“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now some night for a small demonstration I will have Ruburt come up from his present state through the various stages of consciousness so you can see them. [...] And you will all learn what true communication is, for you will learn to communicate in various levels of consciousness and you will learn to listen to me in various levels of consciousness, and you will learn to know me in various levels of consciousness so that you can see (feel?)[sic] beneath the words as well as hear the surface of the words. [...]

Now if you take any number of layers of consciousness and layer them in this manner, you should realize that each of them has adjacent levels of consciousness on either side, so to speak, so that it is not simply a matter of going up and down as if you were playing with scales. [...] But you will learn to feel your own experience in reality in many other layers of consciousness. And I hope that in class, and alone, you will learn to communicate at various levels of consciousness. [...]

You can all learn to use this initial state of altered consciousness, and we will be dealing with it often in class, but you will each be dealing with it in your private lives. You will learn to examine it, but more than this you will learn to cherish it as you should cherish all the states of consciousness that you discover in yourselves and in others. [...]

Now all of you, in your own way and even you (Nadine), have begun to be familiar enough with concepts so that in your dream states and in some of your conscious states you are beginning to play around with them, and so we are in a new playground. [...]

There was a direct and instantaneous reaction between consciousness and matter, an outburst of electromagnetic power strong enough to seed a universe. Your universe is but one of many, and you perceive but a small portion of it. [...]

[...] There are different kinds of creativity, then, that must be learned, and a specialization in energy’s focus and feelings that emerges—elemental energy becoming conscious of itself and aware of issues that did not exist for it “earlier;” millions of molecules momentarily united with living consciousness, filled with primal energy, now learning love and forming highly sensitive psychic patterns; electrical charges that now form emotions instead of clouds; the innocent chaos of undifferentiated personality that exists behind the highly specified and truly sophisticated mechanism of one thought. [...]

This is some of the most important material that I have given you, for you have wondered about the purpose (of consciousness within this system), and have been able often only to see one small speck of time and space.

[...] These were in your corner of the universe, but in your terms they would have seemed to have drifted off so far that none of your instruments could ever find them.

(Seth II:) We seed universes and consciousness and your animals and your plants. The consciousness that composes them, is endowed by us. The warm-blooded creatures that you know are seeded by our consciousness. [...] Consciousness releases its abilities in ways that you do not understand and yet from your own mind, springing from your own dreams, other systems of reality emerge as you have emerged from our dreams. [...]

Now also realize that all consciousness is individual and sacred and that none of this is meant to deny the integrity of any individual consciousness. [...]

[...] There are no more spooks running around in my universe than there are in yours, and many of yours are far spookier. [...]

[...] They are methods that you use as a part of all consciousness to form new experiences and new developments. [...]

It is true that some schools of knowledge almost glorify the use of some drugs as encouraging the expansion of consciousness and the release of repression. [...]

[...] To abandon yourself, then, to the power of your own life, is to rely upon the great forces within and yet beyond nature that gave birth to the universe and to you.

Those feelings do indeed encourage expression of consciousness, and release intuitive information that may otherwise be buried beneath tensions and fears.

This feeling of abandoning oneself to the power and force of one’s own life does not lead to a mental segregation, but instead allows the self to sense the part that it plays in the creative drama of a universe. [...]

There is presently no science, religion, or psychology that comes close to even approaching a conceptual framework that could explain, or even indirectly describe, the dimensions of that kind of universe. [...] Again, each atom and molecule — and any particle that you can imagine — possesses, and would possess, a consciousness. [...]

(Pause.) It is not just that your view of reality is relative to your position within the universe, but that the universe itself is different according to your position within it, and that spiritual or psychological rules apply. The universe deals with different kinds of order, perceptions, and organizations, each dependent upon the others, yet each separate in its own domain.

The universe expands, as I have said before, as an idea expands; and as sentences are built upon words, in your terms, and paragraphs upon sentences, and as each retains its own logic and continuity and evidence within that framework, so do all the portions of the universe appear to you also with the same cohesiveness (dash) — meaning continuity and order. [...]

The same applies to your universe. [...] I am not speaking merely of hidden variables, in scientific terms, nor am I saying that the universe is an illusion, but a psychological reality in which “objectivity” is the result of psychological creativity.

