| Seth:
"Humanity dreams the same dream at once, and you have your mass world. The whole construction is like an educational play in which you are the producers as well as the actors. There is a play within a play within a play. There is no end to the "within" of things. The dreamer dreams, and the dreamer within the dream dreams. But the dreams are not meaningless, and the actions within them are significant. The whole self is the observer and the participator in the roles. " "When you dream of others, they know it. When they dream of you you know it." "(Seth-Jane leaned forward, whispering and smiling, as if telling a joke.) In dreams you are so "dumb" that you believe there is a commerce between the living and the dead. You are so "irrational" as to imagine that you sometimes speak to parents who are dead. You are so "unrealistic" that it seems to you that you visit old houses, long ago torn down, or that you travel in exotic foreign cities that you have actually never visited." "In dreams you are so "insane" that you do not feel yourself locked in a closet of time and space, but feel instead as if all infinity but waited your beckoning." "If you were as knowledgeable and crafty when you were awake, then you would put all religions and sciences out of business, for you would understand the greater reality of your psyche. You would know "where the action is." "Your dead relatives survive. They often appear to you in the dream state. You usually interpret their visitations, however, in terms of your own station of reality. You see them as they were, confined to their relationship with you, and you usually do not perceive or remember other aspects of their existences that would not make sense in terms of your own beliefs." "Throughout the ages, some have recognized the fact that there is self-consciousness and purpose in dream and sleep states, and have maintained, even in waking life, the sense of continuity of the inner self. To such people it is no longer possible to completely identify with the ego consciousness. They are too aware of themselves as more. When such knowledge is gained, the ego can accept it, for it finds to its surprise that is is not less conscious, but more, and that its limitations are dissipated." "A man's thoughts and dreams are more far reaching than he knows. They exist in more dimensions; they affect worlds of which he is unaware. The are as concrete, in effect, as any building....The dream world is constructed within a field that you cannot physically perceive, but it has more continuity than the world you know." "When you are manipulating within physical reality, you have a fairly simple set of rules to serve you. Within dream reality there is greater freedom...Each dream begins with psychic energy which the individual transforms into a reality which is just as functional and real as physical reality." "Through our dreams we change physical reality, and our physical daily experience alters our dream experience. There is constant interaction. Our consciousness is simply directed in a different kind of reality when we dream, a reality as vivid as waking life." "On one level the personality attempts to solve problems through dream construction....Dream action CAN be turned toward fulfilling constructive expectations, which will effect a change for the better!" "Dreams can be utilized creatively to improve health, gain inspiration, restore vitality, solve problems and enrich family relationships. You can have a pleasant and joyful dream that will completely restore your good spirits and vitality." "In our dream life we also visit other levels of existence, and gain needed skills." "The ego is not present in dream reality. The waking consciousness is not the ego. The ego is only that portion of waking consciousness that deals with physical manipulation. Waking consciousness can be taken into the dream state, but the ego cannot, as it would falter and cause failure there. When you take your consciousness into the dream state, you will meet with various conditions, some you can manipulate, some you cannot. Some dream locations will be of your own making, and others will be strange to you because they belong to other dimensions of reality." "As the personality is changed by any experience, it is changed by dreams. We may forget our dreams, but they are always part of us. The dreams experience is felt directly by the inner self. Dreams have their own actuality, they not only exist independent of the dreamer, but they also have tangible form, though not in the form of matter as you are familiar with it. They are forever contained as electrically coded data within the cells of the physical organism." "The dream universe possesses concepts which will someday completely transform the physical world, but the denial of such concepts as possibilities delays their emergence." "There are also shared or "mass" dreams. In these mankind deals with problems of his political and social structure. In these man dreams individually and collectively of ways in which change about could occur. These dreams actually help bring about the resulting change. The very energy and direction of these dreams will help change the situation. The solutions reached are not always the same as those he accepts in the physical world." "The energy behind a 'bad dream' is the energy of hidden fears, which could be formed by anyone, since there are fears in anyone. ... Fear directs your conscious energy into the realm of reality of that fear, and you then must deal at that level. The words 'May peace be with you' will get you through any difficulty in other layers of reality." "In a dream, I have said, you can experience many days while no corresponding