Contents Preface Session 700 Session 701 Session 702 Session 703 Session 704 So What!? Towards an Integral Conscious Creation Paradigm Endnotes

Preface

Jane Roberts and Robert F. Butts held the Seth sessions in Elmira, New York from December 8, 1963 until August 30, 1984. Their unique collaboration resulted in the publication of more than thirty-five books of poetry, fiction, metaphysics, and numerous paintings. Though written for a popular, not academic, audience, the twenty-one Seth-dictated books now form a highly regarded body of metaphysical work in the Western world. They’ve been translated into at least seventeen different languages to date.

 

Seth is the self-described “energy personality essence” channeled by Jane Roberts. However, the channeling phenomenon is still not well understood in terms of current scientific, philosophical, and theological worldviews. These conventional worldviews still see channeling as some kind of dissociative pathology, regressive neurosis/psychosis, or even demonic possession! Yet the emergent fields of Transpersonal and Integral Psychology have forged an authentic postconventional scientific paradigm that sheds new light on the channeling phenomenon.

 

Integral Psychology, and particularly the work of American philosopher Ken Wilber, has synthesized common elements in various “roadmaps of the psyche” from Vajrayana/Madhyamika Buddhism and Advaita/Vedanta Hinduism to the pioneering work of Jean Gebser, Jean Piaget, and Clare Graves (there are many dozens more). Together, they cover a general spectrum of consciousness from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit. In terms of the Seth material, this spectrum covers Frameworks 1, 2, 3, and 4 to All-That-Is (they don’t correlate in one to one fashion as we’ll see shortly, but they cover the same spectrum of consciousness).

 

Combined with compelling evidence now amassed in developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, hermeneutics, genetic epistemology, neurochemistry, evolutionary and systems theory, the Integral Psychology model allows us to speculate that channeling is a distinct intelligence (or developmental stream). In essence, channeling may be very similar to our linguistic, emotional, sexual, interpersonal, musical, mathematic, etc. abilities (there are at least two dozen that have been identified by research to date). In other words, channeling is another ability latent within every human being that develops in stages and blossoms to virtuostic levels in only small percentages of the population in any given time, like all the other intelligences. [1]

 

Interestingly, this model of developmental streams (also called modules, multiple intelligences, or lines) has existed since 1981 in the work of Ken Wilber. [2] There are many others who have done significant research in this area of developmental studies. [3] However, while mainstream acceptance and application of this work is still years away, the proverbial writing is clearly on the wall – an authentic postconventional scientific paradigm now exists that has opened the door to further research on the channeling phenomenon. It is a paradigm free of mythic, dogmatic religious, Newtonian, Darwinian, and Freudian limitations. [4]

 

In fact, Integral Psychology uses this new paradigm to integrate the best practices and partial truths of these earlier paradigms (inclusive). It doesn’t reject them outright (exclusive), but seeks their enduring contributions to the knowledge quest. For example, Freud penetrated to surface layers of the subconscious and learned how early trauma effects healthy development (neurosis, psychosis results through repression, dissociation, etc.). Darwin formulated a theory of biological development over vast periods of time based that helped to put the final nail in the Anglican Church’s institutional dominance as purveyor of Ultimate Truth (the Bible as absolute truth was forever refuted as mythic dogma). Newton formulated the principles of mechanics, the law of universal gravitation, proposed a theory for the propagation of light, and invented differential and integral calculus (creating modern physics and paving the way for the technological advances of the industrial revolution).

 

Aspects of their basic contributions are still viable today. However, the downside is that all of these geniuses could only see as far as their own personal development and self-realization allowed. Their blinders included the dominance of rationality at the expense of deep intuition and authentic spirituality. Freud banished spirit into the realm of regressive, childish domains. Darwin banished spirit into the objective process of natural selection and mutation. Newton never understood the role of spirit in his equations or the physical world. Still, it’s important not to throw out the baby with the bath water – acknowledge their amazing insights, but see them with integral eyes tuned to spirit-in-matter, spirit-in-body, and spirit-in-mind.

 

All of which leads to the potential for deeper understanding of Seth, Jane, and Rob’s magnum opus, The “Unknown” Reality (1977, 1979). Spanning sessions 679 through 744, it was the third Seth-dictated book, and the first to include extensive research and endnotes by Robert F. Butts. It is also unique in its format – the only Seth-dictated book to intentionally avoid chapters, relying instead upon six thematic sections of related sessions. The intent was to break up the linear, analytic, left-brained nature inherent in the chapter format. In other words, Seth purposefully appealed to our nonlinear, intuitive, right-brained nature, which, as we will see, is key for exploring the “unknown” reality. Furthermore, this is the only Seth book to include seventeen Practice Elements, a kind of introductory exercises or “yoga” (which means “union”) to put theory into practice. As such, The “Unknown” Reality is one of the most potentially transformational books in the Seth/Jane repertoire.

 

Seth used the metaphor of the “unknown” reality to hint at our own greater reality – the nested, invisible Source Reality from which we all spring. This Sethian worldview is also consonant with many of the concepts found in perennial philosophy which provides premodern “roadmaps of the psyche” and detailed methods (yoga) to access transpersonal awareness through what Seth calls inner senses – a transpersonal, deep intuition that complements the rational mind. [5] Both worldviews also hold that consciousness is primary and causal, not an effect of space-time or energy-matter. Seth used the concept of frameworks of consciousness to help explain this. Framework 1 represents the physical, objective world. Frameworks 2, 3, and 4 represent the invisible, subjective, inner world – the “unknown” reality from which all objectivity, space-time, and energy-matter emerge. [6]

 

Frameworks 1 and 2 have been compared to physicist David Bohm’s Explicate and Implicate Orders (Friedman, 1990, 1997 [7]). Framework 1 covers the familiar physical world of our waking states, and even some surface elements of the dreaming state. But Framework 2 is more closely understood as the frothy, counterintuitive realm described metaphorically by quantum mechanics as an infinite source of probable energy-matter fields in Framework 1. Thus, Framework 2 can never be measured by the stuff of Framework 1 – energy-matter – directly. It must be thus inferred by clever experiments that reveal its effects, much like the wind can’t be seen, yet can be deduced by observing its effects on trees or the surface of water.

 

Frameworks 3 and 4 are even further removed from physical reality, though no less important in its co-creation. However, there is not a lot of detail in the extant Seth material about them. [8] Still, we can get a sense of how they might relate by referring to the Great Chain of Being theorists, for example, Plotinus, Vasubandu, Fritjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Huston Smith, Rene Geunon, and Ken Wilber. Though they use different words, they all attempt to describe the same spectrum of consciousness from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit to nondual Spirit. Wilber, for example, uses the terms Great Nest of Being, Great Holarchy, and Kosmos. Seth’s term for the Great Chain is All-That-Is.

Figure I. The Great Nest of Being. Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology (2000). [9]

 

The above diagram is only one general way to divide up the “pie” of consciousness, but it shows the common elements in many of the world’s perennial wisdom traditions. Namely, there are distinct ontological frameworks, regional areas, realms, waves, fields, or deep structures within All-That-Is. As we will see below, the divisions shown in the Great Nest above and Seth’s Frameworks of Consciousness below don’t correspond in one to one fashion, but overlap. The linguistic divisions are secondary, of course, but they all attempt to illumine the innate spectrum of consciousness that has been mapped since premodern times by homo sapiens.

 

Framework 1 deals with:

Physical objects	(A = energy-matter consciousness)
Bodies	(A+B = biological consciousness)
Minds	(A+B+C = mental consciousness)
“Narrower” aspects of the subtle (dream) field	(A+B+C+D = dreaming consciousness).

 

Frameworks 2, 3, 4 deal with:

“Wider” aspects of the subtle (soul) field	(A+B+C+D = subtle consciousness)
“Narrow” aspects of the causal (spirit) field	(A+B+C+D+E = causal consciousness).

 

Note that nondual Spirit is listed “outside” of the five basic divisions (in the lower right of the diagram) to acknowledge the Aspects of Source Energy that are never born into and thus never die in terms of Frameworks 1, 2, 3, or 4. Put another way, these four frameworks and beyond (or matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit) are only a metaphorical map of the spectrum of consciousness – an intellectual tool – but are no substitute for the direct experience of the conscious mind through the inner senses.

 

There is another important concept to integrate from the Great Chain theorists. Namely, while there is some kind of “evolutionary” unfolding within Framework 1, in terms of Frameworks 2, 3, and 4 there are also simultaneous, complementary involutionary actions. Thus, linear perception occurs in Framework 1 only (matter, body, mind). But in Frameworks 2, 3, and 4 (subtle and causal), there are nested, simultaneous nonlinear perceptions that guide all energy-matter/space-time toward a “remembrance” or realization of nondual Spirit. Thus, all four frameworks of consciousness simultaneously “evolve” and “involve” in nested, holonic fashion. [10] While there is change-in-time in Framework 1, there is also simultaneous “no-change-in-no-time” that paradoxically is not static or fixed within Frameworks 2, 3, and 4.

 

Welcome to the “unknown” reality where the tools required for exploration are our conscious minds and inner senses.

 

Notice that Seth used quotation marks around the word “unknown” to emphasize that our Source Reality is already “known” to latent nonlinear aspects of our conscious minds. But those superconscious or causal aspects remain “asleep” or “forgotten” in the vast majority of people. Therefore, most of us are not aware that we have a latent superconscious or causal self (which Seth refers to as the inner self, inner ego, psyche, or soul). Yet, anyone can awaken this “remembrance” through learning to use their inner senses. And the good news is that they are innate in all of us.

 

An inherent idea in all of Seth’s books, then, is to make the “unknown” known, the forgotten (amnesis) remembered (anamnesis). Why? Because our species is at a crucial stage of development, and if we are to live sane, just, and beautiful lives in a world that now exceeds six billion people, we might consider the benefits of any “art-science” that helps us to explore the “unknown” reality. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

 

The “Unknown” Reality is not a book for beginners. For example, Seth built upon the foundation laid in the preceding 678 sessions to further explore concepts like:

 

Ø     Probable realities.

 

Ø     Worldviews (individual and collective belief systems).

 

Ø     Reincarnation in the context of simultaneous time (nested linear and nonlinear “evolution” and “involution”).

 

Ø     Consciousness units (CUs) and Electromagnetic Energy units (EEs).

 

Ø     Multipersonhood (one-made-of-many = holonic personality = Aspect Psychology [11]).

 

Ø     The nature of dreams and the dreaming self (subtle fields/Framework 2).

 

Ø     Blueprints for reality (“root assumptions” or “involutionary givens”).

 

Ø     The dream-art scientist, true mental physicist, complete physician (gross/subtle field exemplars).

 

Ø     The multidimensional nature of the psyche (probable selves, reincarnational selves, counterpart selves, and “families” or species of consciousness).

 

While further explication of the above is beyond the scope of this Preface, they are very important for anyone interested in the study Seth’s dream-art science. [12] What we are dealing with is rocket science for the soul. It is not something to be pursued in a naïve fashion. It is thus highly recommended that any motivated student consider working with an authentic meditation teacher to complement their studies, as you will engage a transformational journey that has its own challenges and rewards. While the idea is to be playful and keep it fun, when shadows and darkness are inevitably encountered, that is not the time to quit the pursuit of our ideals [13], but to mindfully and joyfully work through them. An experienced teacher, transpersonal therapist, and/or a community of like-minded explorers can provide invaluable assistance.

 

On a personal note, oftentimes during my first reading twenty-five years ago, I could assimilate only three or four pages at a time, and worked on a Practice Element for a few days or weeks. I also kept a dream journal that was an invaluable phenomenological tool, and it took me close to two years to work through both volumes overall. I did this on my own, without the help of a meditation teacher, therapist, or community. Hindsight is usually 20/20, and I realize my progress would have been much smoother and quicker if I had not done this on my own.

