“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

With his intellectual appreciation of the benefits of fire that followed his physical mastery of it, then his dream universe became enriched with a new freedom. This is but one simple example. While development of the two universes overall is parallel, no exact evenness in all respects is achieved. That is, a concept may be brilliantly alive in the dream universe but unexpressed physically, or for one reason or another an intellectual comprehension in the physical universe may not find expression in the dream universe. But overall there is parallel development.

The energy is then transformed in the dream universe, and again regenerated and used in the formation of the universe of negative matter, into which it seeps from the dream universe. Our discussions will have to thoroughly discuss the nature of the dream universe before we can hope to consider the universe of negative matter, but it will not hurt if you keep the above mentioned facts in mind.

There are breakthroughs in the dream universe from the physical universe, as well as from the dream universe into your own. The dream universe, for the purposes of our explanation, is a specific one. For you I must speak in terms of directions, since there is difficulty due to your insistence on placements in space.

Energy seemingly lost or dissipated or unusable in the physical universe does indeed leave it; but it transfers itself, seeps into the dream universe, and there it helps to insure the existence of the physical universe itself, since the existence of each of these fields or universes is dependent upon the existence of the others, in most actual ways.

[...] I have said that dream universe data has its effect upon your universe, as your universe has its effect upon the dream universe. It is also true that the dream universe is at least as familiar with your own universe as you are familiar with it; and as you tune in on it, so to speak, and while you are necessary for its survival, creating it, so does the dream universe tune in on you. So is your survival dependent upon its survival, and so does it create you as a by-product, if you are looking at your universe from the other side.

Data from one such universe can and does serve as a reference point in another. In such a circumstance, the data is of course interpreted according to the universe in which it appears. An action may occur therefore in the world of matter, and be perceived in both the universe of negative matter and the dream world, but in such a case each universe interprets the action according to, and within, its own framework of reference.

[...] Only an observer from without the three-field system of universes could judge that one action, and not three, had occurred. It will be simplest to discuss at first such correlations occurring within the dream universe, and the universe of matter, since the dream universe is closest to you in both psychic and electromagnetic terms.

As we progress and pick up the study of our dream universe once more, we will be involved also with the study of mental events as they occur within both systems. And because I am presently uninvolved within your system, it is possible for me to give instances as they occur of such mental actions, as they are perceived in both the universe of matter and the dream universe.

Now the so-called laws of your camouflage universe do not apply to the inner universe. [...] However, the laws of the inner universe apply to all camouflage universes, and all consciousnesses on any plane must follow the basic laws of the inner universe. [...]

[...] Things, planets, stars, nebulae, come into being in this universe of yours. They are born continually according to your latest theories, and this universe expands—pushed, so to speak, so that its sides bulge, the outer galaxies literally bursting out into nowhere. True fifth-dimensional space, as I have said often, is to the contrary vital energy, itself alive, possessing endless abilities of transformation, forming all existences, forming even the camouflage universe with which you are familiar, and which you attempt to probe so ineffectively.

[...] 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.

Growth in your camouflage universe often involves the taking up of more space. Actually in our inner universe of reality growth exists in terms of the value or quality expansion of which I have spoken, and does not, I repeat, does not imply any sort of space expansion. Nor does it imply, as growth does in your camouflage universe, a sort of projection into time.

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.

The same energy, however, still gives birth anew to the universe. [...] The groupings “begin” in the invisible universe. [...] It is according to your relative position, but the physical universe was everywhere seeded, impregnated, simultaneously. [...]

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. [...]

Now, in continuation: When you ask about the beginning of a universe, you are speaking of a visible universe.

[...] 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.

[...] (Long pause, one of many.) The universe will begin yesterday. The universe began tomorrow. [...] Yet the statement: “The universe began in some distant past,” is, in basic terms, just as meaningless.

[...] Whenever science or religion seeks the origin of the universe, they search for it in the past. The universe is being created now (underlined). [...] It is therefore somewhat futile to look for the origins of the universe by using a time scheme that is in itself, at the very least, highly relative.

