“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:15.) The job of trying to make the world better seems impossible, for it appears that you have no power, and any small private beneficial actions that you can (underlined) take seem so puny in contrast to this generalized ideal that you dismiss them sardonically, and so you do not try to use your power constructively. [...] (Louder:) What difference can it make to the world if you are a better salesperson, or plumber, or office worker, or car salesman, for Christ’s sake? [...]

[...] There, on your jobs and in your associations, are the places where you intersect with the world. Your impulses directly affect the world in those relationships (intently).

[...] You are left with vague idealized feelings of wanting to change the world for the better, for example — but you are denied the personal power of your own impulses that would otherwise help direct that idealism by developing your personal abilities. [...]

(Pause.) Many of you are convinced that you are not important — and while [each of] you feels that way it will seem that your actions have no effect upon the world. [...]

The inner world of each man and woman is connected with the inner world of the earth. [...] Part of each individual’s soul, then, is intimately connected with what we will call the world’s soul, or the soul of the earth.

The living picture of the world grows within the mind. The world as it appears to you is like a three-dimensional painting in which each individual takes a hand. [...]

WHERE YOU AND THE WORLD MEET

THE LIVING PICTURE OF THE WORLD

So while Seth’s books go out into the public world, the sessions themselves rise from our private lives. [...] In this book Seth describes the continuum of existence that holds us all together and blends our private experiences into world events. This is your world and ours. Hopefully, this book will help us all make it a better world.

[...] However private a trance may be, it must take place in a physical world of shared events. [...] The glass of wine on the coffee table before me, the cigarettes, and the mass-produced table itself, are all reminders that my most adventuresome journeys into other realities are rooted, for now at least, in the physical world of events that we all share together.

So even if I was focused elsewhere and my consciousness turned inward, a spotlight was thrown upon our world from that other viewpoint, almost as if a character in one of our dreams suddenly came awake, walked out of the dream, and dared comment on our waking world. [...]

Robert F. Butts, my husband, sits on the couch across from me, taking verbatim notes of what I say as Seth, transcribing these “other-worldly” communications with a modern pen on good white bond paper. [...]

The inner world of course is part of all planes. It is not so much that it exists simultaneously with the outer world, as that it forms the outer world and the outer world exists in it.

[...] Portions of it do deal with camouflage patterns, with the personal past of the present personality, with racial camouflage memories; and the greater portion belongs to the inner world, and as data comes into it from the inner world, so can it reach far into the inner world itself.

The inner senses deliver data from the inner world of reality to the body. The outer senses deliver data from the outside world of camouflage to the body. [...]

I will have to go into what we will call for now evolution at some time to explain the influence of the inner world upon the outer world, because the species to which you have the honor of belonging is now moving in the direction of breakthrough discoveries, as far as inner reality is concerned. [...]

(Long pause at 4:36.) In the deepest of terms, while each body has a history, each moment in the body’s existence is also new, freshly emerging into the world, innocent and unique. While there is indeed pain in the world, it is the miraculous principle of pleasure that propels life itself.

(Jane seemed to feel somewhat better today, and she described the way she was now attempting to look at the world in general and her own situation in particular. [...]

[...] The world loves itself and all of its parts. [...]

Each new rose in the springtime is in truth a new rose, composed of completely new and unique energy, utterly itself, innocent, alive in the world.

[...] The dream state serves as a rich source for the world’s knowledge, and is also therefore responsible for the outgrowth of its technology. This is a highly important point, for “the technological world out there” was at one time the world of dreams. The discoveries and inventions that made the industrial world possible were always latent in man’s mind, and represented an inner glittering landscape of probability that he brought into actualization through the use of dreams—the intuitive and the conscious manipulation of material that was at one time latent.

[...] Why, I wondered, couldn’t the nations of the world set up cooperative studies to verify its existence? [...] The experiment has the potential for significantly broadening our conscious understanding of the world we’re creating.

[...] Would the peoples of the world cooperate? [...] But, I said, imagine trying to win the cooperation of the nations of the world for such an undertaking! [...]

Man explored the physical world in the dreaming state long before he explored it physically. [...]

When you ask: “When did the world begin?” or “What really happened?” or “Was there a Garden of Eden?”, you are referring to the world as you understand it, but in those terms there were earths in the same space before the earth you recognize existed,² and they began in the manner that I have given you in the early chapters of this book. The patterns for worlds—the patterns—continue in your time dimension, though in that time dimension those worlds must disappear, again, to continue “their existence outside of time.” [...]

[...] The picture of the world is not only the result of those messages transmitted and received, however, but is also caused by the relationships between those messages. In your terms, then (underlined), all of life’s large classifications were present “at the beginning of the world.” [...]