 

Still, my experiences validated that this material is purposefully designed to transform consciousness to the point where the concepts not only become intellectually possible, but with a little luck and persistence, propositionally true through direct experience. After all, metaphysics is only spoken and written abstractions about transcendent experience, and not the experiences themselves. Therefore, the concept of integral post-metaphysics is based upon doing specific exercises, obtaining data, and verifying the validity with a group who have similarly engaged the exercises. That is the basis of all physical, mental, and spiritual scientific method, and is what we are promoting here in the pursuit of dream-art science. [14]

 

However, we are nowhere near this point in terms of mainstream cognitive or mental sciences, much less spiritual sciences. But the whole point is that we are heading in that direction. Thus, the exemplars given by Seth in the following sessions – the dream-art scientist, true mental physicist, complete physician – are intended to hint at potentials that lie on the horizon, without providing the specifics. That’s been left up to anyone interested. We are being introduced to probable futures, and they have their own force of attraction – what Ken Wilber calls “downward causation” and Agape – the loving nudge of Spirit-in-action that awakens the “remembrance” in each of us.

 

Therefore, this compilation is intended as an introduction to further motivate those interested to explore the actual books and do the Practice Elements over a period of time. Though there’s no quick-fix, instant karma, or weekend satori being offered here, anyone can pursue this. The price of membership is simply the commitment to personal transformation, learning the roadmaps and practices, and developing your inner senses.

 

One should also be mindful that The “Unknown” Reality sessions were dictated from February 4, 1974 through April 23, 1975, and the knowledge quest has advanced considerably since then. Again, this book was written for a non-academic audience, so the point is not to get hung up critiquing out-of-date science, but to seek to understand the conceptual milieu and its transpersonal themes.

 

Now, before we turn things over to Seth/Jane and Rob, let’s take a short walk down memory lane and revisit some of the cultural milestones that were in the air around time of these sessions:

 

Ø   Parapsychology had been recognized in 1969 as a legitimate pursuit by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

 

Ø   Six moon landings (twelve men) occurred between 1969-1972, when the first Earthrises were captured on film (Apollo 8) and experienced vicariously by billions, helping to fuel the first postmodern view of planet Earth from the cold, silent emptiness of space.

 

Ø   The Cold War was in full swing. US foreign policy was based on détente with Russia and a world-stunning recognition of the People’s Republic of China in 1972.

 

Ø   The Association for Transpersonal Psychology was founded in 1972 by Abraham Maslow, Anthony Sutich, James Fadiman, Michael Murphy, and Miles Vich.

 

Ø   The Viet Nam War ended in February 1973.

 

Ø   Civil, feminist, animal, and ecological rights movements flourished. For example, the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe vs. Wade established abortion as a “fundamental right” for women.

 

Ø   The Watergate scandal forced President Nixon to resign on August 8, 1974 culminating a national moral crisis of unprecedented proportions.

 

Ø   EST, gestalt therapy, bioenergetics, Rolfing, message, jogging, health foods, tai chi, Esalen, hypnotism, modern dance, meditation, Silva Mind Control, Arica, acupuncture, sex therapy, Reichian therapy, More House and a host of others were explored by the beat generation and baby boomers galore. The New “Age of Aquarius” had dawned.

 

Ø   The OPEC Oil Cartel’s combined earnings rose from $23 billion in 1972 to $140 billion in 1974. During 1973 there was an oil embargo that saw long lines at gas stations.

 

Ø   Cheeseburgers, a pack of cigarettes, a gallon of gasoline cost less than a dollar in many places.

 

Ø   Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion radio show debuted.

 

Ø   Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves broke Babe Ruth’s record when he hit his 715th career home run in a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers on April 8, 1974.

 

Ø   In 1973-4, The Exorcist scared the bejeebers out of millions, and Devil sightings and cases of demonic possession increased proportionally. The Best Picture for 1974: The Godfather, Part II.

 

Ø   In 1974, I Shot the Sheriff by Eric Clapton, Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas, and Annie’s Song by John Denver all reached number one on the US pop charts.

 

Ø   In 1974, Xerox decided to build a personal computer to be used for research. Project “Alto” begins. At Xerox PARC, Jack Hawley developed the first digital mouse. In 1976, Steve Wozniak offered his new computer (Apple) to Hewlett-Packard. They rejected it. Wozniak and Steve Jobs finished work on a computer circuit board, that they call the Apple I computer. Paul Allen began full time work at Microsoft. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, to devote his full attention to Microsoft.

 

Ø   Jane Roberts was forty-five years old on May 8, 1974 and published Adventures in Consciousness: And Introduction to Aspect Psychology in 1975.

 

Ø   A twenty-five year old Ken Wilber worked on his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977).

 

Ø   The Three Mile Island nuclear accident, Jonestown mass suicides, Iranian revolution and hostage drama, the disco craze and Saturday Night Fever, Jane Roberts’s Psychic Manifesto and an American Vision all loomed on the horizon….

 

Though it’s been almost thirty years since this material was first dictated, it is clear that we have barely begun to scratch the surface of the “unknown” reality in any collective sense, and yet the signs are all around us, including the integral leading edge. That is, we now understand the importance of including the physical, mental, and spiritual fields of experience in any authentic integral science. There is thus the potential for a new array of integral art-sciences to provide systemic solutions to myriad educational, economic, and political challenges on a global scale. That’s the bright promise of the integral agenda anyway. As always, the realization of the ideal is up to each of us.

 

I have added various terms [in brackets] from my forth-coming book, Integral Conscious Creation, to provide context for the integral concepts therein (don’t confuse them with Rob’s bracketed words, the difference should be clear). For example, the colors in CAPS refer to those worldviews mapped by Clare Graves, Don Beck, and Chris Cowan. So in terms of hard science, ORANGE refers to the mechanistic Newtonian paradigm that was transcended and included by the GREEN quantum paradigm.

 

For an overview of these worldviews, see:

Emerging New Worldviews – An Excerpt from Integral Conscious Creation: Rocket Science for the Soul

 

For an overview of Ken Wilber’s integral model and terminology, see:

Ken Wilber’s Model of Human Development: An Overview

 

Finally, please support the publishers of the Seth/Jane/Rob books – Amber-Allen, Moment Point Press, and New Awareness Network – and make every effort to purchase them for further study. It’s crucial to read everything, including Rob’s copious notes, as they provide the wider context in which subtle meanings and interrelationships are sure to emerge.

 

Paul M. Helfrich

Castaic, CA

Summer 2003

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Session 700

 

May 29, 1974

 

You must first of all understand that your own greater reality exists whether you are in flesh or out of it, and that your subjective experience has a far greater scope than the physical brain itself allows.

 

This – apart from corporal living – continues of course while you are a creature in space and time. It presents a parallel noncorporal existence, so to speak, that your brain does not register. In the sleep state you are in a connective area, where bleed-throughs occur.

 

… The blueprints for reality [i.e. “involutionary givens”] will not be found in the exterior universe. Some other civilizations experimented with a different kind of science than the one with which you are familiar. They met with varying degrees of success in their attempts to understand the nature of reality, and it is true that their overall goals were different than yours. Such people were focusing their consciousnesses in a completely different direction. Your own behavior, customs, sciences, arts, and disciplines are in a way uniquely yours, yet they also provide glimpses into the ways in which various groupings of abilities can be used to probe into the “unknown” reality.

 

Art is as much a science, in the truest sense of the word, as biology is. [ORANGE] Science as you think of it separates itself from the subject at hand. [GREEN] Art identifies with the subject. In your terms, then, other civilizations considered art as a fine science, and used it in such a way that it painted a very clear-cut picture of the nature of reality – a picture in which human emotion and motivation played a grand role.

 

Your [ORANGE] scientists spend many long years in training. If the same amount of time were spent to learn a different kind of science, you could indeed discover far more about the known and unknown realities. There are some individuals embarked upon a study of dreams, working in the “dream laboratories”; but here again there is prejudiced perception, with [ORANGE] scientists on the outside studying the dreams of others, or emphasizing the physical changes that occur in the dream state. The trouble is that many in the sciences do not comprehend that there is an inner reality [i.e. subjective/intersubjective perspectives]. (Intently:) It is not only as valid as the exterior one, but it is the origin for it. It is that world that offers you answers, solutions, and would reveal many of the blueprints that exist behind the world of your experience.

 

The true art of dreaming is a science long forgotten by your world. (1) Such an art, pursued, trains the mind in a new kind of [gross/subtle/causal field] consciousness – one that is equally at home in either existence, well-grounded and secure in each. Almost anyone can become a satisfied and productive amateur in this art-science but its true fulfillment takes years of training, a strong sense of purpose, and a dedication – as does any true vocation [i.e., not a quick-fix, instant karma, weekend satori].

 

To some extent, a natural talent is a prerequisite for such a true dream-art scientist. A sense of daring, exploration, independence, and spontaneity is required. Such a work is a joy. There are some such people who are quite unrecognized by your societies, because the particular gifts involved are given zero priority. But the talent still exists.

 

… A practitioner of this ancient art learns first of all how to become conscious in normal terms, while in the sleep state. Then he (2) becomes sensitive to the different subjective alterations that occur when dreams begin, happen, and end. He familiarizes himself with the symbolism of his own dreams, and sees how these do or do not correlate with the exterior symbols that appear in the waking life that he shares with others.

 

I will have more to say about these shared symbols later, for they can become agreed upon signposts.

 

There are inner meeting places, then, interior “places” that serve as points of inner commerce and communication. Period. In a completely different context, they are quite as used as any city or marketplace in the physical world. This will be elaborated upon later in the book. (3) Our dream-art scientist learns to recognize such points of correlation.

 

In a manner of speaking, they are indeed learning centers. (4) Many people have dreams in which they are attending classes, for example, in another kind of reality. Whether or not such dreams are “distorted,” many of them represent a valid inner experience. All of this, however, is but a beginning for our dream-art scientist, for he or she then begins to recognize the fact of involvement with many different levels and kinds of reality and activity. He must learn to isolate these, separate one from the other, and then try to understand the laws that govern them. As he does so, he learns that some of these realities nearly coincide with the physical one, that on certain levels events become physical in the future, for example, while others do not. He is then beginning to glimpse the blueprints for the world that you know.

 

… Now: You manufacture articles. It has taken you centuries to reach your point of [ORANGE] technological achievement. It seems to you then that objects come from the outside, generally speaking – for after all, do you not make them in your factories and laboratories?

In a way it seems that “artificial” or synthetic fabrics are not natural. You produce them from the outside. Yet your world is composed of quite natural products, objects that emerge, almost miraculously when you think of it, from the inside of the earth.

 

You work with material that is already there, provided. You mix, change, and rearrange what is already given. The entire physical universe emerges from an inside [action of involution/evolution], however, and none of your manufacture would provide you with even one object, were it not for those that appeared as source materials long before. Wood, plants, all the species of the earth, the seasons and the planet itself, come from this unidentifiable inside. Physical events have the same source.

 

… The true scientist understands that he must probe the interior and not the exterior universe; he will comprehend that he cannot isolate himself from a reality of which he is necessarily a part, and that to do so presents at best a distorted picture. In quite true terms, your dreams and the trees outside of your windows have a common denominator: they both spring from the withinness of consciousness. (5)

 

Simply as an analogy, look at it this way: Your present universe is a mass-shared dream, quite valid – a dream that presents reality in a certain light; a dream that is above all meaningful, creative, based not upon chaos (with a knowing look), but upon spontaneous order. To understand it, however, you must go to another level of consciousness – one where, perhaps, the dream momentarily does not seem so real. There, from another viewpoint, you can see it even more clearly, holding it like a photograph in your hands; at the same time you can see from that broader perspective that you do indeed also stand outside of the dream context, but in a “within” that cannot show in the snapshot because of its limitations.