[...] It seems that the universe began with an initial burst of energy of some kind (the “big bang”). Evolutionists cannot account for its cause. Many religious people believe that a god exists in a larger dimension of reality, and that he created the universe while being himself outside of it. [...] Many individuals, following either persuasion, believe that regardless of its source, the [universe]¹ must run out of energy. [...]

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.

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.

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. [...]

I have mentioned that what I call the dream universe is indeed composed of molecular structure, and that it is a continuing reality, even though your own awareness of it is most usually limited, for quite necessary reasons, to the hours of your own sleep. There is a give and take here, for if you give the dream universe much of its continuing energy, much of your own energy is derived from it. There is, between the physical field and the dream universe, an interdependence that is not at all unusual, for all fields are indeed dependent one upon the other.

The dream universe has molecular construction, but this molecular construction takes up no space as you know it. The dream universe, while composed of molecules, is not composed of matter as you know it. The dream universe consists of depths and dimensions, expansions and contractions, that are more clearly allied, perhaps, to ideals that have no need for the particular kind of structure with which you are familiar.

This involves, simply, a quickening of experience and action relatively unhampered by the sort of time necessities inherent within the physical universe. [...] This is not to say that structure does not exist within the dream universe, for structures of a mental or psychic nature do exist. But structure is not dependent upon matter as in the physical universe, and the motion of molecules is more spontaneous, and an almost unbelievable depth of experience is possible within what would seem to you a fraction of a moment.

You focus your awareness in altered form into another universe, that is in every way as valid and permanent as your own. It is also as changing as the physical universe. [...]

The reality, the physical reality, of fire was such a contribution made by the physical universe to the universe of dreams. Physical man, observing fire, dreamed of it, thereby immeasurably enriching the universe of dreams. His discovery in the physical universe of domesticating fire was another such contribution to the dream universe.

The Crucifixion was one of the gigantic realities that transformed and enriched both the universe of dreams and the universe of matter, and it originated in the universe of dreams. It was a main contribution of that field to your own, and could be compared physically to an emergence of a new planet within the physical universe.

[...] It is a contribution of the universe of dreams to your own universe, representing knowledge within the dream universe that man was independent of physical matter ultimately.

[...] Like transformations are made by events in your universe upon the dream universe. Often, again, the dream universe possesses concepts which will, some day, completely transform the history of your field; but a denial of such concepts as actualities or possibilities within reality, hold these back, and put off breakthroughs that are sorely needed.

[...] Since your universe springs from an inner one, and since that inner one pervades each nook and cranny of your own existence, you must look where you have not before — into the reality of your own minds and emotions. You must look to the natural universe that you know. You must look with your intuitions and creative instincts at the creatures about you, seeing them not as other species with certain habits, not as inferior properties of the earth, to be dissected, but as living examples of the nature of the universe, in constant being and transformation.

You must study the quality of life, dare to follow the patterns of your own thoughts and emotions, and to ride that mobility, for in that mobility there are hints of the origin of the universe and of the psyche. The poet’s view of the universe and of nature is more scientific, then, than the scientists’, for more of nature is comprehended.

Now: The last two sessions, more or less on evolution, can be included in this book, and serve as the opening sessions of a new chapter, entitled: “The Universe and the Psyche.”

Dictation: Your next question is easy to anticipate, of course, for you will want to know the origin of that “interior” universe from which I have said the exterior one ever emerges — and here we must part company with treasured objectivity, and enter instead a mental domain, in which it is seen that contradictions are not errors; an inner domain large enough to contain contradictions at one level, for at another level they are seen to be no contradictions at all.

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. [...]

You take it for granted that you are alive in a universe that has no feelings, much less any feeling for, or knowledge of, your own desires or intents. You think that it is organized along mechanical lines, or absolute lines, or objective lines, and that any intents that you have exist almost in spite of the organization of the universe.

(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.

[...] In other words, such attempts further compound the problem of considering a seemingly objective universe, and describing it in an objective fashion.

(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. [...]

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.

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.