(Pause at 9:30 in an intent delivery.) The grids of perception that compose your world give you the world picture as you (underlined) experience it because your physical senses put you in a certain position within the entire grid. [...]

[...] Each world is so cunningly constructed, again, that each consciousness, regardless of its degree, plays a vital part. And each of your actions, however inconsequential, becomes connected in one way or another—in one way or another—to each other reality and each other world (all with much emphasis).

[...] As it occurred, however, [man] began to make great distinctions between the world of the imagination and the world of nature, until finally he became convinced that the physical world was real and the imaginative world was not. [...]

[...] Visual data consisted of what the eye could see—and that was indeed a different kind of a world, a world in which a sketched object was of considerable value. [...] You must remember also that the art of the great masters was largely unknown to the poor peasants of Europe, much less to the world at large. [...]

Now: Drawing of that nature flourishes in your times in an entirely different fashion, divorced to some extent from its beginnings—in, for example, the highly complicated plans of engineers; the unity of, say, precise sketching and mathematics, necessary in certain sciences, [with] the sketching [being] required for all of the inventions that are now a part of your world. In your world, technology is your art. [...]

When children draw objects they are successfully, then, turning the shapes of the exterior world into their personal mental experiences—possessing them mentally, so to speak, through physically rendering the forms. [...]

[...] If you believe there is no peace in your world, in your private world, there will be none. [...]

[...] Each living self-artist however tries to create the inner self in the material world, and each such portrait is indeed unique.

[...] When you look at the great world picture before you in space and time, look at it as you would a multidimensional worldscape, painted by some artist who was all of the great masters in one; and behind the scenes of destruction and conflict, feel the great energy that in itself denies the destruction that is in that case so cleverly depicted.

[...] This applies to your understanding of private lives as well as world conditions.

[...] (With many pauses:) When I speak of the dream world, I am not referring to some imaginary realm, but to the kind of world of ideas, of thoughts, of mental actions, out of which all form as you think of it emerges. In actuality this is an inner universe rather than an inner world. [...]

(Pause.) Again, the world came into being in the same way that any idea does. The physical world expands in the same way that any idea does. I am speaking for your edification of the world you recognize, of the earth you know, but there are probable earths, of course, as real as your own. [...]

There may be other terms I could use, in some ways more advantageous than the term, “the dream world.” I am emphasizing this dream connection, however, because the dream state is one familiar to each reader, and it represents your closest touchstone to the kind of subjective reality from which your physical world emerges. [...]

Though the fanatic may make much noise in the world, he is actually isolated from all of the world’s ideas except his own. [...]

[...] A novelist may indeed maintain seclusion from the world—and while the world may not like it, it doesn’t care enough, except for a few publicity seekers, to track him down.

As each species of flower has its place in the natural world, so, in terms of this analogy at least, the fool and the scholar, the fanatic, the timid, the weary and the exuberant, the greedy—all of these also have their place.

He fears that the admission of one defeat or error of judgment will bring his world crumbling about him.

[...] Again, your world was not created, then, by some exteriorized, objectified God who created it from the outside, so to speak, and set it into motion. Many [religious] theorists believe, for example, that such a God created the world in such a fashion, and that the process of decay began at almost the same hypothetical moment that the creation ended.

(Long pause at 9:37, one of many.) This divine psychological process—and “process” is not the best word here—this divine psychological state of relatedness forms from its own being worlds within worlds. [...]

There are literally infinite numbers of sequences, faultlessly activated, that make the existence of your own world possible. I admit that it is sometimes inconceivable to me that a human being can imagine his world to be meaningless, for the very existence of one human body speaks of an almost unbelievable molecular and cellular cooperation that could hardly result through the bounty of the most auspicious works of chance.

[...] She’d been “stewing” about David, the state of the world, human frailty, Billy, and herself, and had had to make strong efforts to change her thinking.

[...] To some extent it is everywhere apparent in each person’s private experience, and it is obviously stated in the very existence of your world itself. The religions, in one way or another, have always perceived it, although the attempt to interpret that reality in terms of the recognized facts of the world is bound to distort it.

[...] All of this presupposes “the fact” that no new energy is inserted into the world. The source of the world would therefore seem no longer to exist, having worn itself out in the effort to produce physical phenomena. [...]

(10:13.) Now and then people have such moments, and yet each private reality has its existence in an eternal creativity from which, again, your world springs.

Give us a moment… Your world, then, is the result of a multidimensional creative venture, a work of art in terms almost impossible for you to presently understand, in which each person and creature, and each particle, plays a living part. [...]

[...] Something happens when you meet the world, something happens when you meet each other, something happens when you have a child, when you think, when you look at each other. Something happens the moment you are born and the world is different. Because you are, the world is different. It is a world of individuals, and distorting an old historic statement: God must love individuals because he never made anything else. [...] And when your thoughts meet the world, you change the world. Now, you are also changed by the world since you are not made of concrete. But if I have taught you anything, I hope I have given you the grace to know yourselves to some extent, to recognize that you are indeed, in your way, world changers. For as you change yourselves, as you grow you change the world. The world changes because you are. [...] Each molecule is its own world. Each molecule is its own world. Your thoughts form worlds. [...]

[...] All you have to do is to realize that each breath you take ultimately reaches to the ends of the universe and helps withhold your world. [...]

[...] And if you write what you feel it must not matter, for your message wilt reach people all over the world. [...]

You understand the ways that continents come together, and probabilities join each other, in a manner of speaking, each rising above a field of rich nutrients, so that worlds exist in every imaginable portion of space. They form according to the significances that they choose, so that in one way or another events become latent in some worlds, while in others they form events of a prime nature. [...]

[...] In some worlds certain events remain in a realm of art or fiction, while in other worlds those same events are fully activated. [...]

In some worlds, your fictional characters are physically manifested as probabilities. [...]

Personally, you are now in a period where you are changing probabilities at a swift rate—as indeed your world is. [...]

[...] He offers the nourishment of the world—but the world as he perceives it, and instead you prefer your private nourishment. Bill Gallagher sees a dog-eat-dog world, and, as mentioned earlier, animals have an entirely different meaning to Bill.

To some extent (underlined) now, his beliefs stand for a certain conventionalized view of the world. To some extent (underlined) those views, colored by a different era, were those of your own father, concerning at least the world of commerce, business, and so forth. You all felt that those dire events of the cultural and social world were somehow transposed over the natural one.

Now: beside other reasons, the taxes serve as a focal point, because you feel you must pay tribute to the world that is described by Bill Gallagher—and in that world you feel you have no specific (underlined) conventional role, as earlier mentioned.

[...] You cannot rate the subjective growth of a personality, lines of comprehension, or the value of ideas given to the world. You are a success in lines that can be felt by the world but not measured. [...]

But time and space are one to us.
The infinite skull
Opens skies all curled within,
Miniature world on world.

With winged brains
We swoop and swirl
Inside the blue bell
Of the outer world.

Now Ruburt is a part of the world. [...] There are differences in the world, but those differences merge together to form its character. A sense of identification particularly with the natural world lessens any feelings that you would need defenses against it.

[...] Practically, you can only react to the world as you encounter it through specific experiences, and you cannot escape it, for it will come to your door. The earlier questions about fear of the world, for example, reinforced to some extent, now, generalized fears, without for example specific incidents connected to them.

[...] They have to do with the way Jane reacts to the world through her mystical nature —something we seldom consider, if ever; and any possible inhibiting factors in her behavior that might have been set up after the psychic business started. I found myself wondering if she wanted to be more active in the world —through tours, speaking, classes, or whatever, but that she’d inhibited such desires because she felt I wasn’t interested in them, didn’t want to spend the time on them that would be required, etc. [...]

[...] Early man’s identification with the natural world so led him to feel a part of it that he did experience a kind of being-with the universe in a personal manner or context. [...]

[...] When the world-view enlarges to include more sophisticated cultural environments then, however, the body must rely upon the conscious mind’s interpretation of events. While the animal may encounter danger, it does not feel that its world is not safe. [...] When you feel that your world is not safe the body may respond in many ways, according to the characteristic temperament and beliefs. [...]

Your body will react biologically in response to your world-view. [...]

The body is amazingly quick to act upon environmental cues of a physical nature, but your world also involves cultural activity and “dangers” that are not immediately biologically perceivable. [...]

The world-view consists of those cultural and private beliefs concerning cultural, economic and social environments. [...]

[...] It can handle several (pause) main world views at once, realizing that they are each methods of perceiving and approaching reality. To some degree historically speaking, that sort of situation operated in the past when — comparatively speaking, now — people realized that there was indeed an inner world of complexity and richness that could be approached in certain fashions, one that existed alongside with the physical world, so that the two intersected. [...]

In the inner world, your desires bring about their own fulfillment, effortlessly. That inner world, and the exterior one, intersect and interweave. [...] (Pause.) In the physical world, time may have to elapse, or whatever. [...]

[...] To the world of the intellect, a glass door must be considered solid, as it is in the world of physical senses. [...]

In modern times, then, the intellect was finally left with only one acceptable world view, with one set of assumptions, with only one main approach to reality and experience. [...] When it is enriched (pause) by having in its possession several world views, then it does an excellent job of merging those into meaningful patterns, of sorting information and sending it to the proper places, so to speak.