 

Now: That is the end of dictation. Give us a moment, and we will continue.

 

This is personal material. First of all, however, this book will open up many very important areas, and provide guidelines for many others to follow….

 

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Notes: Session 700

 

1. See the 698th session to 9:41.

 

2. Since from this point Seth uses the masculine pronouns “he” and “him” while discussing representatives of the race, I refer the reader to Note 5 for Session 696, in Section 3 [below].

 

[696/5n. … Every so often Jane hears from a female reader who wants to know why Seth often uses the male gender in his books, especially in passages like those in tonight’s 696th session. A little reflection will show that in spite of the “sexist” implications it would be quite difficult to present such material in other ways, so common is the use of “man,” “he,” “his,” and “him.” In the English language we often don’t have the right word, one meaning male and female equally, with which to represent the species. Many times “humanity” doesn’t fit. Nor do we like to substitute “it,” since it’s neuter and devoid of feeling as far as we’re concerned. We also don’t want to become involved with rewriting Seth’s material: We’re sure that when he produces passages cast in the male gender, his intentions are anything but prejudiced in favor of that sex.

 

While Jane and I talked about the situation, she spontaneously produced the following written material:

 

“Seth is using the English language (my native one) to discuss issues that often involve concepts most difficult to describe in the language itself-or, indeed, in any language.

 

“Obviously, Seth’s purpose is to explain what he can within the framework of that language, rather than to change the language itself – as would be necessary, for example, to escape its often prejudiced nature. This prejudice appears most obviously in its sexual aspects: ‘Mankind’ for the species in general, and ‘he’ in referring to the individual member. Linguistically this leaves the female out in the cold – and in more ways than one-for the masculine intent is clear.

 

“Using that language, however, Seth’s intent is also clear: Individual identity comes before sexual affiliation. That affiliation is a mixture of ‘female’ and ‘male’ elements that are complementary, not opposing. Neither is superior. Male and female also represent psychic and biological faces and a sexual stance. Through all of Seth’s books runs one common thread: Our sexual prejudice is the result of certain aspects of consciousness that we as a species long ago began stressing over others.”]

 

3. A note added later: Unfortunately, Seth didn’t keep his promise to elaborate upon dream/symbol meeting places.

 

4. Chapters 9 and 10 in Seth Speaks contain much information on dreams. For material on the classes held at after-death training centers, see in particular the 537th session in Chapter 9. While out of body during the sleep state, some people from our reality, Jane among them, assist those who have just died in adjusting to their various new environments. And from Seth in the 536th session: “… I had spent many lifetimes acting as [such] a guide under the tutorship of another in my daily sleep states.”

 

5. And trees have their dreams, too. See Note 1 for Session 698 [below].

 

[698/1n. Seth began talking about dreams and related subjects from the time these sessions began over 11 years ago. His material led Jane to do some excellent work with dreams on her own. See, for example, chapters 4 and 5 in The Coming of Seth, and Chapter 14 in The Seth Material. Actually, Seth and Jane dream data run through all of the books those two have produced so far, either singly or together.

 

The 92nd session for September 28, 1964, was a basic one for information on dreams, and Jane quotes various portions of it in chapters 5 and 14, as listed above; I ask the reader to review that material especially (and in both books). In connection with that session, here is some follow-up dream information that Seth gave in the 97th session:

 

“The dream world is indeed a natural by-product of the relationship between the inner self and the physical being. Not a reflection, therefore, but a by-product involving not only a chemical reaction but the transformation of energy from one state to another.

 

“In some respects all planes or fields of existence are indeed by-products of others. For example, without the peculiar spark set off through the interrelationship existing between the inner self and the physical being, the dream world would not exist. But conversely, the dream world is a necessity for the continued existence of the physical individual.

 

“This point is extremely important. As you know, animals dream. What you do not know is that all consciousnesses dream. We have said that to some degree even atoms and molecules have consciousness, and each one of those minute consciousnesses forms its own dreams, even as on the other hand each one forms its own physical image. Now, as in the physical field individual atoms combine for their own benefit into more complicated structure gestalts [i.e., subholons/holons/superholons[15]], so do they also combine to form such gestalts, though of a somewhat different nature, in the dream world.

 

“I have said that the dream world has its own sort of form and permanence. It is physically oriented, though not to the degree inherent in your ordinary universe. In the same manner that the physical image of an individual is built up, so is the dream image built up.

 

“The dream world is not a formless, haphazard, semiconstruction. It does not exist in bulk, but it does exist in form. This is not a contradiction nor a distortion. The true complexity and importance of the dream world as an independent field of existence has not yet been impressed upon [your ORANGE science]. Yet while your world and the dream world are basically independent, they still exert [evolutionary and involutionary] pressures and influences, one upon the other.

 

“It is essential that you realize that the dream world is a byproduct of your own existence. And because it is connected to you through chemical reactions, this leaves open the entryway of interactions, in animals as well as men. Since dreams are a by-product of any consciousness involved within matter, this leads us to the correct conclusion – that trees have their dreams, that all physical matter, being formed about individualized units of consciousness [CUs] of varying degrees, also participates in the involuntary construction of the dream universe.”]

 

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Session 701

 

June 3, 1974

 

… The outsideness of the physical world [i.e., exterior perspectives] is connected, then, with a multidimensional “insideness” [i.e. interior perspectives]. That exterior world is thrust outward, however, and projected into reality in line with your conscious desires, beliefs, and intent. It is important that you remember this position of the conscious mind as you think of it. Each physical experience is unique, and while the energy for it and the creation of it come from within, the pristine, private, and yet shared quality of that experience could not exist in the same way (more emphatically) were it not so exteriorized.

 

The exteriorization has great purpose and meaning, then, and brings forth a different kind of expression. Though I may emphasize the importance of inner reality in this book, therefore, I am in no way denying the great validity and purpose of earthly experience [or exterior, objective perspectives].

 

Any exercises in this book should help you enrich that experience, and understand its framework and nature. None of the exercises should be used to try to “escape” the connotations of your own earthly reality [i.e., they are not intended to ascend-only or transcend-to-escape physical reality].

 

… Nevertheless, the blueprints lie within. … We will have more to say very shortly about our dream-art scientist (see the last session); yet there are also other important ways that could be used to study the nature of reality. One in particular does not involve the dream state per se. It does include the manipulation of consciousness, however. To some extent it includes identification with, rather than separation from, that which is being studied.

 

… While connected with your own civilization, the man Einstein (1) came closest perhaps in this regard, for he was able to quite naturally identify himself with various “functions” of the universe. He was able to listen to the inner voice of matter. He was intuitively and emotionally led to his discoveries. He leaned against time, and felt it give and wobble.

 

The true [mental] physicist (2) will be a bold explorer – not picking at the universe with small tools, but allowing his consciousness to flow into the many open doors that can be found with no instrument, but with the mind.

 

Your own consciousness as you think of it, as you are familiar with it, can indeed help lead you into some much greater understanding of the simultaneous nature of time (3) if you allow it to. You often use tools, instruments, and paraphernalia instead – but they do not feel time, in those terms. You do. Studying your own conscious experience with time will teach you far more. Period….

 

Practice Element 8

 

Using your conscious mind as a threshold, however, you can discover still more. Figuratively speaking, stand where you are. Think of that moment of conscious awareness as a path. Imagine many other such paths, all converging; again, imaginatively take one of them in your mind and follow it. Accept what you experience uncritically. To some small extent you are “altering” your consciousness. (Half humorously:) Of course, you are not “altering” it at all. You are simply using it in a different fashion, and focusing it – however briefly – in another direction. This is the simplest of exercises.

 

Suppose that you stood in one spot all of your physical life, and that you had to do this because you had been told that you must. In such a case you would only see what was directly before you. Your peripheral vision might give you hints of what was to each side, or you might hear sounds that came from behind. Objects – birds, for example – might flash by you, and you might wonder at their motion, significance, and origin. If you suddenly turned an inch to the right or the left you would not be altering your body, but simply changing its position, increasing your overall picture, turning very cautiously from your initial position. So the little exercise above is like that.

 

… You are presently little aware of the dimensions of consciousness – your own or those seemingly “beneath” your own. The true physicist is one who would dare turn around inside his own consciousness.

 

… There are inner structures within matter. These are swirls of energy. They have more purposes than one. The structures are formed by organizations of consciousness, or CU’s [consciousness units]. You have the most intimate knowledge of the nature of a cell, for example, or of an atom. They compose your flesh. There is, in certain terms, a continuum of consciousness there of which your present physical life is a part. You are in certain kinds of communication and communion with your own cells, and at certain levels of consciousness you know this. A true physicist would learn to reach that level of consciousness at will. There were pictures drawn of cellular structures long before any technological methods of seeing them were available, in your terms.

 

… There are shapes and formations that appear when your eyes are closed that are perfect replicas of atoms, molecules, and cells, but you do not recognize them as such. There are also paintings – so-called abstracts – unconsciously produced, many by amateurs, that are excellent representations of such inner organizations. (4)

 

Ruburt [Jane] has at times been able to throw his consciousness into small physical instruments (computer components, for instance), and to perceive their inner activity at the level of, say, electrons. Given time, in your terms, a knowledge of the structure of so-called particles could be quite as clearly understood by using such techniques. Now, however, your terms would not match. Yet your terms are precisely what imprison you, and lead you to the “wrong” kinds of questions.

 

(With amusement:) The wrong kinds of questions are the right ones for you, however, in your [still predominantly BLUE/ORANGE Western] civilization and with your beliefs, because you want to stay within that structure to that extent. Only now are you beginning to question your methods, and even your questions. (5) The true physicist would be able to ask his questions from his usual state of consciousness, and then turn that consciousness in other directions where he himself would be led into adventures with reality, in which the questions would themselves be changed. And then the answers would be felt.

 

(Very forcefully all through here:) But most physicists do not trust felt answers [subjective/intuitive perception]. Feeling is thought to be far less valid than a diagram. It seems you could not operate your world on feelings – but you are not doing very well trying to operate with diagrams, either!

 

In many cases your scientists seem to have the strange idea that you can understand a reality by destroying it; that you can perceive the life mechanism of an animal by killing it; or that you can examine a phenomenon best by separating yourself from it. So, often, you attempt to examine the nature of the brain in man by destroying the brains of animals, by separating portions of the animal brain from its components, isolating them, and tampering with the overall integrity of both the animal in question and of your own spiritual processes. By this I mean that each such attempt puts you more out of context, so to speak, with yourself and your environment, and other species. Period. While you may “learn” certain so-called facts, you are driven still further away from any great knowledge, because the so-called facts stand in your way. You do not as yet understand the uniqueness of consciousness [i.e. there is no working theory of consciousness in mainstream ORANGE scientific paradigms].

 

(Very emphatically:) It is absurd to believe that you can learn something about consciousness by destroying it. It is absurd to believe that you can learn one iota about the inner reality of life when your search leads you to destroy it. Destruction, you see, in your terms (underlined twice), presupposes a misunderstanding of life to begin with.

 

… There are ways of identifying with animals, with atoms and molecules. There are ways of learning from the animals. There are methods that can be used to discover how different species migrate, for example, and then to duplicate such feats technologically if you want to. These methods do not include dissection, for what you learn that way you will not be able to use (deeper and much louder).

 

In a way you are simply over-exuberant, like children playing a new game. You will discover that at best you are using children’s blocks. Some of you have already come to that conclusion. As this book continues, I will indeed outline some beginning proposals as to ways in which you can use your consciousness to understand the nature of reality, and to make some of those inner blueprints clear.

