The Physical Universal Shifts of Consciousness

"The Nature of Personal Reality"

by Jane Roberts

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Session 609, April 10, 1972, 9:29 P.M., Monday

(Jane first mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Seth, her trance personality, would start another book of his own soon. The idea had just "come" to her after supper one night. We hadn't taken it very seriously, since we'd finished proofreading Seth's first book, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul, only last month; certainly we weren't prepared for the fact that he was quite capable of launching another such project so quickly. Nor did Jane have any conscious thoughts about subject matter, or a title, for any projected Seth book.

(However, in last Wednesday's regularly scheduled session Seth had confirmed her anticipations in so many words-but without setting a date:

("Now: Ruburt [as Seth calls Jane] is quite correct. We are preparing for another one, and giving you a rest in between.

("The volumes automatically unite the material and present it within certain frameworks of discipline... As you now know, some considerable time is taken with your preparation of notes, and so I have been waiting a while.

("Ruburt sensed this quite clearly, and as usual feels twinges, wondering what I am going to write about and what kind of a book it will be. Such a book can be given quite normally and quietly along with your regular routine of sessions, adding to your own knowledge and ultimately helping others also. I suggest the simplest of formats; always the least complicated as far as any mechanics are concerned. Do you follow me?

("Yes, " I'd answered, whereupon Seth had discussed other matters for the rest of the evening.

(As we sat for tonight's session, Jane said, "Well, Seth's all ready and I've got the urge to get going. Maybe he'll start his book... "She hasn't been dwelling upon the subject particularly-or at least I don't remember her saying much about it.

(The energy at Jane's command still impresses me, especially when I consider that she weighs less than ninety-five pounds. Given her permission, Seth can cam through very powerfully indeed. Her delivery now though was average. By this I mean that when she speaks for Seth her voice drops in register, becomes somewhat stronger, and acquires Seth's own deliberate but unique accent and rhythm. Jane took off her glasses and placed them on the coffee table between us. The next moment, her eyes much darker, she was in full trance.)

Now: Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.)

We will call this evening's essay "The Manufacture of Personal Reality."

Experience is the product of the mind, the spirit, conscious thoughts and feelings, and unconscious thoughts and feelings. These together form the reality that you know. You are hardly at the mercy of a reality, therefore, that exists apart from yourself, or is thrust upon you. You are so intimately connected with the physical events composing your life experience that often you cannot distinguish between the seemingly material occurrences and the thoughts, expectations and desires that gave them birth.

If there are strongly negative characteristics present in your most intimate thoughts, if these actually form bars between you and a more full life, still you often look through the bars, not seeing them. Until they are recognized they are impediments. Even obstacles have a reason for being. If they are your own, then it is up to you to recognize them and discover the circumstances behind their existence.

Your conscious thoughts can be great clues in uncovering such obstructions. You are not nearly as familiar with your own thoughts as you may imagine. They can escape from you like water through your fingers, carrying with them vital nutrients that spread across the landscape of your psyche-and all too often carrying sludge and mud that clog up the channels of experience and creativity.

An examination of your conscious thoughts will tell you much about the state of your inner mind, your intentions and expectations, and will often lead you to a direct confrontation with challenges and problems. Your thoughts, studied, will let you see where you are going. They point clearly to the nature of physical events. What exists physically exists first in thought and feeling. There is no other rule.

(9:40.) You have the conscious mind for a good reason. You are not at the mercy of unconscious drives unless you consciously acquiesce to them. Your present feelings and expectations can always be used to check your progress. If you do not like your experience, then you must change the nature of your conscious thoughts and expectations. You must alter the kind of messages that you are sending through your thoughts to your own body, to friends and associates.

Each thought has a result, in your terms. The same kind of thought, habitually repeated, will seem to have a more or less permanent effect. If you like the effect then you seldom examine the thought. If you find yourself assailed by physical difficulties, however, you begin to wonder what is wrong.

Sometimes you blame others, your own background, or a previous life-if you accept reincarnation. You may hold God or the devil responsible, or you may simply say, "That is life, " and accept the negative experience as a necessary portion of your lot.

You may finally come to a half-understanding of the nature of reality and wail, "I believe that I have caused these ill effects, but I find myself unable to reverse them."

If this is the case, then regardless of what you have told yourself thus far, you still do not believe that you are the creator of your own experience. As soon as you recognize this fact you can begin at once to alter those conditions that cause you dismay or dissatisfaction.

(A one-minute pause at 9:49.) No one forces you to think in any particular manner. In the past you may have learned to consider things pessimistically. You may believe that pessimism is more realistic than optimism. You may even suppose, and many do, that sorrow is ennobling, a sign of deep spiritualism, a mark of apartness, a necessary mental garb of saints and poets. Nothing could be further from the truth.

All consciousness has within it the deep abiding impetus to use its abilities fully, to expand its capacities, to venture joyfully beyond the seeming barriers of its own experience. The very consciousnesses within the smallest molecules cry out against any ideas of limitation. They yearn toward new forms and experiences. Even atoms, then, constantly seek to join in new organizations of structure and meaning. They do this "instinctively."

Man has been endowed, and has endowed himself, with a conscious mind to direct the nature, shape and form-of his creations. All deep aspirations and unconscious motivations, all unspoken drives, rise up for the approval or disapproval of the conscious mind, and await its direction.

Only when it abdicates its functions does it allow itself to become swayed by "negative" experience. Only when it refuses responsibility does it finally find itself at the seeming mercy of events over which it appears to have no control.

Now you may take your break.

("Thank you. "

(10:00. Jane was out of trance easily. "I've got a feeling, " she said, "that that's the start of Chapter One." Her impression stemmed from the way Seth had called his material an "essay" tonight-which is something he hasn't done before. It developed that she was partially correct. Resume at 10:07.)

Now: Books on positive thinking alone, while sometimes beneficial, usually do not take into consideration the habitual nature of negative feelings, aggressions, or repressions. Often these are merely swept under the rug.

The authors instead tell you to be positive, compassionate, strong, optimistic, filled with joy and enthusiasm, without telling you what to do to get out of the predicament you may be in, and without understanding the vicious circle that may seem to entrap you. Such books, again, while sometimes of value, do not explain how thoughts and emotions cause reality. They do not take into consideration the multidimensional aspects of the self or the fact that ultimately each personality, while following definite general laws, must still find and follow his or her own way of adapting these to personal circumstances.

If you are in poor health, you can remedy it. If your personal relationships are unsatisfactory, you can change them for the better. If you are in poverty, you can instead find yourself surrounded by abundance.

Whether or not you realize it, you have pursued your present course with determination, using many resources, for ends or reasons that at one time made sense to you. You may say, "Poor health makes no sense to me, " or, "A fractured relationship with my mate is hardly what I was after, " or, "I certainly have not been pursuing poverty after all my hard work."

If you were born poor, or born sick, then it certainly seems to you that these circumstances were thrust upon you. Yet they were not, and to some extent or another they can be changed for the better.

This does not mean that effort is not required, and determination. It does mean that you are not powerless to change events and that each of you, regardless of your position, status, circumstances or physical condition, is in control of your own personal experience.

You see and feel what you expect to see and feel. The world as you know it is a picture of your expectations. The world as the race of man knows it is the materialization en masse of your individual expectations. As children come from your physical tissues, so is the world your joint creation.

(10:26Pause. Then softly, with a smile.) I am writing this book to help each individual solve his or her own personal problems. I hope to do this by showing you exactly the way in which you form your own reality, by explaining the ways in which you can alter it to your advantage.

The existence of so-called negative thoughts and feelings will not be glossed over, but neither will your ability to handle these. Period. For they are quite under your control. There are methods of using these as springboards for creativity. At no time will you be told to repress them, to ignore them. You will be shown how to recognize those within your experience, to discover which of them has been allowed to run away with you, and how to manage those that seem to be beyond your control.

The methods that I will outline demand concentration and effort. They will also challenge you, and bring into your life expansion and alterations of consciousness of a most rewarding nature.

I am not a physical personality. Basically, however, neither are you. Your experience now is physical. You are a creator translating your expectations into physical form. The world is meant to serve as a reference point. The exterior appearance is a replica of inner desire. You can change your personal world. You do change it without knowing it. You have only to use your ability consciously, to examine the nature of your thoughts and feelings and project those with which you basically agree.

They coalesce into the events with which you are so intimately familiar. I hope to teach you methods that will allow you to understand the nature of your own reality, and to point a way that will let you change that reality in whatever way you choose.

(Louder:) End of dictation.

("Okay. You're pretty tricky, starting your book like that.

(Pleasantly:) That is my way. I will give you the title and other pertinent information in a later session, and if you want it an outline of intent.

("I guess Jane would like to see that.")

Let us have this one as simple as possible... Give us a moment...

(Still in trance, Jane took a long pause at 10:37. Her eyes closed, she sat rocking back and forth with one foot upon the edge of the coffee table.)

The book will explain how personal reality is formed, with great stress laid upon the ways of changing unfavorable aspects of individual experience.

It will, hopefully, avoid the Pollyanna attributes of many self-help books, and tease the reader into an enthusiastic desire to understand the characteristics of reality if only to solve his or her own problems. The methods given will be highly practical, workable, and within the abilities of any person genuinely concerned with those problems inherent in the nature of human existence.

The point will be made that all healings are the result of the acceptance of one basic fact: That matter is formed by those inner qualities that give it vitality, that structure follows expectation, that matter at any time can be completely changed by the activation of the creative faculties inherent in all consciousness.

Please title what we have done this evening as my preface. The dictated portion, that is. I bid you a fond good evening.

("Thank you very much, Seth. Good night. "

(End at 10:47pm. Jane's delivery as Seth had been quiet but rather fast, considering the modest speed I can attain while taking verbatim notes in my homemade shorthand. "I think I've got half of the title, "she said as soon as she was out of trance. "It's The Nature of Personal Reality-hyphen or colon-then something else, but I didn't get that part. All of a sudden I'm exhausted, " she added, laughing, "but don't write that down. "

(A few notes, added later. Six months were to pass before we learned the rest of the title for Seth's book. While Jane was resting before supper on October 25, 1972, the full name popped into her conscious mind: The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book. We held the 623rd session, bridging Chapters Four and Five, that evening.

(We never did ask Seth for an outline, per se. Once the book was under way we realized it wasn't necessary. This decision also gave Jane as much freedom as possible.)

Session 610, June 7, 1972, 9:10 P.M., Wednesday

(A number of events, foremost among them the death of Jane's mother after after an illness of many years, caused us to lay these sessions aside after Seth finished his preface on April 10. Jane did manage to hold her ESP and writing classes part of the time; she also worked on her novel, The Education of Oversoul 7, which she discusses in her Introduction.

(Through it all, however, we looked forward to our daily participation in Seth's new book. Jane hadn't looked at Seth Speaks for long periods during its production in order to avoid conscious involvement with it-but, she said recently, smiling, she plans to read and use this work session by session as she delivers it. Whatever nervousness she'd felt about producing it was minimal by now. I encouraged her new free attitude.

(I'll indicate Jane's various states of consciousness as I usually do in these sessions, but the notes can only be hints from an interested observer The true variety and depth of the various realities and personalities she reaches are qualities that are uniquely hers, and they often defy the written word.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now for dictation. The first chapter is entitled: "The Living Picture of the World."

The living picture of the world grows within the mind. The world as it appears to you is like a three-dimensional painting in which each individual takes a hand. Each color, each line that appears within it has first been painted within a mind, and only then does it materialize without.

In this case, however, the artists themselves are a portion of the painting, and appear within it. There is no effect in the exterior world that does not spring from an inner source. There is no motion that does not first occur within the mind.

The great creativity of consciousness is your heritage. It does not belong to mankind alone, however. Each living being possesses it, and the living world consists of a spontaneous cooperation that exists between the smallest and the highest, the greatest and the lowly, between the atoms and the molecules and the conscious, reasoning mind.

All manner of insects, birds and beasts cooperate in this venture, producing the natural environment. This is as normal and inevitable as the fact that your breath causes a mist to form on glass if you breathe upon it. All consciousness creates the world, rising out of feeling-tone. It is a natural product of what your consciousness is. Feelings and emotions emerge into reality in certain specific ways. Thoughts appear, growing on the bed already laid. The seasons spring up, formed by ancient feeling-tones, having deep and abiding rhythms. They are the result, again, of innate creative aspects that are a portion of all life.

These ancient aspects lie, now, deeply buried in the psyches of all species, and from them the individual patterns, the specific blueprints for new differentiations, emerge.

(9:29. Intently:) The body of the earth can be said to have its own soul, or mind (whichever term you prefer) . Using this analogy the mountains and oceans, the valleys and rivers and all natural phenomena spring from the earth's soul, as all events and all manufactured objects appear from the inner mind or soul of mankind.

The inner world of each man and woman is connected with the inner world of the earth. The spirit becomes flesh. Part of each individual's soul, then, is intimately connected with what we will call the world's soul, or the soul of the earth.

The smallest blade of grass, or flower, is aware of this connection, and without reasoning comprehends its position, its uniqueness and its source of vitality. The atoms and molecules that compose all objects, whether it be the body of a person, a table, a stone or a frog, know the great passive thrust of creativity that lies beneath their own existence, and upon which their individuality floats, distinct, clear and unassailable.

So does the human individual rise up in victorious distinctiveness from the ancient and yet ever-new fountains of its own soul. The self rises from unknowing into knowing, constantly surprising itself. As you read these sentences, for example, some of your knowledge is conscious knowing and is instantly available. Some is unconscious, but even the unconscious knowledge is knowing in its own unknowing.

You always know what you are doing, even when you do not realize it. Your eye knows it sees, though it cannot see itself except through the use of reflection. In the same way the world as you see it is a reflection of what you are, a reflection not in glass but in three dimensional reality. You project your thoughts, feelings, and expectations outward, then you perceive them as the outside reality. When it seems to you that others are observing you, you are observing yourself from the standpoint of your own projections.

Now you may take a break.

(9:46 to 10:09.)

Now: You are the living picture of yourself. You project what you think you are outward into flesh. Your feelings, your conscious and unconscious thoughts, all alter and form your physical image. This is fairly easy for you to understand.

It is not as easy, however, to realize that your feelings and thoughts form your exterior experience in the same way, or that the events that appear to happen to you are initiated by you within your mental or psychic inner environment.

Your body does not just happen to be thin or fat, tall or short, healthy or ill. These characteristics are mental, and are thrust outward by you upon your image. I do not mean to be facetious, but you were not born yesterday. Your soul was not born yesterday, in those terms, but before the annals of time as you think of time.

The characteristics that were yours at birth were yours for a reason. The inner self chose them. To a large extent, the inner self can even now alter many of them. You did not arrive at birth without a history. Your individuality was always latent within your soul, and the "history" that is a part of you is written within unconscious memory that resides not only within your psyche, but is faithfully decoded in your genes and chromosomes, and fulfilled in the blood that rushes through your veins.

You are aware, alert, and participating in many more realities than you know as your soul expresses itself through you. That consciousness of your usual daylight hours, the ego consciousness, rises up like a flower from the ground of the 'underneath, " the unconscious bed of your own reality. Though you are not aware of it, this ego itself emerges, then falls back again into the unconscious, from which another ego then rises as a new bloom from the springtime earth.

(10:27.) You do not have the same ego now that you had five years ago, but you are not aware of the change. Ego rises out of what you are, in other words. It is a part of the action of your being and consciousness, but as the eye cannot see its own shifting colors and expressions, as it is not aware that it lives and dies constantly as its atomic structure changes, so you are not aware that the ego continually changes, dies, and is reborn.

Physically the structure of a cell retains its identity, even while the matter that composes it is continually altered. The cell rebuilds itself in line with its own pattern of identity, yet is always a part of emerging action, alive and responding even in the midst of its own multitudinous deaths.

So psychological structures form to which various names are given. The names are meaningless, but the structures behind them are not. Such psychological structures also retain their identity, their pattern of uniqueness, even while they change constantly, die and are reborn.

The eye rises out of the physical structure. The ego rises out of the structure of the psyche. It cannot see itself, as the eye cannot. Both look outward-in one case away from the physical body, and in the other case away from the inner psyche to the environment.

The creative body consciousness creates the eye. The creative inner psyche creates the ego. The body forms the eye in the splendid wisdom of its great unconscious knowing. The psyche brings forth the ego that perceives psychologically as the eye perceives physically. Both the eye and the ego are formations focused toward perception of exterior reality.

You may take your break.

(10:36 to 10:45.)

Now: This is not [book] dictation.

Ruburt was correct in the insight of a few moments earlier (during break) . In my book we will be going deeper into the nature of the unconscious and the psyche, bringing out some concepts that are of greatest value.

Ruburt himself, unconsciously but also to some extent consciously, has been more intrigued with questions concerning consciousness and personality-the role of the ego consciousness, for example-since beginning his novel, Oversoul 7 (in late March, 1972) .

Much is not as yet known. Your psychologists are not able to think in terms of a soul, and your religious leaders are not able, or refuse, to comprehend it psychologically even to its simplest degree. Metaphysics and psychology have not met, in other words.

Now: I am, as I have told you often myself, independent of Ruburt. As you know there are connections between us. He does not understand as yet the true nature of his own creativity. Few people do. There are always psychological reasons for all such phenomena-for any phenomena at all. In some respects of course Ruburt's children are his books. His psyche is enormously creative. Part of what I seem to be as I speak through him is as deeply and unconsciously a phenomenon as the birth of a child would be. In a different way so is Oversoul 7 as he thinks of it.

These are not physical children at the mercy of time and the elements, but eternal ones, more knowledgeable than the parent; gods springing from the human psyche, half-human, half-divine. And on this level the parent is astonished, delighted at the superior accomplishments of its children, the superiority of the offspring, and yet also jealous to some extent.

If the books are children symbolically, then in those same terms his representation of my reality is a far more living, three dimensional aspect. He has at various times wondered about schizophrenia, for example. He does not realize that on this level, now, and regardless of my independence and other issues involved, that he creates the personalities free of time, organizes them under the leadership of the conscious mind, and assigns them tasks of great validity and importance, which are then carried out.

This is creativity of a most specialized nature and allows him to probe, if he will, into the nature of consciousness, the psyche, and creativity in a way that few can. Now he himself set up the conditions that would make such results possible. A certain part of my reality is a portion of a certain part of his reality, and here the creation of what I seem to be takes place.

Beyond that is my own independent reality.

I will have more to say, and add to these notes so that they will build up by themselves.

("They're very interesting.")

If Ruburt would regard his problems as challenges then he would get much better results. That is all for now, and I bid you a fond good evening.

('The same to you, Seth. Thank you.)

Come to our class sometime.

("Okay." End at 11:10 P.M. Jane holds her ESP class on Tuesday night each week. Since I'm more solitary by nature, however, I usually type P.M., Monday's session then or work on filing and correspondence.

(In answer to many queries, I'll explain here why I prefer to write these sessions down instead of using a recorder. Shortly after Seth began to speak through Jane in late 1963 we tried recording the material, but I soon learned that I can type a session from my notes a lot faster than I can from a tape.

(This is very important, since all of our psychic work is done at night, after we've already put in a full day writing and painting, and carrying out all those other actions connected with just living in an organized way. [Yet I've had to modify my schedule in order to find the additional time required for the preparation of this manuscript. I paint in the mornings and do this work in the afternoons.]

(When Jane speaks to me as Seth her delivery is slower than it is during a class session, for instance. This, along with Seth's own instructions, makes punctuation easy. The copy is concise; after an occasional correction it's ready for publication. Moreover, I think the fact that such high-quality work is obtained this way says important things about these sessions.)

Session 613, September 11, 1972, 9:10 P.M., Monday

(After holding the first session for this chapter, Jane wrote intently on Oversoul 7 and did some work on a long-range project that she tentatively calls Aspect Psychology. Then, just before we were to resume work on Seth's book, the great food of Friday, June 23, 1972, took place.

(The flood was the worst on record in this section of the country. It grew out of Tropical Storm Agnes-which, somewhat ironically, had lost its hurricane status by the time it began its erratic course up the East Coast from Florida. Agnes was preceded by days of heavy rain that extended on a broad front for hundreds of miles. The storm unexpectedly veered inland after picking up new strength off the Virginia Capes, and when it stalled over New York and Pennsylvania flooding became inevitable.

(Jane and I decided to remain behind when, finally, last minute requests to evacuate our section of Elmira were made before dawn. Our decision, of course, contained deeply symbolic meanings for us that we still only partially understand. The Chemung River passes less than a block from our apartment house on its way through the center of the city, but since we lived on the second floor we thought we'd be secure. The house was solid, we decided. The neighborhood emptied itself except for us, and became extremely quiet.

(The water, thick with topsoil, exuding a near-suffocating odor of petroleum effluents, became one foot deep in the yard, then three, then five... Jane and I found ourselves experiencing a drastic new world, and although Seth hasn't said so yet, I believe that to be one of the reasons we stayed. We sipped wine and used light self-hypnosis to take the edge off our tension, but as we watched the water crawl up the side of the old red-brick house next door, our new reality threatened to turn into a terrifying one indeed. Had we made the right decision?

(By now escape was probably impossible. I suggested that Jane "tune in " psychically to see what she could learn about our situation. "It's hard to be calm when you're really scared, "she said, but began to compose herself. Gradually she attained a very relaxed state. She told me that the water would reach its highest level late that afternoon; incredibly, it would become almost ten feet deep in the yard and reach halfway up the first floor windows of the house next to ours. We would be safe as long as we stayed where we were. Jane sounded awed, though, when she said that the Walnut Street Bridge would "go." I was awed too, since the old steel bridge crossed the Chemung River less than half a block from us. We couldn't see it because of the houses across the street.

(As soon as Jane had "picked up" this information we began to feel better. We ate, played cards, and periodically checked the water level. Several hours passed. The flood crested within fifteen minutes of the time Jane had given, and within three inches of her projected high-water mark. We slept that evening knowing that the water was dropping quickly. The next morning I walked over to the Walnut Street Bridge. It had been destroyed; several of its spans had been washed out.

(We were lucky compared to many others in the city. We'd lost our car, but we had a place to live and had all of our paintings, manuscripts and records, including the fifty-three volumes of the Seth material, intact. Since we occupy two apartments in order to have enough living and working space, we had room to take in a couple who had been flooded out. The weather was cold and rainy. Our days became a routine of actions devoted to survival, although Jane finished Oversoul 7 early in July, and resumed her classes. This book was put aside for a long time.

(In August Jane held one session on the flood-in which Seth had time to just touch upon the reasons behind our personal involvement in it-and late that month and in September we had several house guests in connection with psychic work. One of them was Richard Bach, author of the very successful book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

(When she felt it was time to resume work on Seth's book, Jane discovered to her surprise that she was somewhat nervous about it. Yet, speaking for Seth, she resumed dictation so smoothly that it seemed there hadn't been any such thing as a three-month lapse...)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now: Give us a moment (softly) , and we will resume dictation.

("All right.")

Your experience in the world of physical matter flows outward from the center of your inner psyche. Then you perceive this experience. Exterior events, circumstances and conditions are meant as a kind of living feedback. Altering the state of the psyche automatically alters the physical circumstances.

There is no other valid way of changing physical events. It might help if you imagine an inner living dimension within yourself in which you create, in miniature psychic form, all the exterior conditions that you know. Simply put, you do exactly this. Your thoughts, feelings and mental pictures can be called incipient exterior events, for in one way or another each of these is materialized into physical reality.

You change even the most permanent-seeming conditions of your life constantly through the varying attitudes you have toward them. There is nothing in your exterior experience that did not originate within you.

Interactions with others do occur, of course, yet there are none that you do not accept or draw to you by your thoughts, attitudes, or emotions. This applies in each area of life. In your terms, it applies both before life and after it. In the most miraculous fashion are you given the gift of creating your experience.

In this existence you are learning to handle the inexhaustible energy that is available to you. The mass condition of the world, and the situation of each individual in it, is the materialization of man's progress as he forms his world.

(9:24.) The joy of creativity flows through you as effortlessly as your breath. From it the most minute areas of your outer experience spring. Your feelings have electromagnetic realities that rise outward, affecting the atmosphere itself. They group through attraction, building up areas of events and circumstances that finally coalesce, so to speak, either in matter as objects-or as events in "time."

Some feelings and thoughts are translated into structures that you call objects; these exist, in your terms, in a medium you call space. Others are translated instead into psychological structures called events, that seem to exist in a medium you call time.

Space and time are both root assumptions, which simply means that man accepts both, and assumes that his reality is rooted in a series of moments and a dimension of space. So your inner experience is translated in those terms.

Even the duration of an event or object in space or time is determined by the intensity of the thoughts or emotions that gave it birth. Duration in space is not the same as duration in time, however, though it may seem that this is the case. I am speaking in your terms now. An event or object that exists briefly in space may have a much greater duration in time. It may have far greater importance and intensity, existing in your memory, for example, long after it has disappeared in space. Such an event or object does not merely exist symbolically within your mind or memory-but in your terms its actual reality continues as a time event.

Nor is its reality in space annihilated as. long as it exists within your mind. Let us take a very simple example. A child has been told not to play with a doll. The order is disobeyed. The child, wittingly or unwittingly, breaks the doll, and it is finally thrown away. The doll exists in time quite vitally as long as the child or the adult-to-be remembers it.

(9:40.) If the doll sat on a bureau and this is also vividly recalled, then the space in which the doll sat still carries the impression of the doll, though other objects may be placed there. You react, therefore, not only to what is visible to your physical eyes in space, or to what is directly in front of you in time, but also to objects and events whose reality is still with you, though they may seem to have disappeared.

Basically you create your experience through your beliefs about yourself and the nature of reality. Another way to understand this is to realize that you create your experiences through your expectations. Your feeling-tones are your emotional attitudes toward yourself and life in general, and these generally govern the large areas of experience.

(Pause.) They give the overall emotional coloration that characterizes what happens to you. Period. You are what happens to you. Your emotional feelings are often transitory, but beneath there are certain qualities of feeling uniquely your own, that are like deep musical chords. While your day-to-day feelings may rise or fall, these characteristic feeling-tones lie beneath.

Sometimes they rise to the surface, but in great long rhythms. You cannot call these negative or positive. They are instead tones of your being. They represent the most inner portion of your experience. This does not mean that they are hidden from you, or are meant to be. It simply means that they represent the core from which you form your experience.

If you have become afraid of emotion or the expression of feeling, or if you have been taught that the inner self is no more than a repository of uncivilized impulses, then you may have the habit of denying this deep rhythm. You may try to operate as if it did not exist, or even try to refute it. But it represents your deepest, most creative impulses; to fight against it is like trying to swim upstream against a strong current.

Now you may take your break.

(9:57 to 10:06.)

These feeling-tones, then, pervade your being.

They are the form your spirit takes when combined with flesh. From them, from their core, your flesh arises.

Everything that you experience has consciousness, and each consciousness is endowed with its own feeling-tone. There is great cooperation involved in the formation of the earth as you think of it, and so the individual living structures of the planet rise up from the feeling-tone within each atom and molecule.

Your flesh springs about you in response to these inner chords of your being, and the trees, rocks, seas and mountains spring up as the body of the earth from the deep inner chords within the atoms and molecules, which are also living. Because of the creative cooperation that exists, the miracle of physical materialization is performed so smoothly and automatically that consciously you are not aware of your part in it.

(10:16.) The feeling-tone then is the motion and fiber-the timber-the portion of your energy devoted to your physical experience. Now it flows into what you are as a physical being and materializes you in the world of seasons, space, flesh, and time. Its source, however, is quite independent of the world that you know.

Once you learn to get the feeling of your own inner tone, then you are aware of its power, strength and durability, and you can to some extent ride with it into deeper realities of experience.

The incredible emotional richness and variety and splendor of physical experience is the material reflection of this inner feeling-tone. It pervades the events in your life, the overall inner direction, the quality of perception. It fills up and illuminates the individual aspects of your life, and largely determines the persuasive subjective climate in which you dwell.

It is the essence of yourself. Its sweeps are broad in range, however. It does not determine, for example, specific events. (Pause.) It paints the colors in the large "landscape" of your experience. It is the feeling of yourself, inexhaustible.

In other terms it represents the expression of yourself in pure energy, from which your individuality rises, the You of you, unmistakably given identity that is never duplicated.

This energy comes from the core of BEING (in capital letters) , from All That Is (with our usual capitals) , and represents the source of never-ending vitality. It is Being, Being in You. As such, all of the energy and power of Being is focused and reflected through you in the direction of your three dimensional existence.

You may take your break.

(10:35 to 10:47.)

While your feeling-tone is uniquely yours, still it is expressed in a certain fashion that is shared by all consciousnesses focused in physical reality. So in those terms you spring from the earth as all the other creatures and natural living structures. You are, while physical, a portion of nature, therefore, not apart from it.

Trees and rocks possess their own consciousness, and also share a gestalt consciousness, even as the living portions of your body. The cells and organs have their own awarenesses, and a gestalt one. So the race of man also has individual consciousness and a gestalt or mass consciousness, of which you individually are hardly aware.

The mass race consciousness, in its terms, possesses an identity. You are a portion of that identity while still being unique, individual and independent. You are confined only to the extent that you have chosen physical reality, and so placed yourself within its context of experience. While physical, you follow physical laws, or assumptions. These form the framework for corporeal expression.

Within this framework you have full freedom to create your experience, your personal life in all of its aspects, the living picture of the world. Your personal life, and to some extent your individual living experience, help create the world as it is known in your time.

(11:00.) In this book we will be speaking about your own subjective world, and your part in the creation of events both private and shared. It is important before we continue that you realize that consciousness is within all physical phenomena, however. It is vital that you realize your position within nature. Nature is created from within. The personal life that you know rises up from within you, yet it is given. Period. Since you are a part of Being, then in a certain fashion you give yourself the life that is being lived through you.

(Pause.) New paragraph: You make your own reality. There is no other rule. Knowing this is the secret of creativity.

I have spoken of "you, " yet this must not be confused with the "you" that you often think you are-the ego alone, for the ego is only a portion of You; it is that expert part of your personality that deals directly with the contents of your conscious mind, and is concerned most directly with the material portions of your experience.

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. The ego is composed of various portions of the personality-it is a combination of characteristics, ever-changing, that act in unitary fashion-the portion of the personality that deals most directly with the world.

(Very slowly at 11:18.) The conscious mind is an excellent perceiving attribute, a function that belongs to inner awareness but in this case is turned outward toward the world of events. Through the conscious mind the soul looks outward. Left alone, it perceives clearly.

In certain terms, the ego is the eye through which the conscious mind perceives, or the focus through which it views physical reality. But the conscious mind automatically changes its focus throughout life. The ego, while appearing the same to itself, ever changes. It is only when the conscious mind becomes rigid in its direction, or allows the ego to take on some of its own functions, that difficulties arise. Then the ego allows the conscious mind to work in certain directions and blocks its awareness in others.

And so it is from your larger identity that you form the reality that you know. It is up to you to do this with joy and vigor, clearing your conscious mind so that the deeper knowledge of your greater identity can form joyous expressions in the world of the flesh.

(11:25.) End of the chapter. End of dictation.

Now: The book will enable others to help themselves, and will reach a far greater audience and help more people than Ruburt could meet alone, or than I could help through individual sessions. Those who request help should be put on a list to make sure they know of the book.

("That's a good idea." By mail and telephone, Jane has been getting more requests for help than she can handle.)

Ruburt does not need to feel he must have individual sessions, then, for people who must work this through alone. And now, I bid you a fond good evening.

('Thank you, Seth, and good evening. It's been very pleasant to sit in on a session again.")

If you have questions, you may ask them.

(I paused, considering the late hour, then asked Seth for his opinion about the recent visit of a young scientist from a Western state. Jane, both as Seth and as herself, had made a good start at tuning-in on certain technical information. I felt however that a great amount of time and effort would be needed, on a regular basis over a period of years, probably, for Jane to make full use of her abilities in such specialized endeavors.)

The effect of the visit was good, particularly on Ruburt. We will get to his [scientific] questions. For Ruburt's confidence, I wanted this book decently begun. Other sessions may take over from dictation now and then, but the main project will be the book.

The flood material will be used as an example in the book later on, when natural disasters are discussed; so you will have that material, and others may use and understand it.

And now, a fond good evening.

("Thanks once again, Seth."

(End at 11:32 P.M. Jane was quickly out of an excellent dissociated state. "I'm glad Seth's working on his book again, "she said. "I know it's silly, but I feel a lot better I was even wondering if my own attitude was holding the thing up now, after all of those other interruptions..." And so, like Seth Speaks, this is really two books in one: It's not only about the nature of personal reality, but the circumstances surrounding Jane's production of the material and the many ideas she has concerning it.

(I was happy to learn that Seth plans to incorporate flood data in his book-I've been concerned lest that subject be pushed aside by other events, then perhaps forgotten.)

Session 614, September 13, 1972, 9:36 P.M., Wednesday

(Jane was very pleased now that Seth's book was firmly under way after so many delays. Her energy has been "up" these days. After her long session P.M., Monday night, she had come back with an even longer one in ESP class Tuesday evening-and with Sumari added, too. Now a third session was due tonight.

(She wasn't tired, though, Jane said. Her only complaint concerned the excessive humidity, since she is very sensitive to the weather; today had been hot, with rain after supper We walked around the block just before session time.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

We will resume dictation. Chapter Two: "Reality and Personal Beliefs."

You form the fabric of your experience through your own beliefs and expectations. These personal ideas about yourself and the nature of reality will affect your thoughts and emotions. You take your beliefs about reality as truth, and often do not question them. They seem self-explanatory. They appear in your mind as statements of fact, far too obvious for examination.

Therefore they are accepted without question too often. They are not recognized as beliefs about reality, but are instead considered characteristics of reality itself. (Pause.) Frequently such ideas appear indisputable, so a part of you that it does not occur to you to speculate about their validity. They become invisible assumptions, but they nevertheless color and form your personal experience.

Some people, for example, do not question their religious beliefs but accept them as fact. Others find it comparatively easy to recognize such inner assumptions when they appear in a religious context, but are quite blind to them in other areas.

(9:45.) It is far simpler to recognize your own beliefs in regard to religion, politics or similar subjects, than it is to pinpoint your deepest beliefs about yourself and who and what you are-particularly in relationship with your own life.

Many individuals are completely blind to their own beliefs about themselves, and the nature of reality. Your own conscious thoughts will give you excellent clues. Often you will find yourself refusing to accept certain thoughts that come to your mind because they conflict with other usually accepted ideas.

Your conscious mind is always trying to give you a clear picture, but you often allow preconceived ideas to block out this intelligence. It has been fashionable to blame the subconscious for personality problems and difficulties, the idea being that early events, charged and mysterious, lodged there. In this country several generations grew up believing that the subconscious portions of the personality were unreliable, filled with negative energy, and contained only locked-up unpleasant episodes best forgotten.

(9:54.) They grew up believing that the conscious mind was relatively powerless, that adult experience was set in the days of infancy. These concepts themselves set up artificial divisions. People learned that they should not be aware of "subconscious" material.

The doors to the inner self were to be shut tight. Only lengthy psychoanalysis could or should open them. The normal individual felt that he had best leave such areas alone, so in cutting off these portions of the self, barriers were also set up against the joy of the inner spontaneous self. People felt divorced from the core of their own reality.

The concept of original sin was a very poor, limited and distorted one, but at least along with it went rather simple procedures: Through baptism you might be saved, or through certain words or sacraments or rituals redemption could be found. (See the Gospel according to Mark, 1;1-11, for instance.)

The idea of the tainted subconscious, however, left man no such relatively easy way out. The few rituals possible required years of analysis, which only the very wealthy were privileged to experience.

About the same time that the idea of the unsavory subconscious arose so strongly, the idea of the soul went out the window. Millions of people therefore believed in a reality in which they were deprived of the idea of a soul, and burdened by the concept of a very unreliable, if not definitely evil, subconscious. They saw themselves as vulnerable solitary points of egos, riding perilously and unprotected upon the tumultuous waves of involuntary processes.

(Pause at 10:05. Certainly these sessions aren't "spiritual" in usual terms. Still in trance, Jane lit a cigarette. Her beer was gone, but since I had a little left in my glass she reached over and helped herself. Jane learned on her own some time ago that a very moderate amount of alcohol goes well with the sessions. So does tobacco. Subsequent reading informed us that both substances depress the central nervous system. We think Jane combines the resulting spontaneity with her natural psychic abilities in these sessions. She doesn't begin tasting any beverage, however, until the session is under way.)

At about the same time many intelligent persons were realizing that organized religions' ideas of God, and of heaven and hell, were distorted, unjust, and smacked of children's fairy tales. For these individuals there was no place to look for help.

Under the circumstances, to look within would have seemed foolhardy, for they had been taught that this within contained the source of their problems to begin with. Those who could not afford therapy tried the harder to inhibit any messages from the inner self, for fear they would become swallowed by the savage infantile emotions.

Now first of all, there are no limitations or divisions to the self, though for purposes of discussion a word like "ego" may be used here because you understand what you think it means. You can indeed depend upon seemingly unconscious portions of yourself. As you will see later, you can become more and more consciously aware, therefore bringing into your consciousness larger and larger portions of yourself.

(10:12.) You breathe, grow, and perform multitudinous delicate and precise activities constantly, without being consciously aware of how you carry out such manipulations. You live without consciously knowing how you maintain this miracle of physical awareness in the world of flesh and time.

The seemingly unconscious portions of yourself draw atoms and molecules from the air to form your image. Your lips move, your tongue speaks your name. Does the name belong to the atoms and molecules within your lips or tongue? (Pause.) The atoms and molecules move constantly, forming into cells, tissues and organs. How can the name the tongue speaks belong to them?

They do not read or write, yet they speak complicated syllables that communicate to other beings such as yourself anything from a simple feeling to the most complicated information. How do they do this?

The atoms and molecules of the tongue do not know the syntax of the language they speak. When you begin a sentence you do not have the slightest conscious idea, often, of how you will finish it, yet you take it on faith that the words will make sense, and your meaning will flow out effortlessly.

All of this happens because the inner portions of your being operate spontaneously, joyfully, freely; all of this occurs because your inner self believes in you, often even while you do not believe in it. These unconscious portions of your being operate amazingly well, frequently despite the greatest misunderstanding on your part of their nature and function, and in the face of strong interference from you because of your beliefs.

Each person experiences a unique reality, different from any other individual's. This reality springs outward from the inner landscape of thoughts, feelings, expectations and beliefs. If you believe that the inner self works against you rather than for you, then you hamper its functioning-or rather, you force it to behave in a certain way because of your beliefs.

The conscious mind is meant to make clear judgments about your position in physical reality. Often false beliefs will prevent it from making these, for the egotistically held ideas will cloud its clear vision.

I suggest a break.

(10:31. Jane's trance had been deep. She felt better now, she said, because the weather had lost some of its oppressive quality. I told her that in my opinion the material tonight represented her and Seth at their best-and that it also had a deceptive simplicity. Jane was pleased, saying she felt quite free now about the production of the book.)

Are you ready?.

("Yes." I was just finishing my notes when Jane took off her glasses and resumed speaking for Seth. 10:53.)

Your beliefs can be like fences that surround you.

You must first recognize the existence of such barriers-you must see them or you will not even realize that you are not free, simply because you will not see beyond the fences. (Very positively:) They will represent the boundaries of your experience.

There is one belief, however, that destroys artificial barriers to perception, an expanding belief that automatically pierces false and inhibiting ideas.

Now, separately:

The Self Is Not Limited.

That statement is a statement of fact. It exists regardless of your belief or disbelief in it. Following this concept is another:

There Are No Boundaries or Separations of the Self.

Those that you experience are the result of false beliefs. Following this is the idea that I have already mentioned:

You Make Your Own Reality.

To understand yourself and what you are, you can learn to experience yourself directly apart from your beliefs about yourself. What I would like each reader to do is to sit quietly. Close your eyes. Try to sense within yourself the deep feeling-tones that I mentioned earlier (in the 613th session in Chapter One) . This is not difficult to do.

Your knowledge of their existence will help you recognize their deep rhythms within you. Each individual will sense these tones in his or her own way, so do not worry about how they should feel. Simply tell yourself that they exist, that they are composed of the great energies of your being made flesh.

Then let yourself experience. If you are used to terms like meditation, try to forget the term during this procedure. Do not use any name. Free yourself from concepts, and experience the being of yourself and the motion of your own vitality. Do not question, "Is this right? Am I doing it correctly?. Am I feeling what I should feel?" This is the book's first exercise for you. You are not to use other people's criteria. There are no standards but your own feelings.

No particular time limit is recommended. This should be an enjoyable experience. Accept whatever happens as uniquely your own. The exercise will put you in touch with yourself It will return you to yourself. Whenever you are nervous or upset, take a few moments to sense this feeling-tone within you, and you will find yourself centered in your own being, secure.

When you have tried this exercise several times, then feel these deep rhythms go out from you in all directions, as indeed they do. Electromagnetically they radiate out through your physical being; and in ways that I hope to explain later, they form the environment that you know even as they form your physical image.

(11:14.) I told you that the self was not limited, yet surely you think that your self stops where your skin meets space, that you are inside your skin. Period. Yet your environment is an extension of your self. It is the body of your experience, coalesced in physical form. The inner self forms the objects that you know as surely and automatically as it forms your finger or your eye.

Your environment is the physical picture of your thoughts, emotions and beliefs made visible. Since your thoughts, emotions and beliefs move through space and time, you therefore affect physical conditions separate from you.

Consider the spectacular framework of your body just from the physical standpoint. You perceive it as solid, as you perceive all other physical matter; yet the more matter is explored the more obvious it becomes that within it energy takes on specific shape (in the form of organs, cells, molecules, atoms, electrons) , each less physical than the last, each combining in mysterious gestalt to form matter.

(11:25.) The atoms within your body spin. There is constant commotion and activity. The flesh that seemed so solid turns out to be composed of swiftly moving particles-often orbiting each other-in which great exchanges of energy continually occur.

The stuff, the space outside of your body, is composed of the same elements, but in different proportions. There is a constant physical interchange between the structure you call your body and the space outside it; chemical interactions, basic exchanges without which life as you know it would be impossible.

To hold your breath is to die. Breath, which represents the most intimate and most necessary of your physical sensations, must flow out from what you are, passing into the world that seems to be not you. Physically, portions of you leave your body constantly and intermix with the elements. You know what happens when adrenalin is released through the bloodstream. It stirs you up and prepares you for action. But in other ways the adrenalin does not just stay in your body. It is cast into the air and it affects the atmosphere, though it is transformed.

Any of your emotions liberate hormones, but these also leave you as your breath leaves you; and in that respect you can say that you release chemicals into the air that then affect it.

Physical storms, then, are caused by such interactions. I am telling you that you form your own reality once again, and this includes the physical weather-which is the result, en masse, of your individual reactions.

I will elaborate much more specifically on this particular point later in the book. (A note added later: Seth does-in Chapter Eighteen.) You are in physical existence to learn and understand that your energy, translated into feelings, thoughts and emotions, causes all experience. There are no exceptions.

Once you understand this you have only to learn to examine the nature of your beliefs, for these will automatically cause you to feel and think in certain fashions. Your emotions follow your beliefs. It is not the other way around.

I would like you to recognize your own beliefs in several areas. You must realize that any idea you accept as truth is a belief that you hold. You must, then, take the next step and say, "It is not necessarily true, even though I believe it." You will, I hope, learn to disregard all beliefs that imply basic limitations.

You may take your break.

(11:40. Jane was surprised to learn that almost fifty minutes had passed. Her delivery had become increasingly energetic and intent, and the session had turned into one of those occasions when she-and Seth-appeared to be quite capable of continuing half the night. Id also picked up an infusion of energy. Because I was Ailing to continue, Jane changed her mind about ending the session here. Resume in the same manner at 11:56.)

Now: Later we will discuss some of the reasons for your beliefs, but for now I simply want you to recognize them.