(With many pauses:) Dictation: The physical universe is the result of idea construction, as Ruburt perceived in the experience mentioned in the last session (at 11:10).

(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. [...]

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. [...]

This inwardness is so adaptive and self-generating, seeking all outlets and possibilities, that it not only in your case formed a physical universe, but found new ways, operating through the new physical universe, to construct an additional field or plane within and completely through, or on the other side of while yet within the physical universe; this being your dream world, which is made possible because of the physical mechanisms and involvements themselves.

[...] Nor could I have even begun this explanation of the relationship and growth of the physical universe, the universe of negative matter, and the dream universe at a much earlier date. [...]

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 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.

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.

[...] Even those who are familiar with our material, and know the various means by which individuals create a fairly cohesive body of physical data and call it the physical universe, even these persons will say that while they agree that the individual creates the physical universe with the cooperation of others, that universe has a unity and permanence and recognizable form that the dream world does not have.

[...] Certain symbols are constructed into realities in the dream universe, then, in much the same manner that certain ideas are constructed into matter in the physical universe.

But the legs do walk, and the dream universe does exist. As the entity expands and originates new personalities, and these personalities then become independent individuals, so do the individuals create dream or so-called dream realities and individuals of the dream universe, which are independent.

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.

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.

[...] 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. [...]

[...] 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.

[...] You experience reality through the cast of those abilities and characteristics, but you also stamp the universe with that particular imprint of individuality that is your own, and you attract those events that are suited to your nature and no other.

If you choose a safe universe then you may indeed find some old habitual ideas, thoughts or beliefs, coming to haunt you. Those belonged to the unsafe universe, and made perfect sense there—and there they still do. When you change your affiliation and find yourself now and then encountering such feelings; and they are always one way or another feelings of insecurity—then admit to yourself that while they made sense in the unsafe universe, they do not belong in the safe one. Literally, such feelings make no sense in a safe universe. [...]

Ruburt’s symptoms made sense in an unsafe universe. [...] Your feelings about Prentice made sense in an unsafe universe, where you had to protect the excellence of your vision from incompetence. You can make that leap into the safe universe—just as Ruburt is. [...]

[...] At the risk of repeating myself, you live in a safe universe (loudly). [...] You cannot live in a safe universe and an unsafe one at the same time. [...]

[...] If you thoroughly understood what that means then you do indeed live and experience a safe universe. Your pendulum will give you the specific reasons for any difficulties, but behind these ever-changing reasons is always the sense of insecurity you feel when you believe the universe is against you to whatever degree. [...]

[...] The entire inner universe is far more varied, more complicated, than your physical universe, yet it could be conceived of as the same sort of universe with certain substitutions being made.

[...] To bring this even clearer, you could even imagine that the whole inner universe was an organism, of which your universe represented but one small portion. Yet in using the inner senses, you yourselves probe into this universe, and at least in analogy dissect it, the inner self acting as the imaginary knife.

Realities existing within this electrical universe are built up through counteractions with the human personality and others. All psychological realities and experiences which are not materialized within the physical universe have their actual reality and existence within the electrical universe.

[...] I use the word shape for simplicity’s sake, but the electrical universe is composed of dimensions which are perceived by the inner self, for the inner self also has existence within the electrical universe. [...]

[...] In an unsafe universe you run your personal life along certain lines. [...] It does not seem to belong in an unsafe universe. [...]

[...] Your beliefs in the safe universe are spreading. [...] In the unsafe universe, however, you—not you alone—believe that something good will be fought over. [...]

At John’s level, and in his unsafe universe, the events still prove how valuable the books are, since, to whatever extent, they are fought over. At Ruburt’s level and your own, the events show you that the universe, as it applies to your publishing world is safe—with leeway for action—and also opens up creative relationships with people at Prentice that were latent before. [...]

[...] You cannot say “I live in a safe universe, but—” —but anything. You cannot say “I live in a safe universe, but I am threatened by the economic problems of my state,” move to Pennsylvania, or to Timbuktu (humorously intent). [...]