 

… Even in your terms of history and serial time, as a race you have tried various methods of dealing with the physical world. (6) In this latest venture you are discovering that exterior manipulation is not enough, that [ORANGE] technology alone is not “the answer.” Please understand me: There is nothing wrong with a loving technology [GREEN or wider].

 

If Einstein had been a better mathematician, (7) he would not have made the breakthroughs that he did. He would have been too cowed. Yet even then his mathematics did hold him back, and put a kink in his intuitions. Often you take it for granted that intuitive knowledge is not practical, will not work, or will not give you diagrams. Those same diagrams of which science is so proud, however, can also be barriers, giving you a dead instead of a living knowledge. Therefore, they can be quite impractical.

 

I admit that I am being sneaky here; but if you did not feel the need to kill animals to gain knowledge, then you would not have wars, either. You would understand the balances of nature far better.

 

If you did not feel any need to destroy reality (in your terms) in order to understand it, then you would not need to dissect animals, hoping to discover the reasons for human diseases. You would have attained a living knowledge long ago, in which diseases as such did not occur. You would have understood long ago the connections between mind and body, feelings, health, and illness.

 

I am not saying that you would have necessarily had a perfect world, but that you would have been dealing more directly with the blueprints for reality….

 

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Notes: Session 701

 

1. Today Jane had been looking at Einstein’s own book on his theories of relativity. (Relativity, The Special and the General Theory, Tr. by Robert W. Lawson, Copyright 1961 by the Estate of Albert Einstein, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, N.Y.) She soon laid it aside, telling me that she couldn’t understand much of it except by making a strong effort of will. The mathematics it contained were beyond her entirely. I had ordered the book last month after she expressed interest in seeing it. Einstein died in 1955 at the age of 76.

 

2. Two weeks after this session was held I added “[mental]” to Seth’s term, “the true physicist,” because he does refer to “mental physicists” in the next three sessions.

 

3. A note added five months later: For some of Seth’s early remarks about time, see the excerpts from the 14th session (for January 8, 1964) in Chapter 4 of The Seth Material. I quoted a few lines from the same session midway through the Introductory Notes for Volume 1 of “Unknown “ Reality (as well as after the 724th session in Volume 2), and considered some thoughts about our attempts to grasp Seth’s concept of simultaneous time. The notes introducing this first volume also contain other applicable material having to do with Jane’s trance production times for the Seth books.

 

4. As an artist myself, I’ve occasionally wondered if some abstract paintings could have such origins. It’s quite possible that I’ve talked about this with Jane, although I don’t remember doing so at any particular time.

 

5. In physics, questioning is certainly the mode of the day, however, even if in its own terms. Two months ago a prominent East Coast newspaper carried a long article about the “turmoil” and “confusion” in which modern [GREEN] physics finds itself because of recent discoveries on atomic and subatomic levels. Many of these new facts contradict respected old facts, and are leading to previously unheard of, or rejected, questions having to do with internal structures for such near-dimensionless processes as the electron, which moves about the atomic nucleus, and for the various “heavier” particles that make up the nucleus itself.

 

Now it’s suspected that, in many cases at least, some of the fundamental laws of nature aren’t directly available to us – that often our world presents to us only an approximate representation of its basic qualities. Science needs new theories to unify as many of the four forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, and the atomic “strong” and “weak” forces) as possible, instead of separating them as in the past. We are now told that simplicity is the thing.

 

(And, very simply, the idea that the “event horizons” of black holes may radiate detectable light could be a step in the unification of some of those forces – gravity and electromagnetism – as they are treated in relativity theory and quantum theory, respectively. See Note 4 for Session 681, and Note 4 for Session 688 [below].)

 

[681/4n. I thought that in his last sentence especially Seth was flirting with the principle of uncertainty, or indeterminacy, as postulated in 1927 by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg. In quantum mechanics this axiom maintains that it’s not possible to simultaneously ascertain the momentum and position of a subatomic wave-particle like an electron, say – electrons being one of the qualities that make up atoms. The day after this session was held, I asked Jane if she’d heard of Heisenberg. She hadn’t; nor did she understand his work, as best I could explain it to her.]

 

[688/4n. A typical black hole, according to predictions made by Einstein in his theory of gravity, is thought to be the collapsed remnants of a giant star that’s used up all of its nuclear energy. Its density is unimaginably great, its gravity so powerful that not even light can escape from it. Hence, such an object is invisible, forming a “hole” in space.

 

(Yet, it has been proposed that some light radiation might escape from the “event horizon” just above, or surrounding, the black hole, and that eventually this radiation may be detected with more advanced satellite equipment. Seth hasn’t commented one way or the other on such theoretical attributes of black holes.)

 

See the 593rd session in the Appendix of Seth Speaks, where Seth briefly discusses both black holes and their suggested counterparts, white holes.]

 

6. In Section 1, see the 683rd session to 10:11 [below].

 

[683. … Other kinds of psychological gestalts [i.e. blueprints for reality/“involutionary givens”] have been and are being tried – some that would appear quite inconceivable to you; and yet now and then versions of them appear within your system.

 

It is quite possible, for example, for several selves to occupy a body, and were this the norm it would be easily accepted. That implies another kind of multipersonhood, however, one actually allowing for the fulfillment of many abilities of various natures usually left unexpressed. It also implies a freedom and organization of consciousness that is unusual in your system of reality, and was not chosen there.

 

(“Some people are going to hook up all of this with possession, aren’t they?” I asked.)

 

(10:11.) Not when I am finished. Most individuals, for example, develop intellectually or emotionally or physically, ignoring to a large degree the body’s and the mind’s full [and the soul’s and spirit’s] potential. The limited structure that you presently identify with selfhood is simply not capable of fully using all of those characteristics.

 

The I-structure [outer ego] arises from the inner self [inner ego], formed about various interests, abilities, and drives. Selections are made as to the areas of concentration. You rarely find a person who is a great intellect, a great athlete, and also a person of deep emotional and spiritual understanding – an ideal prototype of what it seems mankind could produce.

 

In some systems of physical existence, a multipersonhood is established in which three or four “persons” emerge from the same inner self, each one utilizing to the best of its abilities those characteristics of its own. This presupposes a gestalt of awareness, however, in which each knows of the activities of the others, and participates; and you have a different version of mass consciousness. Do you see the correlation?

 

(“Yes.”)

 

In the systems in which evolution of consciousness has worked in that fashion, all faculties of body and mind in one “lifetime” are beautifully utilized. Nor is there any ambiguity about identity. The individual would say, for example, “I am Joe, and Jane, and Jim, and Bob.” There are physical variations of a sexual nature, so that on all levels identity includes the male and female. Shadows of all such probabilities appear within your own system, as oddities. Anything apparent to whatever degree in your system is developed in another.

 

The point of all this is that these units are unpredictable, and fulfill all probabilities of consciousness. Any concepts of gods or other beings that are based upon limited [BLUE/ORANGE/GREEN/YELLOW/TURQUOISE] ideas of personhood will ultimately be futile. You view the fantastic variety of physical life – its animals, insects, birds, fish, man and all his works – with hardly a qualm; yet you must understand that the nature of consciousness itself is far more varied, and you must learn to think of an inner reality that is as infinite as the exterior one. These concepts alone do alter your present consciousness, and change it in degree. The present idea of the soul, you see, is a “primitive” idea that can scarcely begin to explain the creativity or reality from which mankind’s being comes. You are multipersons (intently). You exist in many times and places at once. You exist as one person, simultaneously. This does not deny the independence of the persons, but your inner reality straddles their reality, while it also serves as a psychic world in which they can grow.

 

I do not want to get involved in a discussion of “levels,” in which progression is supposed to occur from one to the other. All such discussions are based upon your idea of one-personhood, consecutive time, and limited versions of the soul. There are red, yellow, and violet flowers. One is not more progressed than the others, but each is different.

 

These units combine into various kinds of gestalts of consciousness. Basically, it is not correct to say that one is more progressed than another. The petal of a flower, for example, is not more developed than the root. An ant on the ground may see that the petal is way above the root and stem, but ants are too wise to think that the petal must be better than the root.]

 

7. Evidently Albert Einstein wasn’t a great mathematician. He often commented upon his poor memory. He did much of his work through intuition and images. Not long after the outline for his Special Theory of Relativity was published in 1905, it was said that Einstein owed its accomplishment at least partly to the fact that he knew little about the mathematics of space and time.

 

In the 45th session for April 20, 1964, I find Seth saying: “Einstein traveled within and trusted his own intuitions, and used his inner senses. He would have discovered much more had he been able to trust his intuitions even more, and able to leave more of the so-called scientific proof of his theories to lesser men, to give himself more inner freedom.”

 

The inner senses, as described by Seth, are listed in Chapter 19 of The Seth Material. [And in endnote 5, p. 35.]

 

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Session 702

 

June 10, 1974

 

… Ultimately your use of instruments, and your preoccupation with them as tools to study the greater nature of reality, will teach you one important lesson: The instruments are useful only in measuring the level of reality in which they themselves exist [Framework 1]. (1) Period.

 

They help you interpret the universe in horizontal [translational] terms, so to speak. In studying the deeper realities within and “behind” that universe [Frameworks 2, 3, 4], the instruments are not only useless but misleading. I am not suggesting that their use is futile, however – merely pointing out the limitations inherently involved.

 

So-called objective [ORANGE] science gives you a picture, a model, that has served well enough in its own fashion, enabling you to travel to the moon, for example, and to advance in a technology that for a time you set your hearts upon. In the framework of objective science as it now exists, however, even the technology will come up against a stone wall. Even as a means, objective [ORANGE] science is only helpful for a while, because it will constantly run up against deeper inner realities that are necessarily shunted aside and ignored simply because of its method and attitude. (2) No objective science or splendid technology alone will keep even one man or woman alive, for example, if that individual has decided to leave the flesh, or finds no joy in daily life.

 

(Pause.) A loving technology [GREEN or wider], again, would always add to the qualitative and spiritual deepening of experience. The inner order of existence and true science go together. The true scientist is not afraid of identifying with the reality he chooses to study. He knows that only then can he dare to begin to understand its nature. There are many unofficial scientists, true ones in that regard, unknown in this age. Many are quite ordinary people in exterior terms, with other professions. Yet it is no accident that greater discoveries are often made by “amateurs” – those who are relatively free from official dogmas, released from the pressure to get ahead in a given field – those whose creativity flows freely and naturally in those areas of their natural interest.

 

… Without an identification with the land, the planet and the seasons, all of your technology will not help you understand the earth, or even use it effectively, much less fully. Without an identification with the race as a whole, no technology can save the race. (Pause, during an intent delivery.) Unless man also identifies himself with the other kinds of life with which he shares the world, no technology will ever help him understand his experience. I am speaking in very practical terms. Gadgets will, ultimately, teach you nothing about the dimensions of your own consciousness. When you use them (biofeedback, for instance) even to attain alterations of consciousness, you are programming yourselves, stepping apart from yourselves.

 

… Such gadgets can be useful only if they show you that such alterations are naturally possible. Otherwise, with your ideas of applied science and technology, the gadgets will be the pivoting point, and the [ORANGE] ideas of manipulation will be stressed. In other words, unless the ideas behind objective science are altered, then gadget-produced altered states will almost certainly be used to manipulate, rather than free, consciousness.

 

I am not making a prediction here. I am simply pointing out one probability that exists. There have indeed been civilizations upon your planet (3) understood as well as you, and without your kind of technology, the workings of the planets, the positioning of stars – people who even foresaw “later” global changes. They used a mental physics. There were men before you who journeyed to the moon, and who brought back data quite as “scientific” and pertinent. There were those who understood the “origin” of your solar system far better than you. Some of these civilizations did not need spaceships. (4) Instead, highly trained men combining the abilities of dream-art scientists and mental physicists cooperated in journeys not only through time but through space. There are ancient maps drawn from a 200-mile-or-more vantage point – these meticulously completed on return from such journeys.