I am going to list some limiting false, beliefs. If you find yourself agreeing with any of them, then recognize this as an area in which you must personally work.

1. Life is a valley of sorrows.

2. The body is inferior. As a vehicle of the soul it is automatically degraded, tinged. You may feel that the flesh is inherently bad or evil, that its appetites are wrong. Christians may find the body deplorable, thinking that the soul descended into it-"descent" automatically meaning the change from a higher or better condition to one that is worse.

Followers of Eastern religions often feel it their duty, also, to deny the flesh, to rise above it, so to speak, into a state where nothing is desired. ("Emptiness' in Taoism, for instance. ) Using a different vocabulary, they still believe that earth experience is not desirable in itself.

3. 1 am helpless before circumstances that I cannot control.

4. 1 am helpless because my personality and character were formed in infancy, and I am at the mercy of my past.

5. I am helpless because I am at the mercy of events from past lives in other incarnations, over which I now have no control. I must be punished, or I am punishing myself for unkindnesses done to others in past lives. I must accept the negative aspects of my life because of my karma.

6. People are basically bad, and out to get me.

7. 1 have the truth and no one else has. Or, my group has the truth and no other group has.

8. I will grow frailer, sicker, and lose my powers as I grow old.

9. My existence is dependent upon my experience in flesh. When my body dies my consciousness dies with it.

Now: That was a rather general list of false beliefs. Now here is a more specific list of more intimate beliefs, any of which you may have personally about yourself.

1. I am sickly, and always have been.

2. There is something wrong with money. People who have it are greedy, less spiritual than those who are poor. They are unhappier, and snobs.

3. 1 am not creative. I have no imagination.

Next: I can never do what I want to do.

Next: People dislike me.

Next: I am fat.

("That would be number 6.")

Then 7:1 always have bad luck.

(12:15.) These are all beliefs held by many people. Those who have them will meet them in experience. Physical data will always seem to reinforce the beliefs, therefore, but the beliefs formed the reality. We are going to attempt to knock down such limiting concepts.

First of all, you must realize that no one can change your beliefs for you, nor can they be forced upon you from without. You can indeed change them for yourself, however, with knowledge and application.

Look about you. Your entire physical environment is the materialization of your beliefs. Your sense of joy, sorrow, health or illness-all of these are also caused by your beliefs. If you believe that a given situation should make you unhappy, then it will, and the unhappiness will then reinforce the condition.

Within you is the ability to change your ideas about reality and about yourself, to create a personal living experience that is fulfilling to yourself and others. I would like you to write down your beliefs about yourself as you become aware of them. Later you can use this list in a way that you do not now suspect.

Break or end of session, whatever you prefer.

("Well, I guess we'd better end it, then."

(End at 12:25 A.M. Both of us felt much better now than we had before the session began.)

Session 615, September 18, 1972, 9:32 P.M., Monday

(Jane has already had one session-a short one-today. The mail had brought us good news early this afternoon; we'd celebrated with a drink, then Seth had come through.

(While we were eating supper this evening Jane received a long distance call from one of our visitors of last August. Regretfully, she had to tell him she'd had little time to work on the scientific projects discussed then, although she was still interested. While she was doing the dishes and thinking about this she received an amusing flash from Seth: She was to stop worrying about such things and "adopt a position of divine nonchalance."

(Jane was quite ready for her regular session at 9:00, although because of the call we weren't sure what it would cover By 9:30, however, the session still hadn't started, and she was impatient. Yet when she did take off her glasses and begin speaking for Seth her voice was quiet, her pace leisurely, her eyes closed often. )

Now: Dictation.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Your conscious beliefs direct the functioning of your body. It is not the other way around.

Your inner self adopts the physically conscious, physically focused mind as a method of allowing it to manipulate in the world that you know. The conscious mind is particularly equipped to direct outward activity, to handle waking experience and oversee physical work.

Its beliefs about the nature of reality are then given to inner portions of the self. These rely mainly upon the conscious mind's interpretation of temporal reality. The conscious mind sets the goals and the inner self brings them about, using all its facilities and inexhaustible energy.

The great value of the conscious mind lies precisely in its ability to make decisions and set directions. Its role is dual, however: It is meant to assess conditions both inside and outside, to handle data that comes from the physical world and from the inner portions of the self. It is not a closed system, then.

To be human necessitates fine discrimination in the use of such consciousness. Many people are afraid of their own thoughts. They do not examine them. They accept the beliefs of others. Such actions distort data from both within and without.

There is no battle between the intuitive self and the conscious mind. There only seems to be when the individual refuses to face all the information that is available in his conscious mind. (Pause.) Sometimes it seems easier to avoid the frequent readjustments in behavior that self-examination requires. In such cases an individual collects many secondhand beliefs. Some contradict each other; the signals given to the body and to the inner self are not smoothly flowing or clear-cut, but a muddied jumble of counter-directions.

These will immediately set off alarms of various natures. The body will not function properly, or the overall emotional environment will suffer. Such reactions are actually excellent precautions, meant to be taken as a sign that change is needed.

At the same time, the inner self will transmit to the conscious mind insights and intuitions meant to clear its sight. But if you believe that the inner self is dangerous and not to be trusted, if you are afraid of dreams or any intrusive psychic material, then you deny this help and turn aside from it.

(9:50.) If you believe, moreover, that you must accept your difficulties, then this belief alone can deter you from solving them.

I repeat: Your ideas and beliefs form the structure of your experience. Your beliefs and the reasons for them can be found in your conscious mind. If you accept the idea that the reasons for your behavior are forever buried in the past of this life, or any other, then you will not be able to alter your experience until you change that belief. I am speaking now of more or less normal experience. Later we will discuss more particular areas, such as circumstances in which illnesses date from birth.

The realization that you form your own reality should be a liberating one. You are responsible for your successes and your joys. You can change those areas of your life with which you are less than pleased, but you must take the responsibility for your being.

Your spirit joined itself with flesh, and in flesh, to experience a world of incredible richness, to help create a dimension of reality of colors and of form. Your spirit was born in flesh to enrich a marvelous area of sense awareness, to feel energy made into corporeal form. You are here to use, enjoy, and express yourself through the body. You are here to aid in the great expansion of consciousness. You are not here to cry about the miseries of the human condition, but to change them when you find them not to your liking through the joy, strength and vitality that is within you; to create the spirit as faithfully and beautifully as you can in flesh.

The conscious mind allows you to look outward into the physical universe, and see the reflection of your spiritual activity, to perceive and assess your individual and joint creations.

In a manner of speaking, the conscious mind is a window through which you look outward-and looking outward, perceive the fruits of your inner mind. Often you let false beliefs blur that great vision. Your joy, vitality and accomplishment do not come from the outside to you as the result of events that "happen to you. " They spring from inner events that are the result of your beliefs.

(10:06. Seth-Jane, deep in thought, paused.) Much has been written about the nature and importance of suggestion. One of the current ideas in vogue holds that you are constantly at the mercy of suggestion. Your own conscious beliefs are the most important suggestions that you receive. All other ideas are rejected or accepted according to whether or not you believe they are true, in line with the steady conscious chattering that goes on within your mind most of the day-the suggestions given to you by yourself.

You will accept a suggestion given by another only if it fits in with your own ideas about the nature of reality in general, and your concepts about yourself in particular.

If you use your conscious mind properly, then, you examine those beliefs that come to you. You do not accept them willy-nilly. If you use your conscious mind properly, you are also aware of intuitive ideas that come to you from within. You are only half conscious when you do not examine the information that comes to you from without, and when you ignore the data that comes to you from within.

(10:13.) Many false beliefs therefore are indiscriminately accepted because you have not examined them. You have given the inner self a faulty picture of reality. Since it is the function of the conscious mind to assess physical experience, it [the inner self] hasn't been able to do its job properly. If the inner portions of the self were supposed to have that responsibility, then you would not need a conscious mind.

(Emphatically:) When the inner self is alerted, it will immediately try to remedy the situation by an influx of self-corrective measures. On occasion, when the situation gets out of hand, it will bypass those restrictive areas of the conscious mind, and solve the problem by shooting forth energy in other layers of activity.

It will manage to work around the blind spots in the reasoning mind, for example. Often it will sift out from the barrage of conflicting beliefs the particular set that is the most life-giving, and send these forth in what then appears as a burst of revelation. Such revelations result in new patterns that change behavior.

You must be aware of the contents of your own reasoning mind. Find the ambiguities. Regardless of the nature of your beliefs they are indeed made flesh and material. The miracle of your being cannot escape itself. Your thoughts blossom into events. If you think the world is evil, you will meet with events that seem evil. There are no accidents in cosmic terms, or in terms of the world as you know it. Your beliefs grow as surely in time and space as flowers do. When you realize this you can even feel their growing.

You may take a break.

(10:29 to 10:44.)

Now: Resume dictation.

The conscious mind is basically curious, open. It is also equipped to examine its own contents. Because of the psychological theories of the last century, many Western people believed that the primary purpose of the conscious mind was to inhibit "unconscious" material.

Instead, as mentioned (in this session) , it is also meant to receive and interpret important data that comes to it from the inner self. Left alone, it does this very well. It receives and interprets impressions. What has happened, however, is that man has taught it to accept [only] data coming from the outside world, and to set up barriers against inner knowledge.

Such a situation denies the individual his full strength, and cuts him off - consciously, now - from the important sources of his being. These conditions inhibit creative expression in particular, and deny the conscious self the continually emerging insights and intuitions otherwise available.

Thought and feeling then seem separate. Creativity and intellect do not show themselves as the brothers that they are, but often as strangers. The conscious mind loses its fine edge. It cuts out from its experience the vast body of inner knowledge available to it. Divisions, illusionary ones, appear in the self.

Left alone, the self acts spontaneously as a unit, but as an ever-changing one. Listening to voices both within and without, the conscious mind is able to form beliefs that are in league with the self's knowledge as received from material and nonmaterial sources. Then examination of beliefs takes its place along with other activities-naturally, easily, without effort. Once the conscious mind has accepted a collection of conflicting beliefs, however, a definite attempt is necessary to sort these out.

Remember, even false beliefs will seem to be justified in terms of physical data, since your experience in the outside world is the materialization of those beliefs. So you must work with the raw material of your ideas, even while your sense data may tell you that a given belief is obviously a truth. To change your experience or any portion of it, then, you must change your ideas. Since you have been forming your own reality all along, the results will follow naturally.

(Pause.) You must be convinced that you can alter your beliefs. You must be willing to try. Think of a limiting idea as a muddy color and your life as a multidimensional painting that is marred. You change the idea as an artist would his palette.

The artist does not identify with the colors he uses. He knows he chooses them, and applies them with a brush. So you paint your reality with your ideas in the same manner. You are not your ideas, nor even your thoughts. You are the self who experiences them. If a painter finds his hands stained with pigment at the end of a day, he can wash the stain off easily, knowing its nature. If you think that limiting thoughts are a portion of you, permanently attached therefore, you will not think of washing them off. You would behave instead like a mad artist who says, "My paints are a part of me. They have stained my fingers, and there is nothing I can do about it."

There is no contradiction, though there may seem to be, between spontaneously being aware of your thoughts, and examining them. You do not have to be blind to be spontaneous. You are not being spontaneous when you indiscriminately accept as your own, for a fact, every bit of data that comes to you.

(11:10.) Many beliefs would automatically fall away quite harmlessly if you were being truly spontaneous. Instead you often harbor them.

Previous limiting ideas, accepted, figuratively form a restraining bed, gathering other such material so that your mind becomes filled with debris. When you are spontaneous, you accept the free nature of your mind and it spontaneously makes decisions as to the validity or non-validity of data it receives. When you refuse to allow it this function it becomes cluttered.

No apple tree tries to grow violets. Quite automatically it knows what it is, and the framework of its own identity and existence. (Pause.) You have a conscious mind, but this is only the "topmost" portion of your mind. Much more of "it" is available to you. Much more of your knowledge can be conscious, therefore; but a false belief, a limiting one, is as ambiguous to your nature as any apple tree's idea that it was a violet plant.

It could not produce violets, nor could it be a good apple tree while it tried to. The mistaken belief is one that does not fit the basic conditions of your inner being. So if you believe that you are at the mercy of physical events, you entertain a false belief If you feel that your present experience was set in circumstances beyond your control, you entertain a false belief.

You had a hand in the development of your childhood environment. You chose the circumstances. This does not mean that you are at the mercy of those circumstances. It means that you set challenges to be overcome, set goals to be reached, set up frameworks of experience through which you could develop, understand and fulfill certain abilities.

(11:29.) The creative power to form your own experience is within you now, as it has been since the time of your birth and before. You may have chosen a particular theme for this existence, a certain framework of conditions, but within these you have the freedom to experiment, create, and alter conditions and events.

Each person chooses for himself the individual patterns within which he will create this personal reality. But inside these bounds are infinite varieties of actions and unlimited resources.

The inner self is embarked upon an exciting endeavor, in which it learns how to translate its reality into physical terms. The conscious mind is brilliantly attuned to physical reality, then, and often so dazzled by what it perceives that it is tempted to think physical phenomena is a cause, rather than a result. Deeper portions of the self always serve to remind it that this is not the case. When the conscious mind accepts too many false beliefs, particularly if it sees that inner self as a danger, then it closes out these constant reminders. When this situation arises the conscious mind feels itself assailed by a reality that seems greater than itself, over which it has no control. The deep feeling of security in which it should be anchored is lost.

The false beliefs must be weeded out so that the conscious mind can become aware of its source once again, and open to the inner channels of splendor and power available to it.

(11:40.) 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. (See both sessions in Chapter One.)

The ego is your idea of your physical image in relation to the world. Your self image is not unconscious, then. You are quite aware of it, though often you reject certain thoughts about it in favor of others. False beliefs can result in a rigid ego that insists upon using the conscious mind in one direction only, further distorting its perceptions.

Often you quite consciously decide to bury a thought or an idea that might cause you to alter your behavior, because it does not seem to fit in with limiting ideas that you already hold. Listen to your own train of thought as you go about your days. What suggestions and ideas are you giving yourself. Realize that these will be materialized in your personal experience.

Many quite limiting ideas will pass without scrutiny under the guise of goodness. You may feel quite virtuous, for example, in hating evil, or what seems to you to be evil; but if you find yourself concentrating upon either hatred or evil you are creating it. If you are poor you may feel quite self-righteous in your financial condition, looking with scorn upon those who are wealthy, telling yourself that money is wrong and so reinforcing the condition of poverty. If you are ill you may find yourself dwelling upon the misery of your condition, and bitterly envying those who are healthy, bemoaning your state-and therefore perpetuating it through your thoughts.

If you dwell upon limitations, then you will meet them. You must create a new picture in your mind. It will differ from the picture your physical senses may show you at any given time, precisely in those areas where changes are required.

Hatred of war will not bring peace-another example. Only love of peace will bring about those conditions.

You may take a break, or end the session as you prefer.

("Then we'll call it a night."

(11:56 P.M. Jane was out of an excellent trance before I finished writing. She didn't remember any of the material. "My God, Rob, it's almost midnight, " she exclaimed. Actually she could have continued the session-she's been extremely active psychically lately-but I wondered about her being tired tomorrow. She has ESP class tomorrow night, a session Wednesday night, and writing class on Thursday. )

Session 616, September 20, 1972, 9:28 P.M., Wednesday

(As we sat waiting for the session to begin at 9:20, Jane told me she'd just "picked up" the heading for Chapter Three of Seth's book: "Telepathy and Belief Gathering"-or "Idea Gathering";-she wasn't sure which. We'll see how close she came. At 9. 25 she said, "I'm getting ready to start now. I can tell..." She lit a cigarette and looked off to one side and down, her attention already turned inward as she prepared to psychically join a very familiar "energy personality essence, " as Seth calls himself. )

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now: We will resume dictation.

I quite realize that many of my statements will contradict the beliefs of those of you who accept the idea that the conscious mind is relatively powerless, and that the answers to problems lie hidden beneath.

Obviously the conscious mind is a phenomenon, not a thing. It is ever-changing. It can be concentrated or turned by the ego in literally endless directions. It can view outward reality or turn inward, observing its own contents.

There are gradations and fluctuations within its activity. It is far more flexible than you give it credit for. (Pause.) The ego can use the conscious mind almost entirely as a way of perceiving external or internal realities that coincide with its own beliefs. It is not that certain answers do not lie openly accessible, therefore, but that often you have set yourself on a course of action in which you believe, and you do not want to open yourself to any material that may contradict your current beliefs.

If you are sick, for example, there is a reason. To recover thoroughly without taking on new symptoms, you must discover the reason. You may dislike your illness, but it is a course you have decided upon. While you are convinced that the course is necessary you will keep the symptoms.

Now these may be the result of one specific belief, or caused by a complex of beliefs held together.

The beliefs of course will be accepted by you not as beliefs, but as reality. Once you understand that you form your reality, then you must begin to examine these beliefs by letting the conscious mind freely examine its own contents.

(9:40.) We will speak about health and illness more specifically later in the book. I would like to make one point here, however-that often psychoanalysis is simply a game of hide-and-seek, in which you continue to relinquish responsibility for your actions and reality and assign the basic cause to some area of the psyche, hidden in a dark forest of the past. Then you give yourself the task of finding this secret. In so doing you never think of looking for it in the conscious mind, since you are convinced that all deep answers lie far beneath-and, moreover, that your consciousness is not only unable to help you but will often send up camouflages instead. So you play that game.

When and if you manage to change your beliefs in that self-deceptive framework, then any suitable "forgotten" event from the past will be used as a catalyst. One would do as well as another.

(Pause at 9:45, one of many. Now rock music began to blare out from one of the apartments below us. I felt the very floor vibrate, but Jane, in trance, didn't seem to be bothered. )

The basic beliefs however were always in your conscious mind, and the reasons for your behavior. You simply had not examined its contents with the realization that your beliefs were not necessarily reality, but often your conceptions of it.

At the same time, in psychoanalysis you are often programmed to believe that the "unconscious, " being the source of such dark secrets, cannot be counted upon as any bed of creativity or inspiration, and so you are denied the help that the inner portions of the self could give to your consciousness.

(9:50.) Usually when you do examine your conscious mind you do so looking through, or with, your own structured beliefs. The knowledge that your beliefs are not necessarily reality will allow you to be aware of all the data that is consciously available to you. I am not telling you to examine your thoughts so frequently and with such vigor that you get in your own way, but you are not fully conscious unless you are aware of the contents of your conscious mind. I am also emphasizing the fact that the conscious mind is equipped to receive information from the inner self as well as the exterior universe.

I am not telling you to inhibit thoughts or feelings. I am asking that you become aware of those you have. Realize that they form your reality. Concentrate upon those that give you the results that you want.

If you find all of this difficult, you can also examine your physical reality in all of its aspects. Realize that your physical experience and environment is the materialization of your beliefs. If you find great exuberance, health, effective work, abundance, smiles on the faces of those you meet, then take it for granted that your beliefs are beneficial. If you see a world that is good, people that like you, take it for granted, again, that your beliefs are beneficial. But if you find poor health, a lack of meaningful work, a lack of abundance, a world of sorrow and evil, then assume that your beliefs are faulty and begin examining them.

We will later discuss the nature of mass reality, but for now we are dwelling upon the personal aspects. The main point I wanted to make in this chapter was that your conscious beliefs are extremely important, and that you are not at the mercy of events or causes that dwell far beneath your awareness.

That is the end of the chapter, and you may take a break.

("Thank you. Very good."

(10:01. There were several developments during break, and I'll try to discuss them in order before we get into Chapter Three. To begin with, Jane L-ft her excellent trance easily, saying she had barely heard the music. It still boomed up from below us, but she wasn't interested in that. Instead she talked about "feeling sort of funny, " without being able to elaborate.

(While we had a quick snack I asked her if she thought the recent strange behavior of our cat, Willy, could stem from his reactions to our own psychic states. We'd seen this happen before, although not recently. Early this month Willy had picked up a case of fleas that was stubbornly resisting treatment. He'd taken to staying outside all night as well as most of the day. He was also losing weight. Our other cat, Rooney, had always seemed to be immune to us in such matters and even now was conducting himself in his usual leisurely fashion.

(Willy was outside now, in a light rain that had begun a couple of hours ago. At supper time he'd actually seemed to feel that the inside of the house was forbidden territory, and had refused to come in. Now I went down the back stairs and called for him as I circled the house. No Willy. I met Jane in the front hall. Here the music was even louder, thundering out from the first floor apartment.

(Once we were back upstairs in our living room, the music led me to talk about peer groups involving young people. We like rock and often dance to it; it's alive and vital. I also believe that Jane uses its energy when we hear it in the house during sessions. I commented upon the value many youths obviously placed upon conforming in their nonconformity. Jane described her own similar, intense concerns in high school and college. I had evidently chosen not to be much influenced by those factors, though; I'd always been something of a loner.

(I asked that Seth comment upon Willy's behavior, if he cared to, after dictation. Then Jane said, "I knew I was feeling funny tonight. Now I get it. It's like I've got three channels from Seth going at once...

( "I've even got directions. " She pointed off to her upper right as she sat in her rocker "Seth comes through on his book from here, on this channel. "Next she indicated her lower right. "Then over here, immediately available, is Seth on you and me and Willy. And also on the portrait you asked me about the other day-the one you just finished.

("Over here now, "Jane said, designating her upper left, "is Seth on what you were just saying about peer groups-how young people feel it's so important to fit in with their own kind, and why. And why I felt that way, but you didn't. Hey, I've even got a bunch of history about that, all ready to deliver-a lot of material on each idea... I was really confused for a while, yet now I see that each thing's separate, already prepared by Seth. You're not going to get two sentences about one subjects then switch to another one..." Jane laughed. "Which channel do you want?"

("I'm keeping my mouth shut, " I said, joking. "How about going back to the book?" I thought doing that would help her control the proliferation of channels until we could learn more about the development. The possibility had been indicated often: witness Seth's ability to discuss a variety of subjects with the members of a group, even if they were strangers to Jane. The new step in her abilities would be her conscious awareness of the blocks of material already prepared and awaiting delivery. Jane promptly agreed to resume book work.

("I've never felt this way before-like I've been programmed in advance. It's as though I need three voice boxes. That's really weird. I do get it as sound, though. If I could talk three times at once, I could deliver finished material on those three things. Now I have to pick the right channel to get Seth back on his book; and it almost seems that if someone else came here now and mentioned a subject, I'd have that information all ready too.

("Each channel is as clear as a bell. There's no static or bleed-through between them. There: Now I've just got another one"-Jane pointed to her lower left-"and it explains all of this." She laughed again. "Just call me station J-A-N-E...")

(Seth returned in a humorous manner at 10:37.)

Now: Resume dictation. Chapter Three: "Suggestion, Telepathy, and the Grouping of Beliefs."

(Pause. Note the difference between Seth's heading for this chapter and the one Jane gave before the session.)

Ideas have an electromagnetic reality. Beliefs are strong ideas about the nature of reality. Ideas generate emotion. Like attracts like, so similar ideas group about each other and you accept those that fit in with your particular "system" of ideas.

The ego attempts to maintain a clear point of focus, of stability, so that it can direct the light of the conscious mind with some precision and concentrate its focus in areas of actuality that seem permanent. As mentioned (in Chapter One) , the ego, while a portion of the whole self, can be defined as a psychological "structure, " composed of characteristics belonging to the personality as a whole, organized together to form a surface identity.

Now generally speaking, through the period of a lifetime, this allows for the easy emergence of many tendencies and abilities. It permits many more potentials to emerge than would otherwise be possible. If this were not the case, for example, your interests throughout life would not change.

The ego, while appearing to be permanent, then, forever changes as it adapts to new characteristics from the whole self, and lets others recede. Otherwise it would not be responsive to the needs and desires of the entire personality.

Because it is intimately connected with other portions of the self it does not basically feel alienated or alone, but proudly acts as the director of the conscious mind's focus. It is an adjunct of the conscious mind in that respect.

(10:51. Jane's delivery was very intent.)

Basically it understands its source and its nature. It is the portion of the mind, then, that looks out upon physical reality and surveys it in relation to those characteristics of which it is composed at any given time. It makes it's judgments according to its own idea of itself.

It is the most physically oriented portion of your inner self; but it is not, however, apart from your inner self. It sits on the window sill, so to speak, between you and the exterior world. (Voice stronger for emphasis:) It can also look in both directions. It makes judgments about the nature of reality in relationship to its and your needs. It accepts or does not accept beliefs. It cannot shut out information from your conscious mind, however-but it can refuse to pay attention to it.

This does not mean that the information becomes unconscious. It is simply thrown into a corner of your mind, unassimilated, and not organized into the parcel of beliefs upon which you are presently concentrating. It is there if you look for it.

(11:00.) It is not invisible, nor do you have to know exactly what you are looking for, which of course would make the situation nearly impossible. All you have to do is decide to examine the contents of your conscious mind, realizing that it contains treasures that you have overlooked.

Another way to do this is to recognize through examination that the physical effects you meet exist as data in your conscious mind-and the information that formerly seemed unavailable will be obvious. The seemingly invisible ideas that cause your difficulties have quite obvious

visible physical effects, and these will lead you automatically to the conscious area in which the initiating beliefs or ideas reside.

Once more, if you become aware of your own conscious thoughts, these themselves will give you clues for they clearly speak your beliefs. If, for example, you have scarcely enough money on which to live, and you examine your thoughts, you may find yourself constantly thinking, "I can never pay this bill, I never have any luck, I'll always be poor." Or you will find yourself envying those who have more, degrading the value of money perhaps, and saying that those who have it are unhappy, or at best spiritually poor.

(11:10.) When you find these thoughts in yourself you may say, and rather indignantly: "But those things are all true. I am poor. I cannot meet my bills, " and so forth. In so doing, you see, you accept your belief about reality as a characteristic of reality itself, and so the belief is transparent or invisible to you. But it causes your physical experience.

You must change the belief. I will give you methods to allow you to do this. You may follow your thoughts in another area, and find your-self thinking that you are having difficulty because you are too sensitive. Finding the thought you may say, "But it is true; I am. I react with such great emotion to small things." But that is a belief, and a limiting one.

If you follow your thoughts further you may find yourself thinking, "I am proud of my sensitivity. It sets me apart from the mob, " or, "I am too good for this world." These are limiting beliefs. They will distort true reality-your own true reality.

(11:17.) These are but a few samples of the ways in which your own quite conscious ideas may be invisible to you while being available all the time, and limiting your experience.

Now we have been speaking of the conscious mind, for it is the director of your activities physically. I told you (at the beginning of this chapter) that it was important to realize the ego's position as the most "exterior" portion of the inner self, not alienated but looking outward to physical reality. Using this analogy, portions of the self on the other side of the conscious mind constantly receive telepathic data. Remember, there are no divisions, so the terms used are simply to make the discussion easier.

The ego tries to organize all material coming into the conscious mind, for its purposes-the ego's-are those that have come to the surface at any given time in the self's overall encounter with physical reality. As I said, the ego cannot keep information out of the conscious mind but it can refuse to focus directly upon it.

(11:25.) Now. The telepathic information, using our analogy, comes through deeper portions of the self. These parts have such an amazing capacity to receive that some organization is necessary to sift the data. Some is simply not important to you. It concerns people of whom you have no other knowledge.

You are a sender and a receiver. Because ideas have an electromagnetic reality, beliefs, because of their intensity, radiate strongly. Due to the organizing structure of your own psychological nature, similar beliefs congregate, and you will readily accept those with which you already agree.

Limiting ideas therefore predispose you to accept others of a similar nature. Exuberant ideas of freedom, spontaneity and joy automatically collect others of their kind also. There is a constant interplay between yourself and others in the exchange of ideas, both telepathically and on a conscious level.

This interchange follows, again, your conscious beliefs. It is fashionable in some circles to believe that you react physically to telepathically received messages despite your conscious beliefs or ideas. This is not the case. You react only to those telepathic messages that fit in with your conscious ideas about yourself and your reality (emphatically) .

Let me add that the conscious mind is itself spontaneous. It enjoys playing with its own contents, so I am not here recommending a type of stern mental discipline in which you examine yourself at every moment. I am telling you about countering measures that you can take in areas in which you are not pleased with your experience.

Do you want a break?

("Yes, I guess so.")

We will indeed then.

(Humorously: "Thank you."

(11:37. Again Jane had really been under. She didn't remember the material, and was amazed that an hour had passed. I told her Id taken the break because I was still worried about Willy.

(Jane said she believed that "Seth could do three books at once, a chapter at a time on each, and with no confusion among them. Right now I feel that this whole book's just there, ready to be given for the writing down." Her very active dream life had evidently included a lot of preparation for it, she added, but I didn't ask her any questions that might open up more channels.

("Not since the sessions started [in 1963] have I felt that Seth's material was so richly available. I wasn't able to be that open before this-I couldn't accept a lot that was right there because it didn't fit in with my beliefs. 'Jane pointed to her left. "Hmmm. Now I could get stuff on archaeology, of all things. Wild..."

(She had doubts, though, about her ability to come through with the very technical data for the young scientist who had called her before the last session. She felt somewhat "remote" from his questions while she was so involved in producing this book. Resume at 11:55.)

Now: Give us a moment, for Willy.

In an odd way, he is himself somewhat frightened of his behavior. Ruburt has decided to leave the house more often, and be free to go outside whenever he wishes-not to spend so much time inside because of his work. Now he has sent Willy out as a testing device, and the cat does not know exactly what has happened.

Willy likes to go out, but he is not used to being out all of the time. To an extent he feels banished. He simply picked up Ruburt's feelings, now, which are strong, and Ruburt's growing vehemence of intent. In a way these were not directed at the cat, yet Ruburt also knew the cat would pick them up.

Willy was always the house cat, you see, and Jane stayed in the house all day, writing. So it is the house cat who changes habits, rather than Rooney (our other cat) .

To an extent you both acquiesced, the doors being left open. You obviously have only to keep them closed. Do you follow me here?

("Yes."

(The furnace, knocked out in last June's flood, hasn't been repaired yet because of a shortage of skilled workers in the area. Everything in the house is damp and swollen. Doors especially don't work easily, if at all, so we've been taking the easy way out...)

Now give us a moment. Ruburt is beginning now to itch to go out, but it is the cat who itches.

("That's what I've been wondering about.")

Your Willy is in no danger, but show him your love, and regulate his ingoing and outgoing. Not that Ruburt need regulate his, but that his distraction or impatience causes the cat to overreact.

Now: Ruburt's sensing of the channels does represent a development and has been possible for some time; but it is only now entering his experience. Do remind him of his success in this and other areas, for the feeling and reality of success can and will be carried over.

I will end our session. I will see to it that I speak about your painting before or after book dictation. (Louder, jovially:) I am on channel one this evening. My heartiest regards.

("Thank you.")

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth."

(End at 12:07 A.M. After coming out of trance Jane attempted to describe a manifestation which, though invisible, was "hovering before us now like a big oval type of thing." It was made up of a group of energies that could represent a personality like Seth, she said, yet it was nameless. It was just there, and gave her no feeling particularly that it was going to be of assistance. Jane had trouble being precise about the effect and her feelings in connection with it, and I had difficulty translating her narrative into written words. I mention it here in case something develops. She's had similar perceptions occasionally before.

(By now the members of ESP class are staying on top of each session for the book, imputing the material before the chapters are finished. So are Jane and I. It looks like all of us will grow as the book does.

(A note added a few days later. This session was held on Wednesday. We had guests the following Friday evening, and as Jane described the multiple-channel effects to them, she realized that she was tuning into some of Seth's backlog of data about peer groups and the need to conform. Seth hadn't actually given us the material during Wednesday's session, nor did he now - instead Jane verbalized it on her own to some extent. The next morning I asked her to note down what she remembered of it.

('Telling Rob and our friends about the channels that I became aware of in the last session, "Jane wrote, "I suddenly began drawing upon the one with the information about conformity and the need for individual expression.

("I realized that Seth had a great amount of information all gathered and there, including the biological foundations of both characteristics. Take the amoeba, a one-celled microscopic animal, for instance. I knew that the protoplasm in the amoeba, the essential living matter, represents the individual needing-to-go-out quality. Yet the protoplasm must conform to its environment-in this case the amoeba's 'body, ' which can only move as a unit when directed by the individualistic need to react to stimuli.

('The protoplasm, while reacting 'on its own, ' has to take the cell form into consideration; this insures the integrity of the whole unit. To move, the protoplasm must necessarily move the whole thing.

("This is just a sample of the implications called up by Rob's talk about peer groups in the session Wednesday. The material itself has much more available on biological aspects, plus cultural and historical ones. It could also discuss the same question from the view of the growth of the human body and the development, say, of cancer cells that break out of a conforming pattern and superimpose a 'new' one, their own, on the unit structure...

("There-I just got that last sentence as I finished this account. That idea is something new for me, too.)

Session 617, September 25, 1972, 9:21 p. M. P.M., Monday

(While we were eating breakfast this morning Jane and I heard a peculiar multiple "barking" sound that came from the sky. I leaned out of a window just in time to see a large formation of geese fly over, obviously southbound for the winter. They flew low, I thought, their formation unbalanced-one tail of their inverted V was much longer than the other; inside the V, as though being protected, was a small group that was not information.

(I found the spectacle strangely moving, and so did Jane. We marveled at the inherent order in the migration, the loud honking that so proudly demonstrated its rightness. Others, we saw, were impressed too: men doing flood repair work in a downstairs apartment came outside to stand in the driveway, staring skyward. I took the flight as another sign of nature's amazing variety and vitality-a strong reminder of values I was afraid we humans often denigrated.

(Jane's delivery as Seth was fast from the beginning of the session.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

We will resume dictation... You will react, therefore, to all the information that you receive according to your conscious beliefs concerning the nature of reality. The deeper portions of the self do not have to take the ego's idea of time into consideration, so these portions of the self also deal with data that would ordinarily escape the ego's perception, perhaps until a certain "point" of ego time was reached.

The ego, which must manipulate most directly with the everyday world, takes time, clock time, quite seriously. Even the ego however realizes to some extent that clock time is a convention; but it does not like such conventions broken.

It will often neglect any clairvoyant or precognitive material that comes into the conscious mind from the deeper portions of the self. On occasion, when the ego recognizes that such data can be highly practical, it then becomes more liberal in its recognition of it-but only when such information fits in with its concepts of what is possible and not possible.

Now the ego's concepts are your concepts, since it is a part of you. If you dwell on ideas of danger or potential disaster, if you think of the world mainly in terms of your physical survival and consider all those circumstances that may work against it, then you may find yourself suddenly aware of precognitive dreams that foretell incidents of accidents, earthquakes, robberies or murders.

Your own idea of the perilous nature of existence becomes so strong that the ego allows this data to emerge, even though it is "out of time, " because your fearful beliefs convince it that you must be on guard. The incidents do not even have to involve you. From all the unconscious telepathic and clairvoyant data available, however, you will be aware of this particular grouping, and it will only serve to reinforce your idea that existence is above all perilous.

If this information becomes available in the dream state you may then say, "I am frightened of dreams. My bad dreams so often come true." So you try to inhibit memory of your dreams. Instead you should examine your conscious beliefs, for they are so strong that they are causing you not only to focus upon calamity in the physical world, but to use your inner abilities to the same end.

(9:37.) Telepathic communication is constant. This is usually at an unconscious level merely because your conscious mind is in a state of becoming. It cannot hold all of the information you possess. As an example, if your conscious ideas are relatively positive you will react to telepathically received information of a similar nature, even if you do so on an unconscious level.

As I mentioned earlier (in the 616th session) , you are @ sending your own telepathic thoughts outward. Others will react to those according to their own ideas of reality. A family can constantly reinforce its joy (louder) , gaiety, and spontaneity by concentrating on ideas of vitality, strength and creativity; or it can let half of its energy slip away (deeper) by reinforcing resentments, angers and thoughts of doubt and failure.

("I get it. "

(Seth's clever, somewhat humorous stresses in the above paragraph were intended to make certain points to me personally while he continued work on his book. Involved were discussions between Jane and me today, and some poor perceptions on my part.)

Either way the ideas of reality are reinforced both consciously and unconsciously, not only within the family but among all those with whom the family comes in contact.

You get what you concentrate upon. There is no other main rule.

It may be easy for you to see beliefs that are invisible to others in themselves. Reading this book, you may be able to point at friends or acquaintances and see clearly that their ideas are invisible beliefs which limit their experience-and yet be blind to your own invisible beliefs, which you take so readily as truth or characteristics of reality.

Your sense data, again, will most definitely reinforce your ideas. You will also react clairvoyantly and telepathically to inner information at an unconscious level that is, once more, "collected" under the organization of your quite conscious concepts concerning existence in general, and your own in particular. So you are locked into physical situations that are corroborated by the great evidence of sense data-and of course it is convincing because it reflects so beautifully, so creatively, and so actively, your own ideas and beliefs, whether they are positive or negative.

In greater terms positive and negative have little meaning, for the physical experience is meant as a learning one. But if you are unhappy then the word negative has a meaning.

(Pause, one of few, at 9:50.) I expect that by now my readers have at least begun to examine their beliefs, and perhaps obtained a glimpse of some invisible ones that had been accepted before as definite aspects of reality.

Now if you are honest with your lists, you will finally come to what I call core beliefs, strong ideas about your own existence. Many other subsidiary beliefs, that earlier seemed separate from each other, should now appear quite clearly as being offshoots of core beliefs. They seem logical only in their relationship to a core idea. Once the core belief is understood to be a false one, the others will fall away.

It is the core belief which is strong enough to so focus your perception that you perceive from the physical world only those events that correlate with it. It is also the strength of the core belief that draws up from the vast bank of inner knowledge only those events that seem to fit within its organization.

Now let me give you a brief example of a core belief. It is a blanket belief-human nature is inherently evil. This is a core belief. About it will spring events that only serve to reinforce it. Experiences-both personal and global-will come into the perception of a person who holds this belief, that will only serve to deepen it further.

From all the available physical data of newspapers, television, letters and private communication, he or she will concentrate only upon those issues that "prove" that point. Suspicion of others will grow, to say nothing about the individual's personal distrust. The belief will reach into the most intimate areas of his or her life, and finally no evidence will seem to be available to disprove it.

This is a sample of an invisible core belief at its worst. A person holding it will not trust a mate, family, friends, colleagues, country, or the world in general.

Another more personal core belief: "My life is worthless. What I do is meaningless." Now a person who holds such an idea will ordinarily not recognize it as an invisible belief. Instead he or she may emotionally feel that life has no meaning, that individual action is meaningless, that death is annihilation; and connected to this will be a conglomeration of subsidiary beliefs that deeply affect the family involved, and all those with whom such a person comes in contact.

In writing down your list of personal beliefs, therefore, leave nothing out. Examine the list as though it belonged to someone else. I did not want to imply that you make a list of specifically negative ideas, however. It is of supreme importance that you recognize the existence of joyful beliefs, and take into consideration those elements of your own experience with which you have had success.

I want you to capture that feeling of accomplishment, and to translate it, or transfer it, to areas in which you have had difficulty. But you must remember that the ideas exist first and the experience physically follows.

You may take your break.

(10:06 to 10:19.) You make your own reality. I cannot say this too often. There will be periods where all of your beliefs are at an even par, so to speak. They will agree.

The ideas may be quite limited. They may be false. They may be based upon premises that are not true. Their vitality and strength how-ever will be quite real, and seem to bring excellent results.

"Wealth is everything." Now this idea is far from a truth. The per-son who accepts it completely, though, will be wealthy and in excellent health, and everything will fit in quite well with his beliefs. Yet the idea is still a belief about reality, and so there will be invisible gulfs in his experience of which he is ignorant.

On the outside the situation will look most advantageous, and while the person seems quite content, beneath there will be the gnawing knowledge of incompletion. On the surface there will be balance.

So as your beliefs change there will be alterations in your experience and behavior, and points of stress, creative stress, while you are learning. Our rich man just mentioned may suddenly realize that his belief is limiting, in that he concentrated upon it exclusively so that money and health became his sole aims. The shattered belief may leave him open to illness, which would seem like a negative experience. Yet through the illness he may be led to areas of perception he had earlier denied, and [he may] be enriched in that particular manner.

The shifting of belief may then open him to question his other beliefs, and he realizes that in the area of wealth, for example, he did very well because of his beliefs; but in those others, perhaps deeper experiences opened by his illness, he learns that human experience includes dimensions of reality that had earlier been closed to him, and that these are also easily within his reach-and without the illness that originally brought them forth. A new conglomeration of beliefs might emerge. In the meantime there was stress, but it was creative.

(10:31.) Now here is another example. Your conscious thoughts regulate your health. The persistent idea of illness will make you ill. While you believe that you become ill because of viruses, infections or accidents, then you must go to doctors who operate within that system of belief. And because you believe in their cures, hopefully you will be relieved of your difficulty.

Because you do not understand that your thoughts create illness you will continue to undergo it, however, and new symptoms will appear. You will again return to the doctor. When you are in the process of changing beliefs-when you are beginning to realize that your thoughts and feelings cause illness-then for a while you may not know what to do.

In the larger context you realize that the doctor can at best give you temporary relief, yet you may not be completely convinced as yet of your own ability to change your thoughts; or you may be so cowed by their effectiveness that you are frightened. So there is a period of stress in between beliefs, so to speak, while you dispense with one set and are learning to use another.

But here you become involved with one of the most meaningful aspects of the nature of personal reality, as you test your thoughts against what seems to be. There may be a time before you learn how to change your thoughts effectively, but you are engaged in a basic meaningful endeavor.

The truth is then that you form your reality directly. You react consciously and unconsciously to your beliefs. You collect from the physical universe, and the interior one, data that seems to correlate with your beliefs.

Believe, then, that you are a being unlimited by nature, born into flesh to materialize as best you can the great joy and spontaneity of your nature.

Now you may take a break. This will be a shorter chapter because of the previous long one.

(10:40. Jane's pace had been consistently faster than in previous sessions on the book. Break was short. Beginning at 10:45, Seth gave several pages of material for me; Id hardly expected it. Then he wound up the session at 1 1:20 P. m. with this comment: "Now: Tell Ruburt there will be schools of thought built upon core beliefs. Tell him that. ')

Session 618, September 28, 1972, 9:45 p. M. Thursday

(The session was witnessed by writer Richard Bach and his editor, Eleanor Friede. They flew into Elmira yesterday after poor weather had delayed their scheduled arrival on Tuesday in time for ESP class. Dick had also visited us in late August, when Seth had Chapter One of this book under way.

(Jane had delivered a rather lengthy but informal session for our guests last night, as we lingered around the supper table after a late meal Dick recorded it and is to send us a transcript, so later we'll be able to add a few excerpts from that material to this session.

(Earlier this evening Jane had sung quite spontaneously in Sumari, but her manner became more deliberate now as she began speaking for Seth.)

Now: Good evening

("Good evening, Seth.")

-and we will resume dictation. Give us a moment. (Pause.) Core beliefs are those about which you build your life. You are consciously aware of these, though often you do not focus your attention upon them. They become invisible, therefore, unless you become aware of the contents of your conscious mind.

To become acquainted with your own ideas and beliefs you must walk among them, symbolically speaking, without blinders. You must look through the structures that you have yourself created, the organized ideas upon which you have grouped your experience.

To see clearly into your own mind you must first of all unstructure your thoughts, follow them without judging them, without comparing them to the framework of your beliefs.

Structured beliefs collect and hold your experience, packaging it, so to speak; and so when you look at a given experience that seems like another, you put it into the same structured package, often without examination. Such beliefs can hold surprises; when you lift up the cover of one you may find that it has served to hide valuable information that did not belong there. An artificial grouping of ideas, like paper flowers, can be collected about a standard core belief.

The core belief, because of its intensity and because of your habits, will often tend to attract to itself others of a like nature. They will hang on. If you are not accustomed to examining your own mind, then you can allow separate growths of this kind to form about a belief until you cannot distinguish one from the other. This can develop to such an extent that all of your experience is seen only in relationship to this idea-growth. (Seth called for the hyphen.) Data that seems unrelated to this core belief is then not assimilated but thrown into the corners of your mind, unused, and you are denied the value of the information.

Separate portions of your mind can contain such chambers of inactive material. This information will not be a part of the organized structure of your usual thoughts; though the data is consciously available you can be relatively blind to it.

(10:00.) Usually when you look into your conscious mind you do so for a particular reason, to find some information. But if you have schooled yourself to believe that such data is not consciously available, then it will not occur to you to find it in your conscious mind. If furthermore your conscious data is strongly organized about a core belief, then this will automatically make you blind to experience that is not connected with it.

A core belief is invisible only when you think of it as a fact of life, and not as a belief about life; only when you identify with it so completely that you automatically focus your perceptions along that specific line.

For example, here is a seemingly very innocent core belief: "I am a responsible parent."

Now on the surface there is nothing wrong with that belief. If you hold to it and do not examine it, however, you may find that the word "responsible" is quite loaded, and collects other ideas that are equally unexamined by you. What is your idea of being responsible? According to your answer you can discover whether the core belief works to your advantage or not.

If responsible means, "I must be a parent twenty-four hours a day to the exclusion of everything else, " then you may be in difficulty, for that core belief might prevent you from using other abilities that exist quite apart from your parenthood.

You may begin to perceive all physical data through the eyes of that core belief alone. You will not look out upon physical reality with the wonder of a child any more, or with the unstructured curiosity of an individual, but always through parental eyes. Thus you will close your-self off from much of physical experience.

Now telepathically you will also attract unconscious data that fits into this rigid pattern, according to the strength and stubbornness of this idea and whether or not you are willing to deal with it. You may narrow your life still further, all information of any kind finally becoming relatively invisible to you unless it touches upon your parental reality.

Now we will take a break.

(10:12 to 10:21.)

Now: The core belief just given is of one kind.

You hold some basic assumptions that are also core beliefs. To you they seem to be definitions. They are so a part of you that you take them for granted. Your idea of time is one.

You may enjoy manipulating thoughts of time in your mind. You may find yourself thinking that time is basically different from your experience of it, but fundamentally you believe that you exist in the hours and the years, that the weeks come at you one at a time, that you are caught in the onrush of the seasons.

Naturally your physical experience reinforces this belief. You structure your perception, therefore, in terms of the lapses that seem to hap-pen between events. This in itself forces you to concentrate your attention in one direction only, and discourages you from perceiving the events in your life in other fashions.

You may occasionally employ the association of ideas, one thought leading easily to another. When you do this you often perceive new insights. As the events fall apart from time continuity in your mind they seem to take on fresh vitality. You have unstructured them, you see, from the usual organization.

As you apprehend them through association you come quite close to examining the contents of your mind in a free fashion. But if you drop the time concept and then view the conscious content of your mind through other core ideas, you are still structuring. I am not saying that you should never organize those contents. I am saying that you must become aware of your own structures. Build them up or tear them down, but do not allow yourself to become blind to the furniture of your own mind.

You can stub your toe as easily on a misplaced idea as you can upon an old chair. It will help you, in fact, if you think of your own beliefs as furniture that can be rearranged, changed, renewed, completely discarded or replaced. Your ideas are yours. They should not control you. It is up to you to accept those that you choose to accept.

Imagine yourself then rearranging this furniture. Images of particular pieces will come clearly to you. Ask yourself what ideas these pieces represent. See how well the tables fit together. Open up the drawers inside.

(10:35.) There will be no mystery. You know what your own beliefs are. You will see the groupings, but it is up to you to look inside your own mind and to use the images in your own way. Throw out ideas that do not suit you. If you read this, find such an idea in yourself and then say, "I cannot throw this idea away, " then you must realize that your inner remark is in itself a belief. You can indeed throw the idea away, the second one, as easily as the first.

You are not powerless before ideas. Using this analogy, you will certainly find some furniture that you did not expect. Do not simply look in the center of your inner room of consciousness; and make sure that you are on guard against the certain invisibility that was mentioned earlier (in this chapter) , where an idea, quite available, appears to be a part of reality instead.

The structuring of beliefs is done in a highly characteristic yet individual manner, so you will find patterns that exist between various groupings, and one can lead you to another.

The idea of being the responsible parent, for example, may lead quite easily to other psychic structures involving responsibility, so that data is accepted on its own value. You may even think that it is wrong to view any situation except through your parental status.

The belief in guilt therefore would be a cementing structure that would hold together other similar core beliefs, and add to their strength. You must understand that these are not simply dead ideas, like debris, within your mind. They are psychic matter. In a sense then they are alive. They group themselves like cells, protecting their own validity and identity.

You feed them, figuratively speaking, with like ideas. When you examine one such belief then you obviously threaten the integrity of the structure; and so there are ways of inserting new supports, so to speak-methods to tide you over. The whole core belief need not fall down upon you as you examine its basis.

Now: I will stop at that for now, and take a break. We will be finished with this chapter shortly, and then we will begin the next. (To Eleanor and Dick:) I would speak faster for you, but we need the notes for the book.

(10:46. Jane's trance had been good. We were pleased that others had been present during some book dictation. The rest of the session was given over to our guests; Seth's manner became more jovial and his pace speeded up considerably. End at about 12:30 A.M.

(Some notes added later. Dick Bach felt that he didn't really write Seagull himself. By now the story of that book's conception is well known: Late one night in 1959, Dick was walking beside a canal near a West Coast beach when he heard a voice say, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull". No one else was around. He was astonished. He was even more so when, on his return home, the voice initiated images that gave him the bulk of the book in three-dimensional form. Then it stopped. On his own Dick tried unsuccessfully to finish the manuscript. Nothing happened until one day eight years later, when he suddenly wakened to hear the voice again-and with it came the rest of the book.

(Who wrote it? Dick didn't claim authorship. He came across The Seth Material, saw similarities in Jane's and his experiences, and came here to see if she or Seth could explain the phenomenon. There are Points of correlation, of course, only Jane is presented not with just a voice but with an entire personality, Seth, who then writes books while she is in an altered state of consciousness. So she and Dick were highly interested in what Seth would say.

(Besides this Jane's novel, The Education of Oversoul 7, was written under similar [and yet different] circumstances. She describes the processes involved in her Introduction, along with the creation of some of her poetry.

(To Jane, these states are all aspects of the same kind of highly accelerated creativity that finally "goes beyond itself" into Levels-or aspects-of reality that we don't understand clearly yet. The whole question is also relevant in cases involving automatic @ting, painting, singing, musical composition, etc.

(Now here are some near-verbatim quotes from the information Seth gave Dick Bach and company on the evening of September 27, 1972: "Information does not exist by itself. Connected with it is the consciousness of all those who under stand it, perceive it or originate it. So there are not records in term of objective, forever-available banks of information into which you tune. Instead, the consciousness that held, or holds, or will hold the information attracts it like a magnet... The information itself wants to move toward consciousness. It is not dead or inert. It is not something you grab for, it is also something that wants to be grabbed, and so it gravitates to those who seek it.

("Your consciousness attracts the consciousness that is already connected with the material. That is one of my goodies for the evening! Information, then, becomes new and is reborn as it is interpreted through a new consciousness, as Seagull was.

("The inner portion of your being, using those abilities that have always been yours, interpreted the information through the kaleidoscope of your own being, using the best portions of yourself-producing, then, a brilliant truth in new clothes-but in clothes that no one could have given it but yourself. Now I will tell you: If you assign the authorship of Seagull to another, then you deny the uniqueness of your own inner self.

("The truth came to you and was given to you, but the originality and uniqueness was provided by your own inner being, which may now be so separated from your conscious self that it seems to be apart from it.

("So other things were also involved-not only the birth of a book, but the emergence of the inner self, through art, into the physical universe. Now part of the focus and the strength comes from those two births, and the intensity behind them is also the reason why the book's nativity strikes the world as strongly as it does. The two are merged in the book. You are looking for the author of Seagull, and I tell you I am looking at him. He may not have the face that you see when you look in the mirror, simply because you cannot see your true identity in a mirror. But I am looking at all that is visible of the author of Seagull, and you should know him best of all. And I will tell you through the years how to become acquainted with him, and more on speaking terms.

("Ruburt already has a head start on this, so I am not spoiling his fun. There are indeed 'aspects' of your own consciousness that operate in completely different environments. Environments, for example, that are not physical. There are aspects of you, therefore, that know many other kinds of information than those available to you at the conscious level now... '

(Note that Seth endorsed Jane's theory of Aspects. She's begun a book on the subject. In it she will explore-among other things-the nature, validity, and sources of such personalities as Seth, and the "intrusion" of intuitional or revelatory material. Once again, see her Introduction.)

Session 619, October 9, 1972, 9:06 P.M., Monday

(My mother lives with my brother and his family in a small community in upstate New York, near Rochester, and Jane and I had spent the weekend visiting one and all. During our drive back to Elmira this morning Jane said, "Somebody's working on Seth's book, I can tell you that. I keep getting snatches of it. It's about imagination and beliefs, I think, and how they interact-only there's a lot more to it. Well, " she added, pleased, "it's nice to know the work's being done..." )

Now: I bid you good evening-

("Good evening, Seth.)

-and unless there is something you specifically want me to discuss, we will resume dictation.

("No, go ahead.")

Give us a moment, then... Imagination also plays an important part in your subjective life, as it gives mobility to your beliefs. It is one of the motivating agencies that helps transform your beliefs into physical experience. It is vital therefore that you understand the interrelationship between ideas and imagination. In order to dislodge unsuitable beliefs and establish new ones, you must learn to use your imagination to move concepts in and out of your mind. The proper use of imagination can then propel ideas in the directions you desire.

End of Chapter Three.

(Pause at 9:12.) Chapter Four: "Your Imagination and Your Beliefs, and a Few Words About the Origin of Your Beliefs."

In physical life, your conscious mind is largely dependent upon the workings of your physical brain. You have a conscious mind whether you are in flesh or out of it, but when you are physically oriented, then it is connected to the physical brain.

The brain to some extent keeps the mind to a three-dimensional focus. It orients you toward the environment in which you must operate, and it is because of the mind's allegiance with the temporal brain that you perceive, for example, time as a series of moments.

The brain channels the information that the mind receives to your physical structure, so that your experience is physically sifted and automatically translated into terms that the organism can understand. (Seth-Jane spoke emphatically, rapping upon the coffee table between us.) Because of this, physically speaking and in life as you think of it, the mind is to a large extent dependent upon the brain's growth and activity. There is some information necessary to physical survival that must be taught and handed down from parent to child. There are basic assumptions of a general nature with which you are born, but because the specific conditions of your environment are so various, these must be implemented. So it is necessary that the child accept beliefs from its parents.

These will reinforce the family group when the child most needs protection. This acquiescence to belief, then, is important in the early stages as infant develops into child. This sharing of mutual ideas not only protects the new offspring from dangers obvious to the parents; it also serves as a framework within which the child can grow.

(9:27.) This provides leeway until the conscious mind is able to reason for itself and provide its own value judgments. Later I will discuss greater aspects of the origin of ideas, but for now we will simply speak in terms of this life, the one you know.

The beliefs that you receive, therefore, are your parents' conceptions of the nature of reality. They are given to you through example, verbal communication, and constant telepathic reinforcement. You receive ideas about the world in general and your relationship to it; and from your parents you are also given concepts of what you are. You pick up their ideas of your own reality.

Underneath all of this, you carry indelibly within you your own knowledge of your identity, meaning and purpose, but in the early stages of development great care is taken to see that you relate in physical terms. These are directional beliefs that you receive from your parents, orienting you in ways that they feel are safe. Cushioned with these beliefs the child can be safe and satisfy its own curiosity, develop its abilities, and throw its full energy in clearly stated areas of activity.

(9:35.) So it is quite necessary that an acquiescence to belief does exist, particularly in early life. There is no reason, though, for an individual to be bound by childhood beliefs or experience. The nature of some such beliefs is that while seemingly obvious ones are recognized as harmful or foolish, others connected to them may not be so easily understood.

For example: It may seem silly to you that you ever believed in, say, original sin. It may not be so obvious that many of your present actions are caused by a belief in guilt. We will have much to say about the ways in which your beliefs can be connected, simply because you are not used to examining them.

You may say, "I am overweight because I feel guilty about something in my past." You may then try to discover what the charged event was, but in such a case your trouble is a belief in guilt itself.

You do not have to carry such a belief. I am well aware that strong elements of your civilization are built upon ideas of guilt and punishment. Many of you are afraid that without a feeling of guilt there would be no inner discipline, and the world would run wild. It is running quite wild now - not despite your ideas of guilt and punishment, but largely because of them. But we will have more to say about that later in the book.

The early ideas given to you by your parents, then, structure your learning experiences themselves. They set the safe boundaries within which you can operate in early years. Quite without your conscious knowing-because your mind, connected with its brain, is not that developed-your imagination is set along certain roads.

(9:46.) Largely, but not completely, your imagination follows your beliefs, as do your emotions. To some extent there are certain general patterns. A child will cry when it is hurt. It will stop when the hurt stops, and the emotion behind the cry will automatically change into another. But if the child discovers that a prolonged cry after the event gets extra attention and consideration, then it will begin to extend the emotion.

From the earliest stages the child automatically compares its interpretation of reality with its parents'. Since the parents are bigger and stronger and fulfill so many of its needs, it will attempt to bring its experience into line with their expectations and beliefs. While it is generally quite natural for the child to cry or feel "badly" when hurt, this inclination can be carried through belief to such an extent that prolonged feelings of desolation are adopted as definite behavior patterns.

Behind this would be the belief that any hurt was inherently a disaster. Such a belief could originate from an overanxious mother, for instance. If such a mother's imagination followed her belief-as of course it would-then she would immediately perceive a great potential danger to her child in the smallest threat. Both through the mother's actions, and telepathically, the child would receive such a message and react according to those understood beliefs.

Many such beliefs lie quite within the conscious mind. The grown adult, not used to examining his or her own beliefs, however, may be quite unaware of harboring such an idea The idea itself is not buried or unconscious. It is simply unexamined.

So one of the most hampering beliefs of all, as earlier mentioned (in the 614th session in Chapter Two, for instance) , is the idea that the clues to current behavior are buried and usually inaccessible. This belief itself closes to you the contents of your own conscious mind and prevents you from looking there for the answers that are available.

Now you may take your break.

(10:01. Jane said she had been really out during her trance, and that now she felt "almost drunk with exhilaration." The times noted as she delivered the material show that she'd marched along at a good pace. "On the one hand, " she continued, looking a little bleary, "I could go way under and deliver the book until morning; or I could just go to bed and conk right out. " She was quite curious about the reasons behind these feelings.

(I now described an effect that had started to bother me after the session had begun; it's a good little example of the way beliefs can work. No sooner had Seth come through than I became aware of an unaccustomed tightness in my writing hand-a tension that interfered with the automatic formation of the letters and words. I kept the notes going by making an extra effort, but I found it quite distracting to keep thinking about the mechanics of writing while trying to concentrate upon what Seth was saying. The difficulty persisted through the delivery and into break.

(I told Jane I'd thought of using the pendulum after the session to get at the cause of the hand phenomenon, since I didn't want to interrupt book dictation by asking Seth about it. [Briefly for those who have asked me. The pendulum is a very old method. I use it, with excellent results, to obtain ideomotor-"subconscious"-responses about knowledge that lies just outside my usual consciousness. I hold a small heavy object suspended by a thread so that it's free to move. By mentally asking questions, I obtain "yes" or "no" answers according to whether the pendulum swings back and forth, or from side to side.]

(As we talked about our individual hang-ups, Jane said that we had a choice: We could get material on them or continue with book work. Both channels were available from Seth, complete. Although we wanted dictation to continue we were also interested in learning more about our personal questions. Feeling somewhat guilty, we opted for the latter course-but as the material unfolded we were glad we'd done so. Resume at 10:20.)

Now: This is your information.

First of all, it is within your conscious mind. The pendulum would be a method of allowing you to view conscious material that is not structured to recognized beliefs. I want you to understand that, for the reader does not have the benefit of my talking to him personally in this way.

The belief is conscious. You are well aware of it, but you are not aware of those that cling to it. The belief is that you do not communicate well with your mother.

(Seth was quite correct. Talk about seeing the proverbial light-suddenly I saw the belief that had been right there all the time... Remember that Jane and I had spent the weekend visiting my mother and brother, et al.)

Hinged to this is the belief that this felt lack of communication is wrong, and that for anything wrong you should be punished. In taking dictation for this book you are helping us communicate with many people, while at the same time you feel that you cannot communicate with your own parent.

These beliefs working together, then, bring about a strain in the hand that does the writing. Quite simply, you want to express through the sessions these ideas in which you so believe, and yet you feel or believe yourself guilty for doing so when you cannot describe the same ideas to your own parent.

The conflicting beliefs, then, cause the difficulty in the method. The hand's motion is not as automatically smooth as it should be. You also believe that you communicate through writing far better than you do verbally. To Ruburt you often write notes, saying things easily and beautifully that you find difficult verbally because of your belief.

("Yes...")

So this evening you feel guilty in reaching others through transcribing the notes, when you believe that you could not reach your mother vocally. So the method becomes involved with your beliefs.

(With a smile:) I am giving this to you to show you how beliefs work.

("I need the help, too.")

You also believe-(humorously:) if you wish you can underline every "believe" while I am talking to you-that your main method of communication is painting; and here you are taking notes as a form of dissemination instead.

This would not be involved particularly were it not for the fact of two subsidiary current beliefs that conflict, having to do with the weekend. One, that you should be in Rochester, as you were, dealing vocally with your mother. And two, that you should have been here, reaching out to the world at large through your painting.

Instead, on your return you are communicating to the world through your notes-a choice you made consciously, but without being aware of the other contents of your conscious mind, and the "conflicting" beliefs. Do you follow me?

("Yes.")

These mentioned beliefs are obvious enough when I tell you of them, but their opposing natures gave confusing data to the body consciousness: Write and do not write.

(10:35.) The idea of punishment, the belief in it, also enters in. You do what you decided to do anyway-have the session-but by punishing yourself with your own personal interpretation.

Your mother's "condition, " you believe, involves a lack of communication. Your brother told you about her occasionally faltering speech. Now your quite conscious interpretation of an apt kind of self-punishment was a lack of hand motion. I am trying to put this simply so you can follow the connections.

Because you believe your method of expression is primarily through your hand in painting, and you believe your mother's to be vocal, you tampered with your hand's motion-not, for example, your speech. Can you follow that consciously?

("Yes." And it was very well put, I thought as I wrote.)

Now at various times you made those conscious choices. They escaped your notice but they existed as conscious points of awareness and choice. Now do you have any questions?

(10:40. "No, I'd just like time to think about all of this.")

Now: Ruburt has recently been in the process of recognizing some beliefs that he wants to get rid of. He has been loosening them so that they rattle around within his consciousness. He is becoming aware of them. They are not as invisible as they were. He is facing many of them for the first time.

You should both become equally aware, and consciously and alertly aware, of the beneficial ideas and their importance in your lives-and this will be a portion of the book for others also.

Tonight Ruburt was exhausted, in one way, from comparing your joint beliefs with those of your brother's family; of checking his own body beliefs (Jane touched her knee) with theirs and seeing where his were detrimental-but also from contrasting his personal psychic and creative abilities with theirs, and that exhilarated him. The result (smilingly) was that he felt both exhausted and exhilarated.

I saw to it that he became aware that I was working on our book (this morning) . Ideas about it came into his consciousness. In the past, he did not believe that such bleed-through should occur, and so in his experience they did not usually emerge. They were there but his belief prevented his recognition of them.

I will from time to time give subsidiary material for Ruburt and also for you, implementing a chapter in the book for your personal use. It is vital that you realize you are working with beliefs in your mind-that the real work is done there in the mind-and not look for immediate physical results.

They will follow as surely and certainly as the "bad" results followed, and this must be a belief: that the good results will come. But the real work is done in the mind. If you do the work then you can rest assured of the results, but you must not check constantly for them. Do you see the difference?

("Yes.")

Do you have any questions?

("No. I think it's excellent material." As Seth, Jane now did something rather unusual. She turned in her rocker to look at the clock that sits to her left and somewhat behind her, on our combination bookcase and room divider.)

Now: Take a brief break. I will then add some book material to get us further into the chapter, but I will not keep you overlong.

(10:55. After Jane had come out of another "far-out trance, " as she put it, I was very pleased to tell her that my writing hand was much improved and that Seth had answered her own questions. I went over the delivery with her. Resume at 11:08.)

Dictation. (Pause.) Your beliefs always change to some extent. As an adult you perform many activities that you believed you could not as a child. For instance: You may at [the age of] three have believed it was dangerous to cross a street. By thirty, hopefully, you have dismissed such a belief, though it fit in very well and was necessary to you in your childhood. If your mother reinforced this belief telepathically and verbally through dire pictures of the potential danger involved in street crossing, however, then you would also carry within you that emotional fear, and perhaps entertain imaginative considerations of possible accident.

Your emotions and your imagination both follow your belief. When the belief vanishes then the same emotional context is no longer entertained, and your imagination turns in other directions. Beliefs automatically mobilize your emotional and imaginative powers.

Few beliefs are intellectual alone. When you are examining the contents of your conscious mind, you must learn, or recognize, the emotional and imaginative connotations that are connected with a given idea. There are various ways of altering the belief by substituting its opposite. One particular method is three-pronged. You generate the emotion opposite the one that arises from the belief you want to change, and you turn your imagination in the opposite direction from the one dictated by the belief. At the same time you consciously assure yourself that the unsatisfactory belief is an idea about reality and not an aspect of reality itself

You realize that ideas are not stationary. Emotions and imagination move them in one direction or the other, reinforce them or negate them.

(Pause at 11:23.) Quite deliberately you use your conscious mind playfully, creating a game as children do, in which for a time you completely ignore what seems to be in physical terms and "pretend" that what you really want is real.

If you are poor, you purposely pretend that you have all you need financially. Imagine how you will spend your money. If you are ill, imagine playfully that you are cured. See yourself doing what you would do. If you cannot communicate with others, imagine yourself doing so easily. If you feel your days dark and pointless, then imagine them filled and joyful.

Now this may sound impractical, yet in your daily life you use your imagination and your emotions often at the service of far less worthy beliefs; and the results are quite clear-and let me add, unfortunately practical.

As it took a while for the unsatisfactory beliefs to become materialized, so it may be a time before you see physical results; but the new ideas will take growth and change your experience as certainly as the old ones did. The process of imagining will also bring you face to face with other subsidiary ideas that may momentarily bring you up short. You may see where you held two quite conflicting ideas simultaneously, and with equal vigor. In such a case, you stalemated yourself.

You may believe that you have a right to health, and yet with equal intensity believe that the human condition is by nature tainted. So you will try to be healthy and not healthy at the same time, or successful and not successful, according to your individual system of beliefs-for later in the book you will see how your beliefs will generally fall into a Sys-tem of related ideas.

This is the end for the evening.

("Very good, Seth.")

(Pleasantly.) I am glad you approve.

("Good night.")

I bid you a fond good evening, and a hearty introduction to good beliefs.

("Thank you." End at 11:33 P.M. Once the session was over Jane began to yawn repeatedly, her eyes wet. My waiting hand was practically free of tension now.

(The members of Jane's ESP class have been putting the ideas in Personal Reality to good use. Strangely, this has made Jane somewhat impatient, since she can only proceed with what Seth has given so far. She finds herself in the odd position of envying future readers, who will be able to go through the finished work and make use of it as a unit.

(The next morning Jane told me that she and/or Seth "worked on the book all night. Each time I woke up, dictation, or stuff like that, was going on. It was pretty insistent-almost unpleasantly so at times..." She's experienced such effects before in connection with the book. They aren't a nightly occurrence by any means, but I suggested she tell herself upon retiring that she shouldn't be aware of such activity during sleeping hours. We planned to ask Seth about it also.)

Session 620, October 11, 1972, 10:00 P.M., Wednesday

(Late this afternoon Jane received a call from a senior editor of Time magazine. He wants to talk to her later this week in connection with a cover story he is to write about Richard Bach. Dick's book has become a national phenomenon. See the 618th session in Chapter Three.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

(Humorously:) I hope you have time for me.

("I get it. Yes.")

We will then resume dictation. (Pause.) Your beliefs generate emotion. It is somewhat fashionable to place feelings above conscious thoughts, the idea being that emotions are more basic and natural than conscious reasoning is. The two actually go together but your conscious thinking largely determines your emotions, and not the other way around. Your beliefs generate the appropriate emotion that is implied. A long period of inner depression does not just come upon you. Your emotions do not betray you. Instead, over a period of time you have been consciously entertaining negative beliefs that then-generated the strong feelings of despondency.

If emotion could be trusted above conscious reasoning then there would be little point in aware thought at all. You would not need it.

You are not at the mercy of your emotions, either, for they are meant to follow the flow of your reasoning. Your mind is meant to perceive the physical environment clearly, and its judgments about the environment then activate the body's mechanisms to bring about proper response. If your beliefs about existence are fearful, then the emotional reactions will be those leading to stress. Your own value judgments need examination in such a case.

Your imagination of course fires your emotions, and it also follows your beliefs faithfully. As you think so you feel, and not the other way around.

Later we will have some comments regarding hypnotism. Here let me mention that in those terms you hypnotize yourself constantly with your own conscious thoughts and suggestions. The term hypnosis merely applies to a quite normal state in which you concentrate your attention, narrowing your focus to a particular area of thought or belief.

You concentrate with great vigor upon one idea, usually to the exclusion of others. It is a quite conscious performance. As such it also portrays the importance of belief, for using hypnosis you "force-feed" a belief to yourself, or one given to you by another-a "hypnotist"; but you concentrate all of your attention upon the idea presented.

Here, as in normal life, your emotions and actions follow your beliefs. If you believe you are sick then for all intents and purposes you are sick. If you believe that you are healthy then you are healthy. There is much written about the nature of healing, and there will be material in this book dealing with it, but there is also healing-in-reverse, in which case an individual loses a belief in his or her health and accepts instead the idea of personal illness.

(Pause at 10:22.) Here the belief itself will generate the negative emotions that will, indeed, bring about a physical or emotional illness. The imagination will follow, painting dire mental pictures of a particular condition. Before long physical data bears out the negative belief, negative in that it is far less desirable than a concept of health.

I mention this here simply because in the overall development of an individual, an illness may also be used as a method to achieve another, constructive, end. In such a case belief would also be involved: Such a person would have to believe that an unhealthy condition was the best way to serve another purpose.

Other means would seem closed to him because of various personal beliefs that would form a vacuum in his experience-that is, he would see no other way, perhaps, to achieve the same end. This will be discussed much more thoroughly later in the book.

One belief, of course, can be dependent upon many others, each generating its own emotion and imaginative reality. The belief in illness itself depends upon a belief in human unworthiness, guilt and imperfection, for example.

The mind does not hold just active beliefs. It contains many others in a passive state. These lie latent, ready to be focused upon and used; any of them can be brought to the fore when a conscious thought acts as a stimulus.

If you are focusing upon ideas of poverty, illness or lack, for example, your conscious mind also holds latently concepts of health, vigor and abundance. If you divert your thoughts from the negative ideas to the positive ones, then your concentration will begin to alter the balance. The vast reservoir of energy and potential within you is called into action under the leadership of your conscious mind.

Because you are reasoning as creatures, because you have available such varieties of experience, the [human] species developed reasoning abilities that are meant to evolve and grow as they are used. Your consciousness expands as you use it. You become "more" conscious as you exercise these faculties.

A flower cannot write a poem about itself. You can, and in so doing your own consciousness turns around about itself. It literally becomes more than it was. Existing in such diversified, rich environment-possibilities, the human psyche needed and developed a conscious mind that could make fairly concise and accurate "minute by minute" judgments and evaluations. As the conscious mind grew, now, so did the range of imagination. The conscious mind is a vehicle for the imagination in many ways. The greater its knowledge the further the reach of imagination. In return imagination enriches conscious reasoning and emotional experience.

(Slowly:) You have not learned to use your consciousness properly or fully, so that it seems that imagination, emotions and reasoning are separate faculties, or sometimes set against each other. The mature conscious mind, once more, accepts data from the exterior world and from the interior one. It is only when you believe that consciousness must be attuned only to exterior conditions that you force it to cut itself off from inner knowledge, intuitional "voices, " and the depths from which it springs.

You may take your break.

(10:48. Jane had spoken for Seth at a deliberate pace throughout the delivery, in a rather dry voice. Her trance had been good. This proved to be the end of book work for the evening. Seth came through with five additional pages of material for Jane and me, however, and the session ended at 11:45 P.M.)

Session 621, October 16, 1972, 9:40 P.M.. P.M., Monday

(Seth spoke through Jane five times last week. On P.M., Monday and Wednesday evenings he furnished material on this book, plus some personal material for us; discussed at length Tuesday night in ESP class; spoke briefly Friday afternoon to a visiting editor from Time magazine-subject, Freudian psychology; and on Saturday evening talked informally to a group of our friends about daily life in Italy during the time he had been a minor pope in the fourth century A.D. [Reincarnation-wise, Seth had first mentioned his papal experience in an ESP class session in May, 1971. See Chapter Twenty-two of Seth Speaks.]

(I made just a few notes on the Saturday night material after our guests left. We'd been discussing current population problem when Seth came through to tell us that in the fourth century, infanticide-at least to his knowledge-had been quite common. Before a child was baptized it was considered to be the property of its parents, who could do with it as they wished, with no stigma attached.

(Surplus children, who would have been "an impossible burden " upon the economy of the times, its housing, food supply, etc., were simply killed before baptism. Once the child was baptized, however, it became a sacred being, possessing a soul and the right to life...

(Seth added that our records of those early centuries are confused as far as the Church, baptism and children are concerned. There was quite a bit more to the session but I didn't think my memory of it was clear enough for accurate notes.)

Good evening again.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: I am not minimizing the importance of the inner self. All of its infinite resources are placed at the disposal of your conscious mind, however, and for your conscious purposes.

(Pause.) There has been on the one hand a too-great reliance upon the conscious mind-while its characteristics and mechanisms were misunderstood-so that proponents of the "conscious-reasoning-mind-above-all" theories advocate a use of intellect and reasoning powers, while not recognizing their source in the inner self.

The conscious mind was [therefore] expected to perform alone, so to speak, ignoring the highly intuitive inner information that is also available to it. It was not supposed to be aware of such data. Yet any individual knows quite well that intuitive hunches, inspiration, precognitive information or clairvoyant material has often risen to conscious knowledge. Usually it is shoved away and disregarded because you have been taught that the conscious mind should not hold with such "nonsense." So you have been told to trust your conscious mind, while at the same time you were led to believe it could only be aware of stimuli that came to it from the outside physical world.

On the other hand there are those who stress the great value of the inner self, the emotional being, at the expense of the conscious mind. These theories hold that the intellect and usual consciousness are far inferior to the inner "unconscious" portions of being, and that all the answers are hidden from view. (Pause.) The followers of this belief consider the conscious mind in such derogatory terms that it almost seems to be a supercilious cancer that sprouted like a growth upon man's psyche-impeding rather than aiding his progress and understanding.

Both groups ignore the miraculous unity of the psyche, the fine natural interworkings that exist between the so-called conscious mind and the so-called unconscious-the incredibly rich interaction as each gives and takes.

The "unconscious" simply contains great portions of your own experience in which you have been taught not to believe. Again, your conscious mind is meant to look into the exterior world and into the interior one. The conscious mind is a vehicle for the expression of the soul in corporeal terms.

(A one-minute pause at 9:59.) It is your method of assessing temporal experience according to the beliefs that it holds about the nature of reality. It automatically causes the body to react in certain ways. I cannot say this often enough: Your beliefs form your reality, your body and its condition, your personal relationships, your environment, and en masse your civilization and world.

Your beliefs automatically attract the appropriate emotions. They reinforce themselves through imagination; and at the risk of repeating myself, because this is so important: Imagination and feeling follow your beliefs. It is not the other way around.

If-now, a brief innocuous-enough example-you meet an individual often enough and think, "He gives me a pain in the neck, " it is surely no coincidence that you find yourself with a painful neck in future encounters with this person. The suggestion is quite a conscious one, however (emphatically) , given by yourself and carried out not symbolically but most practically, most literally. In other words, the conscious mind gives its orders and the inner self carries them out.

In this existence you are physically oriented. Surely then the conscious physically oriented mind is the one that is meant to make deductions about the nature of physical reality. Otherwise you would have no free will.

(10:10.) In Western culture since the Industrial Revolution (after about 1760) , the idea grew that there was little connection between the objects in the world and the individual. Now this is not a history book so I will not go into the reasons behind this idea, but will merely mention that it was an overreaction, in your terms at least, to previous religious concepts.

Before that time man did believe that he could affect matter and the environment through his thoughts. With the Industrial Revolution, however, even the elements of nature lost their living quality in man's eyes. They became objects to be categorized, named, torn apart and examined.

You do not dissect a pet cat or dog, so when man began to dissect the universe in those terms he had already lost his sense of love for it. It became soulless for him. Only then could he examine it, you see, without qualm, and without being aware of the living voice that protested (Jane now spoke in a much louder and deeper voice temporarily) ; and so in his great fascination for what made things work, in his great curiosity to understand the heredity of a flower, say, he forgot what he could [also] learn by smelling a flower, looking at it, watching it be itself.

So he examined "dead nature." Often he had to kill life in order, he thought, to discover its reality.

You cannot understand what makes things live when you must first rob their life. And so when man learned to categorize, number and dissect nature, he lost its living quality and no longer felt a part of it. To some important extent he denied his heritage, for spirit is born into nature and the soul, and for a time resides in flesh.

Man's thoughts no longer seemed to have any effect upon nature because in his mind he saw himself apart from it. In an ambiguous fashion, while concentrating upon nature's exterior aspects in a very conscious manner, he still ended up denying the conscious powers of his own mind. He became blind to the connection between his thoughts and his physical environment and experience.

Do you want a break?

("No.")

Nature became then an adversary that he must control. Yet underneath he felt that he was at the mercy of nature, because in cutting himself off from it he also cut himself off from using many of his own abilities.

It was at this point that the nature of the conscious mind itself became so misunderstood, and those unrecognized or denied powers were assigned to unconscious portions of the self by ensuing schools of psychology. (With emphasis:) Very natural functions of the conscious mind, therefore, were assigned to the "underground" and cut off from normal use.

Now you may take your break.

(10:29. Jane had been very well dissociated, with her delivery intense and often fast. She shook her head as she came out of trance. "Wow, was he ever going strong. Boy... I didn't have the slightest idea of what he was going to talk about tonight, but then I saw that he had one whole block of stuff to get through before he gave us any break... . "

(Resume in the same active manner at 10:40.)

Now: Resume dictation. Then I will have a remark to make.

("Okay.")

Give us a moment... Because the conscious mind has been so stressed (while stripped of many of its characteristics) , there is now an overreaction occurring in which normal consciousness is being put down, colloquially speaking.

Emotion and imagination are being considered as far superior. The displaced powers of consciousness are still being assigned to the unconscious, and great efforts are being made to reach what seem to be normally inaccessible areas of awareness. To this end drugs are used, cults set up, and there are methods and training manuals galore. Period. Yet there is nothing basically inaccessible about such "inner knowledge or experience." It can all be quite conscious, and used to enrich the reality that you know. The conscious mind is not some prodigal child or poor relative of the self. It can quite freely focus into inner reality when you understand that it can. You, again, have a conscious mind. You can change the focus of your own consciousness.

There have been tyrannies propagated for various reasons by the race of man upon itself. One of the greatest, however, is the idea that the conscious mind does not have any touch with the fountains of its own being, that it is divorced from nature, and that the individual is there-fore at the mercy of unconscious drives over which he has no control.

Man therefore feels himself powerless. If the purpose of civilization is to enable the individual to live in peace, joy, security and abundance, then that idea has served him poorly.

(Pause at 10:55.) When a man or a woman feels no connection between personal reality and experience and the surrounding world, then he [or she] loses even an animal's sense of pure competence and belonging. Your beliefs, once more, form your reality, shaping your life and all of its conditions.

All of the powers of your inner self are set into activation as a result of your conscious beliefs. You have lost a sense of responsibility for your conscious thought because you have been taught that it is not what forms your life. You have been told that regardless of your beliefs you are terrorized by unconscious conditioning.

The whole following sentence to be underlined: And as long as you hold that conscious belief you will experience it as reality.

(All through these pages Jane's delivery was most absorbed and energetic. I easily felt Seth staring at me through her wide-open eyes.)

Some of your beliefs originated in your childhood, but you are not at their mercy unless you believe that you are. Because your imagination follows your beliefs, you can find yourself in a vicious circle in which you constantly paint pictures in your mind that reinforce "negative" aspects in your life.

The imaginative events generate appropriate emotions, which automatically bring about hormonal changes in your body or affect your behavior with others, or cause you to interpret events always in the light of your beliefs. And so daily experience will seem to justify what you believe more and more.

The only way out of it is to become aware of your beliefs, aware of your own conscious thought, and to change your beliefs so that you bring them more in line with the kind of reality you want to experience. Imagination and emotion will then automatically come into play to reinforce the new beliefs.

As mentioned (in the 614th session in Chapter Two) , the first important step is to realize that your beliefs about reality are just that-beliefs about reality and not necessarily attributes of reality. You must make a clear distinction between you and your beliefs. You must then realize that your beliefs are physically materialized. What you believe to be true in your experience is true. To change the physical effect you must change the original belief-while being quite aware that for a time physical materializations of the old beliefs may still hold.

If you completely understand what I am saying, however, your new beliefs will-and quickly-begin to show themselves in your experience. But you must not be concerned for their emergence, for this brings up the fear that the new ideas will not materialize, and so this negates your purpose.

I mentioned (in the 619th session) a game in which you playfully adopt an idea that you want to materialize, then imagine it happening in your mind. Know that all events are mental and psychic first and that these will happen in physical terms, but do not keep watching yourself. Continue with the game.

(11:10.) You are doing the same thing now constantly and automatically with whatever beliefs you have, and they are being as constantly and automatically translated. It is the separation of self from beliefs that is so important initially, however.

You are not to hammer at yourself consciously. Imagination and emotion are your great allies. Your conscious direction will automatically bring them into play. You can see why it is so important that you examine all of your beliefs about yourself and the nature of your reality; and one belief, if you let it, will lead you to another.

Now: Much has been written saying that if imagination and will power are in conflict, imagination will win. Now I tell you, if you examine yourself you will find (deeper and louder) that imagination and will power are never-underlined twice-in conflict. Your beliefs may conflict, but your imagination will always follow your will power and your conscious thoughts and beliefs.

If this is not apparent to you, then it is because you have not as yet completely examined your beliefs. Let us take a simple example: You are overweight. You have tried diets to no avail. You tell yourself that you want to lose weight. You follow what I have said so far. You change the belief. You say, "Because I believe I am overweight, I am, so I will think of myself at my ideal weight."

But you find that you still overeat. In your mind's eye you still see yourself as overweight, imagine the goodies and snacks, and in your terms "give in" to your imagination-and you think that will power is useless and conscious thought powerless.

But pretend that you go beyond this point. In sheer desperation you say, "All right, I will examine my beliefs further!" Now this is a hypothetical case so you may find one of innumerable beliefs. You may, for instance, find that you believe you are not worthy, and hence should not look attractive. Or that health means physical weight and it is dangerous to be slim.

Or you may find that you feel-and believe that you are-so vulnerable that you need the weight so people will think twice before they shove you around. In all of these cases the ideas will be conscious. You have entertained them often and your imagination and emotions are in league with them, and not in conflict.

(As Seth, Jane looked at the clock on our bookcase.)

Do you want a break, or do you want to end the session?

("We'll take a break.")

As you will.

(11:26. To me, Jane's very deep trance had seemed to be quite impervious, her delivery fueled by a driving energy. She confirmed that she hadn't been bothered in the slightest by anything, and added that Seth was really able to continue until dawn. It certainly seemed so.

(Moreover, she sat waiting for me to finish these notes so that Seth could return. He was ready with some personal data for us, she said, and this would be followed by more book dictation if we stayed up for it.

(Seth did return at 11.35 with some information deleted here. He also gave some unrecorded material during a freer exchange between the two of us; I described this to Jane after the session while it was fresh in my memory. At ll: 52 Jane sat quietly, still in trance, while I wrote a few lines. Then she resumed book dictation at 11:55.)

Now: You may be poor. Following my suggestions, you may try to alter the belief and say, "My wants are taken care of and I have a great abundance." Yet you may still find yourself unable to meet your bills.

Imaginatively you may see the next bill coming, with you unable to pay it. "I will have enough money, " you say. "This is my new belief. " But nothing changes so you think, "My conscious thoughts mean nothing." Yet upon examination of your beliefs you may find a deep conviction of your own unworthiness.

You may find yourself thinking, "I am no one to begin with, " or "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, " or, "The world is against me, " or, "Money is wrong. People who have it are not spiritual." You may discover, again, one of numerous beliefs that all lead to the fact that you do not want to have money or are afraid of it. In any case your imagination and your beliefs go hand in hand.

You may be trying to remember your dreams-another example. You may give yourself appropriate suggestions each night, only to awaken again with no memory of them. You may say, "Consciously I want to remember my dreams, but my suggestions do not work. Therefore what I want on a conscious level has little significance."

Yet if you examine your beliefs more carefully you will find one of many possible beliefs, such as, "I'm afraid to remember my dreams, " or,-My dreams are always unpleasant, " or, "I'm afraid to know what I dream about, " or, "I want to remember my dreams but-they may tell me more than I want to know!"-

In this case also your reality colors your beliefs, and your experience is a direct result of your conscious attitudes. By such attitudes as these just mentioned you put clamps upon your inner self, purposely hamper your experience, and reinforce beliefs in the negative aspects of your being.

Only by examining these ideas of your own can you learn where you stand with yourself. Now I do not mean to stress the negative by any means, so I suggest that you look to those areas of your life in which you are pleased and have done well. See how emotionally and imaginatively you personally reinforced those beliefs and brought them to physical fruition-realize how naturally and automatically the results appeared. Catch hold of those feelings of accomplishment and understand that you can use the same methods in other areas.

End of dictation.

("Okay.")

And unless you have questions, end of session.

("No, I guess not. It's very interesting.")

It's always a pleasure.

("Thank you. Goodnight."

(12:07 A.M. As Jane came slowly out of trance she announced the title for the next chapter, which will be Five. It had just come to her. "The Future and Your Present Beliefs.-"But I think there's still a little tail left to this chapter first, " she said. Eyes closed, she sank back into her rocker. It took an extra effort for her to rouse herself enough to go to bed.

(A note added @. "I was wrong about this being the title of the next chapter, "Jane wrote in November, "but I know it will be one... 'However, not only was the end of this chapter not so imminent; Seth never did use Jane's suggested chapter heading.)

Session 622, October 18, 1972, 9:40 P.M., Wednesday

("It's funny. I'm still waiting for the session, "Jane said at 9.35. By then, we'd been ready for twenty minutes. I hadn't really expected her to have a session tonight-but then, was my belief influencing reality? She had delivered a long and intense one P.M., Monday night, and in Tuesday's ESP class she'd "been in and out of trance all night, " as she described it. This meant for about three hours; Sumari had been included, too. Jane's energy has been high for some time now.

(Then at 9.38 she said, "At last - I feel Seth around. We'll have a session after all...")

Now: Good evening

("Good evening, Seth.")

- and we will begin with dictation. (Quietly.)

You also communicate your beliefs to others, of course. When visitors enter your home, they do not see it exactly as you do because they also view it through the screen of their beliefs. In your own environment however your personal beliefs will usually predominate.