amount of physical time passes. It seems as if you travel very far in the flicker of an eyelash. Now, condensed time is the time felt by the entity while any of its given personalities live on a plane of physical materialization. To go into this further, many have said that life was a dream. They were true to the facts in one regard, yet far afield as far as the main issue is concerned." "The life of any given individual could be legitimately compared to the dream of an entity While the individual suffers and enjoys his given number of years, these years are but a flash to the entity The entity is concerned with them in the same way that you are concerned with your dreams. As you give inner purpose and organization to your dreams, and as you obtain insight and satisfaction from them, though they involve only a portion of your life, so the entity to some extent directs and gives purpose and organization to his personalities. So does the entity obtain insights and satisfactions from its existing personalities, although no one of them takes up all of its attention." "And as your dreams originate with you, rise from you, attain a seeming independence and have their ending with you, so do the entity's personalities arise from him, attain various degrees of independence and return to him while never leaving him for an instant." "You are familiar through your reading with so-called secondary personalities. Now, this idea comes close to the relationship between the entity and its personalities. They are independent to various degrees, and they operate on various planes of existence for purposes of overall fulfillment and development." "To a lesser degree, you function along these lines in varying roles when you exist simultaneously as a member of a family a community and a nation and as an artist or writer. As you attempt to use your abilities, so does the entity use its abilities, and he organizes his various personalities and, to some extent, directs their activities while still allowing them what you could call free will . . . " "Your own dreams are fragments, even as you are fragments of your entity An unrecognized unity and organization lies within all of your dreams, beneath their diversity And your dreams, while part of you, also exist apart." "The dream world has its own reality its own 'time' and its own inner organization. As the entity is only partially concerned with its personalities after setting them into motion, so you are unconcerned with this dream world after you have set it into motion. But it exists." "To a different degree, it is filled with conscious semi-personalities. They are not [as a rule] as developed as you are, as you are not as developed as your entity is. That dream world experiences its own continuity. It is not aware of any break, for example, when you are waking. It does not know if you sleep or wake. It merely exists to a fairly vivid degree while you dream or sleep, and it sleeps but does not 'die' when you waken . . . " "The entity itself does not have to keep constant track of its personalities because each one possesses an inner self-conscious part that knows its origin. This part, for now, I will call the self-conscious beyond the subconscious . . . I mentioned that some part of you knows exactly how much oxygen the lungs breathe, and this is the part of which I spoke. It also receives all inner data." "This portion of the personality translates inner data and sifts it through the subconscious, which is a barrier and also a threshold to the present personality. I told you also that the topmost layers of the subconscious contain personal memories and beneath�racial memory. The personality is not actually layered, of course, but continuing with the necessary analogy beneath the racial memories you look out upon another dimension of reality with the face of this other self-conscious part of you." "This portion is 'turned toward' the entity. When such abilities as telepathy are used, this function is carried on continually by this other self-conscious part of you. But as a rule, you act upon such data without the knowledge of the ordinary conscious self." "There is also a corresponding, but 'lesser' self-consciousness that connects your present personalities with the dream world, which is aware of its origin and communicates data from you to dream reality.... Seth: "Your idea of space and time is determined by your neurological structure. The camouflage is so craftily executed and created by the inner self that you must, by necessity, focus your attention on the physical reality which has been created." "Time as you experience it is an illusion caused by your own physical senses....The apparent boundaries between past, present and future are only illusions caused by the amount of action you can physically perceive, and so it seems to you that one moment exists and is gone forever, and the next moment comes and like the one before also disappears." "Everything in the universe exists at one time simultaneously. The first words ever spoken still ring through the universe, and in your terms, the last words ever spoken have already been said." "The past, present and future only appear to those who exist within three-dimensional reality. The past exists as a series of electromagnetic connections held in the physical brain and in the nonphysical mind. These electromagnetic connections can be changed." "The future consists of a series of electromagnetic connections in the mind and brain also. In other words, the past and present are real to the same extent. You take it for granted that present action can change the future, but present actions can also change the past." "The past is no more objective or