 

There were sketches of atoms and molecules, also drawn after trained men and women learned the art of identifying with such phenomena. There are significances hidden in the archives of many archaeological stores that are not recognized by you because you have not made the proper connections – and in some cases you have not advanced sufficiently to understand the information.

 

… The particular thrust and direction of your own [ORANGE] science have been directly opposed to the development of such inner sciences, however, so that to some extent each step in the one direction has thus far taken you further from the other. Yet all sciences are based on the desire for knowledge, and so there are intersections that occur even in the most diverse of paths; and you are at such an intersection.

 

Your own science has led you to its logical conclusion. It is not enough, and some suspect that its methods and attitudes have a built-in disadvantage. Physicists are going beyond themselves, so to speak, where even their own instruments cannot follow and where all rules do not apply. Even the [GREEN] prophet Einstein did not lead them far enough. You cannot stand apart from a reality and do any more than present diagrams of it. You will not understand its living heart or its nature.

 

The behavior of electrons, for example, will elude your technological knowledge – for in deepest terms what you will “perceive” will be a facade, an appearance or illusion. So far, within the rules of the game, you have been able to make your “facts” about electrons work. To follow their multidimensional activity however is another matter – (humorously:) a pun – and you need, if you will forgive me, a speedier means.

 

(Pause.) The blueprints for reality [i.e., “involutionary” givens] lie even beneath the electrons’ activity [with nested aspects in Frameworks 2, 3, 4]. As long as you think in terms of [subatomic] particles, you are basically off the track – or even when you think in terms of waves. The idea of interrelated fields comes closer, of course, yet even here you are simply changing one kind of term for one like it, only slightly different. In all of these cases you are ignoring the reality of consciousness [i.e., the Great Nest/All-That-Is], and its [holonic] gestalt formations and manifestations. Until you perceive the innate consciousness behind any “visible” or “invisible” manifestations, then, you put a definite barrier to your own knowledge.

 

Take your break.

 

(10:20. “I don’t know what he said about electrons and things like that, “ Jane told me as soon as she was out of her hour-long trance state, “but all of this is general and it’s leading up to something more. I carried it as far as I could. Maybe we’ll get more on it after break … “

 

(I thought it very interesting that Seth had talked about subatomic waves and particles in the last paragraph of his delivery tonight. Such ideas involve the physicists’ ongoing conception of the duality of nature. For instance: Is light made up of waves or particles? A contemporary accommodation, called complementarily, leads experimenters to accept results that show either aspect to be true. As noted in the last session, Jane had attempted to read Einstein’s book on his [GREEN] theories of relativity earlier that day. We had briefly discussed Einstein’s work and some allied subjects before tonight’s session, but I hadn’t asked her to give material on physics through Seth. (5) In her own way, Jane is quite interested in the field, however, and has done a little work in it with scientists. We may have more to say about those efforts later in “Unknown” Reality.

 

(Now, however, we had time to just touch upon the data involving electrons when Jane told me that she was suddenly aware of more information on the same subject. Seth was ready. “I’ll do the best I can with this, “ she said, as she took off her glasses. Resume at 10:22.)

 

Ruburt’s [Jane’s] vocabulary is not an official scientific one. Nor for our purposes should it be – for that vocabulary is limiting.

 

In as simple a language as possible, and to some extent in your terms, the electron’s spin determines time “sequences” from your viewpoint. In those terms, then, a reversed spin is a reversed time motion. There is much you cannot observe. There is much that is extremely difficult to explain, simply because your verbal structure alone presupposes certain [linear, sequential] assumptions. Electrons, however, spin in many directions at once, (6) an effect impossible for you to perceive. You can only theorize about it. There are “electromagnetic momentums thus achieved and maintained,” certain stabilities that operate and maintain their own integrity, though these may not be “equal” at all portions of the spin. There are equalities set up “between” the inequalities.

 

Time, in your terms then, is spinning newly backward as surely as it is spinning newly (the telephone began to ring) – ignore it – into the future. And it is spinning outward and inward into all probabilities simultaneously.

 

… There are, nevertheless, unequal thrusts in all directions, though “equalities” can be ascertained by concentrating only upon certain portions of the spin.

 

Take your break.

 

(10:36. “I heard the phone, and tried to hold the trance through it,” Jane said. “But I don’t know about this book, and ordinary people reading it. I’m just letting it all come out … It’s great fun, though. I feel like I’m in the heart of things. It’s only a little after ten-thirty, but I feel that I’ve really traveled a long way since the session started…”

 

(Using conventional reincarnational terms, I half jokingly asked Jane if she’d ever been a dream-art scientist, say, or a mental physicist. She said she didn’t know. [We hardly ever talk about whatever personal involvement either of us might have had with reincarnation, incidentally, regardless of whether any such lives would be based upon Seth’s ideas of simultaneous time and probabilities, or upon time as a series of successive moments.] Jane did know that the rest of the session would be for her, though. She was right; Seth came through at 10:55, then said good night at 11:30 P.M.)….

 

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Notes: Session 702

 

1. Once again (as in Note 7 for the last session), I quote Seth from the 45th session: “Any investigation of the basic inner universe, which is the only real universe, must be done as much as possible from a point outside your own distortions … To get outside your own universe, you must travel inward … Your so-called scientific, so-called objective experiments can continue for an eternity, but they will only probe further and further with camouflage [physical] instruments into a camouflage universe [framework 1] … The subconscious, it is true, has elements of its own distortions, but these are easier to escape than the tons of distortive camouflage atmosphere that weigh your scientific experiments down.”

 

(See Note 3 for Appendix 11, concerning Seth’s use of “camouflage” in the early sessions [below].)

 

[Appendix 11/3n. … in the 16th session for January 15, 1964, [Seth said that] basic nonphysical reality … was “like some chameleon-like animal, constantly camouflaging its true appearance by taking on the outward manifestations of each neighboring forest territory [or world] ….” And so this primal vitality expressed itself physically in our environment.

 

“Camouflage” became a familiar word to us in those early sessions, and we thought it an excellent one for Seth’s purposes – but rather oddly, except for using it once in a while in recent years, he’s largely dropped it from his vocabulary.]

 

[Ed. note: the Hindu term Maya, Buddhist samsara, and Jane Roberts’s idea constructions deal with essentially the same concept, namely, that energy-matter and space-time are merely the thin “exterior crust” of All-That-Is.]

 

2. Seth’s material about technology and science leading to inner realities reminds me of two related examples that I’ve become aware of recently through my own reading. The first one involves a more intimate inner reality than the second, yet both pose interesting questions. Each reader can probably give similar illustrations. (However, as I wrote in Appendix 1, “I’m not interested in knocking our technology, but in pointing out coexisting inner factors that I’m sure are just as important.”)

 

My first example concerns the development of biofeedback machines in the 1960’s. With one of these devices the individual was to learn to control, when necessary, his or her own blood pressure, or any of certain other involuntary body functions. Doubtlessly such self monitoring is an example of the [GREEN] “loving technology” that Seth mentioned in his final delivery for the last Session; yet we now understand that the early claims for biofeedback were considerably exaggerated. Within a more reasonable context the technique will take its place in our medical systems, but in each case what we learn will surely point up the need to understand our individual inner realities; i.e., what caused the high blood pressure, or whatever, in the first place?

 

My second example grows out of a recent book on astronomy. The author explains the various theories for the origin of our observable universe of planets, galaxies, quasars, and so forth, presenting the evidence for and against each theory. Yet when the question arises as to what prevailed before the advent of our universe (or of whether it has existed “forever”), we are told that [ORANGE] science doesn’t deal with ultimate origins and endings; we are referred to the realms of [BLUE/mythic dogmatic] theology and/or philosophy for whatever answers are available.

 

Strange but inevitable, I think, how the conscious mind, developing such disciplines as biofeedback and astronomy (to use the examples considered here), finds itself led back to its own inner sources.

 

3. Four little notes, the last two of which are added later from Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality:

 

See Chapter 15 of Seth Speaks for Seth’s material on the art and technology of the ancient civilization of Lumina (as well as his references to those that came before and after it). Even now, he tells us, the Lumanians’ attributes are incorporated in our own heritage.

 

Seth discusses some “species of consciousness,” starting at 11:08 in Session 692, Volume 1.

 

From the 715th session in Section 4 of Volume 2: “There are civilizations of the psyche, and only by learning about these will you discover the truth about the ‘lost’ civilizations of your planet – for each such physical culture coincided with and emerged from a corresponding portion of the psyche that you even now possess.”

 

From the 742nd session in Section 6: “Atlantis is a land that you want to inhabit, appearing in your literature, your dreams, and your fantasies, serving as an impetus for development … It carries also, however, the imprint of your fears, for the tales say that Atlantis was destroyed. You place it in your past while it exists in your future. Not the destruction alone, but the entire pattern seen through the framework of your beliefs. Beside this, however, many civilizations have come and gone in somewhat the same manner, and the “myth” [of Atlantis] is based somewhat then on physical fact in your terms.”

 

4. In the 40th session for April 1, 1964, Seth had something to say about the challenges space travel will present to our own civilization: “… you are severely hampered as far as space travel is concerned, by the time elements involved … In your terms it will simply take you too long to get where you want to go. [GREEN and wider] Scientists will begin to look for easier methods. They are even now being forced to consider the possibilities of telepathy as a means of communication, and they will be forced further and further along these lines.

 

“It is very possible that you might end up in what you intend as a space venture only to discover that you have ‘traveled’ to another plane [probability]. But at first you will not know the difference.”

 

And from the 45th session, 20 days later: “… your present theory of the expanding universe is in error. Space travel will be dumped when your [GREEN and wider] scientists discover that space as you know it is a distortion, and that journeying from one so-called galaxy to another is done through divesting the physical body of camouflage [matter]. The vehicle of so-called space travel is mental and psychic mobility, in terms of psychic transformation of energy [CORAL or wider]….

 

5. In the last session see the material, with notes 1 and 7, on Einstein, as well as Note 5; in the 684th session the material on the multidimensional activities and fluctuations of Seth’s CU’s (or units of consciousness), electrons, and other such phenomena; and in the 681st session the material, with Note 7 especially, on science, probable atoms, and the basic unpredictability behind all systems of reality. In the same session Seth also comments on Jane’s vocabulary, as he does after break tonight.

 

6. Seth, in the 681st session: “Atoms can move in more directions than one at once.” In Note 7 for that session I wrote that as an artist my intuitional reaction to that statement was to associate the multidirectional ability of the atom with Seth’s notions of simultaneous time and probabilities Since electrons are the particles or processes moving about the nucleus of the atom, I now make the same association for them. Thus, according to Seth, we have a most complicated and profound dance of units or essences – behavior not really amenable to translation in words.

 

In the 688th session, in Section 2, see the material on time and the backward and forward, inward and outward motion of the CU’s, or units of consciousness.

 

Physicists began talking about the spin of electrons in 1925; shortly afterward they began to consider the spin of the components of the nucleus itself.

 

This spin isn’t the orbital motion of the electron around a nucleus, however, but (very briefly) is actually more a measure of the electron’s magnetic field.

 

Time reversal or particle symmetry, the equivalence of space and time, is a tenet of [GREEN] relativistic physics and quantum theory. In the material I have on file on electron spin itself, though, I haven’t found any discussion of Seth’s ideas of: (a) a reversed electron spin and a consequent time reversal, or (b) electrons spinning in many directions at once (even if we could grasp such a situation). Such concepts in association with electron spin may be dealt with in the literature of physics, but are unfamiliar to me or outside my limited understanding. I’m sure also that in ordinary terms Jane knows nothing of them.

 

Instead, I’d say that Seth’s material after break grew out of her own intuitive, mystical understanding that space and time are interwound.