While you have highly limited concepts about the nature of the self, you cannot begin to conceive of a multidimensional godhood, or a universal reality in which all consciousness is unique, inviolate — and yet given to the formation of infinite gestalts of organization and meaning.

(11:11.) The unknown reality, however, is unknown enough to usual reaches of the most flexible consciousness, in your terms, that it can only be approached by a personality as couched in it as I am. [...] One of my purposes then has been to make this unknown reality consciously known.

[...] I used the opportunity, then, to explain the great freedom available to Robert Butts’s mother after death — but also to explain those elements of her reality present during life that had been closed to him consciously because of mankind’s concepts about the nature of the psyche. [...] Your consciousness will expand as you become acquainted with these ideas.

[...] My psychological awareness bridges worlds of which you are consciously aware, and others that seem, at least, to escape your notice. [...] She was led to develop her own, therefore, and this book is an extension of certain ideas already mentioned in Adventures in Consciousness.³ To write that book, Jane Roberts drew on deep resources of energy.

Because mental enzymes seem to give the same effects most of the time in your physical universe, your scientists for years blithely labeled these as the laws of nature, that is, the apparent laws of cause and effect. Now because, if you’ll excuse the pun, a certain cause will usually give a certain effect in your physical universe, you may be justified in saying that these apparent results are laws that operate within your physical universe. [...]

Incidentally I do have access to your conscious and unconscious minds, but only when you permit it. Consciously neither of you are aware of the subtle permission or refusal of permission that you yourselves give. [...]

(Tired consciousness sometimes yields good results; so may a clogged-up consciousness. [...]

[...] You get a subconscious focus different in many ways from conscious concentration. [...]

Before Seth began a discussion of dreams, and as a preliminary, he explained the natural mobility of human consciousness and outlined the main features of the “interior universe” that could be glimpsed in both waking and dream states and which underlie physical reality. This introduction offers a natural pathway into the area of dreams (part of the interior universe) and to the other states of consciousness possible within the dream framework. [...]

I’m including in this chapter a few poems as notes of a subjective autobiography, to show what events triggered this first release of unconscious material on my part, opening the doors to the interior universe; for now I believe that certain personal conditions are characteristic prerequisites for such developments, that the channels of intuitive knowledge are opened according to the intensity of individual need. This need might not be consciously recognized, as it was not in my case, but it must be present.

A small household tragedy, the death of a cat, yet to me it contained the question of the uniqueness of life and the value of consciousness. [...] In a world where humans slaughtered their own kind constantly, who in their right mind would give a moment’s thought to a cat’s consciousness? [...]

[...] Dreams, inspirations, experiences in mystic consciousness — all, I believe, have their prime source outside of our usual consciousness and mode of activity.

No one, Ruburt or myself, can have the experiences that you can have with your own consciousness. No one can learn to manipulate physical reality in the way that you can or understand the nature of their own consciousness in the way that you can. You have a unique experience ahead of you that is yours and can exist for no other consciousness in the universe. [...] The journey into consciousness and reality that can be perceived by you can be perceived by no other. [...]

[...] It was a way of getting you to become familiar with your own consciousness and states of consciousness that you adapt, all without knowing, into which you fall and rise without conscious knowledge. If you were aware of yourselves, you would not need me to tell you what these stages of consciousness are. But they are a part of your heritage, a part of your inner knowledge, and we want you to use them consciously and with egotistical awareness now, for your ego is not to be treated as a stepchild, as a poor relative. [...]

[...] These states of consciousness are your own and I did not invent them. [...] The states of consciousness, however, are important for they are states of consciousness that are quite natural to you as you go about your days. [...]

[...] One portion of it faces physical reality, ordinary working consciousness, and usually it is here that you focus. [...] You do not need the electroencephalograph to let you know when you are in Alpha I. If you want, you may imagine a particular kind of pattern as being your waking consciousness, as in a graph with the very quick motions representing delta and then slowing out gently for the Alpha patterns, if you prefer. [...]

This is not an uncaring universe or nature operating, but portions of consciousness who choose at whatever levels certain experiences that nourish the living environment, and bring satisfactions that may never show on life’s surface.

The universe is meaningful or it is not. Since the universe is indeed meaningful, then there must be a reason and a cause even for conditions that appear chaotic, cruel, or grotesque. [...]

