“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The concept of nirvana (see the 637th session in Chapter Nine) and the idea of heaven are two versions of the same picture, the former being one in which individuality is lost in the bliss of undifferentiated consciousness, and the latter one in which still-conscious individuals perform mindless adoration. Neither theory contains an understanding of the functions of the conscious mind, or the evolution of consciousness — or, for that matter, certain aspects of greater physics. [...] The expanding universe theory¹ applies to the mind as well as to the universe.

[...] The woman being created from his rib symbolized the necessary emergence, even from the new creature, of the intuitive forces that will always come forth — for without that development the race would not have attained self-consciousness in your terms.

[...] The earthly characteristics often appear as he is depicted in animal form, for he was also of course connected with the intuitive terrestrial attributes from which the new human consciousness would spring.

Now: This new kind of consciousness brought with it the open mirror of memory in which past joy and pain could be recalled, and so the realization of mortal death became more immediate than it was with the animals.

[...] Therefore, if you begin in an attempt to contract your consciousness and energy, in the hopes of attaining communication with inner reality, then indeed will your consciousness, closed and contracted like a tight fist, open and expand. And if you seek to communicate by expansion of consciousness, then will this expansion come crushing and closing upon itself.

[...] As an analogy here, the conscious ego could be said to exist within this copper tube, located at approximately its center.

This end would then represent the extension of the self outward toward the physical universe. [...]

Now using the analogy again, in our mental enclosure we attempt to close off this channel of communication with the outer universe. [...]

[...] The conscious mind is one brilliant segment of your larger consciousness, but it is composed of the same universal energy and vitality that composes all consciousness. [...]

[...] You usually think of your conscious mind as your ego. [...]

[...] It is also conscious, and is the director of all automatic interior activity (emphatically).

[...] Your ego and your ordinary consciousness bring into focus all of your physical experiences, and make possible the brilliant preciseness of physical experience.

[...] You are as natural as an animal, and as “tuned in” to the deep rhythms of the earth — those that you consciously perceive and those that are perceived by your body consciousness, but are screened out by the “official mind.”

[...] In fact, the behavior of any object in your universe is “predictable” only because you concentrate upon such a small portion of its reality.² Unpredictability assures uniqueness, and is the opposite of predetermined motion. [...]

You must therefore explore the psyche, the living consciousness. [...]

[...] The dream-art scientist, the true mental physicist, the complete physician — such designations represent the kinds of training that could allow you to understand the unknown, and therefore the known reality, and so become aware of the blueprints that exist behind the physical universe. [...]

[...] The conscious is the furthest reach, the outer radius of the primary field. Emanations from this field continue, traveling further, projecting energy that is transformed as you know into matter; and in a simplified version of your universe perceived in terms of such force fields, you would have seemingly endless atoms and molecules spinning about the nucleus, or an endless variety of such patterns that would appear on first appraisal random to an observer from another field.

[...] The smallest imaginable particle gives evidence of that basic unity of energy adopting form, materializing the camouflage pattern necessary for efficient manipulation within your universe, that is composed of diverse but interwoven fields of apparent, semi-apparent, or unapparent activities and correlations. That is, many valid actions within your own universe do not, as you know, have solidity, and yet appear within and operate through the physical universe.

I have mentioned that atoms and molecules possess consciousness to a degree, as do electrons of course. [...]

[...] Nevertheless they affect your universe, even though you are not able to perceive them except in limited dimension.

[...] Physical life is everywhere filled with the universal energy that is its source, so it can hardly be inferior to it’s own composition.

(Long pause.) Such beliefs serve to limit your comprehension, until it seems often that physical life consists of a frantic struggle for survival at every level of consciousness. [...]

[...] (Pause.) All portions of the environment contain their own kinds of consciousness. [...]

Projections from the dream state intrigue me because in them I believe we encounter the inside of our own consciousness in a most direct fashion. In a way, we are completely on our own, manipulating in a subjective environment, aware of the workings of consciousness when it is not soaked up or fastened upon objective specifics. [...] In these states, consciousness operates within definite conditions, within an ordered system of experience. [...]

[...] The dream universe is obviously closely connected with your own, since pseudo-objects are present. [...] Within the dream state, then, you are in the ‘outward’ areas of the physically oriented universe.

[...] In a good painting, these almost explode when perceived by the lively consciousness of another. [...] This idea should help you understand experience in terms of intensities and projections or the movement of consciousness without necessarily motion through space.

The next point is to realize that you are alert, conscious and awake, while your body is asleep. [...]

(Jane finds her “massive feelings,” as she calls them, not only instructive psychically, but exhilarating indeed when they encompass revelatory or transcendent states of consciousness. [...]