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Session 703

 

June 12, 1974

 

… The multidimensional aspects of the electron cannot be perceived within your three-dimensional system [Framework 1], using instruments that are already predisposed or prefocused to measure only certain kinds of effects.

 

While this may sound quite sacrilegious scientifically, it is possible to understand the electron’s nature and greater reality by using certain focuses of consciousness: by probing the electron, for example, with a “laser” [beam] of consciousness finely focused and attuned – and more will be said about this later in the book. So far in any of your investigations, you have been probing exterior conditions, searching for their interior nature.

 

To make this clear: When you dissect an animal, for instance, you are still dealing only with the “inside” of exterior reality, or with another level of outsideness. (Pause.) In a manner of speaking, when you probe the heavens with your instruments you are doing the same thing. There is a difference between this and the “withinness” out of which all matter springs [Frameworks 2, 3, 4]. It is there that the blueprints for reality [i.e., “involutionary givens”] are found. There are various ways of studying reality. Let us take a very simple example.

 

Suppose a scientist found a first orange [an appropriate synchronicity for ORANGE science!], and used every instrument available to examine it, but refused to feel it, taste it, smell it, or otherwise to become personally involved with it for fear of losing scientific objectivity.

 

In sense terms he would learn little about an orange, though he might be able to isolate its elements, predict where others might be found, theorize about its environment – but the greater “withinness” of the orange is not found any place inside of its skin either. The seeds are the physical carriers of future oranges, but the blueprints for that reality [i.e., “involutionary givens”] are what formed the seeds. In such dilemmas you are always brought back to the question of which came first, and begin another merry chase. Because you think in terms of [linear] consecutive time, it seems that there must have been a first egg, or seed. (1) The blueprints for reality exist, however, in dimensions without such a time sequence [again, Frameworks 2, 3, 4].

 

Your closest point to the withinness of which I speak [i.e., subtle, causal, spirit] is your own consciousness, though you use it as a tool to examine the exterior universe. But it is basically free of that reality, not confined to the life-and-death saga, and at other levels deals with the blueprints for its own physical existence.

 

In the entire gestalt [nested whole/parts or holarchy] from cellular to “self” consciousness, there is a vast field of knowledge – much of it now “unconsciously” available – used to maintain the body’s integrity in space and time. With the conscious mind as director, there is no reason why much of this knowledge cannot become normally and naturally available. There is, therefore, a quite valid, vital, real and vastly creative inner reality, and an inward sequence of events [“downward causation” via Frameworks 2, 3, 4] from which your present universe and life emerges. Any true scientist will ultimately have to learn to enter that realm of reality. So-called objective approaches will only work at all when you are dealing with so-called objective effects – and your [GREEN] physicists are learning that even in that framework many “facts” are facts only within certain frequencies, (2) or under certain conditions. You are left with “workable facts” that help you manipulate in your own backyard, but such facts become prejudice when you try to venture beyond your own cosmic neighborhood and find that your preconceived, native ideas do not apply outside of their context.

 

Because of your attitudes, ideas do not seem as real to you as objects, or as practical. Thoughts are not given the same validity as rocks or trees or beer cans (two of which sat on the coffee table between us at the moment) or automobiles. In your terms an automobile gets you somewhere. You do not understand the great mobility of thought, nor grasp its practical nature. You make your world, and in an important manner your thoughts are indeed the immediate personal blueprints for it. When you manipulate objects you feel efficient. The manipulation of thoughts is far more practical. Here is a brief example.

 

… Your medical technology may help you “conquer” one disease after another – some in fact caused by that same technology – and you will feel very efficient as you do heart transplants, as you fight one virus after another. But all of this will do nothing except to allow people to die, perhaps, of other diseases still “unconquered.” People will die when they are ready to, following inner dictates and dynamics. A person ready to die will, despite any medication. (Emphatically:) A person who wants to live will seize upon the tiniest hope, and respond. The dynamics of health have nothing to do with inoculations. They reside in the consciousness of each being. In your terms they are regulated by emotions, desires, and thoughts. A true doctor cannot be scientifically objective. He cannot divorce himself from the reality of his patient. Instead, usually, the doctor’s words and very methods literally separate the patient from himself or herself. The malady is seen almost as a thing apart from the patient’s person – but thrust upon it – over which the patient has little control. (3)

 

The condition is analyzed, the blood is sampled. It becomes “a blood sample” to the doctor. The patient may silently shout out, “That is not just a blood sample – it is my blood you are taking.” But he [or she] is discouraged from identifying with the blood of his physical being, so that even his own blood seems alien.

 

The blueprints for reality [involutionary givens in Frameworks 2, 3, 4]: In greater terms they reside within you. In private terms they are part of your being.

 

To some extent I am suggesting in this book a different approach. So far the blueprints for reality have been largely unknown. Your [ORANGE] methods make them invisible, so here I am suggesting ways in which the unknown reality can become a known one. I have mentioned the dream-art scientist and the [true] mental physicist (in sessions 700-1). I would like to add here the “complete physician.”

 

… The complete physician would be a person who learned to understand the dynamics of being, the soul-body relationship – one who was healthy in his or her own body. Unhappy people cannot teach you to be happy. Sick ones cannot teach you to be well. Psychiatrists have a high suicide rate. Why do you think they can help you live happily, or add to your vitality? Physicians are not the healthiest of men by far. (4) Why do you think they can cure you?

 

(With emphasis:) Now in your framework of beliefs the psychiatrists and the doctors are helpful. They know more than you do about the techniques upon which you all agree. While the society accepts these techniques, then you are to some extent dependent upon them, and you had better think twice before you let them go. But in greater, more vital issues, the sick doctor does not know as much about health as an “uneducated, untrained,” but healthy person – and I am speaking in quite practical terms. The person who is healthy understands the dynamics of health. In your framework it seems that his or her understanding can be of little practical value to you if you are, for instance, unhealthy. But a true medical profession would be, literally, a health profession. It would seek out people who were healthy and learn from them how to promote health, and not how to diagram disease.

 

This is on the most surface level, however. A true healing, or health profession, would deal intimately with the powers of the psyche in healing the body, and with the interrelationship among the desires, beliefs, and activities of the conscious mind and its effects upon the cellular behavior.

 

The “unknown” reality. Unknown or not, it is what you are working with. …

 

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Notes: Session 703

 

1. While discussing probabilities and his units of consciousness in the 682nd session, in Section 1, Seth told us: “The idea of one universe alone is basically nonsensical [i.e. “the myth of the given” or pregiven fixed state]. Your reality must be seen in its relationship to others [i.e. holonic worldspaces, probable realities, Frameworks of consciousness]. Otherwise you are always caught in questions like ‘How did the universe begin?’ or ‘When will it end?’ All systems are constantly being created.”

 

Also see the material about astronomy and origins in Note 2 for Session 702. [See page 22, second example.]

 

2. Physicists assign a frequency, or vibration in periodic motion, to all objects in our universe – galaxies, stars, planets, subatomic wave/particles, and so forth. Form is thought to be an expression of frequency. Some scientists say now that the familiar “vibrations” mediums talk about represent or approximate this quality. Seth first mentioned frequencies soon after these sessions began.

 

To me there are connections between such periodic activity and Seth’s information in the 684th session, in Section 1: “Your bodies blink off and on like lights … For that matter, so does the physical universe.” For additional references on the way atoms and molecules – consciousness itself, in other words – can phase in and out of our probable reality, see Note 3 for the 684th session [below].

 

And yet, very rarely do I hear Jane speak of vibrations (the “vibes,” in popular jargon) or frequencies.

 

[684/3n. In Note 1 for Session 681 I dealt very briefly with fluctuations of consciousness, or reality, and referred the reader to the 567th session in Chapter 16 of Seth Speaks. For additional material on the same subject in the same book, also see the 535th session in Chapter 9 and the 576th in Chapter 19.

 

And in connection with Seth’s statement tonight that “… your bodies blink off and on like lights,” see Jane’s comments on her own feelings about related ideas in the notes at the beginning of the last session.]

 

3. See the 661st session in Chapter 17 of Personal Reality. In his material after 11:23 especially, Seth discusses the doctor-patient relationship, and the feelings of powerlessness that can beset the individual during times of illness.

 

4. Current statistics show that in the United States the suicide rate for psychiatrists, doctors, and dentists is three to four times higher than it is for the rest of the population. There’s much discussion now of the additional stresses and frustrations encountered by those in the medical disciplines, aside from personality traits or conflicts that can lead an individual to take his or her own life; the suicide of a doctor, for instance, may be triggered by his inability to fulfill the role society expects of him.

 

The bulk of the material in Personal Reality concerns the nature of beliefs, and the physical and mental environments that are created, both individually and en masse, as a result of those beliefs. It follows, then, that a number of the sessions in that book either deal with health and illness, or with subjects that approach those topics in various ways. Chapters 16 and 17 in particular contain material on what Seth calls natural hypnosis, and on Western medicine, physicians, the suggestions associated with medical insurance and “health” literature, diet, childbirth, hospitals, natural death, good and evil, and so forth. …

 

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Session 704

 

June 17, 1974

9:27 P.M. Monday

 

… The unknown reality [i.e. Frameworks 2, 3, 4], probable man, dreams, the spin of electrons, the blueprints for reality [involutionary givens/“downward causation”] – all of these are intimately related.

 

Your daily personal lives are touched, are changed, are created from the [holonic] interrelationships that exist among those phenomena. So, of course, your mass world is also affected. You do have free will, and in a certain fashion it can be said to be dependent upon the [holonic] nature of probabilities and the multidimensional [holonic] behavior of electrons. (1)

 

Unpredictability does not mean chaos. All order rises out of the creative elements of unpredictability. 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. The great saga of recognized physical activity arises from a vast unrecognized, unpredictable dimension [Framework 2] in which probabilities are allowed full freedom.

 

The full practical implication here should be understood: No course is irrevocably set or beyond change. Within the limited framework of your usual operations, however, so-called predictions (3) may be made. They will be workable to some degree. In deeper terms however no action is set beyond alteration. The unknown reality [Frameworks 2, 3, 4] is the source for the known one [Framework 1]. If you want to “discover” how things work, then your journey must eventually lead you into the dimensions that lie within the world you know [via the inner senses/eye of spirit/translogic].

 

You must therefore explore the psyche, the living consciousness. It will lead you to the withinness. This is not an impractical, but very practical, endeavor in all areas. Scientifically, studies would vastly enlarge your concepts so that a loving technology [GREEN and wider] could follow the most beautiful contours of the mind, rising on the natural mountains of human abilities and then more easily into fulfillment.

 

Medicine would gently and expertly encourage healing processes as it more fully understood the psyche’s great emotional being and needs. Learning would take advantage of the latent inner knowledge of the subjective self, and help it interpret itself in terms of physical life. The dream state would be seen as an inexhaustible fountain of information. Efforts could then be made to understand and interpret private symbolism, and individuals within a society would be taught to take advantage of their own inner data to enrich their personal lives and help the community.

 

I am aware that some of this sounds “retrogressive,” for I am even suggesting a situation in which politicians or statesmen would learn to “dream wisely” – and become aware of the psyche, the mass psyche, of their people, and tune into the “private oracle” [i.e., the inner senses/eye of spirit/translogic].

 

Now all of this certainly sounds unscientific to many people, yet most of my readers have already picked up a different version of the nature of science, or they would not be reading this book to begin with. The private oracle: What does that mean? And what does it have to do with the unknown reality? More, what does it have to do with the practical world? The private oracle is the voice of the inner multidimensional [holonic] self – the part of each person not fully contained in his or her personhood, the part of the unknown self-structure out of which personhood, with its physical alliance, springs. Basically that portion of the psyche is outside of space and time [Frameworks 2, 3, 4], while enabling you to operate in it. (4) It deals intimately with probabilities – (louder:) the source of all predictable action.