[...] I do want to point out that all fetuses do not necessarily intend to develop into normal babies, and that if medical science, through its techniques, ends up in directing a normal birth, the consciousness of the child may never feel normally allied with physical experience.

I am not advising that malformed infants be killed, but I do want to point out that even in those most severe cases there is meaning in such conditions, and the consciousness involved then chooses another kind of experience.

I have used the term “expansion of consciousness” here rather than the more frequently used “cosmic consciousness” (pause), because the latter implies an experience of proportions not available to mankind at this time. (Pause.) Intense expansions of consciousness by contrast to your normal state may appear to be cosmic in nature, but they barely hint at those possibilities of consciousness that are available to you now, much less begin to approach a true cosmic awareness.

[...] Expansion of consciousness, therefore, requires honest self appraisal, an awareness of one’s own beliefs and prejudices. [...] All who wish to look within themselves, to find their own answers, to encounter their own “appointment with the universe,” should therefore become well acquainted with the intimate workings of their own personality.

Above all, individuals who receive such information in states of expanded consciousness are already those who feel deeply within themselves connections not only with the earth itself, but with deeper realities. Consciously they may often be unaware of this basic quality within themselves. [...]

[...] This in turn reminded her of her own manuscript, The Physical Universe As Idea Construction, which she discusses in the Introduction. [...]

(To Art O.): Now, my dear scientific friend over there: Atoms and molecules, minute as they may appear to you, also carry their burden of consciousness and responsibility. Yet there is a portion of consciousness that can joyfully perceive in a manner that is not dictated by its nature; it can playfully perceive as a creative aspect of its being, without responsibility. In one manner of speaking the very air about you sings with its own joyful consciousness. It does not know the same kind of burden of consciousness that often oppresses you. (Speaking generally): You are so frightened of death, in your terms, that you dare not turn your consciousness off for one second; for you fear that if you do, indeed, who will be there to turn it back on again?

It is theoretically possible, for example, for any of you to disperse your consciousness and become a part of any object in the room — or to fly apart, to disperse yourself out into space — without leaving your sense of identity. [...] Consciousness by its very characteristics carries the burden of perception. This is the kind of consciousness you are used to thinking of. You cannot imagine it without perception in your terms; and yet consciousness can be vital and alive without your idea of perception. [...]

[...] You forget that consciousness is the only true vehicle. No part of your consciousness is imprisoned within you. [...]

Until you are honest with yourself and become consciously aware of yourself, you cannot honestly relate with others; you will project upon them your own fears and prejudices. [...] You must become consciously aware of what you tell yourself is true every moment of the day, for that is the reality that you project outward.

All of these procedures are unnecessary to consciousness itself, however. They are necessary to develop communication between nonphysical consciousness and the physical form which it has adopted. Consciousness, in forming an image, or creating it, then responds to it creatively, setting up frameworks for further creative actions. Consciousness experiences reality directly, but having formed physical matter into a personal image, it must then creatively translate data to that physical brain. [...]

The brain looks out upon the physical universe, and consciousness then reacts, again creatively, to that environment. [...]

[...] There is no mass creative act, for all portions of consciousness have their part to play in creativity. This is the meaning of action, of consciousness, and of individuality: the freedom to create.

Consciousness itself perceives directly, and these various methods of perception have been adopted to meet varying physical circumstances. [...]

[...] The connections between the dreaming self and the waking self, and between the dream universe and the physical universe, exist on chemical, electromagnetic and psychic levels.

[...] He must remember however in his psychological time experiments that to focus outward, within and through the universe, is to expand and focus inward simultaneously. [...]

[...] It will indeed be beneficial for you both to suggest to your subconscious that it enable you to develop your psychic abilities, and then consciously forget the matter.

[...] As far as I can recall, this was the first time I became consciously aware that a dream could influence waking action.

Consciousness predates physical forms. Consciousness predates the physical universe. (Long pause.) Consciousness predates all of its manifestations.

[...] Consciousness built the forms, so life existed within consciousness for all eternity. There was no point in which chemicals or atoms suddenly acquired life, for they always possessed consciousness, which is life’s requirement.

[...] Your own impulses naturally lead you to seek creative fulfillment, the expansion of your consciousness, psychic excursions, and the conscious knowledge and manipulation of your dreams.