independent from the perceiver than is the present. The electromagnetic connections were largely made by the individual perceiver. The connection can be changed, and such changes are far from uncommon. These changes happen spontaneously on a subconscious basis." "The past is seldom what you remember it to be, for you have already rearranged it from the instant of any given event. The past is being constantly recreated by each individual as attitudes and associations change. This is an actual recreation, not a symbolic one. The child is indeed still within the man, but he is not the child that 'was', for even the child within the man constantly changes." "Every action changes every other action. Therefore, every action in your present affects actions you call past. It is possible to react in the past to an event that has not occurred, and to be influenced by your own future." "It is also possible for an individual to react in the past to an event in the future, which in your terms, may never occur." "Because past, present and future exist simultaneously, there is no reason why you cannot react to an event whether or not it happens to fall within the small field of reality in which you usually observe and participate." "On a subconscious level, you react to many events that have not yet occurred as far as your ego's awareness is concerned. Such reactions are carefully screened out and not admitted to consciousness. The ego finds such instances distracting and annoying, and when forced to admit their validity, will resort to the most far fetched rationalizations to explain them." "No event is predestined. Any given event can be changed not only before and during but after its occurrence. The individual is hardly at the mercy of past events, for he changes them constantly. He is hardly at the mercy of future events, for he changes these not only before but after their happening. An individuals future actions are not dependent upon a concrete finished past, for such a past never existed." "The past is as real as the future, no more or less. There is a part of you that is not locked within physical reality, and that part of you knows that there is only an Eternal Now. The part of you that knows is the whole self, your inner and outer ego (all that you are)." Seth: "The ego is a jealous god, and it wants its interests served. It does not want to admit the reality of any dimensions except those within which it feels comfortable and can understand. It was meant to be an aid but it has been allowed to become a tyrant. Even so, it is much more resilient and eager to learn than is generally supposed. It is not natively as rigid as it seems. Its curiosity can be of great value." Seth asks "Why is it so difficult for you to learn what freedom is? ...I ask you, how far do you think a flower would get if in the morning it turned its face toward the sky and said, "I demand the sun. And now I need rain. So I demand it. And I demand bees to come and take my pollen. I demand, therefore that the sun shall shine for a certain number of hours, and that the rain shall pour for a certain number of hours... and that the bees come - bees A,B, C, D, and E, for I shall accept no other bees to come. I demand that discipline operate, and that the soil shall follow my command. But I do not allow the soil any spontaneity of its own. And I do not allow the sun any spontaneity of its own. And I do not agree that the sun knows what it is doing. I demand that all these things follow my ideas of discipline.? "And who, I ask you, would listen? For in the miraculous spontaneity of the sun, there is discipline that utterly escapes you, and a knowledge beyond any that we know. And in the spontaneous playing of the bees from flower to flower, there is a discipline beyond any that you know, and laws that follow their own knowledge, and joy that is beyond command. For true discipline, you see, is found only in spontaneity. Spontaneity knows its own order." "In the spontaneous working of your nervous system, what do we find? We see here the head of "the Dean" that rests upon his shoulders, and the intellect that demands discipline. And yet all of this rests upon the spontaneous workings of the inner self, and the nervous system of which the intellect knows little. And without that spontaneous discipline, there would be no ego to sit upon the shoulders and demand discipline... " "You are like children with a game, and you think that the game is played by everyone. Physical life is not the rule. Identity and consciousness existed long before your earth was formed. You suppose that any personality must appear in physical terms. Consciousness is the force behind matter, and it forms many other realities besides the physical one. It is, again, your own viewpoint that is presently so limited that it seems to you that physical reality is the rule and mode of existence." "The source and power of your present consciousness has never been physical, and where I am, many are not even aware that such a physical system exists. The physical system is an illusion, but you must accept it and from your viewpoint try to understand the realities that exist beyond it." "You cannot objectify the inner portions of your own identity, and therefore you do not perceive them. So much of your energy is used in the physical productions that you cannot afford to perceive any reality but your own. Like children playing with blocks, you focus your attention on the physical blocks. The physical blocks appear very real to you when you dwell within their perspective. Other shapes and forms that you could perceive, you do not. Even in explaining other realities, I must use the words and shapes or you would not understand me." "The human race is a stage through which various forms of consciousness travel... Yours is a training system for emerging consciousness. Before you can be allowed into systems of reality that are more extensive and open, you must first learn to handle energy and see through physical materialization, the concrete result of thought and emotion. Seth: "Now I bless you, but the blessings must come from yourselves. The real blessings must come from yourselves. You must realize that you are one with All That Is, and within you is the only one who can give blessing, and you must be willing to accept the blessing that only you can give, and the joy that only you can give to yourselves and to one another. "There should never be a word in any language that means repentance. There should only be a word that means, I bless; for when you bless, you do not need to repent. For when you accept a blessing, there is nothing to repent. Love of All That Is requires simply that you become open as air, for when you are open as air then joy of all that is flows through you indiscriminately, and there is nothing to repent. You only need repentance when you do not know joy. For within joy and within all that is there is only glory, consciousness and song. There is only blessedness. "When you berate yourself for your sins, then you do not realize what joy is. Do you berate a flower that has one crooked stem? So in yourselves, know spontaneity and in spontaneity you will find joy. Spontaneity has its own discipline. You do not need to enforce discipline upon it." From Dreams, session 882: Seth: "The universe will begin yesterday. The universe began tomorrow. Both of these statements are quite meaningless. The tenses are wrong, and perhaps your time sense is completely outraged. Yet the statement: 'The universe began in some distant past,' is, in basic terms, just as meaningless." "In fact, the first two statements, while making no logical sense, do indeed hint of phenomena that show time itself to be no more than a creative construct. Time and space are in a fashion part of the furniture of your universe." "The very existence of passing moments belongs to your psychological rooms in the same way that clocks are attached to your walls. Whenever science or religion seeks the origin of the universe, they search for it in the past. The universe is being created now. Creation occurs in each moment, in your terms. The illusion of time itself is being created now. 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." "Your now, or present moment, is a psychological platform. It seems that the universe began with an initial burst of energy of some kind. 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. He set it into motion. Many individuals, following either persuasion, believe that regardless of its source, the universe must run out of energy. Established science is quite certain that no energy can now be created or destroyed, but only transformed. Science sees energy and matter as being basically the same thing, appearing differently under varying circumstances." "In certain terms, science and religion are both dealing with the idea of an objectively created universe. Either God "made it", or physical matter, in some unexplained manner, was formed after an initial explosion of energy, and consciousness emerged from that initially dead matter in a way yet to be explained." "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, 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 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. In that state before the beginning, your consciousness existed free of space and time, aware of immense probabilities. This is extremely difficult to verbalize, yet it is very important that such an attempt be made. Your consciousness is part of an infinitely original creative process." "I will purposely avoid using the word "God" because of the connotations placed upon it by conventional religion. I will make an attempt to explain the characteristics of this divine process throughout this book. I call this process "All That Is". All That Is is so much a part of its creations that it is almost impossible to separate the "creator form its creations," for each creation also carries indelibly within it the characteristics of its source. Rob speaking: "When I arose early on the 26th so that I could wrap the proofs for mailing however, I noticed that Billy didn't appear to feel well. Jane watched him while I went to the post office. He was no better when I returned, and as the morning passed we came to realize that he had a urinary problem. That afternoon I took him to our veterinarian, who kept him for treatment; the problem was serious; by then the cat was in great pain. Jane and I both wondered: Why Billy? Why should such a seemingly perfect young creature suddenly become that sick, for no observable reason? .... On Tuesday the veterinarian told us by telephone that Billy was better, that "probably" we could take him home the following afternoon, I was to call before making the drive across town, though. Wednesday afternoon, then, an hour before I was due to check, the phone rang ...it was the vet, regretfully explaining that Billy had died an hour or so before. "We were shocked because Billy's unexpected--and serious--illness reminded us of the almost universally accepted view that life is terribly vulnerable. Any kind of life. Billy was a replacement for our previous cat, Willy (who'd died in November 1976 at the age of 16), and we'd found him at an animal shelter the next weekend after Willy's death; as far as having a pet to love went, we'd thought ourselves "set" for a number of years. At first we'd called the newcomer Willy Two, but soon automatically shortened that to Billy. "During the 836th session, Seth reminded us that "animals do not 'think' of long lives or short lives, but of a brilliant present, which in a way, compared to your framework, has no beginning or end.., time, in your terms, does not exist for them--and in the deepest of terms a life's quality on a human scale cannot be judged primarily in terms of its length, either. Seth: "My dear friends: Existence is larger than life or death. Life and death are both states of existence. An identity exists whether it is in the state of life or in the state of death. Your cat's consciousness never was dependent upon its physical form. Instead, the consciousness was itself choosing the experience of cathood. There was nothing that said: 'This consciousness must be a cat.' "Billy belonged in another probability, and in a fashion you switched probabilities for him, though without his consent, when you took him from the animal shelter, where he would have soon been 'done away with.' His three years with you represented a grace period for him . . . He did not make this probability his own because of what you may call 'other commitments' --or rather, other purposes. "There is no such thing as a cat consciousness, basically speaking, or a bird consciousness. In those terms, there are instead simply consciousnesses that choose to take certain focuses. We have not touched upon some of these matters, and some are, again, most difficult to explain, as we wish to avoid distortions. These would have nothing to do with Ruburt per se, but simply with the way you put concepts together at this stage of development" "You both knew Billy was about to die. So did the plants in your house, and the trees outside your door. The cellular announcement was made that the strong possibility existed, for the birth and death of each cell is known to all cells in the world . . .Cellular communication is too fast for you to follow. The cat could have changed its mind, of course, but the signals were sent out, and ahead of time. [Several people who wrote to you] picked up on that probability... . " .. . .The quality of identity is far more mysterious than you understand, for you assign an identity in a blanket fashion, say, to each living thing. Now your dead cat, Billy, exists in the following manner: The units of consciousness that organized to form his identity as you knew it, still form that pattern--but not physically. The cat exists as itself in the greater living memory of its own 'larger' selfhood. Its organization--the cat's--exists inviolately, but as a part of the greater psychic organization from which it came. "That identity of Billy's remains vital, known to itself whether or not it is reactivated in your terms. This is not necessarily always the case--and there is great variation--but Billy identified with 'the larger organization' of the litter [that is, with his brothers and sisters, all of whom are also dead], and the consciousnesses of that litter are now together. They are forming a gestalt, where the five consciousnesses will merge to form a new identity." Now: There is an 'unknown' reality. I am part of it, and so are you. "Some time ago I suddenly appeared within your space and time. Since then I have spoken to many people. There would be nothing strange to anyone in any of this if I had been born into your world in a body of my own, in usual terms. Instead I began to express myself by speaking through Jane Roberts. Period. In all of this there has been a purpose, and part of that purpose lies in this present book. "Each individual is a part of the unknown reality. Because of my position, however, I am obviously more a part of it than most. My psychological awareness bridges worlds of which you are consciously aware, and others that seem, at least, to escape your notice. The woman through whom I speak found herself in an unusual situation, for no theories�metaphysical, psychological, or otherwise�could adequately explain her experience. She was led to develop her own, therefore, and this book is an extension of certain ideas already mentioned in Adventures in Consciousness. To write that book, Jane Roberts drew on deep resources of energy. "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. Once expressed, however, it can be comprehended. One of my purposes then has been to make this unknown reality consciously known. "Man thought once, historically speaking, that there was but one world. Now he knows differently, but he still clings to the idea of one god, one self, and one body through which to express it. "There is one God, but within that God are many. There is one self, but within that self are many. There is one body, in one time, but the self has other bodies in other times. All 'times' exist at once. Historically speaking, mankind chose a certain line of development. In it his consciousness specialized, focusing upon sharp particulars of experience. But inherent always, psychologically and biologically, there has been the possibility of a change in that pattern, an alteration that would effectively lift the race into another kind of weather. "Such a development would, however, necessitate first of all a broadening of concepts about the self, and a greater understanding of human potential. Human consciousness is now at a stage where such a development is not only feasible. but necessary if the race is to achieve its greatest fulfillment. "Jane Roberts experience to some extent hints at the multidimensional nature of the human psyche and gives clues as to the abilities that lie within each individual. These are part of your racial. |
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