 

Because of its position it has great powers of communication, both as a receiver and as a sender. Unfortunately, science as it has developed in your time [ORANGE flatland] has resulted in a mistrust of the individual, and saddled him or her with a sense of powerlessness, subjectively, even while it has added a seeming sense of objective power [through ORANGE technology]. I say that it has seemingly added a sense of objective power (intently during a fast delivery). For instance, your sophisticated techniques allow you to say that conditions are right for a tornado, and you will have a tornado watch (as we had in our Elmira area not long ago), or your instruments will pick up faint earthquake tremors, and following fault lines you will then “predict” that an earthquake will appear in another area. So it seems that you have some power over your environment. The individual person can then prepare for a potential disaster. It seems that you can seed the clouds with chemicals and bring forth rain when it is needed, and therefore obtain a power over the environment that is quite practical. You believe that you need scientific paraphernalia to achieve such ends – yet many animals are aware of such phenomena, and without such instruments. And mankind itself is innately equipped to “foresee” such potential disasters.

 

The physical organism itself is so equipped. Blood pressure rises in whole populations – stress signals in terms of hormones are activated, but you are not taught to recognize these natural signals. There is a give-and-take between all portions of nature. 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.”

 

I am simply suggesting that you become more natural [GREEN and wider; remember it’s 1974]. Because [ORANGE] science has made an effective barrier to that method of approach, the power seems to reside in the gadgets rather than in man. Man no longer identifies with a storm, for example, and has lost his sense of relationship with it, and therefore his natural power over it. The same applies to storms of the psyche. 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 [Frameworks 2, 3, 4], and therefore the known reality [Framework 1], and so become aware of the blueprints [i.e., “involutionary givens”] that exist behind the physical universe. The proof is in the pudding, of course. Largely, it seems that your techniques work a good deal of the time. Let us look at medicine, for instance.

 

… Your physicians can point to lives saved by sophisticated technology. You can point to diseases stamped out because of inoculations or other preventive measures, such as the intake of certain vitamins, or sanitary procedures. It seems the worst kind of idiocy to suggest that the individual has any kind of effective protection against illness or disease. (Long pause.) Almost anyone can name a family member or friend who died 30 or 40 years ago of a disease that is now completely conquered. It seems that such lives would have been saved with modern procedures. In your society a medical checkup is a must every so often.

 

Again, many can thankfully praise a given doctor for discovering a disease condition “in time,” so that effective countering measures were taken and the disease was eliminated. You cannot know for sure, of course, what would have happened otherwise. You cannot know for sure what happened to those people who wanted to die. If they did not die of the disease, they may have “fallen prey” to an accident, or died in a war, or in a natural disaster.

 

They may have been “cured” whether or not they had treatment, and gone on to lead productive lives. You do not know. A man or woman who is ready to die, if saved from one disease will promptly get another, or find a way of fulfilling that desire. Your problem there rests with the will to live, and with the mechanics of the psyche. The complete physician would try to understand the inner mechanics of vitality and, as best he could, learn to encourage these.

 

He would try to ascertain the patterns of the psyche, and follow them. He would encourage the patient to tune into the private oracle [i.e., inner senses/eye of spirit/translogic] in order to ascertain his or her own purposes in physical life, and to reinforce spiritual strength. The complete physician would be an individual, (male or female), who was in superb health, and therefore understood himself the particular dynamics that operate between spiritual vitality and physical well-being. (Intently:) That would be his specialty.

 

We are indeed speaking of a somewhat ideal situation here, from your viewpoint. Yet you will not learn the mechanics of health by putting yourself in a hospital. You may be cured of a particular disease, but unless you learn more about the dynamics of your being, you will simply “fall prey” to another. The same applies to all levels of activity. You may discover how to be happy by association with a happy person, but you definitely will not discover that answer by associating with those who are miserable. They will only teach you what unhappiness is like – if you do not know already.

 

Each individual is a universe in a small package. (A one-minute pause.) As the physical planets move in order while being individual, so there can be a social order that is based upon the integrity of the individual. But that order would recognize the inner validity that is within the self; and the inner order, unseen, that forms the integrity of the physical body, likewise would form the integrity of the social body. The self, the individual, being its fulfilled self, would automatically function for the good of itself and for the good of society. The individual’s good, therefore, is the society’s good, and represents spiritual and physical fulfillment. This presupposes, however, an understanding of the inner self [i.e., inner ego, soul, psyche] and an exploration into the unknown reality of the individual psyche [particularly Frameworks 2, 3, 4].

 

… To some extent, each individual who wants to can become aware of the “unknown” reality – can become his or her own dream-art scientist, mental physicist, or complete physician, and begin to explore those lands of the psyche that are the real frontier.

 

Such a journey will illuminate not only the private aspects of reality [individual dimensions of being], but the experience of the species as well [collective dimensions of being]. Period. End of section….

 

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Notes: Session 704

 

1. See Session 702 after 10:22, with Note 6, as well as Note 2 for Session 703. More references to material on the fluctuations of atoms among realities can be found in Note 3 for Session 684.

 

2. See the 681st session after 10:00 [below].

 

[681/(10:00.) Such endless [spontaneous, unpredictable] creativity can seem so dazzling that the individual would appear lost within it’s yet consciousness forms its own organizations and psychic interactions at all levels. Any consciousness automatically tries to express itself in all probable directions, and does so. In so doing it will experience All That Is through its own being, though interpreted, of course, through that familiar reality of its own. You grow probable selves as a flower grows petals. Each probable self, however, will follow through in its own reality – that is, it will experience to the fullest those dimensions inherent to it. You pick and choose one birth and one death, in your terms.

 

(To me:) You died as a young boy in an operation, however, in this life as you think of it. You died again in the war, where you were a pilot – but those are not your official deaths, so you do not recognize them.

 

[ORANGE] Science likes to think that it deals with predictable action. It perceives such a small amount of data, however, and in such a limited area, that the great inner unpredictability of any molecule, atom, or wave is not apparent. Scientists perceive only what appears within your system, and that often appears predictable.

 

Give us a moment … True order and organization, even of biological structure, can be achieved only by granting a basic unpredictability. I am aware that this sounds startling. Basically, however, the motion of any wave or particle or entity is unpredictable-freewheeling and undetermined. Your life structure is a result of that unpredictability. Your psychological structure is also. However, because you are presented with a fairly cohesive picture, in which certain laws seem to apply, you think that the laws come first and physical reality follows. Instead, the cohesive picture is the result of the unpredictable nature that is and must be basic to all energy.

 

Statistics provide an artificial, predetermined framework in which your reality is then examined. Mathematics is a theoretical organized structure that of itself imposes your ideas of order and predictability. Statistically, the position of an atom can be theorized, but no one knows where any given atom is at any given time.

 

(10:22.) You are examining probable atoms. You are composed of probable atoms. (A one-minute pause.) Give us a moment. … (A one-minute pause.) Consciousness, to be fully free, had to be endowed with unpredictability. All That Is had to surprise himself, itself, herself, constantly, through freely granting itself its own freedom, or forever repeat itself. This basic unpredictability then follows through on all levels of consciousness and being. A certain cellular structure may seem inevitable within its own frame of reference only because opposing or contradictory probabilities do not appear therein.

 

In your terms, consciousness is able to hold its own sense of identity by accepting one probability, one physical life, for example, and maintaining its identity through a lifetime. Even then, certain events will be remembered and others forgotten. The consciousness also learns to handle alternate moments as it “matures.” As it does so mature it forms a new, larger framework of identity, as the cell forms into an organ on another level.

 

In your terms – the phrase is necessary – the moment point, the present, is the point of interaction between all existences and reality. All probabilities flow through it, though one of your moment points may be experienced as centuries, or as a breath, in other probable realities of which you are a part.]

 

3. In Note 6 for Session 681 I quoted Seth on his own ability to predict (which he seldom indulges), and on the subject in general. He also commented on predictions in a more amused way in ESP class for January 5, 1971; see the transcript in the Appendix of Seth Speaks: “Time, in your terms, is plastic. Most predictions are made in a highly distorted fashion; they can lead the public astray. Not only that, but when the predictors fall flat on their faces it does not help ‘The Cause.’ Reality does not exist in that fashion. You can tune into certain probabilities and predict ‘that they will occur,’ but free will always operates. No god in a giant ivory tower says ‘This will happen February 15 at 8:05.’; and if no god predicts, then I do not see the point of doing so myself.”

 

4. A note added later: Jane dealt with her “own” ideas of the inner [holonic] multidimensional self in Part 2 of her Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. See chapters 10 and 11, among others. Seth’s private oracle is analogous to her basic nonphysical source self [i.e. inner ego/subtle field], from which numerous Aspect selves simultaneously emerge into various realities. All Aspects of a source self are in communication with each other, even if unconsciously. The Aspect self that appears in our reality is the focus personality [i.e. outer ego/self-system/gross field], “earthized” in physical form. I made a number of diagrams to illustrate Jane’s material in Part 2 of Adventures, and several of these show a schematic source self with its attendant Aspects.

 

In very simplified terms, then, Jane regards Seth as a personagram [temporary outer-ego or bridge personality formed via subtle/causal superholonic agency [16], “a multidimensional personification of another Aspect of the entity or source self, as expressed through the medium.” Aspects like Seth, she wrote in Chapter 11, “would have to communicate through the psychic fabric of the focus personality. They would have to appear in line with our idea of personhood, though their own reality might exist in quite different terms. I think that I always sensed this about Seth. It wasn’t that I mistrusted the Seth personality, but I felt it was a personification of something else – and that ‘something else’ wasn’t a person in our terms … Yet in an odd way I felt that he was more than that, or represented more; and that his psychological reality straddled worlds… I sensed a multidimensionality of personality that I couldn’t define.

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So What?!

 

That was all well and nice, but what does this mean in terms of my everyday life? What can I take away from this right now?

 

While Seth’s dream-art science is a potential science in our present now, it already exists in a probable future. While it is a promissory science in Framework 1 terms, it is also a latent or potential science from a holonic perspective that includes Frameworks 1-4. Yet, it is something that has never existed before in our culture. Though there are plenty of New Age stories and myths about adepts, alchemists, mystery schools, lost civilizations, etc. there is little evidence that any civilization on our planet ever learned to use their inner senses in any sustained form on a collective scale. Of course we can cite the evidence of many esoteric traditions and lineages of yogis, sages, shamans, and seers, but we’re talking about a collective center of gravity, not just the leading edge of a small elite. So tales of this or that lost civilization, even in the Seth material, remain just that – lost and “forgotten” for all practical purposes.

 

Also, these dream-art science sessions provide important clues for further understanding the mechanics of what has popularly come to be called conscious creation. However, what does “you create your own reality” really mean? How does it work? And just who is the “you” in “you create your own reality?” For example, when Seth says, “you form your own reality,” to whom is he speaking? Who is the “you” reading these words right now? And now? And what about now?

 

Seth describes the conscious mind (holon) as three simultaneously nested processes (subholons):

 

Ø   Outer ego (center of gravity for waking identity = waking self)

 

Ø   Subconscious (mediating layer between outer and inner = dreaming self)

 

Ø   Inner ego (“outside” of space-time, mediator to All-That-Is = sleeping self)

 

Put simply, this is the multidimensional (holonic) “you” he refers to when he says, “you form your own reality.”

 

Now this is a big concept to understand if you’re used to thinking of yourself as a single separated ego-self, isolated from everyone and everything else. One way to make this simpler is to use the analogy of the conscious mind as an iceberg.

 

The tip of the iceberg represents you, the outer ego-self. The air around you represents the time framework that you live in. The tip lives in a field where time seems to flow from past to future in fairly predictable fashion.