[...] What you have in your physical species are the manifestations of inner species of being, or creative groupings originated by consciousness as material patterns into which consciousness then flows. [...]

This is a cornerstone for consciousness and for personality development. [...] Without it, no further development of consciousness can occur. [...] This state has been called cosmic consciousness, but it is hardly that.

I have told you that the ego, generally speaking, is self-conscious action that attempts to set itself apart from action and to consider action as an alien object. Now this altered ego retains its highly specialized self-consciousness, and yet it can now experience itself as an identity within and as a part of action.

[...] The responsibility of dealing with manipulation within the physical universe remains, but in some respects the nature of this manipulation changes. [...]

[...] Retaining its own consciousness of reality it can now afford to step out of itself momentarily in order to gain further experience.

[...] Now this would put tremendous pressure on any consciousness without proper background and development. We do not have one simple, cozy universe in which to hide. We are still alert to other quite alien systems of reality that flash on the very outskirts of consciousness as we know it. There are far more various kinds of consciousness than there are physical forms, each with its own patterns of perception, dwelling within its own camouflage system. [...]

[...] Consciousness must show itself, however. [...] In some systems for example, it forms highly integrated mathematical and musical patterns that are themselves stimuli for other universal systems. [...]

[...] In childhood and in the dream state, each personality is aware to some extent of the true freedom that belongs to its own inner consciousness. These abilities of which I speak, therefore, are inherent characteristics of consciousness as a whole and of each personality.

Consciousness is not dependent upon form, as I have said, and yet it always seeks to create form. [...]

Your universe is only one of many such universes. [...] One universe does become another. However, the universes containing an almost infinite number of planes are therefore affected by the exchange of energies involved, and the interaction and continual movement even of one plane through another results in effects which will be perceived in various ways, again according to your own situation in them.

Their time measurements, based on camouflage to begin with, are almost riotously inadequate and bound to give distortive data, since the universe simply cannot be measured in these terms. The universe was not created at any particular time, but neither is it expanding into nowhere like an inflated balloon that grows forever larger, at least not along the lines now being considered. The expansion is an illusion, based among other things upon inadequate time measurements, upon the limited cause and effect theories; and yet in some manners the universe could be said to be expanding, but with entirely different connotations than are usually used.

Therefore the expanding universe implies a universe expanding in a more or less empty space, and this is not true. The phenomena that are given as evidence of this kind of expanding universe are the result of camouflage instruments, distortive ideas of time, and the resulting cause and effect theory.

I did want to answer Ruburt’s question as to the expanding universe, though we will not go into all the details now. Your camouflage idea of time is no help, and until you realize that time as you think of it does not exist in any real terms, then you will not be able to understand the true nature of your universe.

I would like this evening to speak more concerning the interrelationship of various units; for when I speak of the interrelationship of universes, remember that these universes are also units, or if you prefer, systems.

It goes without saying however that the characteristics of any system or unit that I have given here must apply to the dream universe, and to your own universe. [...]

[...] This unity and interdependence is in itself responsible for that interplay of mental and psychic action which results in the individual consciousness, that is, with the ego.

[...] Increased consciousness and awareness of itself, through the manipulation and materialization of its own energy into more complicated camouflage patterns, is another characteristic of a system or unit.

What do you think this physical universe is? You may not have thought of the question consciously, but each of us has an opinion and we guide our daily actions by it whether we realize it or not. By physical universe I mean everything with which we come into contact in any way at all—stars, chairs, events, rocks, flowers—our entire physical experience. [...]

[...] Seth says that we form the physical universe as unselfconsciously as we breathe. [...] Physical matter is like plastic that we use and mold to our own desire, not like concrete into which our consciousness has been poured. [...]

“Chemicals themselves will not give rise to consciousness or life. Your scientists will have to face the fact that consciousness comes first and evolves its own form. … All the cells in the body have a separate consciousness. There is a conscious cooperation between the cells in all the organs, and between the organs themselves. [...]

“Molecules and atoms and even smaller particles have a condensed consciousness. They form into cells and form an individual cellular consciousness. This combination results in a consciousness that is capable of much more experience and fulfillment than would be possible for the isolated atom or molecule alone. [...]