[...] This seventh inner sense represents an extension of the self, a widening of its conscious comprehension … or a pulling together into … a minute capsule that enables the self to enter other fields.

[...] No living consciousness exists on any plane without this tissue capsule enclosing it … To some inhabitants of other planes [realities] that have access to your plane, all that can be seen of you is this capsule, since such inhabitants have had no experience in your particular type of camouflage [physical] construction. [...]

“The universe as you think of it contains innumerable planes, all taking up, in your terms, the same amount of space. [...]

[...] Your physical universe, then, had a nonphysical origin, in which it is still couched. In the same manner your individual consciousness has an origin in which it is still couched.

Give us a moment… No chance encounter of physical elements alone, under any circumstances, could produce consciousness — or the conditions that would then make consciousness possible.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF FRAMEWORK 2. A CREATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE MEDIUM IN WHICH PHYSICALLY-ORIENTED CONSCIOUSNESS RESIDES, AND THE SOURCE OF EVENTS

[...] (Long pause.) “A Creative Analysis of the Medium in Which Physically-Oriented Consciousness Resides, and the Source of Events.”

Your conscious mind, again, is a part of your inner self, and ever-changing. In terms of species consciousness it is a development of great significance. [...] They come naturally up to consciousness. [...]

[...] But the experiences undergone by the patients — and all of this applies to massive doses — represent the enactment, through terrible encounter, of the species’ birth into consciousness, and its death as consciousness falls back annihilated; followed by its rebirth as the individual patient struggles to emerge again from dimensions not native under those conditions.

[...] When this occurs “all by itself” it is an innate reflection of the psyche’s creativity and happens with its own rhythm — connected to seasons of the mind and blood and consciousness and cells in ways that you do not as yet understand. But the whole structure and its subsidiary relationships change together, and the conscious mind is able to assimilate what is happening.

It is just because individuals are not aware of the resiliency of their own consciousnesses that they agree to such proceedings. So patient and therapist share the belief that the conscious mind does not have easy access to the needed knowledge.

When this natural give-and-take continues, the individual is happy, healthy, And feels at one with the universe itself. [...] People are, therefore, taught to give up their own private view of the universe, and to substitute for it a prepackaged, rather bland picture so that everyone more or less agrees with this standard version. [...]

Each person has a unique, natural, native way of dealing with the universe, and of relating to inner and outer reality. [...]

(I was thinking that Seth was on his way to saying that part of Jane’s own trouble was her conscious struggle to go her own way with her unusual abilities, in spite of her early conditioning—religious and otherwise. [...]

[...] Her self-distrust was the conscious overlay for the culturally forbidden activities. [...]

[...] On the other hand, I can say everything — for her life encompassed the world, the universe, just as much as yours does, or mine, or Laurel’s. She lives then, as I’m sure you know. From my own experience I can say that she’ll surely communicate with you, expressing new and unfathomable facets and attitudes of the universe — always brilliant, perhaps inexpressible in ordinary terms, yet reaching you and touching in unexpected ways. I think I know my own parents better now than I did when they were ‘living.’ I understand so much more about them now, and with compassion see and feel their strivings and hopes, loves and successes and failures in ways I was not consciously aware of before. [...]

[...] I also discovered what must be a very common phenomenon: Those who knew of Jane’s passing became instantly self-conscious when we met. [...] My visitors reminded me anew of how private an event Jane’s death is for me, yet how universal it is. [...]

[...] No other answer makes intuitive or consciously reasonable sense to me. I think it quite psychologically and psychically limiting to believe otherwise, for such beliefs can only impede or postpone our further conscious understanding of the individual and mass realities — the overall “nature” — we’re creating. [...]

[...] In our terms, the tunnel shapes lead to an unfathomable new reality that is supposedly filled with the light of the universe. [...] This metaphor is particularly apropos at this time, with the trees still carrying their thick growth of leaves — yet later in the fall it may become even more applicable as the leaves drop and the streetlights, poor as they may be in comparison to the light of the universe, can shine through a little more brilliantly.

This sense would permit our man to feel the basic sensations felt by the tree, so that instead of looking at it, his consciousness would expand to contain the experience of what it is to be a tree. [...] He would in no way lose consciousness of who he was, and he would perceive these experiences again, somewhat in the same manner that you perceive heat and cold. [...]

[...] Had this been a valid contact within the interior universe or unconscious playacting? [...]

[...] I preferred to think of our psychic experiences as emphasizing, instead, the unknown abilities of our present consciousness. [...]

Your scientists are correct in supposing that the universe is composed of the same elements that can be found in your plane. [...]

[...] This colossus exploded, and the still expanding universe we see today is the aftermath of that event. One variation of the theory considered a pulsating universe that results from the repeated collapsing and expanding of all matter-energy.

As you become more proficient at using your conscious mind, then of course you examine the beliefs that surround you, even as you question and often move out of your native environment. [...]

[...] That question, often asked unconsciously — if not consciously — brings you back to beliefs in punishment that have nothing to do with the concept of natural guilt, but with those distortions placed upon it. [...]

As you have probably supposed by now, there is consciousness in everything. Visible or invisible to you, each fragment of the universe has a consciousness of its own. Pain and pleasure, the strongest aspects of all consciousness, are experienced strongly by every fragment, according to its degree. Differentiation is of course various, and it is in the degree of differentiation that consciousness is different.

In drawing up his list of so-called natural laws, I have said that man decided that what appeared to be cause and effect to him was therefore a natural law of the universe. Not only do these so-called laws, which are not laws, vary according to where you are in the universe, they also vary according to what you are in the universe. [...] And if a tree wrote its laws of the universe, then you would know how different they are.

[...] In some ways its living forces and consciousness are kept to a minimum. [...] The state of consciousness involved here is dull as compared to the highly differentiated human ability in many ways.

[...] However conscious fears cause the ego to tighten its grasp and some effects of this nature were starting up again. [...]

… the so-called laws of your camouflage physical universe do not apply to the inner universe … However, the laws of the inner universe apply to all camouflage universes … Some of these basic laws have counterparts known and accepted in various camouflage realities.

6. Perhaps I should have briefly discussed it in Volume 1, but ever since Seth originally gave his “Joe, Jane, Jim, and Bob” material (as I call it) in the 683rd session, I’ve wondered about possible connections between the probabilities described in that session and our own reality: How much of our species’ distorted, intuitive knowledge of those probable realities may appear as myth and oddity in our camouflage universe? [...] Considering our personal lack of conscious knowledge about androgyny and such related concepts at the time, Jane and I think it most interesting that Seth came through with that particular material in the 683rd session.

[...] You are neurologically tuned in to one particular field of actuality that you recognize.² In your terms and from your viewpoint only, messages from other existences live within you as ghost images within the cells, for the cells recognize more than you do on a conscious level. That is, for a brief time, Joseph (Rob) was consciously able to perceive a portion of another existence.

You could not be consciously aware of those other realities all of the time, and deal with the world that you know. [...]

[...] By its nature, however, that precise specialization and tuning of consciousness in to space and time largely precludes other less-specialized encounters with realities. [...] Nor can you remember dream events — or so it seems — as you do your normal conscious experience. In actual fact you remember consciously only certain highlighted events of your lives, and ordinary details of your days vanish as dreams seem to.

(Long pause at 10:44.) Your earth exists in the context of the physical universe. [...] The events that you recognize as real are dependent upon all of the other events occurring within your psyche, even as the existence of the earth is dependent upon the other aspects of the physical universe.

[...] You can become consciously aware of your dreams to some extent — that is, consciously aware of your own dreaming. [...]

[...] Your conscious mind as you understand it is the “psychological structure” that deals with conditions on a physical basis. [...]

[...] The inner self-conscious ego as I have said—and this is for Philip’s edification—the inner self-conscious ego can be compared to another face, looking out upon a different world. [...]

The inner senses belong to you as inhabitors of a spontaneous inner reality universe. [...]

[...] Nothing exists in any universe or on any plane that does not have form of one sort or another. [...]

The consciousness that directs this transformation knows what it is doing. [...]

As breathing is carried on in a manner that seems automatic to the conscious mind, so the important function of transforming the vitality of the universe into pattern units seems to be carried on automatically. [...]

I cannot say this too often — you are far more than the conscious mind, and the self which you do not admit is the portion that not only insures your own physical survival in the physical universe which it has made, but which is also the connective between yourself and inner reality. [...]

Because you know that you breathe, without being consciously aware of the mechanics involved, you are forced to admit that you do your own breathing. When you cross a room, you are forced to admit that you have caused yourself to do so, though consciously you have no idea of willing the muscles to move, or of stimulating one tendon or another. [...]

He says, ‘I breathe, but who breathes, since consciously I cannot tell myself to breathe or not to breathe?’ He says, ‘I dream. [...]

[...] The dream universe is obviously then strongly connected with your own, since pseudoimages are present. [...] Therefore within the dream state you are in the outward areas of your physically-oriented universe, you see.

[...] There will be only the mobility of your own consciousness. [...]

[...] The traveling consciousness would lose all physical conception of time however. [...]

[...] In a good painting these almost explode when perceived by the lively consciousness of another. [...]