least, would be more honest when they tried to describe the beginning of the universe if they admitted that reason alone cannot provide any true insight. Each of you are as familiar with the so-called birth of the universe, as close to it or as distant [from it], as your own recognized consciousness is to your own physical birth, for the initiation of awareness and sensation in one infant really carries all of the same questions as those involved with the birth of the universe.

[...] His consciousness left his body — an event not even considered possible by many educated people. Ruburt’s consciousness merged, while still retaining its own individuality, with the consciousness of the leaves outside his window, and with the nail in the windowsill, and traveled outward and inward at the same time, so that like a mental wind his consciousness traveled through other psychological neighborhoods.

(10:40.) To some extent or another, your intuitions acquaint you with the fact that you have your own place in the universe, and that the universe itself is well-disposed toward you. The intuitions speak of your unique and vital part in the fabric of that universe. The intuitions know that the universe bends in your direction. [...]

The origin of your universe is nonphysical, and each event, however grand or minute, has its birth in the Framework 2 environment. Your physical universe arose from that inner framework, then, and continues to do so.

The universe is the natural extension of divine creativity and intent, lovingly formed from the inside out (underlined)—so there was consciousness before there was matter, and not the other way around.

(Long pause.) Your consciousness will survive your body’s death, but it will also take on another kind of form—a form that is itself composed of “units of consciousness.” You have a propensity for wanting to think in terms of hierarchies of consciousness, with humanity at the top of the list, in global terms. The Bible, for example, says that man is put in dominion over the animals, and it seems as if upgrading the consciousnesses of animals must somehow degrade your own. [...]

2. I see correlations between the “flat view of reality” given to us by our physical senses, as Seth maintains, and the “flat” view of the universe that cosmologists perceive when they look way out into space. [...] Yet when scientists examine our universe of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, they see space as essentially flat, instead of curving in upon itself as it should over those enormous distances. Nor can the big-bang theory of the origin of the universe account for the homogeneity of a flat universe. [...]

This may hardly be original thinking here, but these proliferations of consciousness imply some pretty fantastic abilities on the part of we humans—for such developments show that even though we live as small creatures within the incredible richness of an overall consciousness, or All That Is, still our actions can result in that great consciousness exploring new areas of itself. [...]

[...] Then science threw out the entire thesis: Man wasn’t at the center of the universe anymore. The universe wasn’t created by God, and man and nature alike had no meaning, so that thematically man went from being the center of the universe, a special creature, created by God, to a meaningless conglomeration of atoms and molecules, and a meaningless universe, and that philosophical drop was shattering to man. So he’s now actually in the process of forming a new model of the universe between those two extremes—one that recognizes that each portion of the universe has meaning in relationship to all of its other parts, but that the meaning can’t necessarily be deduced by an examination of exterior appearances, but only in so far as man examines the nature of his own consciousness in its relationship to other species—to nature itself, to the objective universe, and begins to understand the vital nature of interrelatedness, within which the process of divinity is actualized.”

[...] But all knowledge is originally direct knowing—a kind of molecular mentality, in which the atoms and the molecules give their own kind of intuitive translation of knowledge possessed by all units of consciousness —for all of the knowledge of the universe is inherently contained within even the smallest, most microscopic of its parts.”

Your body consciousness is like the consciousness of any animal—alert, above all optimistic, focused in the present, as you understand it, glorifying in motion and in rest, in excitement and in quietude. [...] The body consciousness enjoys its own expression. [...]

[...] They react in their own ways to suggestion to the tone of your voice, to your expectations of their behavior, to your treatment of them—and in that regard your body consciousness responds to your conscious treatment of it. For this analogy alone, meant to further develop your joint understanding of the relationship between your conscious mind and your body, we will make further points. [...]

[...] You create an actuality, a dream universe, as real as the physical universe. It simply cannot be directly perceived within the physical universe. [...] You can perceive the dream experience, you can receive its particular intensities, because you have created the dream experience within the universe of those intensities. But the dream universe and the dream experience, like thoughts and emotions, are independent of you in existence. You influence the dream universe but you cannot stop a dream experience after you have created it, and you must create it within the small range of intensities available for its existence, for there are no other conditions or agreeable ranges of intensity within which the dream experience can exist.

This data must be interpreted in such a way that the conscious mind then can give a prediction, say, but also in such a way that its reality exits simultaneously with consciousness, but never so replacing consciousness that the ego grows alarmed. This is often done by the use of symbols which are not immediately apparent to consciousness, and thus are allowed through. [...] But the symbols chosen must be of a nature so that they will become meaningful to consciousness, to as large an extent as possible after emergence.

[...] Your creations in the electrical universe may be said to appear as your future in the physical universe. [...] My use of terms such as electrical universe, and so forth, is merely for the sake of simplicity. [...]

You must, then, project or materialize the dream universe outside of the physical self in an electric reality, and then reinterpret it, because the original dream experience has an electric reality that cannot be perceived or used, even by its creators, until it is decoded.

[...] It has a validity within very limited perspectives only; for consciousness does, indeed, evolve form. Form does not evolve consciousness. It is according to when you come into the picture, and what you choose to observe … Consciousness did not come from atoms and molecules scattered by chance through the universe….

If we must speak in terms of continuity, which I regret, then in those terms you could say that life in the physical universe, on your planet, “began” spontaneously in a given number of species at the same time. [...] In those terms there was a point where consciousness, through intent, impressed itself into matter. [...] The inner pulsations of the invisible universe reached certain intensities that “impregnated” the entire physical system simultaneously. [...]

[...] No one denies the amazing structure or design of our physical universe, from the scale of subatomic particles on “up” (regardless of what cosmological theory is used to explain the universe’s beginning). [...] Evidently it would lead from biology through microbiology to physics with, ultimately, a search that at least approached Seth’s electromagnetic energy (EE) units and units of consciousness (CU’s). [...]

If the dream world, the mind, and the inner universe do exist, but not in space, and if they do not exist basically in time, though they may be glimpsed through time, then your question will be: In what medium or in what manner do they exist, and without time, how can they be said to exist in duration? I am telling you that the basic universe exists behind all camouflage universes in the same manner, and taking up no space, that the mind exists behind the brain. [...] Your camouflage universe, on the other hand, takes up space and exists in time.

The inwardness, as you know, is conscious of itself; but forming this new universe it could express its consciousness only through matter as it formed it, beginning with the innate, rather generalized consciousness of atoms. When sufficient atoms were formed from inward energy, then more various combinations became possible, and with them an accelerated consciousness could be made apparent.

(I am not sure that Seth’s statement on page 150 constitutes a distortion, when he mentions that a communication between our universe and the universe of negative matter is possible. In the 63rd session, again, he deals with the two companion universes to ours, calling them a beforeimage and an afterimage, and lumping them under the general terms of negative or antimatter. In the 63rd session Seth states that our universe and the two universes comprising the universe of negative matter can never meet. [...]

[...] In your universe they began with the psychic possibility of a world of physical matter, born in consciousness.

It will be found in some important respects that the dream universe, which began even then, has somewhat the same relationships to the physical universe, but on a psychic level, that the physical universe has to the universe of negative matter. [...]

[...] In those terms the body is a safe universe, self-regulating. The urge toward self-fulfillment at all levels, cellular to “self-conscious,” is a part of the entire structure. [...] The physical universe always cooperates. It follows those beliefs of yours, for you physically mold your experience with the universe according to your beliefs about it.

Ruburt said somewhere “Sometimes you lean into the universe, and feel it give.” [...] Some centuries ago, to develop your particular kind of consciousness, the race separated nature from the self for operating purposes. Mankind “competed” against nature, which was to be conquered, so the universe seemed to be a threatening place. [...]

[...] Body consciousness itself is awakening, and this will add to his own perception. The body is flexibility and health is a natural result of alterations of consciousness—a change of focus that literally brings about new experience.

(10:44.) You live in a safe universe.

You certainly know consciously the importance of those significant clues, or the body’s reasoning or processes. [...] It is a meaningful universe. [...] Either that or you doubt your ability to impress the universe.

It is a meaningful universe. You are known by the universe. In a manner of speaking, some portion of your mental, physical, or spiritual reality is in correspondence with a “like” portion of the universe.

[...] It is not just that the universe knows you as you, but that you carry within yourself a knowledge of the universe also, and an innate, intimate, though unconscious, feeling of relationship, and a certain sense of identity with that cosmic heritage. In a manner of speaking, again underlined, and in the terms of this discussion, you bear a correspondence with portions of the universe that you will never visit personally, physically. [...]

[...] They examine what they think of as an impersonal universe. The universe is however personal most of all. [...]

[...] As the vitality of the universe forms, of itself, the boundaries of the various fields of activity, and as vitality itself takes on the coloration of the various fields and forms the camouflage patterns within them, so also vitality, in the form of emotions that the camouflage patterns of the personality, even while this vitality forms both emotions and personality for every individual, every consciousness, may be thought of as a separate field of activity; and all the data relating to fields of activity may be seen to apply to any consciousness as well.

[...] This consciousness-of-self—I suggest hyphens between consciousness-of-self—this consciousness-of-self is seen in man as personality, as the human personality. It appears, however, in all types of consciousness to one degree or another.

Therefore, consciousness-of-self can appear with or without the existence of an ego. Consciousness-of-self is an attribute then of all physical species, regardless of their classification. [...] Personality, then, can be seen to operate as a field of action in identity; but identity that is conscious of its relation to action as a whole.

[...] It extends as vitally and actually in the dream universe as it does in your own physical universe. It is as much a part of the electrical universe as it is a part of the world of psychological motivation. [...]