(Pause.) People with like ideas reinforce each other's beliefs. You may meet with some misunderstanding when you suddenly decide to change your reality by changing your beliefs-according to the circumstances, you may be going in a completely different direction than the group to which you belong. The others may feel it necessary to defend ideas that all of you previously took for granted. In such cases your beliefs merged. Each individual has his or her own ideas about reality for reasons that seem valid. Needs are met. When you abruptly change your beliefs, then in the group you no longer have the same position-you are not playing that game any longer.

In the group, you may suddenly cease to provide for the others a need that you satisfied earlier. This affects both intimate behavior and, say, social interactions.

(Interestingly enough, we're already beginning to hear about such frictions developing, especially from members of ESP class as they work with the ideas in this book. Other people we see regularly have similar episodes to relate.)

For a time then you may experience a feeling of loss as you move from one group of beliefs to another. However, others, sharing your new beliefs, will gravitate toward you and you to them. I will say more about this later in the book, but it explains for example why a diet-watcher, suddenly determined to lose weight, may meet with veiled or even open resistance from family or friends; why the person who makes new resolutions may find himself baffled by associates' ridicule; why the alcoholic trying not to drink finds others tempting him quite openly, or teasing him into indulgence by hidden tactics.

When someone who has been ill starts on the road to recovery through changing his beliefs, he may be quite surprised to find even his dearest allies suddenly upset, reminding him of the "reality" of his dire state for the same reasons.

New paragraph: Because beliefs form reality-the structure of experience-any change in beliefs altering that structure initiates change to some extent, of course. The status quo which served a certain purpose is gone, new elements are introduced, another creative process begins. Because your private beliefs are shared with others, because there is interaction, then any determined change of direction on your part is felt by others, and they will react in their own fashion.

You are setting out to experience the most fulfilled reality that you can. To do this you have, hopefully, begun to examine your beliefs. You may want others to change. In doing so you begin with yourself. I told you (in the 619th session) to imagine a game in which you see yourself acting in line with the new desired belief. As you do so, see yourself affecting others in the new fashion.

(10:01.) See them reacting to you in the new way. This is highly important because telepathically you are sending them interior messages. You are telling them that you are changing the conditions and behavior of your relationship. You are broadcasting your altered position.

Some will be quite able to understand you at that level. There may be those who need the old framework, and someone, if not you, to play the part you played before. Those people will either drop out of your experience or you must drop them from yours.

Once more, if you think of daily life as an ever-moving three-dimensional painting with you as the artist, then you will realize that as your beliefs change so will your experience. You must accept the idea completely, however, that your beliefs form your experience. Discard those beliefs that are not bringing you those effects you want. In the meantime you will often be in the position of telling yourself that something is true in the face of physical data that seems completely contradictory. You may say, "I live amid abundance and am free from want, " while your eyes tell you that the desk is piled with bills. You must realize that you are the one who produced that "physical evidence" that still faces you, and you did so through your beliefs.

So as you alter the belief, the physical evidence will gradually begin to "prove" your new belief as faithfully as it did your old one. You must work with your own ideas. While there are general categories of beliefs, and general reasons for them, you must become personally aware of your own, for no one person is completely like any other. The old beliefs served a purpose and fulfilled a need.

As mentioned earlier you may have believed that of itself poverty was more spiritual than abundance, or that you were basically unworthy and should therefore punish yourself by being poor. (See the 614th session in Chapter Two, for instance.)

You may take your break.

(10:15 to 10:30.)

According to your energy, power and intensity, you can help change the beliefs of many people, of course.

In your daily physical life you are usually concerned simply with changing your beliefs about yourself, and then changing the beliefs others hold about you. You will find conflicting beliefs within yourself and you must become aware of these. As an example, you may believe that you want to understand the nature of your inner self-you may tell yourself you want to remember your dreams, but at the same time still hold a belief in the basic unworthiness of the self, and be quite frightened of remembering your dreams because of what you might find there.

It does no good in such a case to bemoan the situation and say, "I want to understand myself but I'm frightened that I will not like what I find." You yourself must change your beliefs. You must stop believing that the inner self is a dungeon of unsavory repressed emotion. It does contain some repressed emotion. It also contains great intuition, knowledge, and the answers to all of your questions.

Listen to your own conversation as you speak with friends, and to theirs. See how you reinforce each other's beliefs. See how your imaginations often follow the same lines. All of this is quite out in the open if you realize that it is.

Almost everyone in this society is acquainted with the old suggestion, "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better." Now that is an excellent suggestion, given by the conscious self to other portions of your being. The results of such a suggestion would also follow your conscious beliefs, however.

Earlier I used, "I am a dependable parent, " as an example of a belief. (See the 618th session in Chapter Three.) If to you this means, "I give great attention to seeing that my children brush their teeth, eat enough, and perform properly, " then you will interpret the "better and better" suggestion in that light.

If the belief means to you that love for children is best expressed in those terms, if you feel that there is something embarrassing about expressing affection directly, then the "better and better" suggestion may only reinforce that belief.

You may become more and more efficient in that manner. This is why it is vital that you examine your beliefs for yourself and understand what they mean to you personally. If, using that example, you suddenly begin to realize your position and begin to express your love to your children directly, you may find them quite surprised, delighted but confused. It may take them a while to understand your reactions, but as the old reality had a cohesiveness so will the new.

You must therefore understand and examine your beliefs, realize that they form your experience, and consciously change those that do not give the effects you want. In such an examination you will be aware of many excellent beliefs that work for you. Trace these through. See how they were followed by your imagination and emotions. If possible, look in your own past for points where recognizable new ideas came to you and beneficially changed your experience.

Ideas not only alter the world constantly, they make it constantly.

Now: We are nearly at the end o@ Chapter Four. I will give you both a rest, and we will resume at our next session. My heartiest regards to you both.

("Thank you very much, Seth." End at 10:54 P.M.)

Session 623, October 25, 1972, 9:45 P.M., Wednesday

(No session was held last P.M., Monday night.

(This afternoon Jane began to experience strong feelings of relaxation. These lasted well into the evening. Also, while lying down before supper she received the last three words of the title for this book. The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book. See the notes at the end of Seth's Preface, which we received as the 609th session on April 10, 1972.

(Jane said she didn't want to postpone the session even though she felt "so great"-so much like just taking it easy. Mile we were talking about health in general, I wondered why so many people in our society wore glasses. I mention this here because the subject unexpectedly crops up in the session.

(Just before 9:45 Jane told me I could have material from Seth on the glasses idea, or on his book. Both channels were open. I chose this book, of course. "It's funny, "Jane said, 'but I know that the next [fifth] chapter is there. It's about health and sound, inside sound and outside sound. "She proved to be correct, but at the moment she was unable to elaborate.

(The house was noisy temporarily: A carpenter in a downstairs apartment was using an electric saw at frequent intervals as he repaired some of the damage caused by last June's massive flood. Jane's Seth voice was rather quiet, however.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: Let us go on to discuss the relationship between the inner self, your conscious beliefs, and your most intimate physical creation-your human image.

End of Chapter Four.

Chapter Five. (Pause.) "The Constant Creation of the Physical Body." As mentioned (in Chapter Four) , the conscious mind is a portion of the inner self; that part that surfaces, so to speak, and meets physical reality more or less directly.

You are mainly concerned now with physical orientation and the corporeal materialization of inner reality. Therefore the conscious mind holds in ready access the information that you require for effective day-to-day living. It is not necessary that you hold in steady consciousness data that does not directly apply to what you consider your physical reality at any given "time."

(Pause, one of many.) As soon as the need for such data-aid, information, or knowledge-arises, then it is immediately forthcoming unless your own conscious beliefs cause a barrier. The exquisite, precise and concentrated focus of your conscious mind is quite necessary in physical life. It is because of this highly selective quality that you can "tune into" the particular range of activity that is physical.

In their own way, animals also possess this selective consciousness. They also focus their attention in very specific directions, perceiving from a vast general field of perception stimuli that is "recognized" and accepted in an organized manner.

Now the animals' conscious minds, connected with their physical brains, make this necessary selectivity possible. Without it there would be an "out of focus" effect that would make physical survival impossible, so certain portions of the inner self come to the foreground of being.

New sentence: Because your mind in life is connected with the brain and the physical organism, it is automatically attuned to corporeal reality, and to some extent of course it ignores some nonphysical data that lies within any given field of perception. Quite simply, it does not allow it into its organizing perceptions. It [the data] is then blocked out.

Again, this is quite necessary. There is some information and data that does not "apply" to physical reality. Some of it is perceived by "non-physical entities" who organize it into their system of reality, where it does have meaning, but we will not be concerned with it here.

While you are physical then you will always be concentrating upon certain data to the exclusion of other data. In other kinds of realities you may ignore the physical system entirely, however, focusing instead upon those systems of existence that are not now recognized within your own.

In your present life the conscious mind assesses physical reality and has behind it all the energy, power and ability of the inner self at its disposal. Any information that it requires will be available. It's job is to assess that reality effectively, using that fine focus mentioned earlier. (See Chapter Two.) Because of its character, consciousness, or the conscious mind, cannot be swamped by too much detail, too much information. The inner self sends to it only the information it asks for or feels necessary. To a very large extent then conscious beliefs act as great liberators of such inner data, or as inhibitors of it. Are you following me?

("Yes." Seth asked the question because of a prolonged burst of hammering from the apartment below us. 10:16)

The conscious mind is itself developing and expanding. It is not a thing. It learns through experience and through the effects of its behavior. The inner self brings about whatever results the conscious mind desires.

It does not leave the conscious mind at loose ends nor isolate it from the fountains of its own being. Because the conscious mind is part of the inner self, it is obviously made of the same energy, filled with the same vitality, and revitalized by the deep sources of creativity from which all being emerges.

You must understand that it is not cut off from the inner self. The inner self keeps the physical body alive even as it formed it. The miraculous constant translation of spirit into flesh is carried on with inexhaustible energy by these inner portions of being, but in all cases the inner self looks to the conscious mind for its assessment of the body's condition and reality, and forms the image in line with the conscious mind's beliefs.

So-once more-you form reality through your beliefs, and your most intimate production is your physical body. Your beliefs about it are constantly fed into inner data. You organize on an unconscious level the atoms and molecules that compose your cells to form your body. But the blueprint is made by your conscious beliefs. To change your body you change your beliefs, even in the face of physical data or evidence that conflicts. You each have a body and you each have a consciousness. You can practice with these ideas by applying them to your body. For now we are taking into consideration the fact that, generally speaking, you are not going to make yourself five physical feet taller if you are a grown adult already, because there are certain physical laws with which you must contend. We will discuss those more fully later.

In that context you can even appear taller, and affect others as if you were-which would usually be what you wanted in any case under the circumstances. But except for some conditions which will be mentioned later, you can become healthy if you are ill, slim if you are overweight, gain weight if you prefer, or alter your physical image in profound fashion through the use of your ideas and beliefs.

They form the blueprint by which you make your body, whether you have known this or not. Your body is an artistic creation, formed and constantly maintained at unconscious levels, but quite in line with your beliefs about what and who you are.

You may take a break.

(10:37 to 10:55.)

Now: Dictation: You constantly give yourself suggestions about your body, your health or ill health. You think about your body often, then. You send a barrage of beliefs and instructions to the inner self that affect your physical image.

As I mentioned earlier, your thoughts have a very definite vital reality. Beliefs are thoughts reinforced by imagination and emotion concerning the nature of your reality.

Now thoughts in general possess an electromagnetic reality, but whether you know it or not, they also have an inner sound value.

You know the importance of exterior sound. It is used as a method of communication, but it is also a by-product of many other events, and it affects the physical atmosphere. Now the same is true about what I will call inner sound, the sound of your thoughts within your own head. I am not speaking here of body noises, though you are usually oblivious to these also.

Inner sounds have an even greater effect than exterior ones upon your body. They affect the atoms and molecules that compose your cells. In many respects it is true to say that you speak your body, but the speaking is interior.

The same kind of sound built the Pyramids, and it was not sound that you would hear with your physical ears. Such inner sound forms your bone and flesh. The sound exists connected with but quite apart from the mental words you use in thinking.

(Pause at 11:05. It might be noted here that Seth devoted a group of sessions last November, December, and January to some of the meanings and uses of inner and outer sound. That material was new to us, and included information on the Egyptians' use of "inaudible" sound to help build the Pyramids; according to Seth the Romans also employed such sound in erecting the enormous, truly awesome city of Heliopolis at Baalbek, in what is now the Middle Eastern country of Lebanon. See the continuation of these notes at the end of the session.)

It does not matter in which language you are addressing yourself, for example. The sound is formed by your intent, and the same intent - I am putting this simply now - will have the same sound effect upon the body regardless of the words used.

(As Seth, Jane paused during her delivery. She evidently changed her mind about just what to say and how to say it.)

But usually you think in your own language, and so in quite practical terms the words and the intent merge. For all practical purposes then the two are one. When you say, "I am tired, " mentally you are not only giving silent messages to yourself-I say messages rather than message because the general statement is broken down; many portions of the body must be affected before you feel tired-but beside this the inner sound value of the messages automatically affects the body in just that way.

What should you do, then, if you find yourself feeling tired? This is your conscious assessment of your body's reality at a given time. You want to change it so you do not reinforce it. Instead you say mentally that the body can now begin to rest and refresh itself. You take your initial judgment for granted then without restating it, and instead suggest the remedy be carried out (positively) .

You can, if the conditions warrant, physically rest by lying down or making whatever adjustments seem appropriate. If none are possible then several such suggestions-that the body can refresh itself-will give you benefit. To tell yourself over and over that you are tired, however, reinforces the condition.

The inner sound value of the countering suggestion automatically begins to refresh the body. It is fashionable now to think about noise pollution, yet the same kind of circumstances occur with inner sound, particularly when your inner thoughts are self-contradictory, scrambled and random.

(11:23.) Diverse and highly conflicting instructions are then given to the body. As you should know, the body's inner environment changes constantly, and it is you who change it. Change is quite necessary and as a rule the body's overall balance is maintained. But the directions that you give are often not clear or advantageous, and your beliefs largely determine the kind of information you send to that environment.

The inner self always attempts to maintain the body's equilibrium and health, but many times your own beliefs prevent it from coming to your aid with even half of the energy available to it. Often only when you are in dire straits do you open up the doors to this great energy, when it is much too clear that your previous beliefs and behavior have not worked.

You have at your disposal the means to insure your health. My friend Joseph (as Seth calls me) brought up a point concerning this before our session. He wanted to know why so many in this country wore glasses. He wondered if people unacquainted with glasses and suddenly introduced to them would develop a need for them; and they would.

Many individuals are given glasses to correct an eye difficulty at an early age. Left alone, in many cases, the eyes would correct themselves. The glasses can impede any such self-correction by providing a crutch that further weakens eye muscles, for example, and instead fixes the condition. When you believe that only glasses will correct poor vision then only glasses will.

Instead you must discover the reason for the belief behind the physical poor function or nonfunction, and if this is done the condition will automatically clear up. Now for most people it is easier to get glasses.

We will end dictation.

("Okay.")

We will be going into the medical profession and it is too late for that... Now Ruburt should go along with the continuing relaxation sessions as they occur, and try to capture his mental state then in ordinary times. And I bid you a fond good evening.

("Good night, Seth. Thank you very much.")

Tell him that my energy has always been available to him. He can use it freely and fully. It will not negate or block out my existence. It is available at all times, and it is also his by right, and mine by right. It belongs to all beings by right. It is simply manifested in many ways at many times. And good night.

("Good night."

(End at 11:37 P.M. Jane still felt more or less relaxed-"floppy." She laughed. "I haven't done a damned thing since three o'clock this afternoon, except get supper and have the session. And right now I feel pretty fine."

(We think her relaxation follows naturally enough in the wake of her prolonged, intense psychic activity. She had no session P.M., Monday night, for instance, nor did Seth come through in ESP class last night-and she's already called off her waiting class for this Thursday afternoon.

(Adding to the 11:05 note on sound: The 1971-72 sessions mentioned there also contained much about the inner meanings of sound and Jane's development and use of Sumari-and once again I refer the reader to her Introduction. As Seth told us, "Sumari effectively blocks the automatic translation of inner experience into everyday verbal stereotypes. " One of its services will be to teach Jane to free her inner cognitions enough so that she can translate Speaker manuscripts without distorting them out of all proportion.

(As with Sumari, we expect that references to the Speakers will be included in this book from time to time. In reincarnational terms, the Speakers are teaching personalities who reach across the centuries. Seth commented in Chapter Twenty of Seth Speaks: "The Speakers, more than most, are highly active through all aspects of existence, whether physical or nonphysical, waking or sleeping, between lives or at other levels of reality..."

(Ironically, many of the very ancient Speaker "manuscripts" are entirely verbal. They weren't put into writing because of the beliefs of the times.)

Session 624, October 30, 1972, 9:45 P.M., Monday

Now: Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

We will continue dictation.

To be healthy you must believe in health. A good physician is a changer of beliefs. He will replace an idea of illness with one of health. Whatever methods or drugs he uses will not be effective unless this change of belief takes place.

Unfortunately, when man became a labeler he also made maps, so to speak, of great complexity, categorizing various diseases with greater effectiveness than ever before. He studied dead tissue to discover the nature of the disease that killed it. Physicians began to think of men as carriers of disease and diseases-which, in certain terms, they [the physicians] did themselves create through some new medical procedures.

The old medicine men often dealt far more directly with the patient himself, and understood the nature of beliefs and the prime importance of suggestion. Many of their techniques were adopted for their psychological shock value, in which the patient was quite effectively "brain-washed" out of the disease he believed that he had.

The present medical profession is sadly hampered because of its own beliefs. Often it operates as a framework in which poor health and disease are not only accepted as normal; but the concepts behind them strengthened. Here you have again, as in psychoanalysis, a hide-and-seek arrangement in which both doctor and patient take part. (See the 616th session in Chapter Two.)

Both believe they need the other, of course. Behind this is the p@ chic pattern of beliefs in which the patient often assigns to the doctor the powers of knowledge and wisdom that his beliefs have taught him he does not have. Knowing otherwise, the patient still wants to consider the doctor omnipotent.

Upon the patient a doctor often assigns and projects his own feelings of helplessness against which he combats. The interactions continue with the patient trying to please the doctor, and at best merely changing from one group of symptoms to another. Far too often the doctor shares the patient's unshakable belief in poor health and disease.

Not only this, but the medical profession often provides blueprints for diseases, and the patient too often tries them on for size. This is not to say that the medical profession often is not of great aid and benefit, but within the value system in which it operates much of its positive influence is negated.

Because they are held in such high esteem, the suggestions given by doctors are paid particular attention. The patient's emotional condition is such that he or she readily accepts statements made under such circumstances less critically than usual.

The naming and labeling of "diseases" is a harmful practice that to a large extent denies the innate mobility and ever-changing quality of the psyche as expressed in flesh. You are told that you have "something." Out of the blue "it" has attacked you, and your most intimate organs, perhaps. You are usually told that your emotions or beliefs or system of values have nothing to do with the unfortunate circumstances that beset you.

(10:08.) The patient, therefore, often feels relatively powerless and at the mercy of any stray virus that might come along. The facts are that you choose even the kind of illness that you have according to the nature of your beliefs. You are immune from ill health as long as you believe that you are.

These are quite practical statements. Your body has an overall body consciousness filled with energy and vitality. It automatically rights any imbalances, but your conscious beliefs also affect this body consciousness. Your muscles believe what you tell them about themselves. So does every other portion of your physical body.

While you believe that only doctors can cure you, you had better go to them, because in the framework of your beliefs they are the only people who can help you. But the framework itself is limiting; and again, while you may be cured of one difficulty, you will only replace it with another as long as your beliefs cause you to have physical problems.

Now the same applies to what is frequently called spiritual healing. If through the concentrated use of psychic energy your body is cured by such a healer, you will also simply trade those symptoms for others unless you change your initial beliefs. Now sometimes a healer or a doctor, with his effectiveness in healing a condition, will show you by inference that the healing energy was always within yourself, and this realization may be enough to allow you to change your beliefs about health entirely.

In such a case you will realize that your previous ill health was caused by your belief. If you have any physical problems, concentrate instead upon the healthy portions of your body and the unimpeded functions that you have. In the healthy areas, your beliefs are working for you.

As I mentioned (in the last session) , inner sounds are extremely important. Each of the atoms and molecules that compose your body has its own reality in sound values that you do not hear physically. Each organ of your body then has its own unique sound value too. When there is something wrong the inner sounds are discordant.

The unharmonious sounds have become a part of that portion of the body as a result of the inner sound of your own thought-beliefs. That is why it is vital that you not reinforce these inner sounds through repeating the same negative suggestions to yourself. Verbal suggestions are translated into inner sound. This passes through your body in somewhat the same way that some kinds of light do.

You may take a break.

(10:25 to 10:35.)

Now: While you are physical creatures, then your perceptions must be largely physically oriented. Even your bodies exist in other terms than you usually suppose.

You perceive them as objects, with bulk, composed of bone and flesh. They also have "structures" of sound, light, and electromagnetic properties that you do not perceive. These are all connected with the physical image that you know. Any physical disabilities will show themselves in these other "structures" initially.

The sound, light, and electromagnetic patterns give strength and vitality to the physical form that you recognize. They are more mobile than the physical body, and even more susceptible to the changing pattern of your own thought and emotion.

I told you that thoughts are translated into this inner sound, but thoughts always attempt to materialize themselves also. As such they are incipient images, collectors of energy. They build up their own embryonic form until it is in one way or another physically translated.

Mental images therefore are extremely powerful, combining inner sound and its effects with a clear mental picture which will seek physical form. Your imagination adds motivating and propelling power to such images, and so you will find that many of your beliefs are entertained by you in an inner visual manner. They will have mental pictures connected with them.

One such image may represent one particular belief or it may stand or several. As you make lists of your beliefs you will find some of these pictures coming into your mind. Look at them as you would a painting you have created. If you do not Eke what you see then quite consciously change the picture in your mind.

These images are interior, yet because they are so a part of your beliefs you will see them exteriorized also in your experience.

(10:48.) Let me give you a simple example. You have a sore toe. Now and then you see it quite clearly in your mind. You may find yourself looking at the toe more frequently than usual, and you may also find yourself picking out from the populace anyone who is not walking properly. These people might escape your notice ordinarily, but suddenly the world seems to be full of sore toes.

We are dealing to make a point with a belief already made physical. But if you continued such concentration the toe either would not heal or would develop into a worse condition. Behind all this, of course, would be the belief that caused the difficulty; but once you have brought about a group of symptoms you must be very careful that you do not begin to view your field of reality from that position. When you do, you add both inner and outer images that reinforce the condition.

There is light then that you do not see with physical eyes, as there is sound that you do not hear with your ears. These combine to mentally form the physical image that you know, so you must work from the inside out. Your beliefs are your palette, using the analogy of a painting again.

Your thoughts give the general outline of the reality that you physically experience. Your emotions will fill in the patterns with light. Your imagination will forge these together.

The sound of your inner thoughts is the medium that you actually use. This is far more than an analogy, however, for in simple terms it explains quite clearly the way in which your beliefs form your reality. In quiet moments the word "O-O-O-O-O-M-M-M-M-M, " said slowly, mentally or aloud, will be of benefit in toning up your general physical condition. The sounds contain within them a built-in impetus toward energy and well-being, as I will explain shortly.

Now - I am going to end for this evening. I will resume however at our next session. If you have questions I will answer them.

("No...")

Then I bid you a fond good evening.

("The same to you, Seth."

(Louder:) And my heartiest regards to you both.

("Thank you. Good night." End at 11:05 P.M. Jane remembered none of the material she'd delivered since last break.)

Session 625, November l, 1972, 9:03 P.M., Wednesday

(Jane's delivery was leisurely and quiet as the session began.)

Now: Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: The body reacts not so much to physical sound as to the interior sounds into which the physical sounds are translated. As mentioned (in the last two sessions) , it also reacts to sounds that have no physical "counterparts."

There are certain properties within the structure of the chromosomes that must be activated by specific internal sound values. If this activation does not take place then the "attributes" latent within the chromosomes remain so.

There are chains of influence that are actually composed of inner values of sound that thread together, as it were, the complicated interweavings of both the genes and chromosomes.

I am taking this slowly to explain it as simply as possible.

("Yes." See the definitions of genes and chromosomes in the 610th session in Chapter One.)

These sound values are literally interwoven in an electromagnetic pattern. The sounds weave (gesturing) themselves through, and help form this pattern. The activity of cells within the body also causes what you might call minute explosions of interior sound. (Long pause.) The electromagnetic and inner sound patterns are impinged upon by certain kinds of light. Together these all form the prototype upon which, and out of which, the physical body is formed.

Now. When you create a mental image in your mind it is composed of the same properties just mentioned. A mental image then is also a pattern of internal sound with electromagnetic properties imbued with certain light values. In a sense, and a very real one, the mental image is incipient matter; and any structure so composed, combining the electromagnetic sound and light values, will automatically try to reproduce itself in physical existence, or materialization. (Long pause.) There is a definite connection, then, with the nature of such images and the way in which your body itself is composed.

(Pause at 9:25.) Electrons, atoms, and molecules all have their independent interior sound and light values. There are definite sounds produced when messages leap from your nerve ends. It is very difficult to explain some of this, but there is "invisible" light, then, and inaudible sound, that affects your body and helps form the pattern about which it constantly emerges.

The body is obviously continually created during your present life-time, in your terms. It is not a mechanism once created, then left to fend for itself. You were not given a certain amount of "life force" at birth that you use up as you go along, contrary to many schools of thought.

(9:28.) The atoms and molecules within you are quite literally dying and being completely replaced all the time. You are being created physically each instant. Period. The body reacts to exterior sounds and to the stimuli brought to it by the physical senses. These patterns of reaction can be clearly shown. They are all that is presently observable, however, of far greater interactions that also occur.

The atoms and molecules that compose your cells and your flesh, for instance, do not react to the physical sounds that you hear or to the light patterns that your physical eyes perceive. In times of danger your entire body must be able to move swiftly. The hormonal system must react with great rapidity, sometimes completely changing the balance of a moment earlier. The muscles must be immediately alert, and the entire body flexible enough to respond as a whole. This includes every organ and the most minute portion.

Say you are in the middle of a street and suddenly a car is about to hit you. It has come seemingly from nowhere. The cells that compose your intestines, your heart, your muscles obviously do not see the car as "you" do. Yet the whole system must be instantly activated, and the data that "you" perceive must be translated in terms that will energize every portion of your body.

This is done by translating exterior stimuli into interior stimuli, but the physical carriers of the data are all that scientists or physicians have been able to follow thus far. The greater interactions have not been perceived, and the true story of the decoding of such messages (much louder abruptly) has not been understood-and take your break.

(9:40. Jane's trance had developed into quite a profound one but, typically, she was soon out of it. "Wow, he's going to town tonight, " she exclaimed. "He gave me a break now only because he's going into something more, and he doesn't want to interrupt it. I couldn't tell you what that was about, and yet I have an idea... I think Seth wishes I had a better vocabulary for body things."

(Resume in the same manner at 9:57.)

Now: (Pause.) The nerves are also composed of the same kind of interior structures as mentioned earlier (in this chapter) : around, or rather from which, the physical nerves form. Here the exterior data is translated and broken down into inner terms. That is, it is decoded in terms of the internal sound, light, and electromagnetic patterns discussed before.

It then becomes usable information, even in terms of the atoms and molecules that compose the cells. The physical lapse that occurs between an incoming message (pause, frowning) , and its intended destination does not occur on these other levels. The "interior message" gets to its destination ahead of the physical one.

By the time the organism responds the inner patterns have already reacted, and this must and always does precede any physical response to stimuli. Therefore the invisible body pattern, composed of its interior light, sound and electromagnetic properties, reacts first, and actually initiates the later physical response.

(Slowly:) There is always this translation of exterior stimuli. The perceived lapse noted by scientists is of course the physical one (leaning forward, hand to closed eyes) , caused by the "time" it takes the message to leap the nerve endings. The interior translation however is simultaneous. Now return in your mind to the situation of the near accident. That event with the car, its driver, and your own precarious position, exists as another structure beside the one that you physically see. It also-the event-exists in the terms mentioned earlier, in a reality composed of invisible light, inaudible sound, and electromagnetic patterns.

Consciously you react to the physical data-the noise, the squeal of brakes perhaps, the visual shock of seeing the car so close, but the entire inner reality of that scene or event is instantly "recognized" by what I refer to as your inner senses. (See the note at the end of the session.) These respond to the interior patterns I've told you about. The physical data is carried through the nerves with the necessary time lapses that must occur. These represent the temporal end of the spectrum of perception.

Because you are flesh and blood creatures, the interior aspects of perception must have their physical counterparts. But material awareness and bodily response to it would be impossible were it not for these internal webworks.

Now before you see anything physically, you do so through these inner pathways. The interior perception activates the outside one. When you experience physical motion or activity, events or phenomena, you are becoming aware of the tail end of a long "series" of interior comprehensions. I am saying that all exterior events, including your own bodies with their insides, all objects, all physical materializations, are the outside structures of inside ones that are composed of interior sound and invisible light, interwoven in electromagnetic patterns.

(10:28.) Beneath temporal perception, then, each object and event exists in these terms, in patterns that interact with each other. On a physical level you seem to be separated from everything that is not yourself. This is not true, but in your day-to-day existence it seems to be, and it is an assumption that you usually take for granted.

(Pause.) On the interior level of which I have been speaking, all happenings and objects are connected. A movement or change in one affects others. You will physically respond to and recognize some of this alteration, as in the example of the near accident. But whether or not you are consciously aware of such activity, it changes the interior environment of your body through these inner pathways.

Your own thoughts and beliefs, having the same kind of inner reality, also transform the interior environments of others. The near-accident mentioned was a physical event but it was initially a mental one. It existed in this nontemporal reality then before, in your terms, it was physically materialized, perceived and reacted to.

It was propelled from inner reality to outward reality through belief, emotion and imagination. Because you cannot see them, it may seem to you that these qualities are not as real, say, as an object. Physically you can only see the results of an emotion, for instance. You cannot hold it in your hands as you can a stone.

Ideas represent your psychic intent. They generate emotion and imagination. These activate the interior patterns. They are the motive force of action (pause) , the means by which all interior events are exteriorized. They are energy formed and directed, formulations of interior and exterior patterns of reality. They are a part of the creative force from which all realities spring. Again, we run into difficulties in explanation simply because there are few verbal equivalents for what I am trying to say.

(Deliberately:) Imagination and emotions are the most concentrated forms of energy that you possess as physical creatures. Any strong emotion carries within it far more energy than, say, that required to send a rocket to the moon.

(Very forcefully:) Emotions, instead of propelling a physical rocket, for example, send thoughts from this interior reality through the barrier between nonphysical and physical into the "objective" world-no small feat, and one that is constantly repeated.

You may take a break.

(10:47. "Boy, I'm telling you I was out that time, I really was, "Jane said. "The house could have fallen down, I think... I had that thing again where you're in it so deep that you're a part of it-the feeling where you're in the guts of things.

("It's a real weird kind of inner focus. There's a great kind of fulfilling sense of triumphs doing it, like you're pulling stuff out of the secret nature of things. I can't say where you go or what you do. After all this time I'm still amazed that [this book] comes out all finished, "she said. "Usually I don't want anybody else around for this. You cut out everything else-other people would cause you to pick up on them, or be distracting... "

(Seth had something to say about that last thought not long ago. The following quotes are extracted from some deleted material. "Generally speaking, it is better if book dictation is done alone, or with those with whom you are well acquainted and easy. This is simply because there are less psychic distractions and it is easier for Ruburt to focus into one clear channel.

("The needs and desires of others naturally enter in, "Seth continued, "and some energy must be used to close them out The more interested and exited [witnesses] are, of course, the more their own concerns ring out. It is difficult for Ruburt to block out these additional psychic distractions... With strangers the sessions are often personal, however, because their own emotional reactions are so vibrant initially..."

(Supporting Seth's mention of the inner senses during the last delivery: He's told us about nine of these so far, and a list of them can be found in Chapter Nineteen of The Seth Material. There are more to come, too.

(This break, it developed, marked the end of book dictation. Seth returned with other material, though, and the session lasted until 1 1:45 P.M.)

Session 626, November 8, 1972, 9:06 P.M., Wednesday

(No session was held last P.M., Monday evening.

(Yesterday Jane and I read the Time magazine cover story for November 13, 1972, featuring Richard Bach and his book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. We were very pleased for Dick. The article also included information about the Seth material. See the 618th session in Chapter Three for an account of Seth's meeting with Dick and the latter's editor, Eleanor Friede.

(It isn't necessary to go into dates and other details here; but several days before we were told that the Bach story's originally scheduled appearance in late October had been postponed, Jane had a vivid dream giving her that literal information. She wrote Dick about it and told others. Her dream was also fairly accurate concerning the magazine's cover painting for the piece: a montage featuring "a bird that was somehow a part of a man's head, or face, " as she described it. Actually Time's design showed a seagull superimposed over Dick Bach's head, partially obliterating it.

(P.M., Monday night, Jane had another vivid dream involving the Seth material, herself, and a certain kind of magazine story. She's written it down, and we'll see how it turns out.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation. (Pause. Then humorously:) An aside to you: Now, you see, I can speak in Time or out of it. Underline "Time."

("Yes.")

The physically alive body, its activities and condition, are directed through the beliefs of the conscious mind. The body, as explained in this chapter, also has "invisible" counterparts composed of the electromagnetic properties and the interior sound and light qualities.

These invisible structures preceded the emergence of the physical body. They also exist after the body's death. While the condition of the body is directed by the conscious mind in life, then, the idea or mental pattern for the body existed before the conscious mind's connection with the physical brain.

The genes and chromosomes do not just happen to have within them the precisely definite coded information that will be needed. The data is impressed upon them from within. The identity exists before the form. You could say that the identity, existing in another dimension entirely, plants the seed into the medium of physical reality from which its own material existence will spring.

Therefore the inner self forms, first, the "invisible" body structure which will "later" emerge in flesh. At the event of this mental seeding, the conscious mind, in your terms, is obviously not connected with the brain, which has not yet been formed in flesh. The idea of the body is held and made physical by a conscious mind.

New paragraph: Consciousness then is not dependent upon physical perception, though this attribute does require an awareness immersed within a material form. While physical consciousness is sifted through the bodily apparatus, you are usually unaware of noncorporeal kinds because of that process. The general framework, properties and characteristics of the body exist, therefore, before its formation. In simple terms, you choose ahead of time the kind of body you will inhabit and impress. It may seem to you that you do not have any conscious control over your body's condition in life as you know it, much less before your birth. You have been taught that there is little connection between your thought and your body's activities.

(9:29.) A man believing he has heart trouble will finally, through his own anxiety, affect the functioning of his "involuntary" system until his heart is definitely harmed if the belief goes unchecked. The conscious mind directs the so-called involuntary systems of the body, and not the other way around. No idea slips insidiously past your awareness to affect your involuntary system unless it fits in with your own conscious beliefs. Once more, you will not be sick if you think you are well-but there may be other ideas that make you believe in the necessity for poor health.

You are not aware of how the body performs its many involuntary functions. The conscious mind could not handle all that data, but those functions perfectly mirror your consciously held ideas and beliefs.

As I also mentioned (in the 614th session in Chapter Two) , the conscious mind is not basically cut off from the inner self or from those deep inner sources of knowledge available to it. The aware mind is not any one event, for that matter; it represents various portions of the inner self that "surface" at any given time.

Within the basic framework of the body chosen before physical birth (for reasons that will be discussed later) , the individual has full freedom to create a perfectly healthy functioning form. The form is, however, a mirror of beliefs, and will accurately materialize in flesh those ideas held by the conscious mind.

(Jane's delivery was very serious, and somewhat loud. She leaned forward and tapped upon the coffee table between us, her eyes wide and dark.)

That is one of the body's primary functions. A sick body is performing that function then, in its way, as well as a healthy one. It is your most intimate feedback system, changing with your thought and experience, giving you in flesh the physical counterpart of your thought. So it is futile to become angry at a symptom, or to deride the body for its condition when it is presenting you with the corporeal replica of your own thought, as it was meant to do.

Your environment and your experience in the physical world also provide you with the same kind of feedback. It is just as useless to berate your environment or your experience in it as it is to deride your body, for the same reasons.

It often seems, when such ideas as these are presented, that the ideal results in your terms would be perfection-"heaven on earth"-a state in which everyone would be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

(Now Seth asked me to open a beer for Jane. "I don't want to give him a break yet, " he added-the "him" stemming from Jane's male entity name, Ruburt. It was obvious that Jane was in a very deep trance. Our house was turning noisy but she showed no signs whatever of unease. Instead, she sat quietly waiting for me to pick up my notebook... )

You are, however, in physical existence using your body as a medium for learning and expression. You are each unique. (Pause.) Many of you for your own reasons pursue courses that do not involve an even development of abilities, an overall balanced picture, for example, but choose to express and experiment with certain qualities to the exclusion of others. Such a course would not, in physical reality, present you with anything like a balanced picture of perfection.

(9:50.) Later in the book we will discuss other kinds of existence in which you are also involved; and these to some extent color your intents and purposes in physical life as you now understand it.

If all of your beliefs, not just your "fortunate" ones, were not materialized, you would never thoroughly understand on a physical level that your ideas create reality. If only your "positive" beliefs were materialized then you would never clearly comprehend the power of your thought, for you would not completely experience its physical results.

The conscious mind exists before material life and after it. In corporeal existence it is intertwined with the brain, and during physical fife your earthly perceptions-your precise and steady focus within your particular space and time system-are dependent upon that fine alliance.

(Pause.) Before physical birth then you form a mental concept of the body you will have. This image is impressed into matter in this way: You tune yourself into a highly specific dimension of reality. You form a physical structure that will have existence within that intensely concentrated area, that will have validity and actuality-that will come alive within those "frequencies" (very positively) .

Now it is here that the seeming division in the self occurs, for in physical life the conscious mind must be connected with the brain, and in terms of time that organ itself must grow and develop. So all of your consciousness cannot be physically aware. The portion that must "wait for" the brain's development is the part you call in life "the conscious mind. "

The other portions can be called the inner self. Now all of this inner self cannot become expressed even with its connection with the brain, since the brain must sift perception through the physical apparatus.

You may take your break. Because of the noise distractions in the house I kept Ruburt in trance longer-it is easier that way.

(10:06 Jane's hour-long trance had indeed developed into a profound one. "Man, have I been out, "she said, trying to keep her eyes open. She finally gave up and leaned back in her rocker "Are you tired of writing?" I said I wasn't.

("Well, I guess we'll go on, then, " she said. She took her glasses off. Seth returned in a few moments. As soon as he did Jane's eyes came wide open, and her manner grew animated and intense once more. Resume at 10:10.)

The brain with its bodily connections must deal with the time lapses that sensual perception always imply. The interior workings of the body, to be conscious, would have to deal with time sequences that would present the physically attuned consciousness with "mathematical" deductions and calculations far too numerous for it to handle. For example, it would have to keep conscious track of all the muscles, nerves, organs, cells, molecules and atoms, while manipulating the body in space and time.

Therefore a seeming division occurs, in which a portion of the invisible conscious mind is connected with the physical brain, and a portion of it is free of that connection. That [latter] part forms what you think of as the involuntary system of the body.

Again, it is important that you realize the initial nonphysical reaction to stimuli that sparks off all physical reactions. There is constant interplay and communication between the areas of consciousness that are connected to the brain and those that are not. The "deeper" purposes of the consciousness involved "circulate, " sometimes arising in the awareness that is joined with the brain. Information coming from those deeper sources of the self, reaching the areas connected to the brain, will be interpreted according to the beliefs of that most physically focused segment of the self.

To some degree, such inner data will be colored by the current beliefs of that part of the self most directly confronting the physical world. Those beliefs, however, are also constantly being examined by the inner self.

And now, I suggest that you end the session-

("All, right, " I said, in some surprise.)

-but we have a good portion of the material through. So (smiling) count your blessings.

(End at 10:27 P.M. Jane slowly emerged from a deeply dissociated state. The rather abrupt end of the session came, she finally said, just because she had been tiring. This proved to be the end of Chapter Five.)

Session 627, November 13, 1972, 9:21 P.M., Monday

(Over the last few days Jane has received a number of telephone calls-as well as letters-from people about the country, asking for help from her and/or Seth. Some of the problems cited are quite severe, and often they're beyond any reasonable [let alone quick] therapy that Jane, Seth, or I can offer. Because of our own sympathetic reactions Jane and I often end up feeling frustrated; also, to help but a few people with any thoroughness means that we'd have no time left for the rest. Apropos of Jane's efforts to personally do what she can, she received a visitor recently who displayed signs of a secondary personality...

(As we waited for the session tonight, Jane said two channels from Seth were open: Seth could speak on the people who have been seeking her out, or give book dictation. She chose to continue with the book, saying that it will help numbers of people far beyond anything she can do individually.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: Chapter Six: 'The Body of Your Beliefs, and the Power Structures of Beliefs." This is the heading.

Quite literally, you live in the body of your beliefs. You perceive through the body of your beliefs. Your beliefs can increase your vision or diminish it. They can increase or diminish your hearing, or any sense function.

If, for example, you believe that after a certain time of life hearing will fade, then so it will. You will begin to use the faculty less and less, unconsciously transfer your attention to the other senses to compensate, and rely less and less upon your ears until the functions themselves do atrophy. Period.

Functions in this particular regard are habits. You simply forget how to hear properly, following your belief All of the minute manipulations necessary to hearing are unconsciously repressed. The actual physical deterioration then does indeed follow. The deterioration however does not occur first, but after.

The same kind of development can occur in almost any physical category. Usually more than one belief is involved. Parallel with the belief that vision will fail, you may have the before-mentioned belief that hearing will dim, and these two ideas may be reinforced by a belief that age automatically makes you less a person, turning you into an individual who can no longer relate in the daily pattern of environment. The belief, you see, would work to insure the materialization of that state. (Pause.) On the other hand you may believe that wisdom grows with age, that self-understanding brings a peace of mind not earlier known, that the keen mind is actually far better able to assess the environment, and that the physical senses are much more appreciative of all stimuli. And so those conditions will be physically met in your experience. The physical apparatus itself, following your beliefs, will continue in health.

You must understand, again, that your ideas and thoughts do not exist as phantoms or shadow images without substance. They are electromagnetic realities. They affect your physical being and they are automatically translated by your nervous system into the stuff of your flesh and of your experience.

(9:36) Your conscious mind is meant to assess and evaluate physical reality, and to help you chart your course in the corporeal universe of which you are presently part. Other portions of your being, as mentioned (in the last session, for example) , rely upon you to do this. All energy at the inner self's disposal is then concentrated to bring about the results asked for by the conscious mind.

Your effective power of action follows the lines of your beliefs. To believe in your own weakness is to deny yourself the power of action. To accept uncritically all beliefs that come to you is to open yourself to a barrage of conflicting data at best, in which the clear lines of action and power become blurred. Contradictory demands and assessments are then sent in to the inner self, which by various methods will try to tell you that something is wrong. Beliefs of like nature attract each other, for you are bound to look for consistencies in your behavior and experience.

(Pause.) You must learn to deal with your own beliefs directly or you will be forced to deal with them indirectly-by reacting to them quite without knowing it in your physical experience. When you rail against an unfavorable environment, or a situation or condition, basically-and underline the following phrase-you are not acting independently, but almost blindly reacting. You are reacting to events that seem to happen to you, and always in response to a situation.

To act in an independent manner, you must begin to initiate action that you want to occur physically (emphatically) by creating it in your own being.

This is done by combining belief, emotion and imagination, and forming them into a mental picture of the desired physical result. Of course, the wanted result is not yet physical or you would not need to create it, so it does no good to say that your physical experience seems to contradict what you are trying to do.

(Pause.) Because ideas and beliefs have this electromagnetic reality, then, constant interplay between those strongly contradictory beliefs can cause great power blocks, impeding the flow of inner energy outward. At times a polarization can occur. Unassimilated beliefs, unexamined ideas, can seem to adopt a life of their own. These can effectively dominate certain areas of activity.

You may take your break.

(9:50 to 10:10.)

Now, dictation: Not long ago Ruburt was presented with a demonstration embodying the nature and power of beliefs.

He received a phone call from a man who lived in another state. There was a request for an interview. Without knowing why, Ruburt felt an impulse to see the man, and set up an appointment. The visitor arrived from the airport with his wife in tow.

He was a study, a living example, of the effects of conflicting unexamined beliefs, a fierce and yet agonized personification of what can happen when an individual allows his conscious mind to deny its responsibilities-i.e., when an individual becomes afraid of his own consciousness.

Here was a young man whose beliefs were alive with their own life while he was relatively powerless. No effort had been made to reconcile directly opposing beliefs, until the personality itself was quite literally polarized.

(10:20.) You were faced with what could be called a classic instance of secondary personality. I am discussing it here because it so beautifully illustrates the nature and power of beliefs, and the conflicts that can arise when an individual does not accept responsibility for his own thoughts. This is not a usual case-but to some extent or another, such a division occurs physically or mentally when the contents of the conscious mind are not examined.

Entering, the man bristled with belligerence and hostility. Having requested help, he then hated himself for the weakness that he believed caused such a need. He glowered at our friend Ruburt with great vehemency, projecting all of the energy at his command to show that he would not be cowed, and that if anyone took over the situation he would be the one to do so. He spoke of another personality far more powerful than he-though, he said, he could force a roomful of a hundred-and-fifty people to follow his commands. The other personality, however, originated in another galaxy, and came as a friend to help and protect him.

At his behest [he said] this invisible friend killed a lawyer. The lawyer not only did not understand the condition, according to the story, but hurt the feelings of the man under discussion. We will call the man Augustus.

Take a break for Ruburt...

(10:30. Jane had begun coughing intermittently after last break. Now she coughed so steadily that Seth interrupted the delivery-which is a pretty rare occurrence. While Jane rested, I suggested that if Seth returned it would be better if he discussed the reasons behind her coughing. This was done. Surprisingly, the material received ran to several pages. The session ended at 11:43 P.M.)

Session 628, November 15, 1972, 9:29 P.M., Wednesday

(In P.M., Monday's session Seth had started a discussion of Jane's recent visitor, "Augustus, " who had shown definite signs of a subordinate or secondary personality. As we sat for tonight's session Jane said, "I know what Seth's going to call Augustus's other personality: Augustus Two. We were amused, thinking of Seth and Seth Two. * Now, Jane began speaking slowly in trance.)

Good evening

("Good evening, Seth.')

-and we will resume dictation...

To begin with, Augustus was brought up to believe that the inner self was dangerous, that individuals reacted because of inner conflicts over which they had little conscious control. (Gesturing.) He believed that the individual personality was relatively powerless to understand itself and that it stood precariously alone and undefended, with a chasm of evil beneath and with an unattainable, cold, just, but not compassionate Good (with a capital "G") above.

He felt bewildered in a world of opposites. Conflicting beliefs were uncritically accepted. (Pause.) The conscious mind will always attempt to make sense out of its beliefs, to form them into patterns and sequences. It will usually organize ideas in as rational a way as possible, and dispense with those that seem to contradict the overall system of its beliefs.

Augustus had been taught to fear his own thoughts, to avoid self-examination. Beliefs or ideas that frightened him were not faced, therefore, but initially shoved into comers of the conscious mind, where they lay relatively harmlessly in the beginning.

As time went on the number of unexamined, frightening beliefs began to accumulate. Ideas and beliefs do feed upon themselves. There is within them a built-in impetus toward growth, development and fulfillment. Over the years two opposing systems of beliefs built up strongly, vying for Augustus's attention. He believed that he was utterly powerless as an individual, that despite all his efforts he would come to nothing, go unnoticed. He felt completely unloved. He did not feel worthy of love. At the same time he let his conscious mind wander, and to compensate saw himself as all-powerful, contemptuous of his fellow human beings, and able to work greater vengeance upon them for their misunderstanding of him. In this line of beliefs he was able to do anything-cure mankind's ills if he chose, or withhold such knowledge from the world to punish it. Period.

Now all of these ideas were quite conscious, but he held each group separately. The conscious mind, again, tries to obtain overall integrity and unity, lining up its beliefs into some kind of consistent system. When opposing beliefs that directly contradict each other are held for any length of time, and little attempt is made to reconcile them, then a "battle" begins within the conscious mind itself.

(Pause at 9:50.) Since it is the beliefs of the conscious mind that regulate the involuntary bodily motions and the entire physical system, then contradictory beliefs obviously set up adverse physical reactions and imbalances. Before Augustus's opposing beliefs lined themselves up into separate camps, so to speak, the body was in continual turmoil; contradictory messages were constantly sent to the muscular system and the heart. The hormonal system teetered. Even his physical temperature varied rather drastically.

Because like ideas do attract like, both electromagnetically and emotionally, the conscious mind found itself with two complete contradictory systems of belief, and two self-images. (Pause.) To protect the integrity of the physical structure, Augustus's conscious mind neatly divided itself up. No longer were the minute-to-minute messages to the body scrambled.

(Slowly:) The part of Augustus who felt powerful and alien became personified. When Augustus felt threatened then the conscious mind switched over, accepting as operating procedure the system of beliefs in which Augustus saw himself as all-powerful, secure-but as alien. This part of his beliefs, therefore, and this particular self-image, took over his conscious mind and became what we will here call Augustus Two. When Augustus Two assumed leadership then the physical body itself was not only strong and powerful, but capable of physical feats far surpassing those of Augustus One.

(10:01.) Augustus Two, you see, believes that his body is nearly invincible, and following this belief the body does perform much better. Augustus Two believes that he is an alien. In this case the rationale-because there must be one-is that he is a being from another planet, in fact from another galaxy. His purpose in this case is quite clear and simple: He is to help Augustus One, to use his power on the latter's behalf, rewarding his friends and terrifying his enemies. Augustus One quite deeply believes he needs this kind of help.

Now this is a split of the conscious mind. It does not originate within the inner self. When Augustus Two takes over he is quite conscious. He simply views physical reality through an undeviating system of beliefs. The messages sent to the body are not in the least contradictory. The body is under excellent control.

Augustus One's moods of course were a direct result of the ideas he was entertaining. It was this unceasing swing from high states of exaltation and power to low ones of powerlessness and depression that the body could not tolerate, because of the vast alterations entailed. For the greater periods of time Augustus One predominates, since his ideas of worthlessness, in your terms, were adopted earlier; and worse-are only reinforced by the contrast between him and Augustus Two. Augustus Two comes on sometimes for as long as a week at a time.

He does all the things and says all the things that Augustus One would dearly love to do and say, with only certain safeguards. Augustus One, however, is not literally unconscious during this time, but quite aware of the "vicarious" activities and fulfillments. Again, it is a game of hide-and-seek, in which the so-called unconscious mind is relatively innocent.

Augustus Two can therefore rant and rave, he and cheat, assert himself, show his contempt for his fellows, and absolve Augustus One of any responsibility.

You may take your break and we will continue.

(10:19 to 10:30.)

Now: There is nothing evil in the nature of Augustus Two. In spiritualistic circles however he would most certainly be interpreted as an evil spirit or guide.

His nature is protective. The basic ideas and beliefs that have been personified into his being, that became his being, were formed to protect Augustus One from the destructive ideas given to him in his childhood, to combat the beliefs in powerlessness and futility. To that degree they were added onto the original ideas, but still at an early age; so it was from the child's concept of a powerful being that Augustus Two sprang.

The greater the feelings of weakness then the greater the compensating feelings of power and strength-but, again, with no attempt at conscious reconciliation.

(Pause.) Augustus's mother noted only that her son seemed highly changeable. Augustus Two did not present himself as obviously "another personality" until after Augustus's marriage, when the demands of fatherhood and making a living were placed upon him. He could not cope.

His beliefs in his unworthiness prevented him from using his abilities, or even pursuing a course of effective action, with any persistence. It was then that Augustus Two began to assert himself-and to Augustus's wife. In his own way Augustus Two would prove to her that she was married to quite an unusual, powerful man, a paragon of virility and strength; but to do so Augustus One must appear as Augustus Two to her. This continued for some time. Augustus One would first develop a splitting headache, and then this alien from outer space would arrive: the commanding male that Augustus One was not.

(Pause.) Here, however, the "deception" brought about certain difficulties. Not only was Augustus Two more sexually promiscuous, but by contrast Augustus One seemed very pallid indeed. Augustus Two was originally intended to help Augustus One. It's true that the exotic conditions spilled over, casting some glamour on Augustus One when Augustus Two left for a time, but the contrast was too blatant, too out in the open. Augustus One, still the primary personality, became even more frightened. He knew that gradually Augustus Two was outliving his purpose, showing him up, and had to go.

(10:46.) In fact, once Augustus Two obviously "took over" the body of Augustus One, it was all out in the open in the family. The wife began to take notes of what was done and said. When these events were repeated to Augustus One later, the lying and cheating was evident. So was the infantile nature of the "personality"; yet Augustus Two purported to be all-wise, from a galaxy far surpassing Earth in every category of endeavor. And here he was making predictions that never happened, and boasting and lying like a trouper.

The beliefs whose energy generated this "alternate self image" then appeared in the daylight, acting out their natural results in physical reality. Augustus One, now in manhood, was forced to perceive the nature of these beliefs to some extent, yet when he was here visiting Ruburt he still would not examine them.

Augustus Two has not taken over now for two and one-half months. Augustus is in a dilemma, for he still holds intact the beliefs in his own powerlessness, and the contradictory beliefs of omnipotence are not now being expressed through Augustus Two. Yet expressed they will be; and so in the interview Augustus One-who we will now simply call Augustus-at one moment came through with his gigantic belligerence, staring at Ruburt and telling him that he could annihilate anyone who hurt him. In the next moment the great plea for help would surface, the love of his wife and child. In one sentence Augustus would make a statement, and ten minutes later make it clear with another remark that the first fact had not been true.

Here the polarity between Augustus One and Two had dissolved, so that the two opposing systems of belief operated alongside each other. Still Augustus would not examine his own words, his own thoughts, or see the contradictions so obvious to others.

The nature and importance of belief appeared so eloquently that Ruburt was astounded, and found himself forced into some complicated psychological footwork. The two "personalities" were no longer separate, but merging.

(Pause at 11:00.) Augustus said, "My friend killed a neighbor of mine who was against me by giving him pneumonia. He looks out for me." Another neighbor has ulcers, and Augustus told Ruburt that after he touched this neighbor the ulcers seemed to have been healed. So he said, "I would like to know how much of this great ability belongs to me." And looking briefly away: "Perhaps I do not need my friend to protect me after all." Now this was definitely to the good, in that Augustus was beginning to feel that perhaps he was not powerless. His own personality, however, is left to handle the definitely unsavory characteristics of an Augustus Two who is no longer personified.

He is left with the questions: "If I am so powerful, how is it that I am so weak, and cannot even support my family? If I am so great, why cannot I effectively use my energy?"

For the body of Augustus is once again under the sway of beliefs about himself that are highly contradictory. Before, he was physically powerful when he was Augustus Two, and weak when he was Augustus One. Now as Augustus he is alternately strong and weak, and the body stresses are apparent. As Augustus Two he could stay up night and day and perform physical tasks quite difficult for the normal human being to do, for he operated under the indivisible idea of power and strength.

It has taken some courage for him to let Augustus Two vanish. Because the neat division of beliefs no longer exists, however, he will seem even more difficult to his wife since the characteristics of Augustus Two now "bleed into" his own. He will lie for example where before only Augustus Two lied.

Here then is a case where directly opposing beliefs dominated the conscious mind at various times, each operating the body in its own manner. Physically the body has the same capacity for strength regardless of which group of ideas were dominant; but practically speaking, Augustus One was incapable of performing the feats of Augustus Two.

Augustus Two once leaped from a second-story window to the ground in anger, and without injury-a highly unusual feat. Augustus, however, is so exhausted that he can barely get through a normal day. You had a situation in which an individual, through beliefs, put his power and energy literally beside himself. He could use it only when he switched beliefs completely.

It was only because the childlike characteristics of Augustus Two finally appeared so blatantly that Augustus Two had to be dispensed with. Augustus's wife made the difference, for it was obvious that she did not have the same opinion of this "friend" that her husband had. Her beliefs then became the new foundation, the one point of change that allowed Augustus to view this alternate self-image with any kind of detachment at all.

(Humorously:) You may take your alternate break.

(11:22. Jane remembered nothing of what Seth had said. But as soon as she came out of trance-which was quickly, as usual-she told me, "I can tell that Seth's got more on that right there, all ready and waiting... In between sessions I don't feel aware of that usually, though I dream about it sometimes... "

(This was the end of book work for the evening. After break Seth came through with two pages about a matter I'd brought up earlier tonight. Thus the recorded session ended at 11.: 51 P.M.

(The session resumed, however, after I had put my notebook aside. During a spontaneous exchange, Seth delivered some insights concerning his own origin and creative aspects, and why Jane's personality would make the emergence of a Seth possible. There was more. I didn't write down what was said, and as usual ended up wishing I had-perhaps we'll take the time to recoup it during a session.

(I've always found that the material seems to fly away unless it's recorded at once in some fashion. One of the reasons for this, I've often thought, is because Jane isn't the only one who's in a trance during a session-the receiver [myself, for instance] is too, in his or her own way. When the connections between Seth and his audience are broken, the material is to some degree "left behind" in that common meeting area.)

Session 629, November 29, 1972, 9:28 P.M., Wednesday

(As usually happens at this time of year, we've begun to miss some regularly scheduled sessions. Jane and I figure that from now on they'll probably be held irregularly into January, 1973; partly because of our holiday activities, which we enjoy, but also because this seems to be a natural time of rest for us-although Jane plans to keep her ESP and writing classes going as usual

(The first portion of this session is deleted. Seth resumed book dictation on Chapter Six at 9:59.)

There is no real adequate framework in your society in which people like Augustus can be treated with any effectiveness.

An analyst might consider Augustus as schizophrenic and label him neatly, but such terms are basically meaningless. I'f the analyst, over a period of time, should convince Augustus that his condition in the present resulted from some specific inhibited event in the past, and if the analyst was an intuitive and understanding man, then Augustus might change his beliefs enough so that some kind of "cure" was worked. He would then conveniently remember such an event and display the expected emotions as he re-experienced it. Unfortunately in his present state, powerless as it were without Augustus Two, he might also simply call on his "alter ego" to show the good doctor that he was no one to trifle with.

Then there would be the matter of helping Augustus to face the implications of his other-self's behavior in such a way that he could accept it as a portion of his whole identity.

When Augustus Two was in control of the body the chemical makeup varied considerably. It showed significant differences over Augustus's usual hormonal status. The chemical changes were caused by the transition in beliefs that operated, and not the other way around.

(Pause at 10:08. See the material on hormones and beliefs in the 621st session in Chapter Four.)

If chemical alteration were made in Augustus Two he would return to the Augustus One personality, but the change would be artificial-not permanent, and possibly quite dangerous.

The chemically inhibited tendencies would to some extent be forcefully blanketed through medication. The problem would remain, though, and it is quite possible that overt suicidal tendencies could result; or more insidious hidden suicidal inclinations, where vital organs would be attacked.

Sometimes such cases are handled within another framework, in which Augustus would be considered possessed by an independent "evil" entity whenever Augustus Two took over. Now again, if Augustus somehow changed his beliefs it is possible that even within that framework some kind of cure would be effected. But at the same time the dangers and difficulties would make such a cure relatively impossible.

If a practitioner who believed that Augustus was possessed then convinced Augustus of the "fact, " their joint charged beliefs might possibly work for a while. Convincing Augustus that he was under the domination of an evil entity would be step one. Step two, getting rid of the intruder, could at least follow. The trouble is that working within that framework, the self-structure is further weakened, for the normally repressed characteristics of Augustus Two are forever denied. Augustus must then always be "good, " and yet he would always feel vulnerable to another such invasion of evil. The same results as those given could be possible: the growth of suicidal tendencies or other self-destructive behavior.

You may take your break.

(10:23. "Men all this started [in late 1963] about speaking in trance, " Jane said, "I used to feel that there was just one word available at a time, with nothing before it or after it-but now I sense whole blocks of material there just waiting to be given. Like the stuff on the Speakers tonight, earlier * It's like that more and more often... "Before the session Jane had again been aware of several channels of information available from Seth.

(Resume at 10:45.)

Dictation: Luckily the human mind and body are far more flexible, durable and creative than ever given credit for. Many cases like Augustus's never come to light The individuals involved cure themselves. Sometimes this is done when such a person chooses to undergo a traumatic experience-often one part of the personality will plan this quite deliberately while the other portion closes its eyes. These events can seem to be disasters or near disasters, and yet they can sufficiently mobilize the entire personality for survival's sake. In a moment of high critical tension the personality may put itself together again.

Such critical-uniting episodes usually do not involve long sickness, though they may, but instead events such as bad accidents. The difficulty may be exteriorized as a broken limb, for example, instead of a broken self, and as the body is repaired the necessary assimilation of belief takes place.

There are various kinds and stages in such cases. Each individual is unique. Sometimes the framework includes another method of cure, in which portions of each conflicting side of the personality break off to form a clearer psychological structure which can communicate with the other two, act as a referee, and reconcile the opposing beliefs held by each.

This is done many times without the main personality realizing what is really going on. On occasion automatic writing is utilized, or the Ouija board. Both are methods to uncover invisible conscious beliefs-that are accepted by you consciously at any given time, say, and deliberately ignored at another given time.

When people using such methods are told that their writing comes through from a demon or the devil, or an evil spirit, then those invisible beliefs are shoved farther away. Any search into the mind becomes frightening and dangerous, since it might lead to further such "invasion."

Now such invasion is usually the sudden appearance of previously unacceptable beliefs, quite conscious but invisible, tucked away. Then they suddenly appear as alien. In most instances the possession concept makes it all the more upsetting. Easier to face, often, is the idea that the responsibility for such ideas must belong to another entity or being. In all cases of this nature involving Augustus-type episodes, the problem is one of unassimilated beliefs. Instead of such comparatively drastic behavior, however, such beliefs can be expressed through various parts of the body. Unfortunately, a system of medicine that largely deals with symptoms only encourages a patient to project such beliefs on new organs, for instance, after already sacrificing others in operations.

The solutions he in the conscious mind-I cannot emphasize this too strongly-and in those beliefs that you accept about the nature of reality and, specifically, about the nature of your being.

While the most basic work must be done by the individual, help is always available from a variety of sources, both within and without. You will literally interpret and use almost any data that comes to you as helpful, and it will be highly effective-unless your beliefs lead you to think, perhaps, that everyone is against you, or that you are beyond help, or that you do not deserve it. Other such ideas can also close you off from help, of course, but you will instinctively look for it and use it when possible.

You may take a break or end the session as you prefer.

("We'll take the break. "

(11:15 P.M. I chose a break in order to see if Jane still wanted me to ask Seth about the ideas she'd talked about before the session. She had been tired earlier, but had revived considerably now; nevertheless she decided to forego the questions and end the session.)

Session 630, December 11, 1972, 9:26 P.M., Monday

(Jane and I sat for the session at about 9:15. At 9:25 she abruptly told me that she'd just "received" the title of a book I am to write: Through My Eyes. She was very surprised-and so was I. At first, Jane said, she interpreted her information [from Seth?] to mean that I would be writing a chapter with that title for one of her own books. But then she quickly realized that this is to be a work of my own.

(It's supposed to express my views of the Seth experience, and how it has influenced or changed my ideas on art, life, and so forth. Then, as Jane told me about all of this, she announced that Seth was coming through right away-a most unusual procedure as far as our regular sessions are concerned. She took off her glasses... )

Now: The book title should be: "Through My Eyes, " and it should be your own book, covering in your own way many important areas. You have writing ability, as you know.

The book should cover your version of our joint experience-your own philosophical explanation of it, the questions it arouses within your own mind, your observations of Ruburt as Jane and in our trance states. Other portions should explain your own ideas concerning creativity as you feel it in yourself-the differences and similarities between your experience when you paint a picture from "usual" inspiration and when first of all you perceive the psychic impression that leads to a painting. Some illustrations from an initial sketch to a completed painting should be included.

Give some thought to experimentation, observing the nature of color in usual consciousness and in altered states. Pay attention to color in your dreams also. You should go into your own ideas about the people you paint, and why, being fascinated with portraits, you often do not use models.

The book can include some of the material I have given you on art through various channels, and how you have applied it. This work can be followed by one utilizing sessions concerned with art mainly but covering some other artistic areas as well, such as the nature and origin of inspirations.

I have given you an outline that I am sure you can follow. The book should be fun to write besides, and combine your writing and painting abilities. The title is a good one and the book will sell. You will be able to get a contract on it, with advance, and writing it will also serve as a spurt for your painting. I am being tricky here.

("Are you?" I tried to bait Seth a little here.)

I am indeed. For this will short-circuit some of your hang-ups as far as painting is concerned and will lead to new spontaneous painting power (humorously) . You will also consider it a work of merit, and you will be doing your own thing with your experience. I know that the impetus alone will quite slyly and automatically produce some excellent paintings. You will want to use them. I will not tell you in what particular way this sneaks by some of your problems now, or which ones are involved. I suggest that you do up a prospectus, an outline, and some few beginning pages-say a chapter or so.

Now we will have a break, and that is my little surprise for both of you.

("I'll say. Thank you."

(9:42. "I'm so surprised I haven't even put my glasses back on yet, "Jane exclaimed after she'd come out of trance. Neither of us have been thinking of such a project, which isn't to say the idea of my doing a book involving Seth, at least in part, hasn't occurred to me occasionally.

("I'm really surprised when something like this happens to me in a session, Jane said. "It's so different from what I've been thinking about, or doing. I can see a center section of the book right now, with your illustrations. And I can see Seth's portrait on the back cover." She pointed over her right shoulder to where the painting-which is reproduced in The Seth Material-hangs on our living room wall just in back of her rocker.

(Resume in the same active manner at 9:58.)

Now: This book will be a good advertisement for the later book that I will do-and if you insert what I have told you in the book I am doing now, people will already begin to look forward to your book.

("That's pretty crafty.")

So include it in The Nature of Personal Reality, for it is the birth of the book in your personal reality.

I had several things in mind this evening. Some of Ruburt's questions will be answered in our next chapter, which we will begin. Then I will have some other personal comment.

(Pause at 10:01. Our telephone began to ring. The sound penetrated the two closed doors between Jane's study and the living room, where we were. I disliked interrupting the session so I let it ring-feeling uneasy all the while. Jane, in trance, seemed not to hear it.

(She receives more and more calls these days. Now when either of us picks up the telephone we're prepared to talk to a person from any part of the country. Earlier this evening, for instance, Jane took a call from the High Sierra country in California.)

Dictation: Chapter Seven: "The Living Flesh."

Give us a moment... Often individuals go overboard, forgetting that ideas have their own vitality. Such people make divisions where basically there are none. They consider ideas as completely mental properties, separate from their concept of the body. They think ideas reside in their heads. Who, for example, imagines that an idea is alive in his elbow, or knee, or toe?

Generally, people believe that ideas have little to do with the living flesh. The flesh seems physical and ideas do not. Those given to love of the intellect often make an unnecessary separation between the world of concepts and that of the flesh.

While it is true that the body is the living materialization of idea, it is also true that these ideas form an active, responsive, alive body. The body is not just a tool to be used. It is not just a vehicle for the spirit. It is the spirit in flesh. You impose your ideas upon it and largely affect its health and well-being through your conscious beliefs. But the body is composed of living, responding atoms and molecules. These have their own consciousnesses alive in matter, their drive to exist and be within the framework of their own nature. They compose the cells, and these combine to form the organs. The organs possess the combined consciousnesses of each of the cells within them, and in their way the organs sense their own identity.

They have a purpose-that function they provide within the organism as a whole. This cooperation of consciousness continues so that you have a body consciousness that is vital, that strives to maintain its own equilibrium and health.

The stuff of the body should not be considered as some metaphysical result, then, but as a living gestalt of responsive flesh. Your body is composed of other living entities, in other words. Though you organize this living material it has its own right to fulfillment and existence. You are not a soul encased in inert clay.

The "house of clay" does not immediately deteriorate when you leave it. It disintegrates at its own rate. It is no longer organized by your own domain. The life of its atoms and molecules and cells is translated into other living natural forms. Your perception is merely that which you are aware of. Even the atoms and molecules have their own fine vision and appreciate their environment in their own way. The same power that moves your mind forms your body.

There is no difference between the energy that shapes your ideas and the energy that grows a flower, or that heals your finger if you burn it. The soul does not exist apart from nature. It is not thrust into nature. Nature is the soul in flesh, in whatever its materializations. The flesh is as spiritual as the soul, and the soul is as natural as the flesh. In your terms the body is the living soul. Now the soul can live, and does, in many forms-some physical and some not, but while you are material, the body is the living soul. The body constantly heals itself, which means that the soul in the flesh heals itself. The body is often closer to the soul than the mind is because it automatically grows as a flower does, trusting its nature.

You may take your break.

(10:27. Jane's pace had been good. This was the end of book work. After break , Seth delivered two pages of data for Jane and me, and the session ended at 11:01 P.M.)

Session 631, December 18, 1972, 9:37 P.M., Monday

(We had spent the earlier part of the evening trimming our Christmas tree. Now that it was done, with the multicolored lights shining through the branches and the tinsel, we prepared for the session. Beneath our living room windows, a carpenter pounded on an outside doorframe as he repaired damage done to the ground floor of the house by the flood of last June [see the 613th session in Chapter One]. Beside this, the sound of additional hammering inside the house rose up through our floor; but none of this lasted long or interfered with the session.)

Now -

("Good evening, Seth.")

- to begin dictation: Physical existence is valuable for many reasons, one being that the flesh is so responsive to thought and yet so resilient. There are built-in guidelines so that the body consciousness itself, while mirroring your negative images at times, will also automatically struggle against them.

You must remember that you dwell always in a natural framework-which means that your thoughts themselves are as natural, say, as the locks of your hair. In what may seem to you to be an odd analogy I will compare your thoughts with viruses, for they are alive, always present, responsive, and possess their own kind of mobility. Physically speaking at least, thoughts are chemically propelled, and they travel through the universal body as viruses travel through your temporal form.

Thoughts interact with the body and become part of it as viruses do. Some viruses have great therapeutic value. The physical body will often let down its own barriers to these, knowing they will counteract certain others that are not beneficial at the time.

So-called harmful viruses are ever-present within the body. You are very rarely vulnerable to any but a small percentage, though you carry within you traces of the most deadly of them all of the time. Viruses themselves undergo transformations completely unsuspected by medical men. If one virus disappears and another is found, it is never suspected that the first may have changed into the second; and yet through certain alterations of quite natural character such is the case.

So viruses can be beneficial or deadly according to the condition, state, and needs of the body at any given time. It is known that one disease can often cure another; sometimes, left alone, an individual will go from a serious disease through a series of less severe ones that are seemingly unrelated to the original problem.

Now in the context of usual Western learning, and with the introduction of modern drugs, you are in somewhat of a quandary. The body knows how to handle "natural" drugs coming directly from the earth-whether ground or boiled, minced or steamed. A large variety of "manufactured" drugs offer an unfamiliarity to the body's innate structure, which can lead to strong defense mechanisms. These are often aimed directly against the drug instead of the disease itself. Such a situation means that you must then use another drug to counteract the one just given.

(Pause at 9:58.) 1 am not suggesting that you not visit doctors or not take drugs of that nature, as long as you believe in the structure of medical discipline that the Western world has evolved. Your bodies have been conditioned to it through the use of such medications since birth. There are many casualties, but this is still a system that you have chosen, and your ideas still form your reality. No one dies who has not made the decision to do so-and no disease is accepted blindly. Put simply, your thoughts can be regarded as invisible viruses, carriers, sparks setting off reactions not only within the body but the entire physical system as you know it.

Your thoughts are as natural as the cells within your body, and as real. They interact with one another as viruses do. While you are in this reality there is no division between the mental, the spiritual, and the physical. If you think there is, then you do not sufficiently understand the spirituality of the flesh or the physical reality of your thought.

You may take a break.

(10:06 to 10:29.)

Now: As stated, thoughts are as natural as any portion of the body. They are as much a part of nature as feelings are, but if you set up an arbitrary division-considering thoughts mental as distinguished from the physical-then your body may give a truer reflection of your being than your thoughts do.

In the body's spontaneous functioning you see the easy mobility of the soul, the "going with that which I am, " which is an indication of the soul's inner freedom and yet innate sense of direction. All portions of the body's reality are versions in flesh of the soul's reality, even as all segments of the exterior universe mirror an internal one. The latter is as alive and natural and changing as the exterior world. Physical phenomena is only a portion of what nature is, and all realities are natural.

In your terms, probabilities-are extensions and variations on the growth principle that is quite obvious in your daily reality. Such growth is a natural manifestation flourishing within your particular area of actuality, observable to your senses. Again, other entirely natural manifestations of that principle exist. Some can only be glimpsed in distorted form because of other "natural" conditions that you cannot perceive. Probabilities involve you with a rich psychological growth and development, present but not observable in your "home ground." Any kind of existence happens within the context of nature, and nature includes the soul. Your definition of nature has simply been too limiting.

It is natural to live after death, and natural to return the body to earth and [then to] form another. It is natural for your thoughts to be as quick, responsive, and alive as viruses. It is natural for you to have probable selves as well as reincarnational existences.

When you consider ideas as mental and apart from nature, then you feel separated from nature itself. When you imagine a life after death as unnatural or supernatural then you feel divorced, cut off and bewildered. You must try to understand that there are different kinds of nature within Nature-and a capital for the last one. Your physical life-your human nature-is, in your terms, dependent upon a time when you were not. You must realize that not being in that connotation is quite as natural as physical being. Your existence before and after death is as much a normal phenomenon as your present life.

End of dictation. Now do you want a break?

("Yes.")

Then I will continue on another line.

(10.55. Jane had been well dissociated. The house had long since fallen quiet-a somewhat unusual situation these days, it seemed. After break, Seth diseased my painting and gave some material for others who aren't involved with this book. The session ended then at 11:35 P.M.)

Session 632, January 15, 1973, 9:00 P.M., Monday

(We've had a series of brilliant warm days this month, and the ground is bare of snow. Our Christmas tree is gone, although we kept it up through last week. Jane has her classes back in action now. Although we had a few shorter sessions on different matters during the holiday season, this is the first material Seth has given on his book since December 18-and as he resumed dictation on Chapter Seven so easily, we were reminded that he's impervious to our ideas of time.

(Jane's psychic work has resulted in a steady, if modest, increase in mail, and gradually we've fallen far behind in answering it. Recently Seth told us he'd dictate "a nice letter" that we could send to those who write along with any personal note we might add, but we haven't obtained this yet.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

For now, dictation: As most of you know, the atoms that compose your cells, as well as the cells themselves, constantly die and are replaced. The stuff of the internal organs changes and yet they always retain their form. Their identity is intact.

So is your own identity secure in the midst of all these births and deaths of which your conscious self is unaware. The memory of all of its experiences is retained. Each cell remembers its past though all of its parts have been and are being continually replaced.

As your cells have their own memories, so the conscious mind has a more overt kind of memory. Your conscious thoughts act as triggers, bringing both kinds of memory into activation. Within your physical being then each joyful, expanding, traumatic and tragic "past" event lies indelibly written. In your terms this is your working material, the memory of your physical being since the time of its conception in corporeal form. There are [in your memory] the most complex organizations and associative frameworks, that exist both in the depths of your cellular structure and in the highest reaches of your conscious activity.

Earlier I compared your thoughts to viruses (in the last session) . Think of them now as living electromagnetic cells, differing from the physical cells in your body only in the nature of their materialization. Your thoughts direct the overall functioning of your body's cells, even though you do not consciously know how those cells operate. That work is unconscious.

Each physical cell is in its way a miniature brain, with memory of all of its personal experiences and of its relationship with other cells, and with the body as a whole. In your terms this means that each cell operates with an innate picture of the body's entire history-past, present, and future.

Now this picture is ever-changing and mobile. An alteration in just one cell is instantly noted by the body consciousness (the combined consciousnesses of the cells) , and the future effect perceived. This information is used together with all other data from the body, and a prediction made.

(9:21.) This body prediction is then assessed, and on more levels than it is possible for me to explain. Briefly, the picture is "shown" in the invisible arena where flesh and spirit meet. This arena is not a place, of course, but an inner state of gestalt consciousness. The state is brought about through certain interactions that occur deep within the body. Magnetic structures are formed. They are created on a physical level through certain activations of the nerves in which the normal patterns are jumped, so to speak, and images are formed. The nerves and the cellular structures at their tips take pictures. These are all assembled and used to form the larger picture of the body's condition.

These are not images as you think of them but highly coded information, electromagnetically imprinted, that would not appear as images to the physical eye. In any case they cannot be perceived except by the body. But this procedure is so far superior to anything that you know that the body, therefore, actually takes precognitive pictures of its future condition-as if the body situation at the time were projected into the future.

(Seth-Jane paused often while delivering the last sentence, obviously searching for just the right words.)

This predictive picture is then set against two models. First it is checked against the body's ideal standard of health in its individual case-its own greatest fulfillment. Then it is checked against the image of the body sent to it by the conscious self. Correlations are made instantaneously. In an organizational framework that would certainly be envied by the most advanced technological concern, communications spring back and forth with great rapidity. The body makes whatever changes are necessary in order to bring the two images in line with the present corporeal condition.

You may take your break.

(9:35. "Seth gave us a break just to give us a break, "Jane said. "He's got a lot more there, all ready. I think he might talk about that book we bought last week, too-at least a little. "

(The book Jane referred to is a compendium of experiments with animal and human biological rhythms. We haven't read all of it yet, but from our points of view we're already questioning some of the conclusions drawn within it. We think Seth is continually offering larger insights into such rhythms. Resume at 9:42.)

There is a built-in equilibrium to some extent. The body is so responsive to conscious thought that it has its own innate system of self-preservation and its own guiding image of fulfillment.

Say that at the age of four you were severely injured. An accident took place at 3:20 in the afternoon. It was snowing. Your mother was roasting a turkey. Imagine that you burned a hand severely. Though all of the tissue in that hand has often been completely replaced by the time you are twenty-seven, for example, the identity within each of those present cells remembers that injury.

There were countless other events that happened to you on different afternoons at the same hour, both before and after that one. The cells within your hand contain within themselves memories your conscious mind would be dazzled to behold. Yet remember that the cells in your twenty-seven-year-old hand are in no physical way the same cells that experienced any of those events. In some underground of sensation, however, the buried evidences of stimuli and reaction experienced during those numberless "past" afternoons still exist. Some of those memories will certainly be played back, to affect what you think of as your current experience at twenty-seven. Your conscious thoughts and habits regulate which of them will intermix into the maelstrom of the present.

You consciously give the signals for reaction. It is not the other way around. Past events do not intrude in this manner unless they are beckoned by the conscious expectations and thoughts that exist within your mind. (Pause.) Those unconscious memories will be activated according to your current beliefs. You will be replenished and renewed as your thoughts motivate joyful body sensations and physical events, or you will be depressed as you bring into your awareness unpleasant past body happenings.

At times of course both can be highly beneficial. A conscious realization of danger, for example, will call up all information dealing with similar situations, so that the body can deal with it at once from the vast bank of its living memory. But constant unpleasant thoughts put the body into a state of turmoil that is "unrealistic, " and, in turn, force it to reactivate such old patterns.

(Long pause at 10:01, eyes closed.) The living flesh is quite aware of certain facts that escape you on a conscious level. It knows it dies and is reborn constantly, and yet retains itself. I use the terms "dies" and "is reborn" because you make sense of them, but the body does not. The body, while being always itself, comes and goes. It does not feel less or diminished when a cell dies, for it is also in the process of forming a new one.

For a moment, think of your body as one large cell in the moment of its being. You, the larger self, have many bodies, each turning into the other as one dies and is reborn; yet You (capital Y) maintain your identity and your memory even as the smallest cell in your present body does.

This is merely an analogy but it will explain your body's concept of itself; for as a whole it knows it "dies, " as now its portions do, but is also aware of its "future" transformation. Within this framework it protects and maintains its own stability and survival.

At one level of your being there is a common ground where body consciousness merges with that higher consciousness from which your own identity springs. This is the ground of your being where soul and flesh meet, both in time and out of it.

You may take your break.

(10:13 to 10.25.)

Now: Because you are conscious of being, you form your physical reality through conscious thought.

I am quite aware that I am repeating myself again and again when I make that statement, but you need to be reminded that you are not at the mercy of unconscious events. You have the body's innate wisdom behind you and it will always try to correct your errors.

These suggestions will appear in numberless ways-some quite physical to your way of thinking, and some through other means. The body may of itself begin to crave certain foods, for example, or fresh air or exercise. These are simple instances, and later we will be more specific.

You may have dreams urging you to move in such and such a direction, or pointing out areas in which corrections should be made. Often such dreams bring about behavior changes whether or not you remember them in the morning. You may request dreams in which proper direction is given, and you will receive them. If you ask on the one hand, however, and do not believe in the therapeutic nature of dreams on the other, you will short-circuit any such activity. In such a case you are not being honest with the contents of your conscious mind. Instead you are saying, "I will have a dream to help me, and yet I do not believe I can have such a dream."

In all cases when you are concerned about your health, there is a choice of directions for you to follow. The living flesh is yours. It is the materialization of your soul, and through the body the soul will provide you with those answers you require. In the next chapter we will begin to discuss those methods that can be used to refresh and heal the body, and that will help you arouse from within the physical form those memories and experiences most to your advantage. For best results, you must remember that ideas are as alive as the cells within your hand.

End of chapter. That was a transitional chapter. We will take a brief break, and you can have the beginning of the next chapter, or personal material as you request.

("We'd better make it personal then, I guess."

(10:40. During break Jane received some insights from Seth as to what would follow in Chapter Eight-that, for instance, when good thoughts from an individual's present life were activated, they would draw upon similar ones from his or her reincarnational personalities. This was a very interesting idea, aside from being a comforting one. I couldn't recall Seth presenting the concept in just that way before. [A note added later: But as things developed, he didn't begin alluding to it until Chapter Ten.]

(As often happens, the "personal" material that followed break has good general application, and Jane decided she'll use it to make certain points in ESP class. End at 11:26 P.M.

(When she read the first page of this session after I'd typed it, Jane said, "It looks like I distorted that bit about atoms 'dying. ' I don't think it should be put that way, I guess. Seth must have a lot on that. All I remember is that matter can't be created or destroyed. And those particles that break off atoms and are released as radiation don't 'die' as far as I know-although they might evolve... ? "

(In our reality, the first law of thermodynamics tells us that energy [matter] can be changed from one form to another but that it can't be created or destroyed. Although a chemical change results in a new substance the total weight of the ingredients involved remains practically the same; in such ordinary reactions the amount of matter converted into heat is infinitesimal. In mathematical terms Einstein revealed that mass and energy are equivalent to each other-when one is "destroyed " the other is "created. "

(We've been especially interested in such material since Seth referred to the "deaths" of atoms and molecules in the 625th session in Chapter Five, but we haven't asked for more detail because the subject matter is somewhat outside the scope of this book. In physics it is "known, " for instance, that the proton, an elementary particle in the atomic nucleus, has an exceptionally long life in years-the number one followed by twenty-four [or more] zeros. When Seth finishes Personal Reality our plan to ask him to reconcile such data from our world with the root assumptions, or basic agreements, in his own reality.

(At the same time Jane and I read these days that physicists are beginning to question the immutability of such rigid "laws" as those applying to thermo-dynamics, causality, etc., saying that they are either in error after all or need to be modified...

(Those who care to might see Seth's discussion of internal electromagnetic sound and light values in the 625th session referred to earlier, as well as his material on EE [electromagnetic energy] units in Chapter Twenty of Seth Speaks.)

Session 633, January 17, 1973, 9:14 P.M., Wednesday

(Tonight I asked Jane if Seth would deliver his promised letter for correspondents. We sat for the sessions at 9:05. At the same time the city fire whistle began to sound insistently; then we heard several other sirens.

(A note. Jane spent a large part of her writing time today rereading her manuscript, The Physical Universe as Idea Construction, and writing new material related to it. She received the original in a transcendent state on the evening of September 9, 1963. This event initiated her psychic development; almost ten years after its conception the work still serves as a "touchstone" for her-and today Jane discovered concepts in it that she'd been blind to earlier For more on Idea Construction see The Seth Material and Seth Speaks.)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Now: We will begin with a letter.

Dear Friend:

I appreciate your interest in my work and sessions. I also am aware of your quite natural and human need to translate philosophy into daily life and action.

The ideas however are tools given to you for your use, in your own way. The more often you use these mental implements, the more proficient you become in developing and fulfilling your own unique gifts. There are those in your world to whom you can turn for help, often-friends, confidants, or doctors, psychologists and psychics. According to "where you are, " any of these persons may be of assistance.

While such help may be welcomed, the kind of value I offer is of a different nature. In larger terms one of my most important messages is simply this: 'You are a multidimensional personality, and within you lies all the knowledge about yourself, your challenges and problems, that you will ever need to know. Others can help you in their own way, and at certain levels of development such help is necessary and good. But my mission is to remind you of the incredible power within your own being, and to encourage you to recognize and use it."

To this end, through Ruburt, I am producing the continuing body of the Seth material, and books, each in a different way geared to these goals. In my present book, The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book, I am including techniques that will allow you and thousands of others to use these ideas in normal daily living, to enrich the life that you know and to help you understand and solve your problems.

While it may not seem so at the present, the greatest gift I can give you is to reaffirm the integrity of your own being. I say this also because I am aware of your present status even as other portions of your own entity are.

Ruburt has only so much time available, and much must be taken into consideration. I am personally aware of your letter. Ruburt cannot answer all mail personally, however, or his work and mine could suffer. I am composing this note therefore to let you know that I hold you in my mind, and that energy is automatically sent out to you when your letter is received, and when this reply is sent. The energy will help release your own understanding and healing abilities, or help you in whatever particular area help is required.

Such energy is always available, whether you write to me or not. Such energy is constantly at your own command. If you believe me, then you will realize that others at best can only act as intermediaries, middlemen, and are in that respect not needed, for the energy is always available in your life. I simply give you that which is your own.

Seth

("Thank you.")

Now give us a moment; and that is the end of our letter. Some people you will want to send it to, and some you will not. Others you can take care of yourselves.

(Pause at 9:36 We think it of interest to include Seth's letter in his book, since it stresses the importance of beliefs.)

Dictation: Try a simple experiment. The results will be self explanatory. Think of a sad event from your life. Similar feelings will soon follow, and with them memories of other such unpleasant episodes strung together through association. Scenes, odors, words, perhaps half-forgotten, will suddenly come upon you with new freshness.

Your thoughts will activate the appropriate feelings. Beneath your awareness, however, they will also trigger the cells' ever-present memory imprints of stimuli received when those events occurred. There is, to some extent now, a cellular memory playback-and on the part of the entire body, the recognition of its state at that time.

If you pursue such sorrowful thoughts persistently you are reactivating that body condition. Think of one of the most pleasant events that ever happened to you and the reverse will be true, but the process is the same. This time the associated memories are pleasant, and the body changes accordingly.

Remember, these mental associations are living things. They are formations of energy assembled into invisible structures, through processes quite as valid and complicated as the organization of any group of cells. Comparing them with cells, they are of briefer duration, generally speaking, though under certain conditions this does not apply. But your thoughts form structures as real as the cells. Their composition is different in that no solidity is involved in your terms.

As living cells have a structure, react to stimuli and organize according to their own classification, so do thoughts. Thoughts thrive on association. They magnetically attract others like themselves, and like some strange microscopic animals they repel their "enemies, " or other thoughts that are threatening to their own survival.

(Two automobiles equipped with blaring sirens sped past our apartment house, but Jane didn't seem to be disturbed. Similar alarms had been audible in the background since session time.)

Using this analogy, your mental and emotional life forms a framework composed of such structures, and these act directly upon the cells of your physical body.

Now let us return to Augustus; for here we find again in one individual an excellent example of the way in which seemingly nonphysical thoughts and beliefs can affect and alter the corporeal image. And you may take a break.

(9:55. Jane was out of trance quickly. She repeated the idea she'd voiced several times lately-that although Seth had ended the Augustus data rather abruptly in Chapter Six, he planned to return to it occasionally through the book.

(I asked about the title for Chapter Eight. Jane thought it had come through; although she had glimmerings of it now, she couldn't get it clearly. The sirens continued, reminding me of animals Prowling about in the distance. As we listened to them I picked up a book which an ESP class member had left behind last night. It was about philosophy and religion in India. "Oh, put it down, " Jane said as I began to leaf through it. "This is one of those times when Seth could give a whole bunch of stuff on that book "-meaning, of course, that now she had more than one channel available.

(She went on to explain that to her way of thinking the book was "more insidious than a lot of outright lies, because the truth that you instinctively feel it contains could Lead you to accept the greater distortions that are also in it

(Resume in a fast manner at 10:14.)

Now: First of all, Augustus had been told in various ways, quote: "You think too much. You should be doing something physical, involved in sports, more outgoing." Such repeated remarks, with other childhood conditions, made him afraid of his own mental activity. He also felt unworthy, so how could his thoughts be good?

Feelings of violence accumulated early, but in his family there were no acceptable ways of releasing normal aggressive feelings. When these built up into felt, violent eruptions, Augustus was only the more convinced of his unacceptable nature. For some time in his normal state as a teenager, he tried harder and harder to be "good." This meant the banishing of thoughts or impulses that were sexually inspired along various lines, aggressive, or even just unconventional. Considerable energy was used to inhibit these portions of his inner experience. The denied mental events did not disappear, however. They increased in intensity and were kept apart from his "safer" usual thoughts.

In such a way, Augustus actually created a mental structure whose organization followed the principles I mentioned before your break. Under other circumstances and possessing different characteristics, another individual could damage a physical organ by literally attacking it, as surely as it might be assaulted by a virus (emphatically) . Because of Augustus's particular temperament and nature, however, and his native though conventionally undeveloped creativity, he formed a structure rather than destroying one.

In his normal state he accepted only the beliefs he considered were expected of him. As mentioned (in the 628th session in Chapter Six) , there was a time before his condition developed when his "good-self thoughts" and his "bad-self thoughts" vied for his attention, and the body tried desperately to react to constant, alternating and often contradictory concepts.

(Pause.) What developed was a situation in which the conflicting sets of thoughts and feelings finally took turns, though Augustus maintained his own integrity for most of the time. But those beliefs that he shoved away were, by attraction, instantly seized by the other mental structure-again, composed of ideas and feelings combined into what you might think of as an invisible cellular organization, with all capabilities of reaction.

In his normal condition Augustus thought of his own powerlessness-for he had denied himself normal aggressive action-and felt this weak. The beliefs activated the body's cellular memory, weakening the body and impeding its function. Yet for a time, while performance was dulled it was steady. A balance was maintained that suited his purposes.

He became afraid that the body would go out of control and commit violent action, because he was of course aware of the strength of the denied thoughts and feelings. When a crisis situation arose or when he became lost in despair, an acceleration began that he pretended not to notice, and Augustus Two would appear.

(10.35.) Augustus Two was filled with a sense of power-because Augustus considered power wrong and set it aside from what he thought of as his normal self. Yet Augustus knew the body needed the vitality that he had denied it. Therefore enter Augustus Two with his great ideas of extraordinary power, vigor and superiority-(louder and smiling:) I am keeping my Augustuses straight. I hope you are too.

("Yes.")

-and with fantasies of exceptional heroism and the memories of all of those denied by Augustus himself.

Aggressive action conveniently forgotten by Augustus was now recalled with exuberant glee by Augustus Two. As a result the chemical nature of the body was instantly revived. Muscular tone was greatly improved. There were changes in the amount of sugar in the blood and an alteration in the flow of energy throughout the body.

knew when Ruburt interviewed Augustus that the young man identified Augustus Two with the left side of himself. In his normal state that side of the body contained more tension than the right.

In Augustus Two, the tension found release and the energy flow became more even after initial bursts of activity. The longer Augustus Two stayed, however, the weaker his position became-a fact recognized by Augustus and Augustus Two. Augustus, you see, had to build up sufficient repressed thought and emotion because of a situation with which he could not cope. This threat would then bring about the emergence of Augustus Two. The body behaves as you think it must behave, so Augustus and Augustus Two, with their alternating patterns of behavior, caused the body to react in quite different ways.

Forget now that in this case such a division occurred, and imagine instead the successive thoughts and feelings that you possess. When you feel weak you are weak. When you feel joyful your body benefits and becomes stronger. Augustus's case simply shows in exaggerated form the effects of your beliefs upon your physical image. If you think, "Aha, then from now on I will only think good thoughts-and therefore be healthy, and inhibit my 'bad' thoughts, or do anything at all with them but think them, " then in your own way you are doing what Augustus did. He began by believing that some of his thoughts were so evil that they must somehow be made nonexistent. So inhibiting what you consider as negative thoughts, or assuming that they are so terrible, is no answer.

The chapter is to be called, "Health, Good and Bad Thoughts, and the Birth of 'Demons.'" And you may take your break.

(10:55. Jane's trance had been deep, her pace good, yet she remembered hearing the sirens. They continued now although we couldn't see any glow-say from afire-in the sky over the western section of the city. Resume in the same active manner at II: 15.)

Now: Your beliefs about what is desirable and what is not, what is good and what is evil, cannot be divorced from the condition of your body. Your own ideas of values can help you achieve good health or bring about disease, can bring into your experience success or failure, happiness or sadness. Yet each of you will interpret that last remark in line with your own value system. You will have definite ideas about what success or failure means, or what good or evil is.

Your own value system then is built up of your beliefs about reality, and those beliefs form your experience. Suppose you believe that to be "good" you must try to be perfect. You may have been told, or read, that the spirit is perfect, and hence thought that your duty was to reproduce that perfect spirit in flesh as best you could. To this end you attempt to deny all imperfect thoughts and emotions. Your own "negative" thoughts appall you. You may believe also what I have told you-that your thoughts create your reality-so you become all the more frightened at mental or actual expressions of an aggressive nature. You may be so concerned about hurting someone else that you hardly dare move. Trying to be perfect all the time can be far more than a nuisance: It can be disastrous because of your misunderstanding.

The word "perfect" holds many pitfalls. In the first place it presupposes something completed and done beyond change, and so beyond motion, further development, or creativity.

The spirit is always in a state of becoming, ever-changing, supple, and in your terms without end, as it was and is without a point of beginning. Ruburt said recently that if he was sure of one thing about physical reality, it was [that is was] not anywhere near perfect in these terms. But in the same meaning of the word neither is the spirit, which to fulfill the requirement of perfection would have to be set in some state of completion beyond which no fulfillment or creativity was possible.

Your thoughts are. You may approve or disapprove of them, in the way that you think of a storm, for example. Left alone, your thoughts are as various, magnificent, trivial, frightening, or glorious as a hurricane, a flower, a flood, a toad, a raindrop or the fog. Your thoughts are perfectly themselves. Left alone, they come and go.

You with your conscious mind are to discriminate among those thoughts as to which ones you want to form into your system of beliefs (intently) , but in so doing you are not to pretend blindness. You may at times wish that a rainy day were a sunny one, but you do not stand at the window and deny that the rain is falling, or that the air is cold and the sky dark.

Because you accept the rain as a present reality does not mean, either, that you must believe that all days are stormy, and make that obvious misconception a part of your beliefs about reality. So you do not have to pretend that a "dark" thought doesn't exist. You do not have to take it as fact that all of your thoughts would be murky, left alone, and try to hide them.

Some people are afraid of snakes, even of the most harmless variety, and blind to their beauty and place in the universe. Some are aft-aid of certain thoughts, and so are oblivious to their beauty and their place in mental life.

Since you have all kinds of thoughts there are reasons for having them, as you have all kinds of geography. Within your reality it is as foolish to deny the existence of certain thoughts as it would be, say, to pretend that deserts do not exist. In following such a course you deny dimensions of experience and diminish your reality. This does not mean that you have to collect what you think of as negative thoughts, any more than it means that you should spend a month in a desert if you do not like them. Period. It does mean that within nature as you understand it, nothing is meaningless or to be pretended out of existence.

That will do. Now you may end the session or take a break if you prefer.

("I hate to say it, but we'd better end it then.")

(Jovially:) Then I will add: I told you there would be no trouble with the book. Tell Ruburt I said so-but who listens to me? Though he is listening better lately, and on the right track... I wish you a hearty good evening.

("Thank you, Seth. Good night."

(11:44 P.M. Only our own weariness prompted me to end the session, I could tell that Seth was capable of continuing indefinitely. It had been a long day for us. Now even the sirens had fallen silent.

(Seth's joking remarks about "the book" refer to this one. In some recent deleted material he had discussed Jane's initial uncertainty about signing a contract for the publication of psychic work before it had been produced. Tam Mossman, Jane's editor at Prentice-Hall, has read the first six chapters of Personal Reality [as we call it], and has written her a very encouraging letter.)

Session 634, January 22, 1973, 9:19 P.M., Monday

(Since I hadn't finished typing the 633rd session yet, Jane asked me to read her the last couple of pages of it from my notes.)

Now: Dictation: Each individual will have a slightly different definition for "negative" emotions. One person may find sexually stimulating thoughts delightful and a most enjoyable kind of diversion. Another may consider them impure, bad, unhealthy, or otherwise disadvantageous.

Some individuals can with ease and exuberance imagine themselves in a fistfight, a brawl, unmercifully beating "the devil" out of an adversary. The same thoughts may fill another man with intense terror and grave feelings of guilt. This same man, however, who would not purposely entertain fantasies of such nature under normal conditions, may in time of war imagine himself killing the enemy with the greatest feelings of holy joy and righteousness.

(Pause.) What is usually forgotten is the real nature of aggressiveness, which in its truest sense simply means forceful action. This does not necessarily imply physical force, but instead the power of energy directed into a material action.

Birth is perhaps the most forceful aggression, in your terms, of which you are capable in your system of reality (emphatically) . In the same way, the growth of any idea into temporal realization is the result of creative aggression. It is impossible to try to erase true aggressiveness. To do so would obliterate life as you know it.

(Pause at 9.34.) Any attempt to impair the flow of true aggression results in a distortive, uneven, explosive pseudo-aggression that causes wars, individual neurosis, and a great many of your problems in all areas.

Normal aggressiveness flows with strong patterns of energy, giving motive power to all of your thoughts whether you consciously regard them as positive or negative, good or bad. (Very definitely:) The same thrusting creative surge brings them all forth. When you consider a thought good you usually do not question it. You allow it its life and follow through. Usually if you regard a thought as bad or beneath you, or if you are ashamed of it, then you try to deny it, stop its motion and hold it back. You cannot restrain energy, although you may think you can. You simply collect it, whereupon it grows, seeking its fulfillment.

This will lead you to say, "Supposing I feel like killing my boss, then, or putting poison in my husband's tea; or worse, hanging my five children on the clothesline instead of the towels? Are you saying that I should merely follow through?"

I sympathize with your predicament. The fact is that before being "assailed" by what may seem to be such terrifying unnatural ideas, you have already blocked off an endless variety of far less drastic ones, any of which you could have expressed quite safely and naturally in daily life. Your problem then is not how to deal with normal aggressiveness, but how to handle it when it has remained unexpressed, ignored, and denied over a long period of time. Later in this book we will deal specifically with methods to that end. Here I simply want to point out the difference between healthy natural aggressiveness, and the explosive, distorted emergence of repressed aggression.

You will each have to discover for yourself those areas in which you strongly repress your thoughts, for many energy blockages will be found there. All of this will be covered in the later section.

For now consider this blocked energy. Consciously, most people are already afraid of it-they did not repress it because they considered it good. When I use the word "repressed" I do not mean forgotten, or shoved into the unconscious, or beyond reach. You may pretend that such material is hidden but it is quite within your conscious awareness. You have only to honestly look for it and organize what you find.

It is very possible to "see" such information and not see it at the same time, simply because you do not add all of the data together. No one can make you do that, of course. To do it you must have a sense of courage and adventuresomeness; and tell yourself that you refuse to be cowed by ideas that after all belong to you, but are not you.

Now: It is often said that man believes in devils because he believes in gods. The fact is that man began to believe in demons when he started to feel a sense of guilt. The guilt itself arose with the birth of compassion.

Animals have a sense of justice that you do not understand, and built-in to that innocent sense of integrity there is a biological compassion, understood at the deepest cellular levels.

In your terms man is an animal, rising out of himself, from himself evolving certain animal capacities to their utmost; not forming new physical specializations of body any longer (again in your terms) , but creating from his needs, desires and blessed natural aggressiveness inner structures having to do with values, space and time. To varying degrees this same impetus resides throughout all creaturehood.

(Pause at 10:02.) Do you want a break? I forgot.

("No, I'm okay. " Seth-Jane's pace was rather slow.)

Such a task meant that man must break out of the self-regulating, precise, safe and yet limiting aspects of instinct. The birth of a conscious mind, as you think of it, meant that the species took upon itself free win. Built-in procedures that had beautifully sufficed could now be superseded. They became suggestions instead of rules.

Compassion "rose" from the biological structure up to emotional reality. The "new" consciousness accepted its emerging triumph-freedom-and was faced with responsibility for action of a conscious level, and with the birth of guilt.

A cat playfully killing a mouse and eating it is not evil. It suffers no guilt. On biological levels both animals understand. The consciousness of the mouse, under the innate knowledge of impending pain, leaves its body. The cat uses the warm flesh. The mouse itself has been hunter as well as prey, and both understand the terms in ways that are very difficult to explain.

(As Seth-Jane delivered this material, my mind flashed back many years to a summer day when I was about eleven years old. With my two brothers I sat in the back yard of the house in which we grew up, in a small town not far from Elmira. Our neighbor's cat, Mitzi, had caught a field mouse. She played with it in the grass; with conflicting feelings I watched Mitzi, of whom I was very fond, block off each attempt of the terrified mouse to escape-until, finally, having had her sport, she ate it...

(The Mitzi episode in turn reminded me of a series of little poems Jane wrote a few years ago. Many people call them Haiku-the Japanese verse form-but they are only reminiscent of that category. We have several of them pinned up on our walls, among them this one:

The cat eats the mouse.

Neither exist.

Do not tell them.

(The weather has been exceptionally warm for days. A light rain had started at session time, and now there was lightning, followed by thunder resounding across the city.)

At certain levels both cat and mouse understand the nature of the life energy they share, and are not-in those terms-jealous for their own individuality. This does not mean they will not struggle to live, but that they have a built-in unconscious sense of unity with nature in which they know they will not be lost or immersed (quietly intent) .

Man, pursuing his own way, chose to step outside of that framework-on a conscious level. The birth of compassion then took the place of the animals' innate knowledge; the biological compassion turned into emotional realization.

The hunter, freed more or less from animal courtesy, would be forced to emotionally identify with his prey. To kill is to be killed. The balance of life sustains all. He must learn on a conscious level then what he knew all along. This is the intrinsic and only real meaning of guilt and its natural framework.

(Long pause.) You are to preserve life consciously, then, as the animals preserve it unconsciously.

You may take your break. I am sorry.

("That's all right. It's very interesting."

(10:27. This had been one of Jane's longer trances. It had been a deep one, too-yet she remembered hearing the thunder when I asked her about it. She was eager to have me read Seth's material back to her, but then: "Oh, wait a minute... I'm already starting to get more, and I want to get up and move around first. " To give her a break, I went outside to look for our other cat, Willy. The younger one, Rooney, was in. Resume at 10:44.)

Now: The interpretations and uses to which this quite natural guilt has been put are horrendous.

Guilt is the other side of compassion. Its original purpose was to enable you to empathize on an aware level with yourselves and other members of creaturehood, so that you could consciously control what was previously handled on a biological level alone. Guilt in that respect therefore has a strong natural basis, and when it is perverted, misused or misunderstood, it has that great terrifying energy of any runaway basic phenomenon.

(Pause.) If you think you are guilty because you read one kind of book or another, or entertain certain thoughts, then you run particular risks. If you believe something is wrong then in your experience it will be, and you will consider it negative. So you will collect an "unnatural" guilt, one that you do not deserve but accept and so create.

You will not usually form a creation of it of which you are proud. If you believe firmly in poor health you may use this repressed energy to attack a physical organ-a gall bladder may become "bad. " According to your own belief system, you may trust the integrity of your body and instead project this guilt out upon others-onto a personal enemy, or a particular race, creed or color.

If you are religious-minded and fundamental in your beliefs, you may blame a devil who causes you to behave in such and such a manner. As the body creates antibodies* to regulate itself, so you will set up mental and emotional "antibodies, " certain thoughts that are "good, " to protect you from the fantasies or ideas that you consider bad.

If its built-in instincts are left alone the body is basically self-regulating. It does not kill off all red blood cells if there are too many of them at a given time. It has better sense. But in your fear of negative thoughts you often attempt to deny all normal aggressiveness, and at the first glimpse of it bring up your mental antibodies prepared for action. In so doing you try to repudiate the validity of your own experience. If you do not feel your individual reality, then you can never realize that you form it, and so can change it. It is this denial of experience, and the energy blockages involved, that build up the accumulation of unnecessary "unnatural" guilt. The body itself cannot understand these blocked messages, and cries out to express its own corporeal knowledge of the moment as it experiences it. (Intently:) You mentally shout in such situations that you do not feel what you feel.

Over a period of time the conscious mind, because of its position, can override the body's messages. Yet the backed-up accumulation of energy will seek outlet. The smallest, most innocent symbol for the repressed material may then bring about behavior on your part that seems out of all proportion to the stimulus.

On ten justified occasions you may have felt like telling someone to leave you alone, but refrained, not wanting to hurt their feelings; afraid that you would be rude even though the occasion was one where your remark might well have been understood and taken calmly. Because you did not accept your feelings, much less express them, on the next occasion you might explode seemingly without reason and initiate a spectacular argument, completely unjustified.

(11:10.) In this case the other person has no idea as to why you reacted in such a fashion, and is deeply hurt. And your guilt grows. The trouble is that ideas of right and wrong are intimately involved with your chemistry, and you cannot separate your moral values from your body.

When you believe that you are good, your body functions well. I am sure that many of you will say, "I try constantly to be good, yet I am in miserable health, so how can that be?" If you examine your own beliefs the answer will be apparent: You try to be so good precisely because you believe you are so bad and unworthy.

Demons of any kind are the result of your beliefs. They are born from a belief in "unnatural" guilt. You may personify them. You may even meet them in your experience, but if so they are still the product of your immeasurable creativity, though formed by your guilt and your belief in it.

If you shed the distorted concepts of unnatural guilt and accepted the wise ancient wisdom of natural guilt instead, there would be no wars. You would not kill each other mindlessly. You would understand the living integrity of each organ in your body and have no need to attack any of them.

This obviously does not mean that the time of the body's death would not come. It does mean that the seasons of the body would be understood as following those of the mind, ever-changing and flowing, with conditions coming and going but always maintaining the splendid unity within the body's form. You would not have chronic illnesses. Generally speaking, and ideally, the body would wear our gradually while still showing far greater endurance than it does now.

There are many other conditions, though, all having to do with your conscious beliefs. You may think it is better to die quickly of a heart attack, for example. Your individual purposes are not the same so you will manage your body experiences in a great variety of ways.

Generally speaking, you are here to expand your consciousness, to learn the ways of creativity as directed through conscious thought. The aware mind can change its beliefs, and so to a large extent it can alter its bodily experience...

(I sat with my eyes closed momentarily, and Seth caught me.)

(Smiling:) You may change your experience: You may take a break or end the session as you prefer.

("We'll take the break.")

(11:32 to 11:48.)

Natural guilt then is the species' manifestation of the animals' unconscious corporeal sense of justice and integrity. It means: Thou shalt not kill more than is needed for thy physical sustenance. Period.

It has nothing to do with adultery or with sex. It does contain innate issues that apply to human beings, that would have no meaning for other animals in the framework of their experience. Strictly-speaking, the translation from biological language to your own is as given in this session; but the finer discrimination reads thusly: Thou shalt not violate.

The animals do not need such a message, of course, nor can it be literally translated, for your consciousness is flexible and leeway had to be left for your own interpretation.

An outright lie may or may not be a violation. A sex act may or may not be a violation. A scientific expedition may or may not be a violation. Not going to church on Sunday is not a violation. Having normal aggressive thoughts is not a violation. Doing violence to your body, or another's, is a violation. Doing violence to the spirit of another is a violation-but again, because you are conscious beings the interpretations are yours. Swearing is not a violation. If you believe that it is then in your mind it becomes one.

(12:01.) Killing another human being is a violation. Killing while protecting your own body from death at the hands of another through immediate contact is a violation. Whether or not any justification seems apparent, the violation exists.

(Long pause.) Because you believe that physical self-defense is the only way to counter such a situation then you will say, "If I am attacked by another person, are you telling me that I cannot aggressively counter his obvious intent to destroy me?"

Not at all. You could counter such an attack in several ways that do not involve killing. You would not be in such a hypothetical situation to begin with unless violent thoughts of your own, faced or unfaced, had attracted it to you. But once it is a fact, and according to the circumstances, many methods could be used. Because you consider aggression synonymous with violence, you may not understand that aggressive forceful, active, mental or spoken-commands for peace could save your life in such a case; yet they could.

Usually there are a variety of physical actions, not involving killing, that would suffice. As long as you believe that violence must be met with violence you court it and its consequences. On individual terms, your own body and mind become the battleground, as does the physical body of the earth in mass terms. Your material form is alive through natural aggression, the poised, forceful and directed action that is the carrier for creativity.

(Long pause at 12:11, eyes closed.) If you cut your finger it bleeds. In so doing the blood clears away any poisons that may have entered. The bleeding is beneficial and the body knows when to stop it. If the flow continued it would be wrong or detrimental in your terms, but the body would not think the blood was bad because it continued its course of action. It would not attempt to cut off all blood, considering it evil. It would instead make whatever adjustments were necessary to bring the emission to a natural halt.

When you consider aggressive thoughts wrong, using this analogy, you do not even begin to allow the system to clear itself. Instead you shut up the "poisons" inside.

As an accumulation would occur in the flesh, so the same thing might happen in your mental experience. Physically you could end up with a very serious condition; and mentally and emotionally such a clamping down on natural forces can result in "diseased" idea structures that are isolated from other more healthy concepts. These can be like growths-not lacking oxygen, for example, but free access and flow with other portions of your conscious experience.

We will now end the session. My heartiest regards to you both, and a fond good evening.

("Thank you very much, Seth. Good night.")

(End at 12:25 A.M. "Wow, "Jane said when she was out Of another excellent trance. "I'm tired now but Seth's still got plenty left . . .

Session 635, January 24, 1973, 9:44 P.M., Wednesday

(Soon we'll be able to start sending out Seth's own letter to some Of our correspondents; he dictated it in the 633rd session. I've prepared the type written camera copy so that it has just the look Jane and I want it to have, and now a local printer is making several hundred copies for us.)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.')

Dictation. Now (smiling.) You do not need to put in my first now's. (But I had already done so.)

Natural guilt is also highly connected with memory, and arose hand in hand with mankind's excursion into the experience of past, present and future. Natural guilt was meant as a preventive measure. It needed the existence of a sophisticated memory system in which new situations and experiences could be judged against recalled ones, and evaluations made in an in-between moment of reflection.

Any previous acts that had aroused feelings of natural guilt were to be avoided in the future. Because of the multitudinous courses open to the species, not only did the highly specific nature of many kinds of animalistic instinct no longer apply, but a curious balance had to be maintained. The conscious options that opened as man's mental world enlarged made it impossible to allow sufficient freedom, and yet necessary control, on a biological level alone.

(Long pause at 9.56.) So controls were needed lest the conscious mind, denied full use of the animals' innate taboos, run away with itself. Guilt, natural guilt, depends upon memory then.

It does not carry with it any built-in connection with punishment as you think of it. Once more, it was meant as a preventive measure. Any violation against nature would bring about a feeling of guilt so that when a like situation was encountered in the future, man would, in that moment of reflection, not repeat the same action.

I have used the phrase "moment of reflection" several times because it is another attribute peculiar to the conscious mind and, again in your terms, is largely denied to the rest of creaturehood. Without that pause-in which man can remember past in the present, and envisage a future-natural guilt would have no meaning. Man would not be able to recall past acts, judge them against the present situation, or imagine the future sense of guilt that might result.

To that extent natural guilt projected man into the future. This is of course a learning process, natural within the time system that the species adopted. Unfortunately, artificial guilt takes on the same attributes, utilizing both memory and projection. Wars are self-perpetuating because they combine both natural and unnatural guilt, compounded and reinforced by memory. Conscious killing beyond the needs of sustenance is a violation.

(Long pause at 10:08.) We are taking this slow...

("All right. "Jane's delivery has been leisurely since the start of the session.)

The collection of unrecognized artificial guilts, built up through the centuries, has led to such an accumulation of repressed energy that its release has resulted in violent action. Thus the hatred of one generation of adults whose parents were killed in a war helps generate the next one.

Thou shalt not violate. Again, the injunction had to be flexible enough to cover any situations in which the conscious species could become involved. The animals' instincts and their natural situations kept their numbers in bounds; and with unconscious, unknowing courtesy they made room for all others.

Thou shalt not violate against nature, life, or the earth. In your terms creaturehood, while striving for survival and longing for life, while abundant and rambunctious, is not inherently gluttonous. It follows the unconscious order that is within it even as there is a definite order, relationship and limit to the number of chromosomes. A cell that becomes omnivorous can destroy the life of the body.

Thou shalt not violate. So the principle applies to both life and death. You may take your break.

(10.18 to 10.37.)

There is hardly anything mysterious in the idea that life can kill. On a biological level all death is hidden in life, and all life in death.

Viruses are alive, as I mentioned in another connection (in the 631st session in Chapter Seven) , and can be beneficial or detrimental according to other balances in the body. In cancer cells the growth principle runs wild; within creaturehood each of the species has its place, and if one multiplies out of its proper order then all life and the body of the earth itself comes into peril.

In those terms overpopulation is a violation. In the cases of both war and of overgrowth, the species has ignored its natural guilt. When a man kills another, regardless of his other beliefs a certain portion of his conscious mind is always aware of the violation involved, justify it though he may.

When women give birth in a crowded world they also know, and with a portion of their conscious minds, that a violation is involved. When your species sees that it is destroying other species and disrupting the natural balance, then it is consciously aware of its violation. When such natural guilt is not faced there are other mechanisms that must be employed. Again at the risk of repeating myself. Many of your problems result from the fact that you do not accept the responsibility of your own consciousness. It is meant to assess the reality that is unconsciously formed in direct replica of your thoughts and expectations.

When you do not embrace this conscious knowledge, but refuse it, you are not using one of the finest "tools" ever created by your species, and you are to a large extent denying your birthright and heritage.

(Most intently:) When this happens, the species by default must fall back upon vestiges of old instincts-that were not geared to operate in conjunction with a conscious reasoning mind, and do not comprehend your experience; that finds your "moment of reflection" an impertinent denial of impulse. So man loses full use of the animals' regulated, graceful instinct, and yet denies the conscious and emotional discrimination given him instead.

(10:52.) The messages sent as a result are so highly contradictory that you are caught in a position where true instinct cannot reign, nor can reason prevail. Instead a distorted version of instinct results, along with a bastard use of sense as the species tries desperately to regulate its course.

Presently you have a condition in which overpopulation is compensated for by wars (pause) , and if not by wars then by diseases. Yet who must die? The young who would be the parents of children. An understanding of the nature of natural guilt's integrity would save you from such predicaments.

The "demons, " your projections, are then placed upon a national enemy, or the leader of another race; sometimes whole masses of population will project upon other large groups the images of their own unfaced frustrations. Even in Augustus you find the hero and the villain, separate and diversified. As a man can be so divided, so can a nation and a world. So can a species. And a brief break.

(11:02 to 11:12.)

Now, dictation: So, therefore, can a family be so divided, and one member always appear as a hero and one the villain or the demon.

You may have two children, one of whom, generally speaking, behaves like Augustus One, and one who acts like Augustus Two. Because one seems so compliant and docile and one is so violent and unruly, you may never see the connections between their behavior, thinking them so obviously different. Yet if being "good, " polite, and compliant is not the usual state of normal children, neither is incessant violent activity. In such cases what you usually have is a situation in which one child is acting out unfaced aggressive behavior for the whole family. Such unreconciled patterns of activity also mean that love is not being freely expressed.

Love is outgoing, as aggression is. You cannot inhibit one without similarly affecting the other, so under such conditions the docile loving child is usually projecting and expressing the restrained love for the family as a whole. Both the villain and the hero will be in trouble, however, for each are denying other legitimate aspects of their experience.

The same applies then to nations. Natural guilt is a creative mechanism, meant to serve as a conscious spur in the solving of problems that, in your terms, no other animals ever had. By taking advantage of it you leap still further through unknown frontiers, and break through into dimensions of awareness that were always latent since the birth of the conscious mind.

Natural guilt, followed, is a wise guide that brings along with it not only biological integrity, but triggers within consciousness aspects of activity that must otherwise remain closed.

Give us a moment. (Pause.) End of chapter.

(11:30.) Chapter Nine: "Natural Grace, the Framework of Creativity, and the Health of Your Body and Mind. The Birth of Conscience."

(I had to ask Seth to repeat the heading so I could be sure I had it right.)

With animals, there are varying degrees of division between the self who acts and the action involved. With the birth of the conscious mind in man, however, the self who acts needed a way to judge its actions. Again we come to the importance of that period of reflection, in which the self, with the use of memory, glimpses its own past experience in the present and projects its results into the future.

Now that is all. I simply wanted to begin.

("All right.")

I bid you a fond good evening.

("Thank you. Good night." 1 1:35 P.M. The ending of the sessions was abrupt.)

Session 636, January 29, 1973, 9:28 P.M., Monday

(I hadn't finished typing the 635th session by tonight, so I read Jane the last

page or so of Chapter Eight and the beginning of Chapter Nine from my notes.

Jane has been on a creative "binge" all month. Seth's material has been infused

with a driving energy. This same intentness has shown up in her sessions and

Sumari for ESP class-and it has been very evident in her poetry.

(Jane is still writing her book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Last week she taped some of this material She's also working on her autobiography, From This Rich Bed; this has been under way for some months.

(From one of the apartments below us came the very faint sounds of classical music. Seth's manner was quiet to begin with this evening.)

Now: Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: The state of grace is a condition in which all growth is effortless, a transparent (pause) , joyful acquiescence that is a ground requirement of all existence. Your own body grows naturally and easily from its time of birth, not expecting resistance but taking its miraculous unfolding for granted; using all of itself with great, gracious, creatively aggressive abandon.

You were born into a state of grace, therefore. It is impossible for you to leave it. You will die in a state of grace whether or not special words are spoken for you, or water or oil is poured upon your head. You share this blessing with the animals and all other living things. You cannot "fall out of" grace, nor can it be taken from you.

You can ignore it. You can hold beliefs that blind you to its existence. You will still be graced but unable to perceive your own uniqueness and integrity, and blind also to other attributes with which you are automatically gifted.

Love perceives the grace in another. Like natural guilt, the state of grace is unconscious in the animals. It is protected. They take it for granted, not knowing what it is or what they do, yet it speaks through all their motions and they dwell in the ancient wisdom of its ways. They do not have conscious memory, again, but the instinctive memory of the cells and organs sustains them. All of this applies in degrees according to the species, and when I speak of conscious memory I am using words that are familiar to you-I mean a memory that can at any time look back through itself.

In some animals, for instance, the rising of such conscious memory is apparent, yet still highly limited, specialized. A dog may remember where he saw his master last, but without being able to summon the memory, and operating without the kind of mental associations that you use. His connections will be of a more biological nature and will not provide the leeway (pause) , that your own mental conditions allow you.

The dog does not recall joyful appreciation of his own state of grace from a past, nor anticipate a recurrence in any future. With the large freedom provided by the conscious mind, however, man could stray from that great inner joy of being, forget it, disbelieve in it, or use his free will to deny its existence.

The splendid biological acceptance of life could not be thrust or forced upon his emerging consciousness, so to be effective, efficient, to emerge in the new focus of awareness, grace had to expand from the life of the tissue to that of the feelings, thoughts and mental processes. Grace became the handmaiden of natural guilt, then.

Man became aware of his state of grace when he lived within the dimensions of his consciousness as it was turned toward his new world of freedom. When he did not violate, he was aware of his own grace. When he violated, it fell back into cellular awareness, as with the animals, but he felt consciously cut off from it and denied.

The simplicity of natural guilt does not lead to what you think of as conscience, yet conscience is also dependent upon that moment of reflection that in a large measure sets you apart from the animals. Conscience, as you think of it, is caused by a dilemma and a misunderstanding of the conditions set upon your physical existence. Conscience arose with the emergence of artificial guilt. Give us a moment...

Now: Artificial guilt is still highly creative in its way, an offshoot made in man's image as his conscious mind began to consider and play upon the natural innocent guilt that originally implied no punishment.

You may take your break.

(10:04. Jane was out of trance quickly. Surprisingly, she had been bothered by the music from below, muted as it was; she has very acute hearing. Her delivery had been intent but on the slow side. Resume at a faster rate at 10:20.)

The conscious mind is a maker of distinctions. It brings to the surface of awareness whole gestalts of previously unconscious material, then assembles and organizes it in ever-changing form. Through purposeful focus, a literally infinite amount of such data can be unconsciously sorted; then only the desired elements will emerge.

The conscious mind is endlessly creative. This applies to all areas of conscious-mind thinking. It is also the organizer of physical data, so natural guilt became the basis for all kinds of variations. These closely followed man's religious and social groupings. The latter are also the result of the aware mind's capacity to play upon, mix and merge, and rearrange perception and experience.

Man is innately good. His conscious mind must be free, with its own will. He can, therefore, consider himself bad. He is the one who sets those standards in his own image.

The mind is also equipped to see its own beliefs, reflect upon them and evaluate their results, so using this tool as it was meant to be used would automatically help man in recognizing both his beliefs and their effects. Part of this great permissiveness has to do with the fact that man is to realize that he creates his own reality. Free will is a necessity. The leeway given allows him to materialize his ideas, meet them in physical experience, and evaluate for himself their particular kind of validity.

(Pause at 10:34.) The animal has no such need. It nestles safely within the confines of its instincts while exploring other aspects of awareness with which man is not so intimately familiar. Yet natural grace and natural guilt are given you, and these will also grow more fully into conscious awareness. If you can sit quietly and realize that your body parts are replacing themselves constantly-if you turn your conscious mind into the consideration of such activity-then you can realize your own state of grace. If you can sense your thoughts steadily replacing themselves then you can also feel your own elegance.

You cannot feel guilty and enjoy such recognition, however; not on a conscious level. If you find that you are berating yourself because of something you did yesterday, or ten years ago, you are not being virtuous. You are most likely involved with artificial guilt. Even if a violation occurred, natural guilt does not involve penance. It is meant as a precautionary measure, a reminder before an event.

"Do not do this again, " is the only afterward message. I am placing these concepts within your time scheme because in your terms they were born out of it. But the fact is that all "time" is simultaneous.

In a simultaneous time, punishment makes no sense. The punishment as an event, and the event for which you were being punished, exist at once; and since there is no past, present and future, you could just as well say that the punishment came first.

We have mentioned reincarnation hardly at all (but see the 631st session in Chapter Seven) , yet here let me state that the theory is a conscious-mind interpretation in linear terms. On the one hand it is highly distorted. On the other hand it is a creative interpretation, as the conscious mind plays with reality as it understands it. But in the terms used there is no karma to be paid off as punishment unless you believe that there are crimes for which you must pay (as indicated in the 614th session in Chapter Two) .

In larger terms there is no cause and effect either, though these are root assumptions in your reality.

(Slowly:) I use these concepts, again, because of their familiarity to you. In the world of time they appear as real. We return once more to that moment of reflection, for it is here that both causes and effects first appear. Dimly, in your terms, it can be traced by observing the animals that even now roam the earth, for each in its own degree-far less than yours-shows that reflection. In some, for all intents and purposes, it does not exist at all. Yet it is there, latent.

You may take your break.

(10:56 Jane didn't have "the slightest glimmering of what that was all about. " Since she was so curious, I read the last few paragraphs to her. Nor do I always try to keep material in mind. Instead I'm usually concentrating on recording it, checking with Seth when I'm in doubt about a word, asking that worthy to repeat a phrase when I fall behind in the notes...

(Resume at a faster rate at 11:11.)

Now: The greater your "period" of reflection, the greater the amount of time that seems to pass between events.

You seem to think that there is an expanse of time between reincarnational existences, that one follows the other as one moment seems to follow another. Because you perceive a reality of cause and effect, you hypothesize a reality in which one life affects the next one. With your theories of guilt and punishment you often imagine that you are hampered in this existence by guilts collected in the last life-or worse, accumulated through the centuries.

These multiple existences, however, are simultaneous and open-ended. In your terms the conscious mind is growing toward a realization of the part it has to play in such multidimensional reality. It is enough that you understand your part in this existence. When you fully comprehend that you form what you think of as your current reality, all else will fall into place.

Your beliefs, thoughts and feelings are instantly materialized physically. Their earthly reality occurs simultaneously with their inception, but in the world of time, lapses between appear to occur. So I say one causes the other, and I use those terms to help you understand, but all are at once. So are your multiple lives occurring as the immediate realization of your being in the natural extension of its many-faceted abilities.

"At once" does not imply a finished state of perfection nor a cosmic situation in which all things have been done, for all things are still happening. You are still happening-but both present and future selves; and your past self is still undergoing what you think is done. Moreover, it is experiencing events that you do not recall, that your linear-attuned consciousness cannot perceive on that level.

Your body has within it the miraculous strength and creative energy with which, in your terms, it was born. You most probably take this to mean that I am implying the possibility of an unending state of youth. While youth can be physically "prolonged" far beyond its present duration, that is not what I am saying.

(11:32.) Physically, your body must follow the nature into which you were born, and in that context the cycle of youth and age is highly important. In some ways, the rhythm of birth and death is like a breath taken and exhaled. Feel your own breath as it comes and goes. You are not it, yet it comes into you and leaves you, and without its continuous flow you could not physically exist. just so your lives go in and out of you-you and yet not you. And a portion of you, while letting them all go, remembers them and knows their journey.

Imagine where your breath goes when it leaves your body, how it escapes through an open window perhaps and becomes a part of the space outside, where you would never recognize it-and when it has left you it is no longer a part of what you are, for you are already different.

So the lives you have lived are not you, while they are of you.

Close your eyes. Think of your breaths as lives, and you the entity through which they have passed and are passing. Then you will feel your state of grace, and all artificial guilts will be meaningless. None of this negates the supreme and utter integrity of your individuality, for you are as well the individual entity through whom the lives flow, and the unique lives that are expressed through you.

No one atom of air is like another. Each in its own way is aware and capable of entering into greater transformations and organizations, filled with infinite potential. As your breath leaves you and becomes part of the world, free, so do your lives leave you and continue to exist in your terms. You cannot confine a personality that you "were" to a particular century that is finished and deny it other fulfillments, for even now it exists and has fresh experience. As your moment of reflection gave birth to consciousness as you think of it-for both really came together-so then can another phenomenon and kind of reflection give birth to at least some dim conscious awareness of the vast dimensions of your own reality.

The animal moves, say, through a forest. You move through psychic, psychological and mental areas in the same way. Through his senses the animal gets messages from distant areas that he cannot directly perceive, and of which he is largely unaware. And so do you.

Am I speaking too softly?

("No." Although I'd had to ask Seth to repeat several phrases.)

End of dictation (louder) , end of session-

("It's been very interesting.")

-and my heartiest good wishes.

("Thank you. Good night."

(11:50 P.M. Jane's trance had been very deep, her pace steady and intent. She yawned several times. Seth was right there, she said, ready with more material, "but I'm tired. I wish I were in bed this minute...")

Session 637, January 31, 1973, 9:05 P.M., Wednesday

(Before Seth began book dictation, he spent fifteen minutes answering two questions we had for others.)

Now give us a moment, for dictation.

(Pause at 9:20.) The you that you consider yourself is never annihilated. Your consciousness is not snuffed out, nor is it swallowed, blissfully unaware of itself, in some nirvana. You are as much a part of a nirvana now as you will ever be.

To some extent, we have discussed your body and its composition of cells (in the 632nd session in Chapter Seven, for instance) . All of the cells that now make up your physical form obviously exist at once. Imagine that you have many lives enduring in the same fashion. Instead of cells then you have selves. I told you that each cell has its own memory. The self-memory is, of course, of far greater dimension.

Think of the greater you-call it the entity if you want to-as forming a psychic structure quite as real as your physical one, but composed of many selves. As each cell of your body has its position within your corporeal space and boundaries, so each self within the entity is aware of its own "time" and dimension of activity. The body is a temporal structure. The cells, however, while a part of this body, are not aware of the entire dimension in which your consciousness dwells. They do not perceive all of the elements that are available even in three-dimensional experience, yet your present consciousness-seemingly so much more sophisticated-physically rests upon cellular awareness.

So the entity or "greater" psychic structure of which you are a part is aware of much larger dimensions of activity than you are, yet in the same way its more sophisticated consciousness rests upon your own, and one is necessary to the other.

In physical life there is a lapse while messages leap the nerve ends. (See the 625th session in Chapter Five.) In other terms and on other levels, this was represented in that "moment of reflection" that took place as man's consciousness emerged from that of the animals. (Note: I did not say that man emerged from the animals.)

In still other terms and at different levels this lapse occurs-this moment of reflection extends itself-as the self leaps clear of physical form (even as the cell at one time deserts the body) .

(9:39.) In this regard now, and for the sake of our analogy only, think of the life of the self as one message leaping across the nerve cells of a multidimensional structure-again, as real as your body-and consider it also as a greater "moment of reflection" on the part of such a many-sided personality.

I make these analogies because they are pertinent, yet I am aware that they can make you feel small or fear for your identity. You are more than a message, say, passing through the vast reaches of a superself. You are not lost in the universe. In a book we must use words, but such analogies can, if you let them, conjure up within your imagination some feeling of your intimate relationship with all other reality. To some extent, the feeling of grace is your emotional recognition of the necessity, purpose and freedom, the innate appreciation, of your rightness and your place in existence.

Do you want a break?

("No.")

Remember also, in your terms now, the great gulf that separates you as a self from those cells that physically compose you. Your own present identity contains the knowledge and "memory" of all those simultaneous existences, even as the cells in their way retain memory of all those physical structures which they (have) formed. Consciously, because of your time concepts, you will interpret those simultaneous lives in reincarnational terms, one seemingly before the other.

You may take your break.

(9:52 to 10:07.)

Now: Your conscious ideas, expectations and beliefs direct the health and activity of the cells. Period.

The cells do not have free will in your terms. They have the innate capacity to form other organizations, but not while affiliated with you. To leave you they must change their form. To some extent you determine their "good health" within the framework of their nature. They also help maintain yours. (Pause.) In terms of consciousness, the entity or greater you knows as much more than you know, as you know more than your cells.

(Humorously, Seth made sure I noted down the last sentence correctly.)

You however do have free will, for while the entity's psychic structure can be compared to the body, it is a part of and inhabits far greater dimensions. All of this may seem to have little to do with your personal reality. Yet your daily experience is as connected with your self or entity (abruptly louder, briefly) , as it is with the cells of your physical form.

There is an obviously intimate relationship between each cell and another. There is a constant give-and-take and grouping of awareness within the body's own miraculous corporeal structure. Your idea of reality and its experience is much different than that of any cell, yet each is interconnected.

(Pause at 10:20.) A group of cells forms an organ. A group of selves forms a soul. I am not telling you that you do not have a soul to call your own. (Again louder, with a smile:) You are a part of your soul. It belongs to you, and you to it. You dwell within its reality as a cell dwells within the reality of an organ. The organ is temporal in your terms. The soul is not.

The cell is material in your terms. The self is not. The entity then, or greater self, is composed of souls. (Pause.) Because the body exists in space and time, the organs have specific purposes. They help keep the body alive and they must stay "in place." The entity has its existence in multitudinous dimensions, its souls free to travel within boundaries that would seem infinite to you. As the smallest cell within your body participates to its degree in your daily experience, so does the soul to an immeasurably greater extent share in the events of the entity.

You possess within yourself all of those potentials in which consciousness creatively takes part. The cell does not need to be consciously aware of you in order to fulfill itself, even though your expectations of health largely influence its existence, but your recognition of the soul and entity can help you direct energies from these other dimensions into your daily life.

You, dear reader, are in the process of expanding your psychic structure, [of] becoming a conscious participator with the soul, in certain terms, [of] becoming what your soul is. As cells multiply and grow-within their own nature and the physical framework-so do selves "evolve" in terms of value fulfillment.

Souls are also creative psychic structures, ever-changing and yet always retaining individual integrity (pause) , and all are dependent one upon the other. Souls make up the life of the entity in those terms. Yet the entity is "more" than the soul is. Take a break.

(10:37 Jane's trance had been very deep. She seemed to pop out of it quickly; yet: "I am so far out... 'Her voice was getting rough. "I feel like we've gotten a fantastic amount of material through-not in terms of time but in content" Resume at 1 1:01.)

Now: When you are aware of the existence of the entity and of the soul, you can consciously draw upon their greater energy, understanding and strength.

It is inherently available, but your conscious intent brings about certain changes in you that automatically trigger such benefits. The results will be felt down to the smallest cells within your body, and will affect even the most seemingly mundane events of your daily life.

You are growing in consciousness; therefore using it expands its capabilities. It is not a thing, but an attribute and characteristic. That is why your understanding and desire are so important. The processes initiated are beyond your normal awareness. They occur automatically with your intent if you do not block them through fear, doubt or opposing beliefs.

(Long pause.) Imagine yourself as a portion of an invisible universe, but one in which all the stars and planets are conscious and full of indescribable energy. You are aware of this. Think of this universe as having the form of a body. If you want to, visualize its outline brilliant against the sky. The suns and planets are your cells, each filled with energy and power but awaiting your direction.

Then see this image exploding into your own consciousness, which is unbelievably bright. Realize that it is a portion of a far greater multidimensional structure, spread out in an even richer dimension. Feel the entity sending you energy as you send energy to your cells. Let it fill your being and then direct it physically any place within your body that you choose.

If instead there is a physical event that you strongly desire, then use that energy to imagine its actual occurrence as vividly as you can. If you follow these directions and understand the meaning for them as given, you will find the results most startling and effective. Energy may be directed to any portion of the body, and if you do not block its actions by disbeliefs, that portion will be cured. Remember, however: If you hold the belief that you are a sickly person, that can hinder you. [In that case, then, to] change that particular kind of belief is your first concern. (Pause.) One of the purposes of this book is to tell you that no one is born to be a sickly person, so reading it can help you there.

In your terms, if you believe that you chose illness to compensate for a past-life deficiency, then it will help you to realize that you form your reality now in your present, and can therefore change it.

Later we will discuss such matters as birth defects. Here we are speaking about conditions that can be physically corrected-but not the growth of an arm if you were born without one, for example, or the correction of other lacks in the body at birth.

(Pause at 11:27.) Do you want a break?

("No.")

Your body is the basic product of your creativity on a physical level. From its integrity all other constructions in your lifetime must come. Your greatest artistic endeavors must arise out of the soul-in-flesh (with hyphens) . You create yourselves on a daily basis, changing your form according to the incalculable richness of your multitudinous abilities. (Very positively:) So out of the soul's resplendent psychic richness do you spring with your free will and desire. You in turn create other living creatures. You also produce forms of art-fluid living constructs that you do not understand, in terms of societies and civilizations-and all of these flow through your alliance with flesh and blood.

This creativity, the strongest force within all reality, reaches from sources we have not as yet discussed in this book, down to the smallest atom and molecule. Your health is an extension of your creativity. So is your relationship with your mate, your boss, and the kinds of events with which you are uniquely familiar.

Now give us a moment; and if you want to, rest your hand.

(A pause at 11.34.) Next chapter heading. This one I believe is Nine.

("Yes.")

All right. (With pauses:) "Your Body as Your Own Unique Living Sculpture. Your Life as Your Most Intimate Work of Art, and the Nature of Creativity as It Applies to Your Personal Experience."

("That's it"?)

That is all heading. Do you have it clearly?

("Yes. " A note added later.-Seth made a mistake here, as will be seen in the 639th session. This is actually the heading for Part Two, rather than Chapter Ten. The error led to some confusion on our parts for a while.)

You may end the session or take a break as you prefer.

(Reluctantly: "We'd better end it, I guess.")

Then I bid you a fond good evening-

("The same to you.")

-and Ruburt is on the right track, and with your help.

("All right. 'Here Seth referred to Jane's daytime writing projects.)

My fondest regards.

('Thank you. Goodnight, Seth."

(End at 11:40 P.M. When Jane woke up the next morning, this passage of Seth's from last night's session was on her mind: "A group of selves form a soul." See the paragraph of material following the 10:20 pause. We're used to thinking, very conveniently, that each of us has our own individual soul Was Seth saying that we share a soul with others?

(Jane was sure that she'd spoken correctly in delivering the material, and checking, we found that my notes backed her up. Even considering the rest of the paragraph under discussion, she wanted to learn more; she wasn't taken with the idea of a group soul, say, or of sharing a soul. We decided to ask Seth to elaborate-a request we don't make too often.

(A rereading of Chapter Six in Seth Speaks, "The Soul and the Nature Of its Perception, ' helped remind us of the truly unlimited attributes of the soul)

Session 638, February 7, 1973, 9:09 P.M., Wednesday

(A session had been mandatory P.M., Monday evening, February 5, since we'd scheduled it for an out-of-state visitor some time ago, but we didn't feel much like it when the time came. Jane and I were saddened P.M., Monday morning to discover that our black cat, Rooney, had died unexpectedly during the night. We'd taken him in as a stray kitten some four years ago. I buried him in the garden. As far as we knew, this neighborhood had been his home territory.

(Because of his particular disposition, Rooney had furnished ideal companionship for our other cat, Willy, who is several years older, and Jane and I had often speculated about the special relationship between the two. Willy had always been the boss. Rooney, incidentally, can be seen in a photograph with Jane on the jacket of The Seth Material, hard cover edition.

(P.M., Monday evening's session concerned the use of hallucinogenic drugs, including LSD, as therapy; no book dictation was involved. Actually, once Jane began speaking for Seth the session went very well indeed, and lasted until midnight. Our visitor is to send us transcripts of the tapes he made. At day's end Jane and I were exhausted.

(Even so, her use of energy in ESP class Tuesday night was remarkable once again, she alternated Seth and singing in Sumari throughout the evening.

(Seth had already given the heading for Chapter Ten, but as we sat for the session now I reminded Jane of her questions about group souls, as described at the end of the 637th session. It was another unusually warm night; we had a window open, and were aware of traffic noise. Jane's delivery was comparatively fast to begin with.)

Now: good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Give us a moment for dictation. (Once again on Chapter Nine.)

I can see that my analogy comparing the soul to an organ within a multidimensional psychic structure of the entity is confusing you. We will clear it up by comparing the same properties, changing the word "soul" to read "oversoul."

As earlier mentioned (at 10:20 in the 637th session) , and simply following the analogy, each self has its own soul within the oversoul, and the oversoul is itself a part of the entity's multidimensional structure.

The earlier statement makes perfect sense to me, for each self would call that portion of its greater reality within the whole unit its own soul. Now, does that explanation clear up the matter for you?

('Yes, I think so...")

If it does for you, then it also will for the reader.

(Even though I said yes, at first break I checked the dictionary definition for oversoul, just in case it might lead me to ask Seth for more clarification. The dictionary discussed the oversoul as the spirit infusing all living things, resulting in the perfect realization of an ideal nature. This is a concept in the nineteenth-century transcendentalist Philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson and others.)

All of this material, I understand, is complicated. It is also difficult to explain. It becomes highly pertinent, however, in many instances of your lives, and affects your daily being and experience. I gave the information [in this chapter] purposely when I did, knowing that our visitor from the psychiatric clinic would be here.

I want to discuss the state of grace in some detail and in different ways throughout this book. (Pause.) The young man who came here described in some detail the way in which LSD is used in therapy work with patients. The psychologists hoped to bring about a cure for various emotional difficulties, to literally introduce a "state of grace." Period.

The material that I have just given you is necessary for any understanding of the ways in which massive doses of LSD can affect the individual. Here we are dealing with an artificial and forced method of, hopefully, bringing about physical, psychic and spiritual illumination. Such enlightenment is supposed to lead to better health, self-knowledge, and provide an inner state of peace. Through such therapy, conscience is to be encountered and conquered once and for all.

('Do you mean 'conscience' or 'consciousness'?")

Conscience. Am I speaking clearly enough?

('Yes. "Although once in a while I have to ask that a word or phrase be repeated.)

It is believed that the self must shed its ego and die symbolically in order that the inner self can be free.

(9.29.) A discussion involving LSD, conscience, the "death and birth of the self, " mental health and spiritual illumination, may not seem applicable to those of you who have not taken drugs. But all of you do hope for illumination, greater vitality and understanding in one way or another, and wonder what methods might help you achieve these ends. Much of this book will be devoted to various techniques that will help you change your own reality for the better.

The next chapter will, actually, deal with a further discussion of some subjects that have been mentioned in this one: How aware can you be, as an individual, of your own greater realize Can you use such knowledge beneficially to improve your daily life? If you are in serious difficulty can LSD, with therapy, help you? Can a chemical open up the doorways to the soul?

Now: End of chapter.

(Pause at 9.35.) Your time was not sidetracked the other evening. That is not for dictation.

("Okay. " In retrospect, Jane and I had been wondering if P.M., Monday's session should have consisted of book dictation-yet Seth was putting that material to use tonight... )

Next chapter.

(As Seth, Jane sat quite motionless in her rocker for well over a minute. Her eyes were closed. She's often told me that she isn't aware of such long pauses while in trance.)

"The Nature of Spontaneous Illumination, and the Nature of Enforced Illumination. The Soul in Chemical Clothes."

Now you may take a break and we will then begin.

(9:40.I didn't realize until the session was over that this was the second heading Seth had given for Chapter Ten. Perhaps my own lapse came about because we'd skipped book dictation on P.M., Monday. [See the material near the end of the 637th session.] Resume at 9:52.)

Now: The young man, an assistant to a famous doctor, wrote and requested a session (on November 13, 1972) . He came here a few evenings ago (P.M., Monday, February 5) , and then attended Ruburt's class the next night. I spoke to him on both occasions.

He had been working with the drugs in a therapeutic framework for some time. Before this he had wandered through India, finally following a guru. He left the guru to follow the doctor. Like many young men all through the ages he was on his individual journey, looking for truth, overturning all stones in an effort to find those methods that would help him discover-in capitals-THE WAY

Meditation had brought him some enlightenment, yet the guru [in India] told him that he must follow blindly in obedience. The doctor offered greater freedom and the hope that perhaps chemically the doors to truth, within his own soul at least, could be opened. So our searcher returned to this country and became part of a large organization.

He saw the sick, unhappy and neurotic brought to this new temple of truth in which chemicals take the place, say, of communion of bread. He felt that some good had been done, yet he also feared that some unnecessary and dangerous tampering might also be accomplished.

He himself took drugs under controlled conditions several times, first small doses and then larger ones. He encountered some particularly frightening material. The doctor suggested that he face himself by taking another massive dose, and though he did not want to, he acquiesced.

The experience was so shattering that he pleaded for a counter drug, knowing as he did so that this was against all the rules. The drug was refused him in any case. He said that he was glad that he was forced to see the thing through, yet grave doubts brought him here, and will finally lead him into other areas away from such therapy.

Many have come to me, or written after "bad trips"; the young especially, always great searchers after truth, and very tempted to look to the chemical, LSD now, as the latest method of finding it. I am not speaking of marijuana at all, which is a different thing altogether and is a natural product of the earth. I am talking about a chemical that is a result of your technological knowledge.

When you are fairly happy and content in your daily life, you can be said to be in a state of grace. On those occasions when you feel at one with the universe, or come upon an exceptional experience in which you seem to go beyond yourself, you can be said to be in a state of illumination, and this has many degrees and levels. In any such state your physical health benefits, generally speaking, though there may be some beliefs blocking in that direction.

(10:14.) These natural states activate within your cells "past" memory having to do with joyful cellular response, brought about by particular events in your lifetime whether you are aware of them or not.

This personal kind of cellular memory in turn triggers other layers within the cells to varying degrees. Again, each atom and molecule contains within it "memory" of its "previous" experiences. According to the state of illumination or grace, those mass memories may be activated that do not necessarily involve your personal experience though your own involvement and the events of your life may appear within them in an entirely different framework than the one with which you are familiar.

Any event of your life is written in the memory of the universe, for example, as you think of it. (Pause.) So in a state of illumination private cellular memory may be animated, and beyond this, a deeper level of knowing in which your own birth and death may or may not be explained.

Do you want a break?

("No.")

Naturally, left alone, you will at various times spontaneously experience such states of grace or illumination, though you may not use those terms. You will feel at peace with yourself and your world, or you will surpass yourself, suddenly feeling a part of events and phenomena usually considered not yourself. But to one extent or another such experiences are natural and a part of your heritage.

Your conscious mind, again, is a part of your inner self, and ever changing. In terms of species consciousness it is a development of great significance. It draws strength from such sources of vitality and rejuvenation. They come naturally up to consciousness. Psychologists usually see people who are already in difficulty. The happy man has no need for such a visit. Few studies have been done to discover why the happy man is happy, yet his answers would be highly pertinent.

In therapy using massive doses of LSD, a condition of chemically enforced insanity takes place. By insanity, I mean a situation in which the conscious mind is forced into a state of powerlessness. There is a literal assault made not only upon the psyche, but upon the organizational framework that makes it possible for you to exist rationally in the world that you know. The ego, of course, cannot be annihilated in physical life. Kill one and another will, and must, emerge from the inner self which is its source.

Take your break.

(10:34 to 10:39.)

Now: Under such enforced conditions, you are literally facing egotistical consciousness with its own death in an encounter that need not occur-and while the physical body is fighting for its own life and vitality. You are bringing about a dilemma of great proportions.

The landscape of the psyche is indeed revealed, bringing good data to the psychiatrist. But the experiences undergone by the patients and all of this applies to massive doses-represent the enactment, through terrible encounter, of the species' birth into consciousness, and its death as consciousness falls back annihilated; followed by its rebirth as the individual patient struggles to emerge again from dimensions not native under those conditions.

The deepest biological and psychic structures are altered. I did not say they were damaged, though they may be according to the situation. Consciousness is assaulted at its roots. When periods of transcendence are felt under such conditions, they represent the psychic birth of a new personality from the sources of the old, and from the death, psychically, of the old. In some cases the genetic messages have changed, in that they are different. (Strongly:) This is psychic slaying in a technological framework.

Under LSD you are highly suggestible. If you are told that the ego must die then you will kill it. You will telepathically follow the ideas of your guide under even the best of conditions. (Long pause.) The psychic "rebirth" may leave you with a completely new set of problems, rising on the bed of the old and as yet undecipherable.

The new ego is quite aware of the conditions of its birth. It knows it was born out of the death of its predecessor, and for all its feelings of transcendent joy, natural enough at its birth, it fears that annihilation from which it sprang.

The natural creature-integrity is not the same. The physical world will never be trusted in quite the same way. The alliance with it is not as secure. (Still very positively.) The "self" that was born into the body, and grew with it, has gone, and another "self" has risen from that previous organization.

Now: Such self-changes happen naturally as life progresses, and when the self modulates at any given time, it is different from what it was. When this occurs "all by itself' it is an innate reflection of the psyche's creativity and happens with its own rhythm-connected to seasons of the mind and blood and consciousness and cells in ways that you do not as yet understand. But the whole structure and its subsidiary relationships change together, and the conscious mind is able to assimilate what is happening.

You grow and live through deaths that happen in you constantly, and travel through births within your lifetime that you do not comprehend. ( Jane leaned forward for emphasis:) Such massive doses of LSD chemically activate all levels of cellular memory to such an extent that in certain terms they are no longer in charge of themselves, and the memories can then emerge unpredictably when the system is under stress. The fine biological and psychological alliance is now weakened.

Take a break.

(11:02 to 11:24.)

Now: It is only because you believe that the ego is such a stepchild of the self that you go to such great lengths to bring out inner knowledge.

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

They also share other beliefs, for example: That the inner self is a repository for repressed fears, terrors, and uncivilized savagery; that the inner self must be forced to get rid of such material before it is possible for it to express its power, energy and strength in creative, positive terms; and that, therefore, the self must first encounter and deal with all those terrors of its past before it can be free of the fears of the present.

Now this is simply another system of belief in which patient and therapist operate. The spontaneity of such sessions do indeed seem to present psychiatrists and psychologists with a map of the psyche. Statistically the individual experiences, while different, will of course follow a pattern-the pattern of beliefs consciously acknowledged and telepathically reacted to.

Beneath this a definite, though distorted, landscape of the psyche can be glimpsed in symbols. These [symbols] are consciousness' attempt to portray cellular memory. Psychic motion always excites the molecules. The latent, easily flowing innate "knowledge" of the molecules builds up the 'knowledge" of the cells (smiling) . They work smoothly together. Under the enforced psychic assault of massive doses of LSD, the very comprehension of the molecules tries to split open. Now this is not something you can physically perceive. Cellular integrity itself can be threatened. Ruburt is quite right in thinking that this is far worse than any physical shock therapy.

Worst of all, there is no need for it. All of this treatment rests upon the idea that the conscious mind is highly inadequate, that deep problems are unknown to it, that it is meant to be simply analytical, and is unable to handle very intuitive or psychic material. Your beliefs alone make this so.

(11:38.) Assaults upon your consciousness in such a manner challenge the stability of your species, and insult the integrity of your creaturehood. You may say that such chemicals are natural because they exist within the reality that you know, but the body is equipped to deal with ingredients that come from the earth. Great doses of such "artificial" drugs are not easily assimilated, and bring about biological confusion.

Within their native framework, some American Indians use peyote in their own way-but not as gluttons, stunning and annihilating their systems. They accept it as a natural ingredient belonging to their earthly structure. They do not try to blast themselves out of existence. They use it to increase the innate perceptions that they have.

They become part of All That Is-as they should-without dying as they are. They are able to assimilate their knowledge, to purposefully direct it into both their individual lives and their social structure. They also use it within their own system of beliefs, of course, in which their creaturehood is understood and taken for granted. The conscious mind is seen as a complement, rather than a detriment, to biological being.

As mentioned earlier (in the 621st session in Chapter Four) there are, simply speaking, two schools of thought in current favor.

One believes that the conscious mind and the intellect have all the answers, but to this school this means that the conscious mind is analytical above all, and that it can find all the answers through reason alone. The other school believes that the answers are in feelings and emotion. Both are wrong. Intellect and feeling together make up your existence, but the fallacy is particularly in the belief that the aware mind must be analytical above all, as opposed to, for example, the understanding or assimilation of intuitive psychic knowledge.

Neither school understands the flexibility and the possibilities that are inherent within the conscious mind, and mankind has barely begun to use its potentials.

Now: I will end dictation. Do you have any questions?

("No.")

The material on your cat is there when you want it.

("Yes. Thank you. "It was too late now; both of us were bleary. Seth had also mentioned the availability of the data about Rooney's life and death in last P.M., Monday's deleted session.)

And I am pleased with our contract-

("So are we. " Tam Mossman, Jane's editor at Prentice-Hall has notified her by telephone that within a few days she will receive a contract for the publication of this book.)

-but then (smiling) , I knew about it, you see.

("Yes. Good night, Seth. "

(Louder and jovially:) And do not worry about time. We can have three sessions a week if you want them.

("Okay. " This manuscript is tentatively due next October.)

I can do everything but the typing.

(End at 11:55 P.M. "Now I've got all this energy left over, " Jane said, after quickly coming out of trance. "I feel it going through me. I could go for a long walk or play badminton-or even have a session, " she joked.

(It isn't contradictor to say that Jane did have energy, even though she was tired. At midnight she sang a short song to me in Sumari. The song was very clear, lyrical and restful; I had been in a low mood today and now she tried to cheer me up. As always, I thought she seemed transported as she sang so beautifully, sitting in her rocker with her head tipped back and her eyes closed. She uses real power in Sumari at times, then contrasts it with very delicate passages. Her breath control is excellent. She's had no musical training.

(Jane discusses Sumari in her Introduction to this book. She's included a selection of Sumari prose and poetry in the Appendix of her novel, The Education of Oversoul 7, which Prentice-Hall is to publish this fall.)

Session 639, February 12, 1973, 9:05 P.M., Monday

(After the last session, I told Jane that I was most intrigued by Seth's assigning two headings to Chapter Ten, but the dilemma was hardly very complicated.)

Now: I bid you good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Part One of the book is to be called: "Where You and the World Meet." The heading that you asked about is for Part Two of the book ("Your Body as Your Own Unique Living Sculpture, "etc., given in the 637th session in Chapter Nine) . The heading referring to the soul in chemical clothes is for the next chapter (Ten) , which is the first chapter in Part Two.

("All right.")

Now: Those are directions for you. (Pause.) Dictation: Your body is you in flesh. As I have mentioned in other books, the soul cannot affirm itself fully through bodily experience at any given "time, " so in those terms there are always portions of you that are unexpressed.

All of your physical experience must, of course, be pivoted in the corporeal reality of the body. The energy that moves your image comes from the soul. Through your own thoughts you direct the body's expression, and it can be of health or of illness. Out of a knowledge of the contents of your own conscious mind you can definitely heal most maladies of the body, within conditions to be given later.

Your ideas themselves follow certain laws of creativity. They have their own rhythms. The associative processes of your mind, working through the brain, have great connection with the minute behavior of your cells. As you learn to use your thoughts, or even as they naturally change, resulting alterations take place within the cells. There is an orderly progression, an intimate relationship.

When massive doses of LSD are used, you are artificially creating a disaster area from which you hope to salvage an efficient working self. It is true that the old interactions between an associative pattern of thought and its habitual action may be broken down, but it is also true that the inner-ordered structure has been shocked psychically and biologically.

(A one-minute pause at 9:21.) In normal daily life, considerable natural therapy often takes place in the dream state, even when nightmares of such frightening degree arise that the sleeper is shocked into awakening. The individual's conscious mind is then forced to face the charged situation-but after the event, in retrospect. The nightmare itself can be like a shock treatment given by one portion of the self to another, in which cellular memory is touched off much as it might be in such an LSD session.

But the self is its own best therapist. It knows precisely how many such "shocks" the psyche can take to advantage, which associations to animate through such intense experience and imagery, and which ones to leave alone.

Nightmares in series are often inner-regulated shock therapy. They may frighten the conscious self considerably, but after all it comes awake in its normal world, shaken perhaps but secure in the framework of the day.

Other dream events, though forgotten, may also cushion the individual to withstand the effects of such "nightmare therapy." In the same way that some LSD treatment finally results in a feeling of rebirth (that is often only temporary, however) , so a period of such nightmares often leads quite naturally to dreams in which the self finally makes new and greater connections with the source of its own being.

(9:32.) If scientists studied the body and the mind in terms of natural healing abilities, they could learn how to encourage these, for such processes-and I have mentioned only one of them-are continuous through your lifetime.

When large doses of chemicals are used, the conscious mind is confronted full blast with very potent experiences that it was not meant to handle, and by which it is purposely made to feel powerless. (Pause.) Faced with the exterior nightmares of wars and natural disasters, the conscious mind is still directed outward into that world with which it knows it was formed to cope. In periods of great physical stress it draws upon the powers of the body and inner self to perform remarkable feats of heroism-that leave it wondering afterward at the power and energy of the self in crisis.

Its own stability and awareness can be vastly deepened and strengthened. In times of seemingly calamitous encounters with nature, individuals may find themselves amazed at their capacity to relate with other people, but in the artificially induced psychic disaster area of massive LSD therapy, the situation is reversed. Consciousness finds itself in a crisis situation; not [because of one coming] from the exterior world, but because it is forced to fight on a battleground for which it was never designed and cannot understand, where basically counted-upon allies of association, memory and organization, and all the powers of the inner self, are suddenly turned into enemies.

It is made vulnerable to all those forces it was meant to lead, while being stripped of its natural logical abilities-indeed, of its very sense of identity. (Intently:) There is nothing exterior against which it can work, and no framework in which it can get balance.

Ruburt has been working on a book of poems called The Dialogues, and in it recently he wrote of the double worlds. One night he stood at the kitchen window, and quite without drugs saw a rainy puddle below suddenly turn into an alive, beautifully fluid creature who stood up and walked while the rain slid off its liquid sides.

He was filled with joy as he observed this reality. He knew that in the physical world the puddle was flat, but that he was perceiving another just-as-solid reality; a larger one, in fact, in which that rain creature had its being.

For a moment he saw double worlds with his physical vision. While the experience was exhilarating, it could have turned into a "nightmare" had his conscious mind not clearly understood; had he walked outside, for example, and found himself encountering living creatures rising out of each rainy puddle; and if for the life of him he could not have turned the creatures back. As it was, it was a beneficial experience.

But when the conscious mind is forced to face far less pleasant encounters, and is robbed of its power to reason at the same time, then you do indeed insult the basis of its being.

You may take your break.

(9:51. Jane's trance had been really deep, her pace as fast as it's been since

Seth beganthis book. She yawned repeatedly now.

(Whenshe had her experience involving the puddle-as well as another

one, described immediately below-I asked her to write an account of both events in case Seth referred to them sometime. Her material is presented, with the appropriate selection of poetry from Dialogues, in the notes at next break. Resume at a bit slower rate at 10:20.)

Dictation. (A whisper, humorously.)

(I whispered back: "Okay.")

Now: A few moments following Ruburt's experience with the rain creature, he had another. His eyes were wide open and he stood in the exceedingly small kitchen-when suddenly there appeared before him a round soft yellow light.

He saw it physically, yet could find no physical cause for it. It lasted several seconds and disappeared. As soon as Ruburt saw it he leaped back. The last line in the poem he had completed just before dinner spoke of a light that would illuminate both worlds, one of the soul and one of the flesh. Consciously he thought the light must have been caused by lightning, even while he knew with another portion of himself that that was not the case.

A moment later the line from his poem came to him, and he made the proper connection. The conscious mind was disturbed for a moment but it assimilated the data. The meaning of the light will become even clearer through Ruburt's dreams, the intuitive continuation of the poem, and physical example.

The meaning of the light will normally become unfolded as he is ready to fully perceive it. While the event has happened, therefore, like any event it is not completed. In the drug experience mentioned before (in the last session) , startling, enforced symbols and occurrences are suddenly thrust upon the conscious mind; and more, within a context in which time as it knows it has little meaning. It [the conscious mind] cannot reflect upon phenomena subjectively. They happen too quickly.

Within their happening there may be a distorted-to it grotesque duration in which action may be seemingly impossible. No separation between self and experience may be allowed. Even an exalted experience can be an assault upon consciousness if it is forced. The price paid is much too high as far as the entire personality is concerned.

The feelings that are often realized in later sessions, say of rebirth, are indeed that. The old organizations of the self have fallen, and the new structures do indeed rejoice in their oneness and vitality.

A strong suicidal base frequently exists here. The knowledge is present that the "old self" did not make it-so what assurance does the so-called new self have? (Pause.) Again, the body is a living sculpture.

You are in it and you form it, and it is to all intents and purposes you while you are physical. You must identify your material being with it. Otherwise you will feel alienated from your biological identity.

This identity is your physical self through which now, in your terms, all expression must come. You are more than your temporal being alone. Your life as a creature is dependent upon your alliance with flesh. You will exist when your body is dead, but practically speaking, you will always be working through an image of yourself.

(10:42.) If you identify with your body alone, then you may feel that life after death is impossible. If you consider yourself a mental being only, however, you will not feel alive in the flesh, but separated from it. Think of yourself as a physical creature now. Know that later you will still operate through another form, but that the body and the material world are your present modes of expression.

These attitudes are highly important. In a strong drug experience you take physical demonstration out of its natural framework, presenting it in such a way that its usual reactions make no sense. A world may be tumbling down upon you, for example, yet there is no adequate physical defense or retaliation possible.

The psychiatrist may say, "Go along entirely with the experience. If necessary become annihilated." This flies directly in the face of your biological heritage, and the common sense of the conscious mind.

(Smile:) I am quite aware of the distorted religious connections made here: Die to yourself and you will be reborn; you will not kill yourself. What you think of as the self dies and is reborn constantly, as the cells of your body do. Biologically and spiritually, new life relies upon these innumerable changes and transformations, deaths and births that occur naturally both in the seasons of the earth and those of the psyche.

(Slowly at 10:54.) Change flexibly with the gracious dance of all being that is reflected in the universe of the body and mind. This does not include the crucifixion of the ego.

It is always because you do not trust the natural self that you resort to such drug therapy. The individuals who seek out treatment fear the nature of their own identity more than anything else. They are then only too willing to sacrifice it. (Pause, then smiling.) Your thoughts and beliefs form your reality. There is, as Joseph (Seth's name for me) said in our break, no magic therapy-only an understanding of your own great creativity, and the knowledge that you yourself make your world.

In physical life the soul is clothed in chemicals, and you will use the ingredients you take into your body to form an image that is in line with your beliefs. Some of these ideas will undoubtedly be accepted by you from your culture. Others will be your own private interpretation of yourself in flesh. Your beliefs about any chemical will affect what it does to you. Under LSD therapy you expect a drastic reaction and are told to prepare yourself. Your experience will follow your beliefs and your therapist's, communicated verbally and telepathically.

If you believe, however, that the chemicals in certain foods will harm you drastically and bring about disastrous consequences, then even small doses of these can do you harm.

You may take your break.

(11:05. Jane had no recollection of the material she'd delivered for Seth since last break.

(Now here are excerpts from the account she wrote for me of her experiences involving the rain-puddle creature and the light on the evening of February 2. Jane's narrative and poetry supplement Seth's own words, and show how she became consciously aware of the unique transformation of her original poetic ideas into visual reality-and how she then carried the creative process another step by converting her new perceptions into more poetry. We think these bleed-throughs between realities are common, if largely automatic in most cases, in any area of "life. " In the arts they're often called inspiration.

("Friday, February 2, 1973.

("I'd been working all day, " Jane wrote, "on my book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Working like crazy, really on a creative 'high.' 'Just before supper time Id been writing about the single yet double universe of self and soul, and the last line had quoted the mortal self:

'Let us, using our double vision,

travel two worlds in one and form

a single double song

that splashes out in ripples

of thought and blood

that eddy, wrinkle and wake

through the double skies

of our single universe, and break

into rainbow vowels that sing

soft lullabies,

and fall as light

in both our worlds.'

("After supper Rob went out to get groceries. I don't know the time but it was dark and raining hard, with flashes of soundless lightning. It was quite warm for February. I thought about going for a walk, but didn't... Immediately after the two experiences that Seth describes in this session, involving the rain creature and the light, I added this section to Dialogues:

The mortal self, sometime later says,
'That light, striking, what did it touch and was it real?
Just now I stood by the open kitchen window, looking down again at the rainy street.
Only now it's dark. I've written all day long and done my chores, and company is coming, so my mind was blank.
Yet I was caught, transfixed-
The raindrops fell in thousands of separate sparkling dots into a puddle far below,
and as I watched, the puddle rose up, thickened into prickly tissue like an air-filled lung
or porcupine of light, with the raindrops growing out of it as much as in.
It drank the reelections from the passing car headlights,
and they rushed into it blindly till it was so full it pulsed a shining fluid living thing.
The rain slid off its smooth liquid skin and there stood a creature so mobile,
each part moving and alive, sliding, shimmering, that I closed my eyes.
I opened them almost instantly.
The creature'd flattened out again but just began to rise
when everything I saw went through my soul
Our worlds merged and I cried out;
and as I did, a soft sudden circle of light appeared, right in front of me,
well-defined, between the refrigerator and the stove.
It startled me so that I leapt back
a softly glowing circle waist-high in the air to above my head,
not a ball of fire, but a silent round, unmoving light,
and no illumination spread outward from its edges,
so the rest of the room was still dark.
Lightning, of course, but no flash leapt out from the refrigerator or stove,
and there was no beam of light inside the room or without from which it came.
It hung in the air like a sudden flat sunflower,
larger than life, minus seeds or stem.
An omen? The light you spoke of
that would unite our double- single worlds,
appearing in my universe from yours?
Whatever its cause or origin I felt it appeared for a reason,
and Id like to know what that reason is.
I know the puddle was natural, and in this world flat,
while with other vision I saw its counterpart
rise up all shining and nearly walk,
but if that light came from the world I know,
than I have to admit that I don't know how.
But, dear soul, I'm afraid I can't wait for your reply just now.
I hear my company, and I'm glad to just sit and chat
this stormy night, while that rainy wind blows.'

("With the puddle creature I saw both realities-the puddle in physical terms, and the creature in larger than physical terms-and could switch from one reality to the other if I wanted to, I think. But the light didn't have a physical counterpart.
I think it came... from that other reality directly here, because I had my 'windows' open."

(Resume at 11:25.)

Now: In the normal cycle of the death and rebirth of cells, and the usual pattern in which the ego constantly changes, there in a smooth flow and no loss of orientation. Previous cellular memory is carried along easily from one cell generation to another.

As mentioned earlier (in the 610th session in Chapter One) , what you call the ego is a portion of the inner identity that rises to face the world of physical existence. In the regular course of events it will change into another ego, but while losing its "dominant" status it will not die to itself. It will alter its organization as a part of the living psyche.

Under enforced annihilation, there is a frantic attempt at reorganization as the inner self tries to "send up" alternate egos to handle the situation-and in those terms, the more egos you kill the more will emerge.

In all of this the body's situation is highly agitated, and the physical organism is forced to respond as best it can to a series of disastrous events-which, however, it realizes it cannot be experiencing physically. It knows a "mock" battle is going on, but cannot stop itself from sending forth those chemicals and hormones necessary to a physical situation of like degree. There is a great wear and tear on the body, and an inexcusable exhaustion of its native energies.

Ideas form reality, so the body is used to reacting to some "imaginary" situations in which, for example, the mind conjures up dire circumstances which do not physically exist; but these still force the organism into an over-activation, setting up a state of stress. In massive drug therapy the body feels in greatest threat, for it is forced to use all of its resources while its own signals tell it that the messages it is getting do not have a correlation-and yet they are of the most urgent nature.

(11:40) To some extent there is also an assault upon simple creaturehood. Its images and experience, furthermore, are seldom forgotten, and the so-called new ego is born with the memory of their imprint. Some psychologists like to say that you cry out unconsciously against the natural method of your birth. But here you have the situation where a self is faced with its own annihilation, while another "self' arises after conscious participation with its death.

(Long pause.) I am aware that many psychologists and psychiatrists feel that they are charting the course of the psyche with these methods. It is one thing, and unfortunate enough, to dissect a frog to see what did make it live. It is triply dangerous to dissect a psyche, hoping to put it back together again.

That is the end of dictation. We will end the session unless you want to ask questions.

("You said you'd give us some information about Rooney when I asked for it. "

(Our cat, Rooney, died a week ago, as described at the beginning of the 638th session. This material is included because many correspondents have asked us about the roles pets can play in family groups and their belief systems. Seth's data proved to be unexpectedly penetrating and intimate-so much so that what follows is edited to some degree. Enough remains, however, to show that such relationships can be complicated indeed.)

Give us a moment... The cat would have died that winter. In your terms it was a probable death. In a part of his reality he did die that winter. In your reality, you kept him alive. He had been closed up in that house over there, and went wild and terrified.

(The house in question, one of those decaying turn-of-the century Victorian piles, had squatted on the corner diagonally across the street from us. Jane often sketched it from our living room windows.

(Four years ago this winter it was damaged by fire. The family living in it was moved and the shell boarded up-with Rooney, as a kitten, trapped inside. A passer-by heard his cries days later and freed him. The house has since been torn down.)

Ruburt was somewhat afraid of the cat, considering him wild and caged originally, as his own mother had been in his interpretation. Ruburt therefore felt obligated to help Rooney, who did not really have any love for him-just as in his earlier years he [ Jane] had felt obligated to help his mother.

The cat was aware of this in its terms. It became heavy like Ruburt's mother, but no longer threatening. You finally had it fixed. If Ruburt's mother had been unable to bear a child, then Ruburt would have had a different mother and a different background, granting that Ruburt had come alive.

The cat was a male. You and Ruburt originally called it Katherine, however, when it was still a kitten, and before you finally succeeded in coaxing it into your house. Rooney got into neighborhood scrapes, as Ruburt's father did in bars in various parts of the country. The cat knew of the identification but was willing to trade this for several years of additional physical life, in which he also learned to relate to gentleness for the first time.

Rooney even learned to be on terms with another cat; Willy, your older cat, in his way served as mentor.

Ruburt's mother was very much afraid of cats, particularly black ones. Now and then Rooney and Ruburt passed symptoms back and forth. The cat was not a passive receptor, however, and also learned from his encounters with your neighbor downstairs (who also has a cat) . Many of Ruburt's feelings about his mother are buried in Rooney's grave. Rooney, though, is free of a distrust that he had carried with him this time, having to do with his background in that house across the way, and was grateful for those additional years you gave him.

He was also symbolic of Ruburt's own harsh childhood, and to some extent then conquered simply through the natural passage of events.

With the death of Ruburt's mother last year, Rooney's purpose was fulfilled for Ruburt. Rooney even did a final service, for through his death Ruburt faced the nature of pain and creaturehood that his mother's life had so frightened him of.

That is enough.

("Thank you.")

My heartiest wishes.

("The same to you, Seth. Good night.

(1 2:08. Jane didn't remember any of that material Seth had referred to probabilities and hinted at reincarnation in connection with Rooney, I realized as I scanned the notes, but before I could ask about such relationships he returned with a page of information for Jane on a different subject. Then when she came out of trance again, Jane said, "He's got stuff on Willy, too, " but she was tiring. The session ended at 12:21 A.M.)

Session 640, February 14, 1973, 9:27 P.M., Wednesday

(A wet snow had begun after supper. By session time the fall looked like it might be the heaviest of the year. The neighborhood was muffled and serene; even the traffic passing our apartment house was slowed to a crawl for a change.)

Good evening.

('Good evening, Seth.

Now: Dictation: There are natural feedback systems within the body and psyche that operate to set up optimum frameworks of balance, in which your growth and development can take place. There is some difference here, which was mentioned earlier (in the 636th session in Chapter Nine) , between you and the animals and the particular way in which you create your reality...

(Pause.) I am trying to get a rhythm here that will be a good one for you to take notes by...

("I'm doing all right. " Seth-Jane's flow of cadences had been uneven since the beginning of the session, and I'd started to wonder if I should interrupt to ask what was going on. After this exchange, though, Jane's delivery resumed its usual, rather deliberate rhythm.)

In man, conscious thoughts are highly important as the directors of unconscious activity. You become more responsible, then, in a particular way for physical effects that, comparatively speaking, are "instinctive" in the animal. This gives you both a conscious and unconscious feedback system against which to test your experience and alter its nature.

Therapeutic systems are an important part of this interrelationship, and they operate constantly. In one way, a state of grace or illumination happens where there is the greatest poised balance of the conscious mind with other levels of the psyche and body-a biological and spiritual recognition of the individual's wholeness within himself and his relationship with the universe at large.

Such states lead to a condition of mental, psychic and physical health and efficiency. The aware mind's great leeway through the intellect, and its connection with the senses, makes it possible for any singly insignificant event to trigger such experience. Intense focus is a characteristic of the conscious mind, and you can call it narrow because it includes only the physical dimension; but within the scope of that corporeal field it has great freedom to interpret the given dimension in anyway it chooses.

The conscious mind can, for instance, see a rose as a symbol of life or death, or joy or sadness, and under certain conditions its interpretation of a simple flower can trigger deep experiences that call up power and strength from the inner resources of being. Since the attributes of egotistical consciousness have been so misinterpreted, you usually consider it only in its analytical breaking-down functions. These are very important as it separates larger fields of perception into smaller ones that can be physically understood. But the conscious mind is also a great synthesizer. It brings together diverse elements from your experience and unites them in new patterns.

These organizations then serve as awakeners or stimulation to inner portions of the self, always providing it with fresh experience. The inner self responds through the richness of its own psychic fabric, sending up, so to speak, ever-new particularized abilities to meet the exterior circumstances.

(9:45.) When your body and mind are working together then the relationship between the two goes smoothly, and their natural therapeutic systems place you in a state of health and grace. I told you earlier (in the 614th session in Chapter Two, for instance) that your feelings follow the flow of your beliefs, and if this does not seem true to you it is because you are not aware of the contents of your conscious mind. You can close your physical eyes.-You can close the eyes of your conscious mind also, and pretend not to see what is there. It is because you do not trust your own basic therapeutic nature, or really understand the conscious or unconscious mind, that you run to so many therapies that originate from without the self.

It seems that technologies and inventions have done a lot of harm, and so they have. On the other hand technology brings within your reach the great therapy of music; this activates the inner living cells of your body, stimulates the energy of the inner self and helps to unite the conscious mind with the other portions of your being.

Music is an exterior representation, and an excellent one, of the life-giving inner sounds that act therapeutically within your body all the time. (See Chapter Five.) The music is a conscious reminder of those deeper inner rhythms, both of sound and of motion. Listening to music that you like will often bring images into your mind that show you your conscious beliefs in different form.

The natural healing of sound can happen also when you do such a simple thing as listen to the rain. You do not need drugs, hypnotism, or even meditation. You only need to allow and direct the freedom of your conscious mind. Left alone, it will flow through thoughts and images that provide their own therapy.

You often avoid this natural treatment, however, and run from frightening conscious thoughts that would in their turn lead you to the source of "negative" beliefs, where they could be faced; you could then travel through them, so to speak, into feelings of joy and victory. Instead, for example, many of you accept the way of drugs, where such feelings and thoughts are thrust upon you, or forced out of you while you are denied the stabilizing comforts of the conscious mind.

You may take your break.

(10:01 to 10:16.)

Dreams are one of your greatest natural therapies, and one of your most effective assets as connectors between the interior and exterior universes.

Usually they are not analyzed according to your [own] current beliefs. You have been taught to interpret them along the lines of very ritualized procedures. You are told, for instance, that certain objects or images in your dreams have a definite meaning-not necessarily your own, but following whatever psychological, mystical or religious school of thought in which you happen to be interested.

Some of these systems do touch upon legitimate portions of reality, but they all overlook the great individualistic and highly private nature of your dreams, and the fact that you create your own reality.

Fire has one meaning if you are afraid of it, another if you consider it a source of warmth; and either of these two meanings will also be colored by any of the endless variations of personal events that any individual might have encountered with it. Your own knowledge of dream symbols and their personal meaning is so opaque simply because you are not used to examining them with your conscious mind. You have been taught that it cannot understand. The great interconnections between waking and dreaming experience then escape you. You do not realize the many physical problems that are solved for you, and by you, in your dreams.

This happens very frequently when you consciously set the problem before yourself, state it clearly, and then drift into sleep. The same thing happens, however, even without such a conscious set. Dreams give you all kinds of information concerning the state of your body, the world at large, and the probable exterior conditions that your present beliefs will bring about.

The dream state provides you with a trial framework in which you explore probable actions and decide upon the ones you want to physically materialize. Not only nightmares, as mentioned earlier (in the last session) , but many other dreams follow rhythms of a therapeutic nature far more effectively than any that are drug-induced. Sleeping pills can interfere with this activity.

I will have quite a bit to say in this book concerning the creative and healing nature of dreams, and the easy methods that can be used to help you utilize those conditions more effectively. Here I merely want to point out some of the natural doorways to self-illumination and states of grace. These can be alternative courses to those who believe that there is no other way but to browbeat the ego-either through the use of chemicals or by other methods calculated to strip it of its powers at least momentarily, rather than teaching it to use those great abilities of assimilation that it does possess.

Your nature, beside possessing natural, general healing abilities, has its own unique and particular private triggers arising from your experience. They can be learned, recognized and utilized by you.

In this area certain events really matter. Singular circumstances, meaningless to others, can be used to open your own storehouse of energy and inner strength. These will include both waking and dreaming events. If you remember having certain dream experiences and waking refreshed, then before sleep consciously think about those dreams and tell yourself they will return.

If any activity, odd or silly as it might seem, brings you a sense of satisfaction, pursue it. Any of these natural healing methods can even lead beyond feelings of well-being and strength, physical health and vitality, to those sublime experiences of illumination and grace.

(10:42.) Enjoyment of an art is also very therapeutic, and its creation springs from an exquisite wedding of the conscious and unconscious minds. I will try later to explain the deep interweaving that exists between dreams, creativity, and the nature of the reality of your experience.

The most rejuvenating idea of all, and the greatest step to any true illumination, is the realization that your exterior life springs from the invisible world of your reality through your conscious thoughts and beliefs, for then you realize the power of your individuality and identity. You are immediately presented with choices. You can no longer see yourself as a victim of circumstances. Yet the conscious mind arose precisely to open up choices, to free you from a one-road experience, to let you use your creativity to form diversified, varied comprehensions.

Let us make a clear distinction here: Your conscious beliefs direct the flow of unconscious processes which bring your ideas into physical reality, so while your thoughts cause your experience, you are not consciously aware of how this takes place (forcefully) .

You cannot, as an instance, tell yourself vehemently, "I want to receive illumination, " and expect it to happen if all of your beliefs actually go in the other direction.

You may feel unworthy or believe such a state impossible for you to achieve, in which case you are sending contradictory messages. Nor can you become concerned with the ways in which your conscious purposes will be unconsciously produced, for the inner workings are not aware phenomena.

The framework of sex is another natural therapeutic system if you have not already hampered its effectiveness by contrary beliefs. Natural "mystical" experience, unclothed in dogma, is the original religious therapy that is so often distorted in ecclesiastical organizations, but it represents man's innate recognition of his oneness with the source of his own being, and of his own experience.

Do you want a break?

(10:56. "No.')

The soul is not only dressed in chemical clothes, but wears the apparel woven from all of the elements of the earth. As physical creatures you will be partially changed by any chemical or element, or food or drug that becomes part of your living system, but those effects will follow the nature of your beliefs.

Your dreams and the physical events of your lives constantly alter the chemical balances within your body. A dream may be purposely experienced to provide an outlet of a kind that is missing in your daily life. It will mobilize your resources and fill your body with a rush of needed hormones, creating a dream state of stress that will bring the organism's healing abilities into combat and result in an end to particular physical symptoms.

Another dream might provide a "dreaming" peaceful interlude in which all stress is minimized, with the overactive output of certain hormones and chemicals quieted as a result.

Such dreams will be greatly effective, but only for a short period of time unless the conscious mind faces the beliefs that have been causing the imbalance. The heavy doses of chemicals introduced from the outside, however, give you an entirely different kind of situation and add new stresses. These dilemmas condition consciousness to believe its position to be even more precarious than it was before, and its sense of power and effectiveness is greatly reduced.

Consciousness' experiences following such therapy may be those of elation, but it feels that any of its adventures rest on issues that it cannot understand, and its capacity to deal with physical reality is less secure than before. This is not the case with natural inner treatments that are carried on in individual behavior. These are the ones that should be understood and encouraged, say, by the psychologists.

Take your break.

(11:13. Jane's trance had been good, her delivery even and very intent for the most part. It was snowing heavily. Resume in the same manner at 11:28.)

Now: Your body is your own living sculpture-not only the shape, structure and nature of its form, . but the miraculous sense-knowledge of its being and the unique effect it has upon others. The sculpture itself is also endowed with the power of creativity given to it by yourself.

(Long pause.) Those innate bodily abilities also help sustain you as you continually create the image. (Pause.) The source for all of this creativity springs from your own inner identity, which is never completely materialized in flesh, and so you always have unused portions of creativity at your command. You react to the body even though you form it. In those terms there is a constant interaction between the creation and the creator, and in three-dimensional reality the creator is so a part of his handiwork that it is difficult to tell one from the other.

A painter puts part of himself into a painting. You put all of you of which you are aware into your body, so that it becomes you in flesh. An artist loves his painting. In physical terms it is completed when he puts down his brush-at least for him, though its effects continue. But you are creating your material image as long as you live, and manifesting yourself in it.

A painter does not look out of his creation's eyes into the room upon whose wall the painting hangs. But you peer out through your own eyes at the universe. (Pause.) You create not only the body, then, but its entire experience, the context in which it takes place. You endow yourself with a three-dimensional existence. It is the framework in which you have your experience, created by you as the artist gives his paintings their dimension.

The trees in a landscape painting cannot physically move with the wind that may blow through the three-dimensional room. The head in a portrait cannot close its eyes if they are open, but you move within the framework of the temporal space that you have created for yourself.

(11:44.) The features in a portrait are painted on canvas or board, but your soul is not painted on your body. It enters into and becomes part of it. Physically, you cannot contain all of your identity, and that "free" portion unconsciously creates the flesh, in your terms. Again, you direct its form through your beliefs, but the unconscious part of you does the "work" of producing it.

That is the end of the session.

('Thank you. "

(Actually it wasn't quite the end. Seth returned to deliver a page of material in which he briefly discussed Jane's own work with beliefs, her poetry, and her latest ideas about her psychic abilities from there he went into our relationship with each other and with our parents.

(Assembling all of these elements into a psychological whole, he declared that "the sessions, among other things, were generated by your own experiences as creatures, and your desires to look for personal answers-but more basically, to seek out the answers [asked for] by all of your race." End at 11:50 P.M.)

Session 641, February 19, 1973, 9:42 P.M., Monday

(Beginning at 8:30 this evening, Jane received two long telephone calls from other states-hence the later start of the session.)

Now: Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth. "

(Amused.-) Are you ready for dictation?

("More or less. " I was only half joking in return. For some reason it was difficult to get my mind on the business at hand.)

A man who makes a statue uses his conscious mind, his creative abilities, his physical body, and the inner resources of his own being.

Deliberately he decides to create a sculpture, and automatically focuses his energies in that direction. When you form the living sculpture of your body, which is far more important to you than any work of art, you should certainly follow the same course. In other words, direct your energies toward the creation of a healthy functioning body. You form your image constantly; as many of the artistic processes are hidden, so the inner mechanisms by which you create your material self lie beneath the surface of your conscious mind. They are highly effective, nevertheless.

As the creation of any art is intimately connected with the dream state, so is the living art of your body. Its breathing form is influenced by the great therapy of dreams. If there are chemical imbalances they are often corrected quite automatically in the dream state, as you act out situations calling up the production of hormones, say, that would be summoned in a like waking situation.

The role-playing in the dream drama would be one in which you creatively worked out the problems that caused the imbalances to begin with. Dreams of a strongly aggressive nature in this context may be very beneficial to a given individual, allowing the release of usually inhibited feelings and freeing the body from tension. By such constant dream therapy, both body and mind regulate themselves to a large degree. So your flesh is affected by your dreams.

In them of course one object may be a symbol, but there is no such thing as an overall statement of dream symbolism, in which a given symbol will have a general meaning. There are too many variations in personal experience. It is true that in dreams you do reach some of the deepest sources of your being at times, but even there, the expression of that being is far too individualistic to assign the same kind of "unconscious" meaning to overall symbols.

(9:54.) Again, there can be a useful analogy in the field of art. While artists all use the same "material"-the human experience-it is still the brilliant uniqueness or individuality pointing out and riding upon that shared human performance that makes a work "great." Afterward the critics may point out patterns, assign the work to a certain school, connect the images or symbols to those in other paintings-and then make the mistake of believing the symbols to be general, always apt, meaning the same thing wherever they are found. But all of this may have little to do with the artist's interpretation of his own symbols, or with his personal experience, so he may wonder how the critics could read this into his work.

(Too true. An as artist myself, I've experienced this "critical" phenomenon more than once. Sometimes the results have been laughable-but more often they've been frustrating. I've also been praised or criticized for elements that I hadn't realized existed in a painting, while my conscious intentions were ignored or unperceived. That can be even more mystifying.-"Are they talking about my painting?")

With dreams the same is true. No one really knows their meaning but yourself. If you read books in which you are told that a certain object always represents such and such, then you are like the artist who accepts the critic's idea of the symbols in his own work. You will feel alienated from your dreams since you are trying to make them follow a pattern that is not yours.

In any case, interpretation involves but one part of the task as you try to consciously assess a dream's meaning. The real work of the dream is done during the event itself, on deep psychic and biological levels.

The dream's happening affects your entire physical condition, and so has this constant therapeutic effect. This result stems from the psychic situation set up within any dream drama (pause) , and in it the problems or challenges of your existence are worked out. Many probable actions are taken; these are then projected into the probable future.

As you come to understand the nature of your own beliefs, you can learn to use the dream state more effectively for your conscious purposes. It is one of the most efficient natural therapies, and the inner framework in which much of your physical body building actually takes place.

You may take a brief break.

(10:14. Jane's pace had been steady. The reference to probabilities in the material reminded me of Chapter Sixteen in Seth Speaks. In that chapter Seth voices one of my favorite quotes: "Each mental act opens up a new dimension of actuality. In a manner of speaking, your slightest thought gives birth to worlds." Resume at 10.33.)

Now: There is one point here that I would like to make. Some of the drugs given to "mental" patients impede the natural flow of dream therapy to varying degrees.

There is another consideration involving medicine; though as I mentioned earlier (in the 624th session from Chapter Five) , if you accept Western medical beliefs I am not suggesting that you suddenly forsake all doctors. But naturally and left alone, any chemical upsets in the body will right themselves after the inner problems causing them are worked out through any of a variety of innate healing methods.

The new balance signals the organism that an inner problem has been resolved. The body, mind and psyche are then more or less operating together. When new psychic challenges arise, another round of natural therapy begins in rhythmic pattern. When imbalances of a physical nature are removed by the introduction of drugs, however, the body signals say that the inner dilemma must have been taken care of also-while this may not be the case at all (very positively) .

The whole organism is not at one with itself under such conditions. The problem manifested itself in a given way, and the drugs then block that normal expression of the psychic disorder. Other pathways of demonstration will be sought.

If these are blocked in the same manner also, then the entire mind-body relationship becomes alienated from itself. The inner mechanics are disturbed. The basic challenge not only is not faced, but is constantly denied the physical expression that, left alone, would bring about its natural solution.

Obviously there are many ramifications here, and in your society your own belief systems must also be taken into consideration. If you do not believe in the natural healing processes you will simply block them. Your fear of not seeing a doctor then will only cause more damage. On the other hand, if you have faith in medical help, this alone will bring therapeutic benefit.

This can only go so far, though, if the inner problems are not dealt with. Often they are resolved regardless of what you do or believe, simply as a result of the vast creative energies within your being, and the system of checks and balances with which you provided your body at birth.

(10:49.) The same applies to mental conditions, which have away, sometimes, of working themselves out better without your professional therapies than with them-often cures happen in spite of your best intentioned treatment. One of the latest ideas is that certain mental conditions are caused by chemical imbalances. Supplying these does result in some improvement, but such inequalities do not cause any disease. Your beliefs about the nature of your own reality do. If medication of that sort improves the immediate situation, the inner problem of beliefs must still be worked out. Otherwise other illnesses will be substituted.

It is extremely difficult to work with yourself in the natural manner when you are surrounded everywhere by the belief that certain drugs, or foods, or doctors will provide the answers. So, in the barrage of mass ideas to the opposite, those who try to allow themselves the benefit of their own innate healing must usually face the stress of wondering whether or not they are right.

Unfortunately, the more you rely upon exterior methods the more it seems you must rely upon them, and the less you trust your own natural abilities. You will often become "allergic" to a drug simply because the body realizes that if the drug was accepted, all recourse to the solution of a particular problem would be cut off, or another more severe illness would result from the physical 'cover-up" of the dilemma.

Natural therapy, therefore, is difficult to achieve to its fullest benefit in your society, because it is constantly interfered with from the time of your birth. Yet it operates regardless of interference, and is always at your command to give health and vitality to the living sculpture in which you have your present experience.

Take your break.

(I1:02. During break there was an outburst of heavy noise from one of the other apartments. Several people seemed to be dragging furniture back and forth. The racket was so loud and prolonged that I was surprised when Jane went back into trance. Resume at a slower pace at I1:14.)

Now. (Pause.) Mental "diseases" often point out the nature of your beliefs as they agree or conflict with those held by others. Here the belief systems are different than those of society to such a degree that obvious effects show in terms of behavior. There are crisis points here as with many physical illnesses, and left alone an individual may well work through to his own solution.

Even with so-called mental disorders, however, orientation with the body is very important, as are the individual's beliefs about his own form and its relationship with others and with time and space. (Pause.) There will often be chemical imbalances in such a situation, unconsciously produced by the individual, sometimes in order to allow him to work out a series of "hallucinary" events. Such sustained "objectified dreaming" necessitates a change, chemically, from the normal state of waking consciousness. It is important to note that regardless of the mental or physical illness adopted, it is chosen for a reason, and is a natural method that the individual himself knows he is physically and mentally equipped to handle.

(11:28. Now all was quiet...)

Personality differences then obviously have a great deal to do with the kind of illness adopted, or the "mars" you may inflict upon your own living sculpture.

Now the inner problems that you encounter are always constructive-challenges leading you toward greater fulfillment.

A problem caused by guilt, for example, physically materialized as a malady, is meant to lead you to face and conquer the idea of guilt, the belief in it that you hold in your conscious mind. The body itself is always in a state of becoming. You think of it as reaching a certain peak and then deteriorating, or becoming less. That is because you do not understand it as the expression of your being in flesh.

It reflects the seasons of the earth and of the flesh. In what you think of as you, it mirrors one condition with great faithfulness and abandon. In old age it does the same thing. It shows you in flesh, both as you come into it and leave it, and here you see great variation. Many cease creating their bodies and die at a young age for a great variety of reasons, of course, but some die because they believe that old age is shameful and that only a young body can be beautiful.

Your beliefs about age, therefore, will affect your body and all of its capacities. As mentioned earlier in this book (in the 627th session in Chapter Six) , you may become hard of hearing because you firmly believe that this must come with age. You will alter the chemical composition of your body according to your beliefs about its activity through the various portions of your life.

Elements, chemicals, cells, atoms and molecules-these partially compose your living sculpture, but you are the one who directs their activity through your conscious beliefs, which then initiate all of those great creative powers that give your body its life, and insure its constant reflection of the self that you believe you are.

(Louder, smiling after an intent delivery.) End of session, and very near the end of the chapter. Unless of course you have questions.

("I guess not.")

Then I bid you a fond good evening-

("Thank you very much, Seth.")

-and my heartiest regards to you both.

("Good night." 11:40 P.M.)

Session 642, February 21, 1973, 9:11 P.M., Wednesday

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.)

Dictation: The natural therapies of the body can be called upon with great effectiveness, as you will see in the next chapter. We will discuss the ways in which this can be encouraged, as well as the role of the conscious mind as the director of "the soul in chemical clothes."

End of chapter.

(9:12.) Now: The next chapter, Eleven, to be tided: "The Conscious Mind as the Carrier of Beliefs. Your Beliefs in Relation to Health and Satisfaction." That is the heading.

(Pause.) The nature of your personal beliefs in a large measure directs the kinds of emotions you will have at any given time. You will feel aggressive, happy, despairing, or determined according to events that happen to you, your beliefs about yourself in relation to them, and your ideas of who and what you are. You will not understand your emotions unless you know your beliefs. It will seem to you that you feel aggressive or upset without reason, or that your feelings sweep down upon you without cause if you do not learn to listen to the beliefs within your own conscious mind, for they generate their own emotions.

One of the strongest general causes of depression, for example, is the belief that your conscious mind is powerless either in the face of exterior circumstances thrust upon you from without, or before strong emotional events that seem to be overwhelming from within.

Psychology, religion, science-in one way or another, all of these have added to the confusion by stripping the conscious mind of its directing qualities, and viewing it as a stepchild of the self. (Pause.) The schools of "positive thinking" try to remedy the situation, but often do more harm than good because they attempt to force beliefs upon you that you would like to hold, but do not in your present state of confusion.

Many such philosophies make you cower at the idea of entertaining "negative" thoughts or emotions. In all cases the clues to your emotional experience and behavior lie in your systems of belief-some more evident to you than others, but all available to you consciously. If you believe that you are of little merit, inferior and filled with guilt, then you may react in several ways according to your personal background and the framework in which you accepted those beliefs. You may be terrified of aggressive feelings because [it seems] others so much more powerful than you could retaliate. If you believe that all such thoughts are wrong you will inhibit them and feel all the more guilty-which will generate aggressiveness against yourself and further deepen your sense of unworthiness.

(9:34.) Now if you read a book in your situation that instructs you to contemplate goodness, to turn your thoughts immediately to love and light when you feel irritated, you are in for trouble. Such practices will only serve to make you more frightened of your natural emotions. You will not understand why you have them any better than you did before. You may only hide them more cleverly, and perhaps become ill if, given the situation, you are not already.

The harder you try to be "good" in such a case the more inferior you will become in your own mind. What do you think of yourself, your daily life, your body, your relationship with others? Ask yourself these questions. Write down the answers or speak them into a recorder. But in one way or another objectify them.

When you feel the rise of unpleasant emotions, take a moment and make an effort to identify their source. The answers are far more available than you may have previously believed. Accept such feelings as your own in the moment. Do not shove them underneath, ignore them or try to substitute what you think of as good thoughts.

First be aware of the reality of your feelings. As you become more aware of your beliefs over a period of time, you will see how they bring forth certain feelings automatically. A man who is sure of himself is not angry at every slight done him, nor does he carry grudges. A man who fears for his own worth, however, is furious under such conditions. The free flow of your emotions will always lead you back to your conscious beliefs if you do not impede them.

Your feelings always change the chemical balance of your body and alter its hormonal output, but the danger comes only when you refuse to face the contents of your conscious mind. Even the intent to know yourself, to face the reality of your experience, can be of great benefit, generating emotions that will provide an energy, an impetus to begin.

(Pause.) No one can do this for you. You may believe that good mental health means being always cheerful, resolute and kind, and never crying or showing disappointment. That belief alone can lead you to deny quite natural dimensions of human experience, and to impede the flow of emotions that could otherwise cleanse both your body and your mind. If you are convinced that feelings are dangerous, then again that belief itself will generate a fear of all of them, and you may become almost panic-stricken if you display anything but the most "reasonable" calm behavior.

Your emotions then may strike you as highly unpredictable, extremely powerful, and to be kept down at all costs. Such an attempt to strangle natural feeling is bound to take its toll, but it is the belief itself that is to blame, and not the emotions. Any of the conditions mentioned puts you out of touch with your inner sense of balance. The natural grace of your being becomes disturbed.

Now-take a break and we will continue.

(9:54. Jane's trance had been excellent, her delivery fast considering my writing speed. Seth's material, especially that given around 9.34, was quite apropos in light of an amusing incident involving Jane shortly before the session. Idly, it seemed, she had picked a book from one of our shelves. It turned out to be a self-help treatise written by a prominent medical man. Leafing through it, Jane became so angry at the poor suggestions it contained that she threw it across the room.

(During break, I wondered aloud if she might have selected the book because she intuitively knew Seth was going to discuss its kind tonight-or did Seth use the incident, once it transpired, to make his points in a fresh way ? Jane didn't know, adding that she hadn't "looked at the book in four or five years. " Nor had L Yet I r bared how we'd believed in it so implicitly at the time of purchase...

(Resume in the same fast manner at 10:05.)

The conscious mind is meant to align all of your capabilities in accordance with its beliefs about the nature of reality. Those resources are considerable, for they include the deepest aspects of your creativity, and powers far beneath consciousness of which you are only dimly aware.

You cannot will yourself to be happy while believing that you have

no right to happiness, or that you are unworthy of it. You cannot tell yourself to release aggressive thoughts if you think it is wrong to free them, so you must come to grips with your beliefs in all instances.

If you have been told, again, that the spirit is good, in fact perfect, and that you must then be perfect in all of your ways, while at the same time you believe in the imperfection of the body, you will always be in conflict with yourself.

If it seems to you that the soul is degraded by its alliance with the flesh then you will not be able to enjoy your own sense of grace, for you will not consider it possible. Your beliefs will dictate your very interpretation of various kinds of emotions. Many people, for example, are convinced that anger is always negative. It can be the most arousing and therapeutic emotion under certain circumstances. You can then realize that you have cowered before contradictory beliefs for years, rise up in anger against them, and quite literally begin a new life of freedom. Normal aggressiveness is basically a natural kind of communication, particularly in social orders; a way of letting another person know that in your terms they have transgressed, and therefore a method of preventing violence-not of causing it.

In animals natural aggression is used with the greatest biological integrity. It is on the one hand ritualized, and on the other hand perfectly spontaneous. Its signals are understood. The various degrees, postures, and indications of natural animal aggressiveness are all steps in a series of communications in which the animal encounters are made clear.

To a large extent, a highly involved series of symbolic actions are carried out long before any battle takes place, if it does finally. The display of the aggressive behavior, however, far more frequently prevents an actual combat situation. Man has highly charged contradictory attitudes about aggression, and his beliefs about it cause many of his mass and private problems.

( Jane paused, still in trance. She had picked up a fresh cigarette, then discovered that she was out of matches. "Wait a minute, " I said, "I'll get you a light "I was glad of the chance to rummage around; the pace had been fast.)

He and I both thank you.

To some degree we will touch upon those dilemmas in this book. In your society and to some extent in others, the natural communication of aggression has broken down. You confuse violence with aggression, and do not understand aggression's creative activity or its purpose as a method of communication to prevent violence.

You deliberately make great effort, in fact, to restrain the communicative elements of aggression while ignoring its many positive values, until its natural power becomes dammed up, finally exploding into violence. Violence is a distortion of aggression.

(Pause at 10:28.) Give us a moment...

Birth is an aggressive action-the thrust outward with great impetus of a self from within a body into a new environment. Any creative idea is aggressive. Violence is not aggressive. It is instead a passive surrender to emotion which is not understood or evaluated, only feared, and at the same time sought.

Violence is basically an overwhelming surrender, and in all violence there is a great degree of suicidal emotion, the antithesis of creativity. (Pause.) Both killer and victim in a war, for instance, are caught up in the same kind of passion, but the passion is not aggressive. It is its opposite-the desire for destruction.

Know that yearning is made up of feelings of despair caused by a sense of powerlessness, not of power. Aggressiveness leads to action, to creativity and to life. It does not lead to destruction, violence or annihilation.

Let us take a very simple example involving a kind and good man in a fairly ordinary environment within your society. (Pause.) He has been taught that it is manly to be aggressive, but he believes that this means fighting. As an adult, he frowns upon fighting. He cannot hit his boss, though he may want to. At the same time his church may tell him to turn the other cheek when he is upset, and to be kind, gentle and understanding.

His society teaches him that such qualities are feminine. He spends his life trying to hide what he thinks of as aggressive-violent-behavior, and trying to be understanding and kind instead. The stereotype is of course unrealistic, having to do with distorted concepts concerning the male and the female, but here we will merely consider the aspects of aggressiveness. Because he is trying to be so understanding our man inhibits the expression of many of the normal irritations that would serve as a natural system of communication between, say, his superior and himself at work, or perhaps with the members of his family at home.

Simultaneously all of these inhibited reactions seek release, for the manifestation of aggressive feelings sets up natural balances within the body itself, as well as serving as a communication system with others. When his system has had enough, our friend may then indeed react with violent behavior. He might suddenly find himself in a fight-initiating one-and the smallest incident may serve as a trigger. He could seriously hurt himself or someone else.

As a rule the animals have better sense. Your mind and your body, therefore, are quite equipped to handle aggression. Violence occurs only when the natural expression of aggression has been short-circuited. The sense of power felt during such episodes is the result of repressed energy suddenly released, but the individual is always at the mercy of that energy then-submerged within it, and passively carried with it.

The fear of your own emotions can do far more damage than their expression, because the apprehension builds up a charge that intensifies the energy behind them.

Now you may take your break.

(10:52. Jane had been "way out... I think we're going to get more on animals and aggression... Boy, Seth's still here. I just got the next sentence, " she laughed, but my writing hand was lame so I asked her to wait. "It's funny, 'she added, "but part of me is already into the session while the rest is still here on break... " Resume in the same manner at 11:05.)

Now: Because you have conscious minds you have great leeway in the manner in which you can express aggression, but the animals' heritage is still retained in its own way. A frown is a natural method of communication, saying, "You have upset me, " or, "I am upset." If you tell yourself to smile when you feel like scowling, then you are tampering with your natural expression and denying to another a legitimate communication that tells how you feel.

When a man or a woman always smiles at you, the smile can be like a mask. You do not know whether or not you are communicating with such a person. The sound of the voice, again, follows its own patterns, and natural aggression should and will color it at times.

There are many biological signs shown by the body, all meant as communications to others on a creative basis-as warnings to whatever degree. Each is automatic in its own way, and yet ritualistic, a dance of muscle in motion with its own meaning, and biologically understood. These are all constructive. They are meant to elicit reactions from others and to arrive at new points of understanding, a balance of rights. When your conscious thoughts interfere with such processes, you are in deep trouble.

The animal's behavior pattern is more limited than your own, in a way freer and more automatically expressed, but narrower in that the events an animal encounters are not as extensive as your own. (Pause.) You cannot appreciate your spirituality unless you appreciate your creaturehood. It is not a matter of rising above your nature, but of evolving from the full understanding of it. There is a difference.

You will not attain spirituality or even a happy life by denying the wisdom and experience of the flesh. You can learn more from watching the animals than you can from a guru or a minister-or from reading my book. But first you must divest yourselves of the idea that your creaturehood is suspect. Your humanness did not emerge by refusing your animal heritage, but upon an extension of what it is.

(11:25.) When you try to be spiritual by cutting off your creaturehood you become less than joyful, fulfilled, satisfied natural creatures, and fall far short of understanding true spirituality. Many who say they believe in the power of thought are so afraid of it that they inhibit it in themselves, avoiding any that appear negative or harmful. The slightest "aggressive" expression is blocked. Thoughts can kill, these people think-as if the individual against whom such an impulse was directed had no protective life-giving energies of his or her own, and no natural defense.

Here, often, and for various reasons, you find a hidden and distorted sense of power that says, "I am so powerful that I could kill you with my thought, and yet I refuse to do so." No one, and no one thought, is that powerful. If thoughts alone could kill, you would not have the overpopulation problem!

Each person has his own built-in energy and protection. You accept only those ideas and thoughts that fit in with your own system of beliefs, and even then there are various safeguards. No man dies unless he wants to die, and for a much better reason than that you may want him to.

(Pause.) Sometimes you think of suicide as ignominious and passive, but of war as aggressive and powerful. Both are equally the result of passivity and distorted aggression, and of natural pathways of communication not used or understood. You think of flowers in terms of gentleness, beauty and "goodness, " and yet every time a new bud opens there is a great thrust of joyful aggression that is hardly passive, and a daring and courage that reaches actively outward. Without aggression your body would be denied its growth; the cells within it caught in inertia. Aggressiveness is at the base of the magnificent bursting of creativity.

Now: That is the end of dictation, and the end of our session. If you want something on probabilities I will give it to you at another time, and it will be, though briefly, discussed along with some material on reincarnation in this book.

(Lately I've been asking Jane if she thought Seth would give at least a short dissertation on probabilities for this book. I've been especially curious about this since we received his information on the death of our cat, Rooney, in the 639th session. [A note added later. Seth kept his word. See Chapters Fourteen and Fifteen.]

(Now Seth made some suggestions about how the members of ESP class could, by following the data in this session, write down their individual beliefs for group discussion.)

Then I will give a progress report at a later time.

("All right.")

I bid you a fond good evening. And have Ruburt show you his latest paper.

("Yes. Thank you, Seth. Good night.

(11:40 P.M. Jane yawned again and again. "I feel exhausted-and yet I'm charged with energy at the same time, " she said. The paper Seth had referred to concerned some of her own work with beliefs. My writing hand ached.)

Session 643, February 26, 1973, 9:20 P.M., Monday

(Both of us have been very busy since the last session was held. I had only one page of it typed from my notes, and now neither of us could remember the rest of it. "Well, since I was in trance when it was delivered, I can say that I haven't heard it, " Jane laughed, "so that's my excuse. What's yours?" I didn't have any. I read a few pages of notes to her while we waited for this session to begin.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: Today Ruburt received a call from a young woman I will name Andrea. She is a lovely young blonde. I would like to use this instance as an excellent example of the ways in which conscious beliefs affect your feelings and behavior.

Andrea is in her early thirties; divorced, with three children. She called to tell Ruburt that she had lost her job this morning; but more than this, that she was involved in a week of very negative circumstances and emotional encounters. A young man she had been seeing began to avoid her. A salesman placed her in what seemed to be a very humiliating situation, and yelled at her in front of a crowd of people. All of her other encounters of late had seemed to follow the same pattern. Finally she became ill and emotionally overwrought. She stayed home from work, and that situation culminated in the loss of her job.

She told Ruburt that she felt herself to be an inferior person, unable to cope, an individual who was not able to hold her own with her coworkers or the world at large.

She had carried those beliefs of course throughout that period of time, and they were expressed unconsciously through her body through gestures, expressions, tones of voice. The whole physical self expected rebuffs. The events of those days, whatever they were, would be interpreted in the light of that mental set (intently) .

All of the available data coming into the organism would be sifted, weighed and valued in a precise search for the material that would give physical emphasis to those beliefs. Information or events running counter would be ignored to a large degree, or distorted in such a fashion that they would be made to fit in with what the mind said was reality.

Conscious beliefs focus your attention, channel it and direct your energy so that you can swiftly bring the ideas into your physical experience. They also act as blinders, throwing aside data that cannot be assimilated while preserving the integrity of the beliefs. So our Andrea did not see, or ignored, the smiles that came her way, or the encouragement; and in some cases she even perceived some potentially beneficial events as "negative"-these then were used to further reinforce the belief in her own inferiority.

Over the phone Ruburt reminded Andrea of her own basic uniqueness, and also of the fact that she was creating her reality through beliefs. Ruburt reinforced other ideas that Andrea had momentarily forgotten-the fact, among others, of her own true worth; and because Ruburt believed in Andrea's worth, and because Andrea knew it, this more positive belief rose up to shove the others aside.

During the day, Andrea was able to look at both beliefs and see them as opposing ideas that she had held about herself. She believed she was unique and good-and also that she was inferior and bad. At various times one belief would color her experience nearly to the exclusion of the other. Just before this session Andrea called back. She realized that she had indeed set up the situation by not dealing honestly with her own conscious ideas.

She had wanted to leave her job for another one but was afraid of taking the step, so she created circumstances in which the decision was seemingly taken out of her hands; it would appear as if she were the victim of unfeeling co-workers, jealous and misunderstanding, and a boss who would not stand up for her.

(Pause at 9:42.) Now she understood that she was not a victim but the originator of those conditions. During the time involved, her feelings faithfully mirrored her conscious beliefs. She was lost in self-pity and self-condemnation. These brought about the weakened body state. In speaking to her the second time Ruburt gave Andrea excellent advice, explaining the way in which such feelings can be handled to advantage. In his or her own way, each reader can easily utilize the method.

Ruburt advised Andrea to accept the validity of such feelings as feelings-not to inhibit them, but to follow their flow with the understanding that they are feelings about reality. As themselves they are real. They express emotional reactions to beliefs. The next time Andrea feels inadequate, for example, she is to actively experience that feeling, realizing that even though she feels inferior this does not mean that she is inferior. She is to say, "I feel inferior, " and at the same time to understand that the feeling is not a statement of fact but of emotion. A different kind of validity is involved.

Experiencing your emotions as such is not the same as accepting them as statements of fact about your own existence. Andrea is then supposed to ask, "Why do I feel so inferior?" If you deny the validity of the emotion itself and pretend it away, then you will never be led to question the beliefs behind it.

(Long pause at 9:56) I am simply giving you a moment to rest your hand... You're not resting it-

("Yes I am, "I said jokingly, putting my pen down after I had finished these notes. As Seth, Jane stared at me soberly.)

At this point Andrea believes that her life must be difficult. She has been told often that a woman without a man is in a very difficult situation, particularly a woman with children. She believes that a new mate will be almost impossible to find. She has been informed that children need a father, and feels at the same time that no man wants to become involved with a woman with children.

In her thirties, it seems to her that youth is fast fleeing, and in line with her beliefs she cannot see a woman who is much older being desirable. So her beliefs put her in a state of crisis. Change them and no crisis exists. The body would then cease reacting to such stress, and almost immediately the exterior situation itself would be altered.

At the same time all beliefs are communicated to others, not only through quite unconscious bodily mechanisms, but telepathically. You will always try to correlate your ideas with exterior experience. (Pause.) All of the abilities of the inner self will be brought to bear to materialize the image of your beliefs, regardless of what they ought to be. The "proper" emotions will be generated, bringing about those body states that exist in your conscious mind.

(Louder.) Now you may take a break.

("Thank you. "

(10:03. Jane had been "really out, not aware of anything, " she said-but Seth promptly returned when I voiced some doubts about using this material in his book.)

Now: This was a way of assisting the young woman involved, and others too. Show her this session. There will be no problem. The situation is one in which many young women are involved, and this material can help them solve dilemmas of which they may have been unaware previously. They do not know a Ruburt, but they can learn through this book. Now you may take your break.

("All right. "

(10:06 Jane laughed when I said Id been hoping Seth would respond to MY comments in that that manner Resume at a slower pace at 10:33.)

I have used Andrea because so many typical Western beliefs coincide in her reality-the idea that aging is disastrous; that women are relatively powerless without a man beside them; that life is, practically speaking, highly difficult while it should be ideally simple. All of these ideas obtain their charge from a basic belief in the powerlessness of the conscious self to form and regulate its experience.

Luckily Andrea is working with her own system of beliefs. Presently, however, while she tells herself that age does not matter, she still believes that her desirability as a woman decreases with the passage of each day. So she feels and acts less attractive-when that belief holds sway. She is fortunate enough to be able to check her physical experience against her beliefs, and astute enough to see areas in which she has made great advances. But let us look at some of those beliefs and apply them to others generally.

Often, of course, those who try the hardest to be "good" do so because they fear for their basic worth, and those who speak of having youthful minds and bodies do so because they are so terrified of age. In the same way, many who shout about independence are afraid that they are basically helpless. In most instances these opposing beliefs are held quite consciously, but kept apart from each other. Therefore they are not reconciled.

(10:45.) Since your feelings follow your beliefs, various groups of them will appear to be senseless at times if you do not allow them free connection with opposing ideas that you may also hold.

A person may seem to be very open and responsive. Reading this book, for example, any reader might say, "My trouble is that I am too emotional." Yet on some self-analysis, almost all will find areas in which emotions are expressed only to a certain point. They are not followed through.

(Pause , one of many.) No feeling brings you to a dead end. It is in motion, and that always leads into another feeling. As it flows it alters your entire physical condition, and that interchange is meant to be consciously accepted. Your emotions will always lead you into a realization of your beliefs if you do not impede them. Emotional states are always impetuses for action, meant to be physically expressed. Each has a basis in natural aggression.

The connections between creativity and aggression have never been understood in your society. A misunderstanding of true aggression can lead into a fear of all emotion, and cause you to cut yourself off from one of nature's best therapies.

Natural aggression provides the charge for all creativity. Now reading this, many readers will be taken back, for they believe that love is the impetus, and that love is opposed to aggression. There is no such artificial division. Natural aggression is the creative loving thrust forward, the way in which love is activated, the fuel through whose agency love propels itself. (With emphasis:) Aggression in the most basic terms has nothing to do with physical violence as you think of it, but with the force through which love is perpetuated and creatively renewed.

(11:01.) When you think in other terms, then you fall into distorted views in which power is assigned to negative elements-and seen as threatening, wrong, or even given demonic connotations. In contrast, good is seen as weak, powerless, passive, and in great need of defense.

You will be afraid of any powerful emotion, therefore; frightened of the dimensions of your own actuality, and to a large extent be led to run away from an acceptance of the power and energy of your own being. You will be forced to dilute your own experience. Such beliefs have a strong depressing characteristic that can lead you to shut down powerful feelings by immediately considering them negative.

You will automatically begin to inhibit any stimulus that might bring about forceful emotions, and so deny yourself needed feedback. You are at the mercy of your emotions only when you fear them. They are the motion of your being. They go hand in hand with your intellect. But when you are unaware of the contents of your conscious mind, and not fair with your emotions, you run into difficulty.

You may take a break.

(11:11. Jane was quickly out of trance. "Somehow I didn't feel quite with it, "she said, but I told her the material was as cogent as ever. As sometimes happens, she'd been bothered by an outburst of noise in the house during her delivery; so had I. At break we were still irritated.

(We sat until 11:26 P.M.. before Jane decided that it wasn't worth trying to resume the session: "I hate to say it, but to hell with it for tonight-")

Session 644, February 28, 1973, 9:05 P.M., Wednesday

(We held the session in Jane's study for a change.

(During the last few days Jane has felt that she's been picking up "advance" material from Seth on his book. She's made sow notes about it. One of the phrases that we think evocative is "bridge beliefs. "

(Shortly before the session Jane told me that she felt Seth around, as usual. But then she added, "I feel a source of energy just above my head-not a cone, nothing that definite, just that it's there outside my body. I feel a sort of free slide or glide that isn't ordinary, like I've had perhaps three glasses of wine... I think I know what Seth's going to talk about. My hands feel light, too, real smooth, as though they're swirling through silky water. Not that I'm out-of-body, but... "

( Jane took her glasses off and closed her eyes as she sat in her rocker. Then.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: Ruburt did receive some information from me, by using another method. Some advance material was given to him for his own use ahead of time, so to speak.

It seemed to him that the information 'Just came, " but not already prepared into words. Instead he received ideas which he then interpreted and verbalized, and wrote down for himself. That material is pertinent and belongs in this chapter. I will give it in my way now.

I have often stated that the mind-body relationship is one system. The thoughts are as necessary to the whole system as the body's cells are. Ruburt correctly interpreted an analogy I gave him in which I compared thoughts to individual cells, and belief systems to the physical organs, which are composed of cells. The organs obviously are stationary in the body, though the cells within them die and are reborn.

Belief systems are as necessary and natural as physical organs are. In fact, their purpose is to help you direct the functioning of your biological being. You give no conscious thought to the coming and going of cells within your organs. Left alone, your thoughts will come and go through your belief systems just as naturally; and ideally, they will balance out, maintaining their own health and directing your body so that its innate therapies take place.

Your systems of belief will of course attract certain kinds of thoughts, with their trails of emotional experience. A steady barrage of hateful, revengeful thoughts should actually lead you to look for the beliefs from which they are gaining their strength.

You cannot do this by ignoring the validity of the thoughts as your experience, however (very intensely) , by trying to shove them under the rug of a superficial optimism. Such habitual, unhappy thoughts will bring about the same kind of physical experience, but it is your own system of beliefs that you must examine.

(9:22. Her eyes closed, Jane sat quite still for over a minute.)

The "negative" subjective and objective events that you meet are meant to make you examine the contents of your own conscious mind. In their way the hateful or revengeful thoughts are natural therapeutic devices, for if you follow them, accepting them with their own validity as feelings, they will automatically lead you beyond themselves; they will change into other feelings, carrying you from hatred into what may seem to be the quicksands of fear-which is always behind hatred.

By going along with feelings you unify your emotional, mental and bodily state. When you try to fight or deny them, you divorce yourself from the reality of your being. Dealing with thoughts and feelings as just directed at least roots you firmly in the integrity of your present experience, and allows its innate motion and natural creativity to thrust toward a therapeutic solution.

When you refute such emotions or become terrified of them, you impede the flow of feeling from one moment to the other. You set up dams. Any emotion will change into another if you experience it honestly. Otherwise you clog the natural movement of your entire system.

Fear, faced and felt with its bodily sensations and the thoughts that go along with it, will automatically bring about its own state of resolution. The conscious system of beliefs behind the impediment will be illuminated, and you will realize that you feel a certain way because you believe an idea that causes and justifies 'such a reaction.

(9:34.) If you habitually deny the expression of any emotions, to that degree you become alienated not only from your body but from your conscious ideas. You will bury certain thoughts and put up biological armor to prevent you from physically feeling their effects upon your body. In each case the answer lies in your personal system of beliefs, in those strong concepts you hold on an intimate level that brought about the inhibitions to begin with.

If you find yourself running around in a spiritual frenzy, trying to repress every negative idea that comes into your head, then ask yourself why you believe so in the great destructive power of your slightest "negative" thought.

The body and mind together do present a united, self regulating, healing, self-clearing system. Within it each problem contains its own solution if it is honestly faced. Each symptom, mental or physical, is a clue to the resolution of the conflict-behind it, and contains within it the seeds of its own healing.

You may take a break.

(9.44. Jane said that during the delivery she "knew, " without being aware of what Seth was saying, that he was talking about the material she'd received on her own earlier in the week. Resume at a slower pace at 10:01.)

Now: It is true that habitual thoughts of love, optimism and self acceptance are better for you than their opposites; but again, your beliefs about yourself will automatically attract thoughts that are consistent with your ideas. There is as much natural aggressiveness in love as there is in hate. Hate is a distortion of such a normal force, the result of your beliefs.

As in the material that Ruburt received ahead of time for his own use, natural aggression is cleansing and highly creative-the thrust behind all emotions.

There are two ways to get at your own conscious beliefs. The most direct is to have a series of talks with yourself. Write down your beliefs in a variety of areas, and you will find that you believe different things at different times. Often there will be contradictions readily apparent. These represent opposing beliefs that regulate your emotions, your bodily condition and your physical experience. Examine the conflicts. Invisible beliefs will appear that unite those seemingly diverse attitudes. Invisible beliefs are simply those of which you are fully aware but prefer to ignore, because they represent areas of strife which you have not been willing to handle thus far. They are quite available once you are determined to examine the complete contents of your conscious mind.

If this strikes you as too intellectual a method, then you can also work backward from your emotions to your beliefs. In any case, regardless of which method you choose, one will lead you to the other. Both approaches require honesty with yourself, and a firm encounter with the mental, psychic and emotional aspects of your current reality.

(10:12.) As with Andrea (see the last session) , you must accept the validity of your feelings while realizing that they are about certain issues or conditions, and are not necessarily factual statements of your reality. "I feel that I am a poor mother,