 

The water line in our analogy acts as the subconscious boundary between the tip and submerged aspects of our iceberg – the “unknown” reality of the inner ego. As we investigate the size and nature of this submerged portion, we begin to sense its vast holonic nature. And most of us can’t consciously “see” our submerged source in its entirety since we – the outer ego – always translate it into subject/object forms through our physical senses and neurochemistry. However, we can perceive the invisible affects of our inner ego through the dream state, inspiration, deep intuition, and meditative states. And it’s only by using our inner senses to “see” our inner ego that we actually become it to the extent that subject/object relationships evaporate.

 

Therefore, the outer ego – our sense of waking identity – is only one aspect, one process, and one subholon of the conscious mind whose main function is to deal with the physical world. It’s the cumulative psychological structure that grows and changes-in-time as it navigates our various personality streams (i.e. cognitive, affective, moral, interpersonal, spiritual, mathematical, musical, etc.).

 

According to Seth,

 

“The ego is a very specialized portion of your greater identity. It is a portion of you that arises to deal directly with the life that the larger You is living. The ego can feel cut off, lonely and frightened, however, if the conscious mind lets the ego run away with it. The ego and the conscious mind are not the same thing.” [17]

 

“The ego is an offshoot of the conscious mind, so to speak. The conscious mind is like a gigantic camera with the ego directing the view and the focus. Left alone, various portions of the identity rise and form the ego, degroup and reform, all the while maintaining a marvelous spontaneity and yet a sense of oneness. Your ego is your idea of your physical image in relation to the world.” [18]

 

Thus, Seth’s conscious mind hints at a vast holonic psychological structure nested within us, one that’s much larger than the outer ego usually recognizes. The conscious mind also uses its outer and inner senses to create overall cognition and perception. This is where a lot of Seth readers miss the boat. They define conscious creation as involving mostly the outer ego and its thoughts, feelings, beliefs, memories, etc. This is only one third of the conscious creation story! The subconscious and the inner ego round out the complete “map” of the conscious mind, all of which holonically co-create space-time, energy-matter, cognition, and perception.

 

It’s also important to remember that the subconscious (dreaming self/subtle self) functions as the meditating layer between the outer and inner egos. The subconscious is a translator of physical and nonphysical cognition and perception. It is not UNconscious, but a mediating holonic structure. To be clear, the narrow definitions of the subconscious in Freudian or Jungian psychology are but the surface layers of what Seth defines as subconscious. So again, Seth’s conscious mind (triune psyche) has three fundamental holonic deep structures. Taken together, then, it includes the:

 

Ø     Thinker and the thought.

 

Ø     Feeler and the feeling.

 

Ø     Believer and the belief.

 

Ø     Dreamer and the dream.

 

Put another way, the conscious mind has aspects (subholons) firmly rooted in Frameworks 1, 2, 3, and 4. Again, Frameworks 2-4 are “unknown” or invisible to the outer ego in Framework 1. Yet together, these deep structures or frameworks form the total “you” who creates all of your reality. Therefore, we can make the “unknown” known and consciously create only through mastery of the inner senses in concert with our physical senses.

 

The main point is that the “you” in “you create your own reality” – the “you” in conscious creation – is much more than just the thoughts, emotions, and beliefs of the outer ego. And Seth’s dream-art science provides exemplars to help “discover” the mechanics and further map the ontology of the conscious mind. Therefore, it’s more accurate to call it holonic conscious creation. But we still have a long, long way to go in terms of contemporary science, art, philosophy, and religion to flesh this out. We still need a method, paradigm, or praxis to produce further research data that can be verified/falsified within a community of practice – one that equally applies to physical, mental, and spiritual sciences.

 

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Towards an Integral Conscious Creation Paradigm

 

For the past six years I’ve been researching “evolutionary” systems theories, psychology, philosophy, theology, and other channeled information that greatly expanded my understanding and appreciation of the Seth material. It was in Ken Wilber’s “integral approach” that I finally found a method that ties it all together and includes the first viable postmodern theory of consciousness. I now believe that the integral approach forms a critical methodological stepping-stone [YELLOW/TURQUOISE] with the potential to create authentic dream-art sciences [CORAL and wider] down the road.

 

The integral approach is like a hip-hop song that gets “sampled” from lots of different sources. That is, it seeks out the best “grooves” and assembles them in a unique new song. For example, the drumbeats may come from a James Brown record, brass stabs from an Earth, Wind, and Fire song, and a bass guitar riff from a David Bowie CD. All are mixed with original lyrics and additional sounds. Together, these different samples form a unique, derivative work in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In the same way the integral approach “samples” from a variety of research methods and knowledge domains to provide a more complete approach while also acknowledging its own shortcomings. But this “song” is so thorough that it begins to sound more like a “symphony” of Kosmic proportions!

 

In a nutshell, then, the first “samples” in our integral “symphony” begin with German sociologist Max Weber’s “big three” that define the primary knowledge domains of the modern era. They are considered primary because we can’t reduce one to the other, and each relies on the unique perspectives inherent in most languages (in parentheses):

• Science (It, Its)

 

• Art (I)

 

• Morals (We)

 

Next, we add the three ways to “see truth” from the perennial philosophy (e.g., St. Bonaventure):

• Eye of Flesh (empiricism, outer senses)

 

• Eye of Mind (rationalism, thought processes)

 

• Eye of Spirit (mysticism, inner senses)

 

Then, we add the developmental stages and states mapped by the premodern, modern, and postmodern philosophers/psychologists (e.g., Patanjali, Shankara, Nagarjuna, Plotinus, Aurobindo, Freud, Jung, Piaget, Wilber, etc.) and cast them within Jane Roberts’s Cosmology:

• Framework 1 (Physical Domain):
      - Physical Objects (quantum fields)
      - Physical Bodies
      - Physical Minds (Waking State)




 

• Framework 2, 3, 4... (Subtle Domain):
      - Subtle “Objects” (EEs/electromagnetic energy units)
      - Subtle “Bodies”
      - Subtle Minds (Dreaming State)




 

• Pyramid Energy Gestalts (Causal Domain):
      - Causal “Objects” (CUs/consciousness units)
      - Causal “Bodies”
      - Causal Mind (Deep Dreamless State)




 

• All-That-Is (Physical, Subtle, Causal Domains):
      - all the above nested together




 

Next, we add the developmental intelligences mapped by the cognitive, developmental, transpersonal, and integral psychologists (e.g., Piaget, Maslow, Gardner, Graves, Grof, Kohlberg, Gilligan, Loevinger, Beck, Kegan, Wilber, etc.). Examples of the over two dozen mapped to date include:

• Cognition

 

• Worldviews (i.e., belief systems)

 

• Emotional

 

• Musical

 

• Mathematical

 

• Linguistic

 

• Moral

 

• Spiritual

 

Next, we add typologies to cover additional personality aspects. Examples include:

• Genders (Male/Female)

 

• Myers-Briggs

 

• The Enneagram (Gurdjieff)

 

• Families of Consciousness (Roberts)

 

• Orientations (Ennis)

 

• Thought-Emotional-Politcal-Religious Focus (Ennis)

 

Finally, we map all of the above onto a matrix of essential perspectives and related validity claims from German social philosopher Habermas (in parentheses):

1. Outer / singular / It / behavior (propositional truth) in relation to…

 

2. Inner / singular / I / intention (personal integrity, sincerity) in relation to…

 

3. Inner / plural / We / culture (justness, intersubjective mesh, mutual understanding) in relation to…

 

4. Outer / plural / Its / social structures (functional fit).

 

To summarize, the integral approach provides a new method to explore the:

• Science of Conscious Creation as body, mind, and spirit unfold-in-time/no-time.

 

• Art of Conscious Creation as body, mind, and spirit unfold-in-time/no-time.

 

• Morals of Conscious Creation as body, mind, and spirit unfold-in-time/no-time.

 

Therefore, in its simplest expression the integral approach explores:

• Science, art, and morals in body, mind, and spirit.

 

Though it sounds complex, it’s just another roadmap, but one that includes a synthesis of premodern, modern, and postmodern roadmaps. It integrates the greatest number of truths from the greatest number of knowledge domains. The integral approach purposefully makes no claim to be absolute or final and is thus intentionally open-ended. But it provides an exciting new way to interpret any body of work, not just the Seth material. So anyone can apply this method to any knowledge domain. Therefore, the idea is to interpret the creative genius of Seth, Jane, and Rob through the “eyes” of the scientific, artistic, and moral domains of body, mind, and spirit from the past three thousand years. For example, through the lenses of Leibniz, Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohm, Hawkings, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Picasso, Dali, Plato, Plotinus, Nagarjuna, Aurobindo, Wilber to name a few.

 

This approach also helps combat the fact that to date many interpretations of Seth/Jane focus heavily on the second perspective (Inner / singular / I) to the exclusion of all others. That is, perspectives 1, 3, and 4 above get reduced to the narrower perspective 2. This often results in beliefs such as:

• You are me.

 

• We are me.

 

• It is me.

 

Taken to this extreme, conscious creation tilts towards a solipsistic perspective. For example, my outer ego consciously creates All-That-Is = Nothing Exists But Me. And while those beliefs suit the narcisstic, self-absorbed Me Generation, e.g. Wilber’s Boomeritis (2002), conscious creation gets reduced to an inflated outer ego with an arrested realization of deep interrelationship to other outer egos, the environment, and inner selves, much less All-That-Is.

 

While there’s no accurate way to present how this all works in a single article, I am writing a book called Integral Conscious Creation that fleshes it out. My intent is to raise more questions than provide pat answers. And this is very much in the spirit of how Seth, Jane, and Rob approached their own experience and developed their theories. Therefore, my inquiry is intended to plant new seeds that stimulate further speculation and constructive dialogue about the practical applications of their work through new, expanded “eyes.”

 

In summary, an integral conscious creation paradigm is a stepping-stone toward the realization of Seth’s dream-art science. Its starting point consists of:

• Integral approach (i.e., science, art, and morals in body, mind, and spirit).

 

• “Roadmaps” found in the Seth Material (e.g., All-That-Is / frameworks of consciousness / triune psyche / consciousness units, etc.).

 

• Practices (exercises found in the Seth Material).

 

Though it will eventually use different words and formulations, it is clear that Seth is talking about an authentic transpersonal science within a community of practice. Thus, in order to formulate and implement dream-art science, we first need to work out the bugs in Wilber’s integral methodology, theory of consciousness, and begin to map the personal transformation of consciousness researchers alike. Take it or leave it, but make no mistake – the path toward an authentic dream-art science goes through Wilber’s model and critical theory. [19] Therefore, this is a foundational area for leading edge research agendas in consciousness studies to flesh out in the decades ahead.

 

Now, Seth made another bold statement that someday,

 

“This material will take its place in the conceptual and emotional life of Western civilization, and finally will make its way throughout the world. New ideas are not accepted easily. When they take fire however, they literally sweep through the universe.” [20]

 

Was this the beer talking – the grandiose ramblings of an inflated outer ego, the musings of an authentic “prophet,” or something in between? It is still too early to tell. However, notice that Seth said, “take its place.” That implies it won’t transgress, subvert, or deconstruct previous or subsequent knowledge sources, but that it has the potential to become a legitimized contribution to the overall knowledge quest.

 

My goal is to contribute toward the realization of that probable future. If you find it useful, consider how you might add your own contribution. If you can improve upon it, feel free to do so. My formulation is in no way the final answer or intended for everyone. But it is intended to stimulate the further creation of first-rate exegetical (i.e. interpretive) works that promote personal transformation, self-realization, and holistic growth during this time of accelerating change. In the mean time, you can check the online forums below for further previews.

 

NewWorldView Community Forums: http://www.newworldview.com/forums/

 

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Endnotes: