The Physical Universal Shifts of Consciousness

"The Unknown Reality"

by Jane Roberts

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Session 679, February 4, 1974, 9:41 PM. P.M., Monday

(Before the session I showed Jane a childhood photograph of herself, and one of me. The two pictures are roughly the same size, about 31/4" by 5". They also look remarkably alike in their brittle and discolored condition-almost as though they'd been snapped at the same time-yet mine is older than Jane's by 20 years.

(The photograph of me, taken and dated by my father [Robert Sr.], has been kept in one of the Butts family albums for 53 years. In it the time is June 1, 1921. I'm almost 2 years old. I have curly light-colored hair. I wear a one-piece suit, long white stockings, and black shoes. I stand in the side yard of the house my parents rented in Mansfield, a small college town in northeastern Pennsylvania. Perhaps a dozen chicks cluster in the grass at my feet while I stare down at them, quite entranced. In blurred focus behind me an unknown teen-age girl sits on a swing that's suspended from a tree limb, and an empty wicker stroller-type carriage [mine?] stands beside her. Parked in a driveway in back of her is a four-door touring car with a fabric top. I might add that Mansfield is only 35 miles below Elmira, N. Y., where Jane and I live now.

(The photograph of Jane is 33 years old. It was taken by an older lady friend who was treating her to an outing at a spa just outside of the New York State resort of Saratoga Springs, where Jane lived with her bedridden mother, Marie, and a housekeeper. In a childish hand Jane had scrawled her friend's name on the back of the picture, along with the date. Many years later she was to tell me, "My mother hated that woman. "In the snapshot it's a sunlit day in August, 1941. Jane is 12 years old. She sits on the grass before some evergreen shrubs; she leans slightly back on her right hand, her bare legs rather primly folded. She wears a print dress that bad been given to her in the Roman Catholic orphanage in Troy, some 35 miles from Saratoga Springs; she'd spent the previous 18 months there in the institution while her mother had been hospitalized in another city for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Jane also wears a short-sleeved pullover sweater. Her mother bad knitted it during her stay in the hospital.

(Jane's blond hair-which was to turn quite black-is neatly parted and combed, and she wears a barrette in it. Her face is youthfully round, but quite unsmiling. She's not scowling. Rather, from her position on the grass she just stares directly out of the photograph at the viewer, displaying a sober, almost controlled regard that seems out of place for one of that age.

(To me, both photographs bad a certain mysterious quality that I'd often found intriguing-an aura due partly to their being old, personal, and so irreplaceable, I suppose. But for a long time I'd been aware of other feelings connected with them. Jane bad begun delivering the Seth material late in 1963, and soon afterwards Seth started developing his ideas on probabilities.1 Many times while looking at the snapshots since then I'd found myself speculating about the probable realities surrounding their two young subjects. I told Jane now that I understood the course of action each of us bad chosen to make physical, or "real" in our terms. But what of all the other paths our probable selves had embarked upon since those pictures had been taken? By now, did those photographs actually depict the immature images of us, the Jane and Rob we knew and had always been, or from our standpoint did they show a probable Jane, a probable Rob-two individuals who long ago had set out upon their own journeys through other realities? I wasn't clear on what I wanted to know, and had trouble expressing myself to Jane. Maybe I just wanted Seth to comment on probabilities in a more personal way. [And added later: At the time, I bad no idea that my questioning would trigger a new Seth book.]

(The outward signs of Jane's trance performances as Seth are very interesting in themselves, and I don't intend to minimize them: indeed, I describe them every so often. My real fascination, however, lies with what I call the greatly enhanced consciousness, or energy, that she displays in the sessions-and always I sense an even more powerful flow of that quality just beneath the surface of her delivery. I thought of this as Jane sat quietly in her Kennedy rocker, waiting for Seth to come through. After a few. minutes, her right band lifted to her glasses. As she took them off her eyes were much darker and more luminous than they usually are: She was dissociated-in trance. Seth was there, staring at me.)

Now: Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth."

(As Seth, Jane briefly handled the two photographs I'd placed on the coffee table between us.)

I am doing two things here-but you can also have the material on any picture separately if you choose to.

("Yes.")

Each of you, again, chose your parents and environment. You spoke in your notes (two days ago) of precognition in connection with art-an excellent point. Precognition in those terms also applies at your birth, when ahead of time you are quite aware on unconscious levels of those conditions that you will meet. You have chosen them and projected them ahead of you, out into the medium of time.

The conditions, however, while "set" in one fashion, are highly plastic in another, so that a multitudinous variety of probable events can flow from them. Precognitively you are unconsciously quite aware-again in your terms-of the results of any given action or cause. When this (photograph) of Ruburt was taken, he had already become aware of the overall interests and concerns that would dominate his future life, although the particular course of it had not been chosen.

Some of this throws light on current experience. The religious background was there. At his preference and demand, he changed from a public to a Catholic school after the third grade. This was against his mother's judgment. She felt that public schools were better and more socially beneficial. Ruburt, at that age-when he changed at the third grade-had quite a will then, in that he forced his mother to acquiesce to the change of schools. He put up such a fuss, Ruburt, and held such temper tantrums, that permission was given. He was stubborn even then.

Now: He was always highly imaginative, as was his mother. His mother was socially defiant, flaunting her beauty with the "disreputable" elements of society. Much later, Ruburt would date the "disreputable" men in his environment, yet neither mother or daughter saw that parallel. Ruburt's mother by then wanted a respectable, hopefully rich husband for Ruburt, and could not understand why he chose men who did not conform.

Ruburt chose a background in which he was poor, as did the mother. The mother was also bright, but chose to bank upon beauty for escape (from her environment) . Ruburt tried his brains instead. That material has been given (over the years in a series of personal sessions) .

("Yes.")

Ruburt's nonconformance took the larger framework of unconventional ideas. In the background, as a child under the organization of the Welfare Department, self-indulgence, small luxuries or too-unconventional behavior, were all dangerous in the framework chosen-the neighbors could report any transgressions to Welfare. At about this time (tapping the photo) Ruburt sat on the lap of an adult man on the front porch, and neighbors duly reported this-the idea being that sexual depravity could be involved.

Ruburt's mother knew that the child could be taken away were it proven that she was an unfit mother in any way, or unable to give the child proper care. Well over a year before this picture was taken, in fact, Ruburt was sent to a Catholic home.5 There, unconventional thought was not tolerated. The inflexibility of dogma conscientiously applied to daily action was experienced, and within it Ruburt tried to apply himself and to focus his deeply mystical nature.

He remembered his mother's constant criticism of him, but barely recalls his scandalized disapproval of her swearing, for example, on his return home. He threw himself headlong into the Catholic reality, pursued it with great stubborn diligence, used it as a framework of conventionality in which he could allow his mystic nature to grow.

When that nature grew out of the framework, he left it. All the beliefs that had once seemed so legitimate were then seen as hampering, and all their defects became plain. While he followed the framework, nothing could swerve him from it, and here (touching the photo) in this child's picture, you already have the unswerving nature, the great spontaneity, looking for a structure that will allow it growth, and yet give the illusion of safety.

The placid-looking child (in the photo) was as dogmatic and unyielding in some respects as Ruburt has ever been. Yet leaving the church framework, Ruburt fastened upon the mind as opposed to the intuitions. The child here was convinced that statues of Christ moved. Without a framework to contain that kind of experience, the growing girl began to squash it. Mystical experience became acceptable only through poetry or art, where it was accepted as creative, but not real enough to get him into trouble, or to upset the "new" framework. The new framework threw aside such superstitious nonsense. The mind would be harnessed, and art became the acceptable translator of mystical experience, and a cushion between that experience and the self. He threw some of the baby out with the bathwater.

The mystical went underground, reappearing as science fiction. Again, in the social and religious background of the child, unconventional mental or physical actions could bring penalties. For a while the child could interpret mystical experience within the church-but even then, there was always conflict with church authorities.

(10:19.) Without this experience of following such a belief in the church so fervently, however, he would not understand the need of people for such beliefs, or be able to reach them as well as he does. His questioning mind was exercised originally as he began to examine religious beliefs. He was afraid that psychic experience, when he encountered it much later, might lead to a new dogma, and was determined not to use it in such a way.

His "conservatism, " meaning his strong recognition of conservative ideas, is used as a springboard. He leaps from where he knows other people are into new areas. He combats the dogma of spiritualism as much as he did the dogma of the church.

He leaped, however, from the framework of the church into another framework, one in which mysticism was experienced secondhand, under the guise of artistic production. Idea Construction literally shattered that framework.

(Pause.) For various reasons already given, concerning your joint relationship, and your own purposes (to me) , it has taken some time for a newer, suitable framework to form itself-one in which Ruburt is free to pursue mystic experience in a practical structure; one in which unconventionality of thought is allowed to continue freely. He felt that this could outgrow the framework of his art, as it did that of the church. The physical symptoms served quite literally as a framework in which spontaneity was to some extent at least allowed a mental and psychic freedom, until he felt secure.

Take your break.

(10:3 1. Jane came out of trance very easily and quickly, as she usually does. The speed of her delivery for Seth bad been average, which to me means that I'd been able to just comfortably keep up with my verbatim "shorthand" notes. Jane remembered little of what she'd said, yet now she felt the emotional impact of the material in her stomach-the reaction she often gets, she told me, when the information is of a personal or "charged" nature.

(I reminded her that I hoped Seth would comment on the old photograph of her in connection with probable realities, although now I could see that it would take him longer to develop answers than I'd thought it would. I didn't think we'd get any material on my own picture tonight.

(Resume in the same manner at 10:42.)

Now: You were correct. Probabilities are of course involved. Remember the first few sentences of this session. The general overall conditions were chosen, but many probable courses were concerned.

(As Seth, Jane pointed to the photograph of herself, taken when she was 12 years old.)

That child took a different course than this woman did (Jane indicated herself as she sat in her rocker) . The dogmatism prevailed. The child's mystical nature, while strong, was not strong enough to defy the church framework, to leave it or to rise above its provided symbolism. It [the mysticism] was to be expressed, if curtailed, relatively speaking. The mind would be harnessed so that it would not ask too many questions. That child (in the photo) joined a nunnery, where she learned to regulate mystical experience according to acceptable precepts-but to express it nevertheless with some regularity, continuously, in a way of life that at least recognized its existence.

In your terms, the intersection with probabilities occurred one day in an interview the child had with a priest. The event, in Ruburt's terms, with its results in your probability, is mentioned in his Rich Bed (see Note 4) . The child in seventh or eighth grade wrote a poem, expressing the desire to be a nun, and brought it to a parish priest. In your probability, the priest told the child that she was needed by her mother; but intuitively he saw that Ruburt's mysticism would not fit into the church organization.

In the other probability, Ruburt's desire at that time won. He managed to water down the extent and dimensions of his mysticism enough so that it was acceptable. In that other probability, there will be no long period of time in which the mystical experience would lie latent, and no necessity at all to put it into new terms.

The writing ability would follow as its handmaiden. In this world the artistic abilities were put first, but the mystical nature was given greater chances to expand and develop. And both were given the opportunity and the challenge of shattering old, historic frameworks, and of rising beyond them.

(Intently:) Ruburt here chose the writing structure, and has stuck to it as unswervingly as he once stuck to the church, yet always seeking a new framework. For a while he idealized you. Your guidance and strength were his framework. When it became apparent that you were also human, and not a framework, he became frightened. When you encouraged the emergence and expression of his mysticism, then you could no longer act, he felt, as a framework to contain it. By then it seemed to threaten the joint structure of your lives. He knew intuitively that you also used artistic creation as a buffer between yourself and mystical expression.

For all of the reasons given-and they are clearly given(in personal sessions)-he was afraid that spontaneity, mental or physical, would threaten the long-accepted framework of your joint lives. If he went spontaneously forward in mystical experience, then, given his ideas, it threatened the conventional acceptance of his art. Conventional ideas of art and writing, upon which the old framework, now, was dependent, no longer fit.

Once again his natural experience, he felt, was leading him beyond structures he had considered safe.

(11:05.) He had you to consider. This experience of his was taking time from your art as well as his own, to his way of thinking. At the same time, the mystical nature rejoiced at its opportunity, and sensed its potential. Ruburt was determined to go ahead (louder)-he was also determined to keep the old structures and to ignore the cracks in them. In part his loyalty to you was connected, and his responsibility as he saw it to keep you focused as an artist, and to let nothing distract you. Yet here he was distracting you.

For a while your joint communication system was shaky. He was afraid to go ahead. The symptoms kept him at his job, at home, and allowed him to concentrate without outside distractions; kept him writing, with mystical experience dutifully translated into art.

The symptoms also served to focus that fantastic energy while he figured out how it should be used. He could not accept a new psychic framework while within it there were questions concerning your joint ideas of business, and divided loyalties about writing and painting; your personal fears, jointly, about spontaneity in general, and the need to protect your talents both from your own sexual natures and the distractions of others.

He could not accept a new framework, and he dared not let the old one go, so the symptoms became the physical materialization of these conflicts, and served many purposes. This child (in the photo) , grown up in its own probability, has no such problems. The challenges are not there, either-only in latent form.

Give us a moment... Ruburt greatly needs to realize that you love him, and accept him, as he is now in your terms. He gets from you what feeling of creaturehood acceptance he has, that you received in your way from your family in early years.

Your questioning, Joseph (see Note 3) , and your deep distrust of the world's current theories, are shared as intensely by Ruburt, and your joint insistence upon discovering new answers is responsible for these sessions, and what will come from them.

You see his joyful potential, and he knows that you do. Sometimes he feels lost, however, as an emotional human being, groping toward that potential, and he needs to be comforted. As you know now, comforting him can be frightening to you, because it returns you both to deep emotional realizations and feelings that you sublimate in your paintings, and even to mystical experiences that you also channel through your work.

Take a break.

(11:25. "I've got that feeling again, " Jane said, after she'd come out of a deep trance. "Empty inside, you know, as though it's all hitting home..."

(From Seth's delivery following last break, I've deleted less than two short sentences of very personal material. Obviously, Jane and I did choose to meet the challenges presented by the emergence of her psychic abilities 11 years ago. Those "new" abilities offered creative possibilities so apparent that, given our natures, we bad little desire to do otherwise; beneath our doubts and questions we intuitively felt the rightness of our decisions. I found that I was able to contribute psychically in certain ways, other than just recording the sessions. And to have at least some of our deepest desires and motivations brought so clearly to conscious awareness, through psychic means or any other way, was more than we'd thought possible in previous years. We found such information especially valuable within the larger social context. With all of this, I was also eager to acquire whatever knowledge was available about both the philosophy and the act of painting.

(I hope the [very slightly edited] information Seth gives about my own family will trigger insights for others. Resume at 11:37.)

Now: Let us briefly, for now, attend to this.

(Seth-Jane held up the photograph of me, taken when I was almost 2 years old.)

That child enjoys great feelings of vigor and safety. In your family relationship so far, so good. You were mainly surrounded by love and affirmation. Your parents were young. Your mother had produced two beautiful boys; and she was also a perfectionist in her way, and in her framework-one never understood by your father.

It was on the surface a very conventional structure, yet underneath, highly unwieldy. There were dogmas. The mother was expected to bear perfect children and to be subservient to the male, at least in outward fashion.

Your mother felt, then, that each played a fitting part in the marriage, in that your father had in her eyes great prospects, and she had given him two sons. It was only later that she felt he had not fulfilled his part of the bargain, and that you began to feel insecure. She had forced herself to focus all of her great emotional power into the marriage structure as they both understood it; but your father would not concentrate his own abilities into the cultural and financial structure as he had agreed to do in the tacit contract.

She had forced herself to contain her own reality in conventional terms-but to her way of thinking, he refused to use his energy in the accepted social and financial structure that each of them had accepted.

You began to feel, years later, as Ruburt did: that creativity was in its way dangerous, that it would lead you outside of accepted social structures, and definitely must be protected against normal family life.

(Picking up the photo of me:) Not in this picture, but quite alive, was your brother Linden. You insisted upon using your abilities, and tried for years to fit them into the commercial pattern, where they were accepted financially and socially, and in terms of your self-image. Finally you grew outside of the structure.'0 When you did, you made the artificial division in which good art would not sell-but you would do it anyway.

You would make your creativity real, in sense terms. Linden would not. He would keep it safely inside a "play" structure-not play necessarily in basic terms, but a structure in which he would work with models, cleverly, never applying his creative abilities in certain ways to a practical reality. They would be outside, safely, in that context.

The abilities that he possessed, that could be channeled into society as he understood it, were [so handled]. In such an eventuality, fragmentation occurred so that the abilities were dispersed, some directed into school, some into drawing, and others into his models. Those creative attributes were separated so that they could be safely handled, yet expressed to some degree, and not completely denied.

Your own character is in its way more direct, meaning that you maintained a more immediate focus. When that picture was taken, however, your parents were beginning to realize their difficulty. Your first year was one in which your father and mother were filled with expectation. 'Linden sensed that lack. He was secure, but not as secure as you had been, as the division between your parents was beginning to show.

Linden uses words now as a framework to contain creativity and communication, rather than to express them. You were more free-roaming here (in the photo) as a child because you felt safer physically. Linden was far less venturesome in that respect....

(After a pause at 12:02, Seth delivered a page of material for Jane before ending the session at 12:16 A.M. As I interpret his information on the photographs, then, Jane's depicts an individual who was to become a probable Jane to the one I know, while mine is pretty much an early version of the self who's always lived in this reality... )

Session 680, February 6, 1974, 9:21 PM. Wednesday

(In the last session, Seth began discussing separate photographs of Jane and me [taken at the ages of 12 and 2, respectively] in connection with his ideas about probable selves. Since we wanted Seth to continue with the same material tonight, we looked the pictures over again while waiting for him to come through. Then, without greetings:)

Now: When I speak of probable selves, of course I am not speaking of some symbolic portion of the personality structure, or using the idea of probabilities as an analogy.

Consciousness is composed of energy, with everything that implies. The psyche, then, can be thought of as a conglomeration of highly charged "particles" of energy, following rules and properties, many simply unknown to you. On other levels, laws of dynamics apply to the energy sources of the self. Think of a given "self" as a nucleus of an energy gestalt of consciousness. That nucleus, according to its intensity, will attract to it certain masses of the entire energy patterns available to a given identity.

In those terms the identity at birth is composed of a variety of such "selves, " with their nuclei, and from that bank the physical personality has full freedom to draw. Ruburt's mystical nature was such a strong portion of the entire identity that in his present reality, and in the probable reality chosen-as mentioned when I discussed this picture (of Jane)-the mystic impulses and expressions were given play. Intersections with probable realities occur when one psychic grouping intensifies to a certain point, so that fulfillment as a self results.

Within the entire identity there may be, for example, several incipient selves, around whose nuclei the physical personality can form. In many instances one main personality is formed, and the incipient selves are drawn into it so that their abilities and interests become subsidiary, or remain largely latent. They are trace selves.

On many occasions, however, such latent selves will be as highly energized as the "main" personality. Since physically a certain personality structure must be maintained, traces are made. Therefore, when such situations arise, one or two of the other energized selves will literally spring apart from the time-space structure that you know.

From your viewpoint these offshoots of energy become unreal. They exist as surely as you do, however. In terms of energy, this multiplication of selves is a natural principle. (To me:) Your "sportsman self" was never endowed with the same kind of force as that of your artistic or writing self. It became subsidiary, yet present to be drawn upon, taking joy through your motion and adding its vitality to your "main" personality.

Had it been given extra force through your environment, circumstances, or your own intent, then either your artistic self would have become subservient or complementary; or, if the energy selves were of nearly equal intensity, then one of them would have become an offshoot, propelled by its own need for fulfillment into a probable reality. Do you follow me?

("Yes."

(9:44.) Give us a moment... Your parents literally did not share the same reality at all. This is not as unusual as you may think. They met and related in a place between each of their realities. It was not that they disagreed with each other's interpretation of events. The events were different.

In terms of energy, intent is stabilizing. There is a center to the self, again, that acts as a nucleus. The nucleus may change, but it will always be the center from which physical existence will radiate. Physically, intent or purpose forms that center, regardless of its reality in terms of energy.

In your family life in this reality, your parents acted opaquely to each other. There were strong energy shifts, so that the personalities did not meet directly. Give us a moment... Some of this is difficult to explain. In a way they were unfocused, yet each with strong abilities, but dispersed. There was a reason for this.

They contained within themselves intense and yet blurred talents that were used as energy sources by the children. Give us time... They came together precisely to give birth to the family, and for no other main reason as far as their joint reality was concerned. They seeded a generation, then.

Your mother loved physical reality and took the greatest pleasure in its most minute aspects, for all of her complaints. Your father loved it but never trusted it. Each of your parents had their strongest reality, this time, and in your terms, in a probable system of reality-and here (in this reality) they were offshoots. To them this system always seemed strange.2

In another system of reality your father was-in fact, still is-a well-known inventor, who never married but used his mechanically creative abilities to the fullest while avoiding emotional commitment. He met Stella (my mother) . They were going to be married-and in terms of years, the same years are involved, historically. At one time, then, in your father's past as you think of it, having met Stella, he did not marry her after all. His love was for machinery, the speed of motorcycles, mixing creativity with metal. At that point of intersection, equal desires and intents within him became like twin nuclei. Whole regroupings of energy occurred, psychological and psychic implosions, so that two equally valid personalities were aware in a world in which only one could live at a time.

By far, the creative, mechanically inventive personality began to outstrip the other. The father that you knew was the probable self, therefore. That probable self, however, dealt with emotional realities that the other avoided, and this was indeed his sole intent.

(Pause at 10:07.) This does not mean that such a personality is limited, basically, or that he does not collect about him new interests and challenges, for he is himself mobile. He even has many of the characteristics of the other self, though these of course are latent. But through having children your father brought about the birth of emotional existence, full-bodied and alive, in sons.

This was a great fulfillment on his part, for the inventor did not trust himself to feel much emotion, much less give birth to emotional beings. In that other probability in which your parents originally met, your mother married a doctor, became a nurse, and helped her husband in his practice. She became an independent woman, and-again in your historical context-when it took some doing for a woman to distinguish herself.

She had one son, then a hysterectomy, on purpose. She schooled herself rigorously, moved in social circles, hid the unschooled, naive aspects of herself. In that life, for example, she would certainly not wear red bows in her hair. All of the controlled energy made her somewhat bitter, though she was successful. She died in her 50's-do you follow me?

("Yes.")

Her energy was such that it spilled over into this system with your father, however. Someday I will try to explain this more clearly, in terms of energy patterns. Historically, however, many probabilities exist at once. When your mother died in her 50's in one probable system, your mother in this system was the recipient of energy that then returned.

Your father's greatest vitality was in the inventor's reality, and so in your terms this one suffered. This does not mean that each personality, regardless of probabilities, is not endowed with free will, and so forth. Each is born, in whatever system, from a source gestalt energy, and develops.

When your picture was taken, therefore, your parents were already living in a probable reality, but you and [your brother] Linden were not. Now take your break.

(10:2 5. Jane's trance had been an excellent one. She said that while immersed in it she'd thought the material 'fantastically complicated... like: 'Where are you in all of this-where's your soul?'"

(Some quick figuring showed us that the 50's for my mother bad encompassed the years 1942-5 1. From my present viewpoint I bad no idea if she'd consciously or unconsciously experienced any influx of energy resulting from the death of a probable self during that decade. In those days the Buttses didn't think in such terms, for one thing; for another, I was absent from 7 the family borne in Sayre for much of that time. In 1947, for example, when my mother was 55 years old, I was 28 and living in New York City. I wasn't to meet Jane for five years. And even if Stella Butts were still living, I think it would be difficult to question her about an event that would have taken place approximately a quarter of a century ago.

(I told Jane now that bad my mother received any additional energy during her 50's, she might have expressed its benefits through the habitual mores of our society, in terms of changes rather than of probabilities, say: "My life changed for the better at that point, when I made that decision. "1 added that perhaps the important thing for us now was to observe our unfolding lives with Seth's ideas of the larger, or whole self, in mind, and so achieve insights we could interpret in terms of probabilities. So we decided not to ask Seth to backtrack and give us material about the son my mother's probable self had had in her reality, even though that son was a probable self of mine.

(As we talked, Jane decided to go back into trance; she was getting so many "bleed-throughs" on the material herself that she was beginning to feel consciously confused. But Seth bad all the data there, she said, if she bad the time to give it. Resume at 10:45.)

Now: There are basically no limitations to the self, and I all portions of the self are connected-so the probable selves are aware, unconsciously, of their relationships.

Because no system is closed, 4 there are flows of energy between them, and interaction. Some of this is exceedingly difficult to verbalize, since the word "structure" itself is not only serialized, but particle-ized.

(Pause.) You think of entities as particles, for example, rather than as waves of energy, aware and alert, or as patterns. (A one-minute pause.) Think of Ruburt's living area in Adventures, for example. Imagine that at age 13, three strong energy centers come to the surface of the personality-highly charged, so that one person cannot adequately fulfill the desires or abilities presented. You may have a three-way split at age 13. At [age] 40, each of the three selves may recognize age 13 as a turning point, and wonder what might have happened had they chosen other courses.

None of this is predetermined. An offshoot probable self might leave your reality at age 13, say, but could intersect with you again at age 30 for a variety of reasons-where to you, you suddenly change a profession, or become aware of a talent you thought you had forgotten, and find yourself developing it with amazing ease.

(To me again:) Your birth (in 1919) coincided with the birth of your mother's child in that other reality, hence her stronger feelings toward you. Your birth, and that of your youngest brother (Richard) , were highly charged for her-yours for the reasons just given, and your brother's because it represented the time of your mother's hysterectomy in that other reality. In this reality, Richard's birth represented your father's final attempt to deal with emotional reality. Both of your parents imbued the third son with the strongest emotional qualities of their natures. Your mother had him defiantly, after the usual childbirth age (she was 36) . almost reacting against that (probable] hysterectomy. In this world, she could and would have another child.

Linden was the one "natural" child of this marriage. Watch how you interpret that, but he was the child least affected by other realities. For that reason, however, and because of your parents personalities here, the same amount of attention was not paid him psychically, and he felt that lack.

(11:02.) Give us a moment... I told you (in the last session) that in one probability Ruburt was a nun, expressing mysticism in a highly disciplined context, where it must be watched so that it does not get out of hand. Because there is an unconscious flow of information and experience here, you have one of the reasons for Ruburt's caution in some psychic matters, and his fear of leading people astray. There were three offshoots: one, the nun, with mysticism conventionally expressed, but under guarded circumstances; one, the writer who veiled mystical experience through art; and one, the Ruburt you know, who experienced mystical experience directly, teaches others to do the same, and forms through writing a wedding of the two aspects. You have known two of those selves, then, and you were present at Ruburt's birth with Idea Construction. Give us a moment... The birth of Joseph took place at York Beach with the dancing episode, 6 so you have in your own experience examples in adult life. I cannot give you everything in one evening, of course. A few glimpses before a word for Ruburt. Sportsmen make good money, so for this and other reasons you early turned to commercial art-a field in which artistic ability would be well paid for.

There were other connections, seemingly trivial yet pertinent. You enjoyed doing comics with outdoor scenes: animals in motion, the body performing. As an audience watches a sportsman perform, so those who read the comics watched your characters perform in action across the page. All hidden patterns, yet each one making sense. I will go into the birth of Joseph. Now, however, a word to Ruburt.

(11:15. After giving two pages of material for Jane, here deleted, Seth closed out the session at 11:33 P.M.)

Session 681, February 11, 1974, 9:28 PM. P.M., Monday

("I'm just waiting, "Jane said at 9:25, after we'd been sitting for the session since 9:10. "Seth's around, I can tell. I was getting stuff earlier, but I'm just waiting until it's ready. I can feel concepts in my bead, but they aren't clear yet, not the way they should be. It's as though Seth's going to have a hard time explaining them.")

Now: Good evening-

("Good evening, Seth.")

-and Ruburt is correct, so give us a moment...

What I am about to explain is difficult. Purposely, it is not as yet in any of the books, simply because certain beliefs must be dispensed with before these ideas can be at all accepted.

It is not that I am holding back so much as that, in your terms, what follows is dependent upon an understanding of concepts presented earlier. People who are still worrying about one soul, gods, and devils, must be helped to relate to greater realities from their own framework, and gently led away from it if possible. Probabilities have been mentioned in such a way that alternate realities are presented, showing such people that choices are available.

The deeper explanations, however, demand a further expansion of ideas of consciousness, and a certain reorientation. It is extremely important that you bear in mind the importance of free will, and the presence of your own identity as you think of it. With that preamble, let me continue then.

It is not so much a matter of Ruburt's vocabulary, incidentally, since even a specialized scientific one would only present these ideas in its own distorted fashion. It is more a problem of basic language itself, as you are acquainted with it. Words do not exist, for example, for some of the ideas I hope to convey. We will, at any rate, begin.

All probable worlds exist now. All probable variations on the most minute aspect in any reality exist now. You weave in and out of probabilities constantly, picking and choosing as you go along. The cells within your body do the same thing.

(Slowly:) I told you once that there were pulses of activity in which you blinked off and on-this applying even to atomic and subatomic partides. "You" assign as real - present here and now - only that activity that is your signal. "You" are not aware of the others. When people think in terms of one self, they of course identify with one body. You know that the cellular structure of it changes constantly. The body is at any given moment, however, a mass conglomeration of energy formed from that rich bank of probable activity. The body is not stable in the terms usually thought of. On deeper biological levels the cells straddle probabilities, and trigger responses. Consciousness rides upon and within the pulses mentioned earlier, and forms its own organizations of identity. Each probability-probable only in relation to and from the standpoint of another probability-is inviolate, however, in that it is not destroyed. Once formed, the pattern will follow its own nature.

(A one-minute pause at 9:50, bead bowed, eyes closed.) The organizations of consciousness "grow" even as cells grow into organs. Groups of probable selves, then, can and do form their own identity structure, which is quite aware of the probable selves involved. In your reality, experience is dependent upon time, but all experience is not so structured. There are, for example, parallel events that are followed as easily as you follow consecutive events.

The structure of probabilities deals with parallel experience on all levels. Your consciousness picks and chooses to accept as real the results of, and ramifications of, only certain overall purposes, desires, or intents. You follow these through a time structure. Your focus allows other just-as-legitimate experience to become invisible or unfelt.

In the same way that you latch upon one personal biological history, you latch upon but one mass earth history. Others go on about you all the time, and other probable selves of your own experience their "histories" parallel to yours. In practical terms of sense data, those worlds do not meet. In deeper terms they coincide. Any of the infinite number of events that could have happened to you and Ruburt [do] happen. Your attention span simply does not include such activity.

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

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

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

Give us a moment... True order and organization, even of biological structure, can be achieved only by granting a basic unpredictability. I am aware that this sounds startling.

Basically, however, the motion of any wave or particle or entity is unpredictable-freewheeling and undetermined. Your life structure is a result of that unpredictability. Your psychological structure is also. However, because you are presented with a fairly cohesive picture, in which certain laws seem to apply, you think that the laws come first and physical reality follows. Instead, the cohesive picture is the result of the unpredictable nature that is and must be basic to all energy.

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

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

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

In your terms-the phrase is necessary-the moment point, 5 the present, is the point of interaction between all existences and reality. All probabilities flow through it, though one of your moment points may be experienced as centuries, or as a breath, in other probable realities of which you are a part.

(Pause at 10:36.) Ruburt is at this moment feeling massive. He is experiencing several things. The inner cellular body consciousness feels itself massive, while to you cells arc minute. The sounds of the package, for example (as Seth, Jane crumpled an empty cigarette package) , or the fingernails across the table (demonstrated) , are magnified, for in the cellular world they are an important outside-the-self cosmic event-messages of great importance. The cellular consciousness experiences itself as eternal, though to you the cells have a brief life. But those cells are aware of the body's history, in your terms, and in a much more familiar fashion than you are aware of the earth's history.

The cells are also aware of probabilities in a more familiar fashion than you are, as they manipulate the past and future history of the body. Ruburt now, again, is experiencing massiveness, as in your idea of probabilities the cellular structure feels its vast endurance. Working with events not even real to you, it produces a physical structure that maintains identity and predictability out of a vastly creative network. That network is unpredictable, yet from it Ruburt can predictably put ashes into that shell. (Jane held up her favorite ashtray, the abalone shell we'd found in Baja California in 1958, and tapped some ashes into it from her cigarette.) The predictability of that gesture rests upon the basis of an unpredictability, in which multitudinous other actions could have occurred, and in other realities do occur.

(10:46.) You had better give us a moment, and rest your hand.

(Jane bad been speaking steadily in trance, if with many pauses, for 78 minutes. Now she still sat upright in her chair, sipping beer, eyes closed. A minute passed.)

Now: Your beliefs and intents cause you to pick, from an unpredictable group of actions, those that you want to happen. You experience those events. (To me:) "Your" desire to live straddled the death of the child in an operation. The child's desire to die chose that event. People are as free as atoms are. Give us a moment... In no way could you predict what would happen to the child in that photograph of yourself.6 In no way now can you "predict" what will happen to you now. You can choose to accept as your reality any number of given unpredictable events. In that respect, the choice is yours, but all the events you do not accept occur nevertheless.

In a very small measure you can see how this works when you think of your mother in, say, her last years, and compare your idea of her with those of [your brothers] Linden and Richard. She was a different person to each of you. She was herself; but in the interweavings of probabilities, while certain agreed-upon historic events were accepted, she admitted into her reality whatever portions of your probable reality she chose. Each of you had a different mother.

Probabilities intersect then in your experience, and their intersection you call reality. Biologically and psychically these are intersections, coming-togethers, consciousness adopting a focus.

Again, Ruburt is still experiencing massiveness.... All of the atoms and molecules that have composed your body since your birth, and will compose it until your death, in your terms, exist flow; so even your knowledge of the body is experienced in a time form-that is, bit by bit.

(Long pause at 11:05.) Part of Ruburt's feeling of massiveness comes from the mass experience of the body, existing all at once. Therefore to him the body feels larger. Calculations impossible to describe occur, so that from this basic unpredictability you experience what seem to be predictable actions. This is only because you focus upon those actions that "make sense" in your reality, and ignore all others. I am not speaking symbolically, of course, when I say you died as a youngster. Nor was any harsh reality forced upon the mother by the dying child, for that portion of your mother was the part that regretted having had the child.

Now: Atoms can move in more directions than one at once. You only perceive scientifically the probable motion you are interested in. The same applies to subjective experience.

Now, take your break.

(11:10. Jane slowly came out of one of her longest session trances; she'd been under for an hour and forty-two minutes. I've indicated but a few of the many long pauses she took.

(She still felt massive. Her eyes rolled up, then closed again. "Things are really weird, like the sky's cracking... Seth talking about it sort of controlled things, but now my head's getting really big. . ." I roused her with a call, and she said, "Yeah, it's wild... I don't know whether I should break it or go along with it. I feel like my head is real big now, and going around to the right and spinning-it's huge..

(11:15. "And when there isn't any sound outside, everything's ringing-the way your ears do, only more so... Now my whole body's really big. Massive. I might end it. It's funny: It's not terribly pleasant. My teeth seem really huge-everything-my feet...

(11:17. Jane smiled as I called her again. ' 'I just got the image of being a giant in a giant room. Then something I don't understand: an image of myself as a gorilla, or something like that. I'm as tall as the ceiling, trying to knock the walls down... I'm not understanding what's going on very well. Now I'm getting bigger. I think I'm going to come out of it... My face isn't doing anything, is it? Changing in any way?"

("No."

(11:21. "1 had the feeling of my hair being long and parted in the middle, as though I've got some kind of humanoid features; you know, with the hair hanging down on each side of my face, which is something like an animal's-but with very intelligent eyes, very warm and soft. "8 Jane finally opened her eyes. Her ears still rang, so loudly that she asked me if I beard the same sound. I told her I didn't. We walked around the room. I made her half a sandwich. "It's sort of frustrating, " she said. "It's as though I'm seeing or feeling what I'm capable of at the moment, but I know there's more there behind that. I can feel it, but I can't get it out."

(As she ate Jane said, "The noises in my mouth are real loud-you're not used to it." When she sipped beer, she felt the cold liquid descend inside her body, but displaced to the right of her esophagous. She recited a list of opposing feelings in her own body that she was simultaneously aware of in her "bigger body": Her right foot was very cold, her back very hot... I got her a sweater, for our living room had cooled off. The February night was very cold.

(Resume, finally, at 11:47.)

Now: Only out of unpredictability can an infinite number of orders, or ordered systems, arise.

Anything less than complete unpredictability will ultimately result in stagnation, or orders of existence that in the long run are self-defeating. Only from unpredictability can any system emerge that can be predictable within itself. Only within complete freedom of motion is any "ordered" motion truly possible.

From the "chaotic" bed of your dreams springs your ordered daily organized action. In your reality, the behavior of your consciousness and of your molecules are highly connected. Your type of consciousness presupposes a molecular consciousness, and your kind of consciousness is inherent in molecular consciousness-inherent within your system, but not basically predictable. Predictability is simply another word for significance. Unpredictability, looking at itself in a variety of different fashions, finds certain portions of itself significant, and forms certain orders, or ordered sequences, about itself. In one of our very early sessions, I told you that you perceive from a vast field only certain data that you find meaningful. That data could only arise from the bed of unpredictability. Only unpredictability can provide the greatest source of probable orders.

Your cells are quite able to handle different orders of events; therefore in the dream state they are able, in their individual ways, to perceive your experience, and from it to choose those actualities you want made real in your terms.

In dreams you are acquainted with probable events, from which you then choose; (to me:) so before you died as a child, you knew that you could pick or choose that death. In greater terms you chose both life and death, and the picture of you at the age of 16 was never taken in one reality.

(Pause.) We have quite all that Ruburt can handle this evening, and this is a beginning.

(Now Seth came through with half a page of material for Jane, then wound up the evening's work with this joking comment:)

His probable brain can translate only so much of this at one time.

("Yes. Good night." 12:06 A.M. Jane still felt somewhat massive. A few notes added the next day: She slept restlessly, and found herself "giving material on probabilities just about all night." She woke up often, and at such times was relieved to discover that she hadn't been holding a session that I wasn't recording. As it was, she laughed, the material was still "safe "-we'd get it at a regular session.

(Jane has often told me that usually on such nighttime occasions she doesn't feel Seth's presence or hear his voice. Instead she's just aware of the material "running through her.")

Session 682, February 13, 1974, 9:27 PM. Wednesday

("I think Seth's heading toward something new," Jane said at 9:20, as we sat waiting for the session. "Funny-not that we're going to come up with new words, but some new ideas. I feel like I've bad three or four drinks, or as though I'm in a different state of consciousness already-and here I haven't had anything except this apricot juice..."

(Indeed, we were out of beer, which Jane usually drinks during the sessions, and she didn't want any wine. "I feel him - Seth - around now, " she said, "but it's like last time: I'm getting stuff, but I'm waiting until it's clear.. . I don't really feel looped, but the center of focus I always use in the sessions seems strange. There's an unfamiliarity about finding it. I'd say, although I don't know, that I'm already in a deeper state than usual..."

(A note: The night was very warm, and followed a series of really cold ones through most of this month. Much snow had melted today. The change in the weather was quite exhilarating.)

Now: Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth."

(Pause.) The Nature of Personal Reality is an excellent handbook, one that will enable people to manipulate in the world they know with greater effectiveness. It will not matter whether or not they understand deeper issues upon which the whole nature of physical reality itself depends. The material I am giving now will attempt some explanation of those deeper issues.

Ruburt's own development makes this possible, for it was necessary that he progress to the point that he has in Adventures, and reach the level of certain theories so that these could be used as springboards. Give us a moment...

We must unfortunately often deal with analogies, because they can form bridgeworks between concepts. There are units of consciousness, then, as there are units of matter. I do not want you to think of these units as particles. There is a basic unit of consciousness that, expressed, will not be broken down, as once it was thought that an atom was the smallest unit and could not be broken down. The basic unit of consciousness obviously is not physical. It contains within itself innately infinite properties of expansion, development, and organization; yet within itself always maintains the kernel of its own individuality. Despite whatever organizations it becomes part of, or how it mixes with other such basic units, its own identity is not annihilated.

It is aware energy, identified within itself as itself, not "personified" but awareized. It is therefore the source of all other kinds of consciousness, and the varieties of its activity are infinite. It combines with others of its kind, forming then units of consciousness-as, mentioned often, atoms and molecules combine.

This basic unit is endowed with unpredictability. That very unpredictability allows for infinite patterns and fulfillments. The word "soul" unfortunately has been so used in regard to your species that it becomes highly difficult to unravel the conceptual difficulties. Using usual definitions, you would call a soul the result of a certain organization of such units, which you would then recognize as a "soul."

(9:47.) That leads to the old inevitable questions: Do animals have souls-or do trees, or rocks? In line with the usual definition then, in your terms, this smallest unit would be "soul stuff." That viewpoint however is highly limited, for "above you, using that scale, there are other more developed organizations of these units; and so from that "more exalted viewpoint, " you would seem to be junior souls indeed.

So I prefer, here at least, to speak of these units of consciousness instead. (Long pause.) Their nature is the vitalizing force behind everything in your physical universe, and others as well. These units can indeed appear in several places at once, and without going through space, in your terms. Literally now, these basic units of consciousness can be in all places at once. They are in all places at once. They will not be recognized because they will always appear as something else.

Of course they move faster than light. There are millions of them in one atom-many millions. Each of these units is aware of the reality of all others, and influences all others. In your terms these units can move forward or backward in time, but they can also move into thresholds of time with which you are not familiar.4

All probabilities are probed and experienced, and all possible universes created from these units. Therefore, there are realities in which the endless probabilities of one given event are probed, and all experience grouped about that venture.

There are systems in which a moment, from your standpoint, is made to endure for the life of a universe. I do not mean that a moment is simply stretched, or that time is slowed down alone, but that all the experiences possible within a moment become realities within that framework. Such systems have little to do with you in any practical manner, nor is such information given to dwarf your idea of what your own consciousness is. It is important, however, that you realize the fact that there is more creativity and variety in an inner reality than you ever physically perceive.

(10:06.) These units of consciousness do not have human characteristics, of course. They do, however, possess their own "inclinations, " leanings, propensities-and perhaps "propensities" comes closest to the term I want. I do not want you to think of them as miniature people. Nevertheless, neither are they clumps of "idle" energy. They are vitalized, aware, charged, with all the qualifications of being.

All psychological structures then are composed of such organizations, however long-or short-lived in your terms. They are innately endowed with the desire or propensity for growth and creative organization. They are not found alone, then, in isolation. Since these units of consciousness exist at once, they are aware of all the organized self-structures of which they are a part. To this extent, all probable realities are connected in that basic manner. These units grow out of themselves. Since I have told you that in your terms your past, present, and future exist at once, these units are constantly emerging out of your now-point from both the future and the past.

(Long pause, one of many.) I do not want to ruin your idea of stability, and I do not want to confuse you. The fact remains that in speaking of probabilities thus far, I have simplified the issues considerably. (To me:) I said, for example, that you died as a child in one probability, and again in the (military) service, and I gave you a small sample of your parents' probable history. (See the last two sessions.) In doing so I used ideas and terms quite easily grasped. The larger picture is somewhat more difficult-by far-to express.

(10:21. "Are you saying that you have to keep things that simple for us?" I asked.)

I am saying that I am now ready to lead you beyond those necessary preliminaries.

All matter is based upon the units mentioned, with their unpredictability and their propensity for exploring all probabilities. Even your atomic structure, then, is poised between probabilities. If this is true, then obviously "you" are aware of only one small probable portion of yourself-and this portion you protect as your identity (underlined) . If you think of it as simply a focus taken by "your" greater identity, then you will be able to follow what I am saying without feeling puny by contrast, or lost. The focus that you have is indeed inviolate.

I have often said that even in your lifetimes, all probable variations of any one event occur, but I never went much further. With your focus, it seems that you have a line of identity from birth to death. Looking back at any point, you are sure that the "self" of ten years ago is the self of today, though perhaps changed in certain respects.

There is, of course, no single-line kind of development at all. In the first place, as you know, your life is at once, though you experience, practically, a life-to-death sequence-Ruburt's living area in Adventures. Every probable event that could happen to you, happens. I gave you one or two small examples of your mother's probable existences. Think in physical terms of the generations going out from one seed into the ages.

Now: Your self-reality in any given moment is like that seed, following probable generations that appear in other dimensions as well as this one. In each now-moment, you draw from the vast bank of unpredictable actions certain ones that are "significant" to you; and your private idea of significance will result in what then seems to be predictable action.

(10:36.) Propensity is a selection of significance, an inclination toward the formation of selected experience. This applies on all levels-atomic and psychological-and to biological stimulus and mental intent.

These basic units move toward organizations then of a selective nature. Having an unpredictable field to draw from, they select activity according to those significances. Period. Various kinds of significances are the result of the units' individual natures. The body that you have is a probable body. It is the result of one line of "development" that could be taken by your particular earth personality in flesh. All of the other possible lines of development also occur, however. They occur at once, but each one simultaneously affects every other. There is actually far greater interaction here than you realize, because you are not used to looking for it. The harder you work to maintain the official accepted idea of the self in conventional terms, the more of course you block out any kind of unpredictability.

Because of the great organizing nature of these basic units, there are also psychological structures that are quite capable of holding their own identities while being aware of any given number of probable selves. Life after death has great meaning in your reality, because death is a part of it. Your greater reality obviously transcends both your births and your deaths. The idea of one universe alone is basically nonsensical. Your reality must be seen in its relationship to others. Otherwise you are always caught in questions like "How did the universe begin?" or "When will it end?" All systems are constantly being created.

Only in a context of probabilities can immortality make any sense. Heredity springs from the great inherent unpredictability that is then broken down to specifications inside the chromosomes, no two of which are alike. What you think of as daily life is then a focus upon certain probable events above others, a choosing of significances, a selection of pattern. Other portions of the self follow different selections.

Now you may take your break.

(10:55. Jane was quickly out of another good trance; once again it had been a long one. Her delivery had been fast at times. "I knew what I was saying when I said it, but I've forgotten it all now..." She paused, then continued in a way I thought somewhat unusual for her: "We're doing the best we can with what abilities we've got. You wonder what this material's application is-what good does it do to know it?"

("Well, " I said, "once it's incorporated into your consciousness you '11 put it to use like you would any other information. It's certainly enlarged my own ideas of what human beings are all about, for instance-their motivations, their behavior-"

(Jane wondered how tonight's material applied to my mother, [who had died three months ago]: "... to Mom Butts herself-not just the theory of it... Is she in another probability now?"

("I'd say the part of her that was close to us is. But that part may be resting there, too. "For reasons too personal to go into here, we haven't yet tried to "tune into" my mother in her new environment. I suggested that the rest of the session be devoted to Jane herself, but Seth bad other ideas. Resume at 11:15.)

Now: Because your greater identity is aware of its probable existences, you are in matter and out of it at the same time-in time and out of it.

You have a greater identity outside of your context, yet a part of it is inside your context, as you. Your youness is your significance, a focus of awareness, conscious of itself, that seeks out and views experience with its own unique propensities. The existence of probable realities and probable selves in no way denies the validity of your own experience or individuality. That rides secure, choosing from unpredictable fields of actuality those that suit its own particular nature.

(With gestures, emphatically:) That selfhood jumps in leapfrog fashion over events that it does not want to actualize (pause) , and does not admit such experience into its selfhood.

Other portions of your greater identity, however, do accept those same events rejected by you, and form their own selfhoods.

Now some of you might choose some of the same events, and there probabilities will merge. Such points of intersection are highly charged and creative. These intersections can happen in individual and mass terms. One historical event may be simultaneously accepted in several probable realities, for example, while others may occur in one and not in an alternate history.

(Long pause at 11:29.) While words are difficult to use here, again, what I am saying applies, in different ways perhaps, to the behavior of worlds, atoms, and psychological structures. Give us a moment... In the life that you know, as given in Personal Reality, your beliefs act to specify the particular probable events that will become "real." Because you are a probable self, an understanding of your own nature will show you some of the abilities, not used here, but present, that you can indeed choose to actualize. You can draw then from your own bank of probable abilities, for there will be traces of them in you. They are being developed in another reality; therefore in this one they can be utilized far easier than you might suppose. When you exercise your right arm, your left arm benefits. When you develop abilities in one system, to some extent they are easier to develop in another. (To me:) In deciding to do some writing (for the Seth books, as an example) , you are also drawing upon abilities that you have worked on in another system, and through your intent you are to a certain extent blending probabilities.

Even a simple understanding of this would help people realize that no existence is dead-ended.

Now give us a moment for our friend.

(Pause at 11:36. Seth came through with a page or so of material for Jane, then wound up the session at 11:48P.M.

(I'd say that Seth's information after 11:29 implies at least a partial answer to the questions Jane asked at break. And tonight, just as she bad following last P.M., Monday's session, Jane realized that she was actively delivering material on probabilities both in the sleep state and while partially awake.)

Session 683, February 18, 1974, 9:39PM. P.M., Monday

(In Note 6 for the last session I wrote quite easily that Jane and I felt "no physical or emotional threat" as we considered the vastness of the inner universe described by Seth. While we talked after supper tonight, however, I discovered to my surprise that Jane did entertain some doubtful thoughts on our places within this great organization of things. She also questioned the emotional value of the material on probabilities. But then, she added, her feelings stemmed from her being blue today.

(Actually, Jane continued, she found the material on probabilities intellectually stimulating, while wondering about its emotional connotations-the inferences that she was but one of countless billions of creatures, "blinking on and off like lights in all of those probable worlds. . ." What value was there to the tiny individual? she asked herself

(In an effort to reassure her, I looked up what Seth said in Chapter 9 of Personal Reality, and showed it to her. See the 637th session: "... think now 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 am aware that [these analogies] 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."

(I also bad a few questions-suspicions, really-that I wanted to discuss with Jane and/or Seth sometime during the session. I'd kept them to myself so far.

("Well, " Jane said at 9:33, after we'd been sitting for the session for some 15 minutes, "at least I feel Seth vaguely around.... "Finally:)

Now: Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth."

(Slowly:) Give us a moment.. Through these units consciousness makes its mark, and not one scribble is ever annihilated.

The experience of any given unit, constantly changing, affects all other units... Give us time... It is difficult to explain because your concepts of selfhood are so limited... These units contain within themselves, in your terms, all "latent" identities, but not in a predetermined fashion. Selves may be quite independent within the framework of their own reality, while still being a part of a larger reality in which their independence works not only for their own benefit, but for the sake of a greater structure.

Within these units there is, again, a propensity for growth and organization. Within a literally infinite field of activity, meaningful order arose out of the propensity for significance. Briefly, certain units would settle upon various kinds of organization, find these significant, then build upon them and attract others of the same nature. So were various systems of reality formed. (Pause.) The particular kind of significance settled upon would act both as a directive for experience and as a method of erecting effective boundaries, within which the selected kind of behavior would continue. The units can and do intermix, yet because of the propensity for selectivity and significance, whole groups of them will "repel" other whole groups, thus providing a protective inner system of interaction.

The units form themselves into the various systems that they have themselves initiated. They transform themselves, therefore, into the structured reality that they then become. Ruburt is quite correct in his supposition of what he calls "multipersonhood" in Adventures.

You think of one I-self (spelled) as the primary and ultimate end of evolution. Yet there are, of course, other identities with many such I-selves, each as aware and independent as your own, while also being aware of the existence of a greater identity in which they have their being. Consciousness fulfills itself by knowing itself. The knowledge changes it, in your terms, into a greater gestalt that then tries to fulfill and know itself, and so forth. There have been experiments upon your earth (by consciousness) with both men and animals at a different level than just mentioned, but with that in mind-herds of animals, for example, with each animal quite aware of the joint knowledge of the herd, the dangers to be encountered in any individual territory, and a psychological structure in which the mass consciousness of the herd recognized the individual consciousness of each animal, and protected it.

There was a constant give-and-take between the individual animal and the mass herd consciousness, so we are not speaking of a condition in which the individual animal was controlled.

The same thing with variations happened with your own race, and for that matter is happening. In the past as you think of it historically, several groups experimented along those lines. At those times the individual consciousness became so entranced with its own experiences, however, that the clear-cut, steady, and conscious communication with the mass consciousness went underground, so to speak. It became available to those who looked for it, but the same kinds of psychological organization did not result on those occasions.2

(Pause.) Other kinds of psychological gestalts have been and are being tried-some that would appear quite inconceivable to you; and yet now and then versions of them appear within your system.

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

("Some people are going to book up all of this with possession, aren't they?" I asked.

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

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

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

("Yes.")

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

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

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

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

Now: Consciousness flowers out in all directions-(We were interrupted by a long-distance telephone call at 10:3 7. A television producer wanted Jane to appear on his show. I asked him to write us. When I hung up, Jane said, "I'm still half in." She sat quietly for a few moments, then resumed the session.)

All directions taken by the flower of consciousness are good. The flower knows it is alive in the bulb, but it takes "time" for the bulb to let the stem and leaves and flower emerge. The flower is not better than the bulb. It is not even more progressed than the bulb. It is the bulb in one of its manifestations. So in your terms, it may seem as if there are progressions, or consecutive steps of development, in which more mature comprehensive selves will emerge. You are a part of those selves now, as the petals are of the bulb. Only in your system is that time period meaningful.

Your idea of one soul, one self, forms a significance and a selectivity that blinds you to these other realities that are as much "here and now" as your present self. The units of consciousness that compose your physical being alone are aware of those greater significances, to which your limited ideas make you opaque.

The concepts in such a system as this can help break those barriers. There are, then, stratas of consciousness existing at once. The ones you are not aware of yet seem more progressed, developed than your own. You are a part of them now. You can know them as you begin to stretch your concepts of personhood and awareness. In terms of time you have many bodies, as you are born and reborn in earth experience. Your consciousness straddles those existences, and even the atoms and molecules within your present body contain the coded knowledge of those other (really simultaneous) forms. These units of consciousness are within all physical matter, containing their own memories. Both biologically and psychically, then, you are aware of your multipersonhood.

(10:45.) Now: Your system does not include the kind of experience mentioned earlier (in this session) , where the body is able to contain in one lifetime the experience of many selves. It uses a time context instead, with each self given a body and a time; but a knowledge of the ideas of multipersonhood could help you realize that you have available many abilities not being used, latent to you but still important in your entire identity, and significant enough to you personally to be developed.

(With emphasis:) Reincarnation simply represents probabilities in a time context (underlined)-portions of the self that are materialized in historical contexts. Period. All kinds of time-backward and forward-emerge from the basic unpredictable nature of consciousness, and are due to "series" of significances. Each self born in time will then pursue its own probable realities from that standpoint. Again, each such self is immediate.

(Long pause, one of many.) All consciousness, in all of its forms, exists at once. It is difficult, without appearing to contradict myself, to explain. Go back to our bulb and flower. In basic terms they exist at once. In your terms, however, it is as if the flower-to-be, from its "future" calls back to the bulb and tells it how to make the flower. Memory operates backward and forward in time. The flower-calling back to the bulb, urging it "ahead" and reminding it of its (probable future) development-is like a future self in your terms, or a more highly advanced self, who has the answers and can indeed be quite practically relied upon. The gods can be seen in the same light, only on a larger scale; and understood in that context, they can be relied upon. It is almost a natural tendency to personify the gods while you are caught up in limited ideas of personhood. Larger concepts of personhood will indeed lead you to some glimpse of the truly remarkable gestalts of consciousness from which you constantly emerge.

These are emotional and psychological beings of such richness that your concepts of selfhood force you to dilute them to a degree that you can understand. Each of your persons is a part of that greater personhood. Again, these ideas alone can help you, so that to some degree you can emotionally and intellectually sense that greater godhood out of which personhood emerges.

(11:10. Long pause during a strong delivery.) That godhood is formed from the eternal yet ever-new emergence and growth of those basic units of consciousness. The reality of the godhood straddles the reality of each unit, and the mass reality of all units.

Take your break.

(11:13. Jane had been really under during another long delivery. She seemed to come out of her trance easily enough, but her eyes rolled up a few times. Her rocker bad crept three feet to her left.

("I've got a few questions, " I said after she'd rested a bit. "I was going to ask them during the delivery, but I'm afraid to bear the answers-at least to the first two." I was only half joking. I'd bad the first question in mind since Seth bad come through with the 6 79th session two weeks ago:

(1. "Are these recent sessions supposed to be the beginning of a new book?"

("I don't know, " Jane said. "The material doesn't seem like a book, but when I started getting stuff in my sleep after the last two sessions, I did wonder... "I had to laugh: She hadn't mentioned her own suspicions to me. At the same time I thought she might be putting up barriers to the idea of another Seth book so soon, since we still have editorial work to do for the last one, Personal Reality [see Note 1 for the 682nd session]. "Maybe these sessions are for your own writing, " Jane speculated. "I love them, though-but another book? Now?"

(2. "Are these units of consciousness that Seth started talking about in the last session the same as the EE units he described in Seth Speaks, a development of that original idea, or what?" [See Note 3/or Session 682.]

(Jane paused. "I think Seth will clear that one up soon.

(3. "It would be nice if Seth would say something about the dream I had the night before last, in which I think I contacted my [deceased] mother for the second time." Yesterday I wrote an account of the experience for use in the hook I've started on my own: Through My Eyes. Seth broached the idea of Through My Eyes in Chapter 6 of Personal Reality. I enjoy working on the project, and have had particularly strong urges to do so since the death of my mother three months ago. In writing about my parents, I discovered that I wrote about my own childhood. See the notes preceding the 679th session; the questions I asked then helped initiate this series of sessions.

(Resume at 11:30.)

Now: (Louder and deeper:) "The 'Unknown' Reality (colon) : A Seth Book." And put "Unknown" in quotes.

It is two things: A book of mine, and a source book for you. Do you follow me?

("Yes... You mean I can use your book in connection with my own writing.")

I do indeed. Now: We will call the basic units of consciousness "CU "-the letter "C, " the letter "U"-consciousness units. From them EE units are formed, and the first roots sent out into the world of physical matter. Period.

(Pause, eyes wide, staring at me.) Now for your dream. You are of course making contact with your mother. She is beginning to stir, as you surmised. Ruburt's (written) comments about the dream are also pertinent, showing your own caution. None of these encounters have been normally emotional ones, for example, but glimpses in which there was no communication in ordinary terms.

It may interest you to know that your athletic tendencies are somewhat involved in your out-of-body travel, in that it seems to you that the body must be poised and balanced, and have support-hence the hallucinations you use. You can use those tendencies to help you, however, if you think in terms of a completely free body, able to move unsupported in space, capable of manipulations in the dream state that are denied it in physical reality. The "inner" body can perform in ways that the physical body cannot, and you can use that as a challenge. Find out what you can do with your inner body; experiment.

You have the assurance that your mother continues to exist. As far as a relationship is concerned, however, you are looking at her from a distance. She is still wondering-that is, she is able to identify with other portions of you than she was during life. She does not want to frighten you, now, with an emotional display, so distance is being used on both of your parts.

(Pause at 11:44.) Give us a moment...

(Seth delivered half a page of material on another matter. Then:)

I bid you both a fond good evening.

("Thank you. The same to you.")

This book will progress at your convenience.

("All right. Good night, Seth." 11:50 P.M. Then a minute later, as we talked about "Unknown" Reality, Jane briefly dipped back into trance:)

Keep it free and uncontracted for, for now.

("Okay."

("It sure doesn't start out like a book to me, " Jane said. "It doesn't seem to be simple, like the others. Maybe this time he's going to go ahead and do it his own way... I can honestly say that the title was completely unknown to me. "She smiled at her unwitting pun on "Unknown" Reality. "Are you ready to start a new book, Rob?"

("Well . .

("I remember Seth mentioned it as a source book for you..."

("If it's a source book for me, it can be for others, too." I added that I didn't care how "tough" or difficult a book it might be-if such was needed to get Seth's ideas across, then okay. Again, I had to laugh at Jane. It was obvious that she was pleased with this new project, that the successes of Seth Speaks and Personal Reality had given her a strong confidence in Seth's and her own abilities; yet she was starting right in with questions:

("What the hell's going to be in it?" she demanded. "Really-where can he go, considering where be started? Oh, forget it. As I came out with that, I got something over here"-she gestured to her right, indicating one of the channels of information available from Seth-"about the unpredictability of consciousness, and precognition and heredity: the cell's soul and the soul's cell.. As 1 did when she began delivering each of the other Seth books, I suggested to Jane that she relax about the whole thing and just let Seth do his work. We quit for the night at 12:03 A.M.)

Session 684, February 20, 1974, 9:42 PM. Wednesday

(Last night, Jane told her students in ESP class that Seth bad started a new book. Seth had a few things to say about the book, too. From the transcript of the class tape [received a week later]: "Now, reality has no beginning and no end. Hopefully-hopefully-hopefully, in your terms of time, you may get a glimpse of what I mean. There is indeed an expanding universe, and it is formed in the eternal present. In my book I will go as far as I can into those precepts, yet some [of you] will not follow. You create your own reality. That works, and is true, whether or not you follow, or care to follow, into these other realms...

("For those of you who do accompany me, I promise you an adventure, a creative alteration of consciousness, and experiences beyond those that you have known in your terms. You look at the world around you and are amazed at its richness and variety. Do you think that the inner world is not as rich, even more rich, more valid? Do you think there is but one kind of consciousness?

("Your world is formed out of the vast unpredictability of consciousness. From it you form your own ideas of significance and of yourself... You must stop thinking in terms of ordinary progression. It is bad enough when you worry about keeping up with the Joneses. It is something else, however, when you start worrying about which kind of self [or consciousness] is superior to another kind."

(A note: Jane telephoned Tam Mossman, her editor, today-and learned that Tam already felt that Seth might have begun another book: he'd wondered about it several times in recent days.

(As we waited for the session to begin at 9:30, Jane said, "I'm getting ready-waiting for that certain clear focus-the one clearest place in consciousness for the material to come through...

Good Evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now: These units of consciousness (CU's) move faster than the speed of light, then-but that statement itself is meaningless in a way, since the units exist outside as well as inside the framework in which light itself has meaning.

(Pause.) As these units approach physical structure, however, they do slow down in your terms. Electrons, for example, are slow dullards in comparison with EE units.1 It goes without saying that the units of consciousness are "mental, " or if you prefer, disembodied, though from their inner organization all physical forms emerge. Certain intensities are built up of unit organization even before the smallest physical particle, or even invisible "physical" particle, exists. These units form what you think of as the mind, around which the structure of the brain is formulated. The units permeate the brain.

The great communication system within the body itself is dependent, then, upon the constant inner flux and flow of these units. On one level the body's very survival is largely determined by the units' propensities for selectivity and significance. Also, however, the body's physical reality is a seeming constant in a seemingly constant physical existence.

(Slowly:) Only because these units have their source outside of space and time is the present corporal reality a triumph of probabilities. Period. Your present image, for example, seems to be the only one possible for you, permanently yours for your lifetime at least; and what happens to it appears almost inevitable. If you become ill, say, you may wonder why, and yet once illness has happened it becomes part of the body's reality, and seems almost like an inevitable part of its experience.

Yet the units of consciousness, being independent of space and time, form your cellular structure, and that structure deals in a most basic manner with the nature of probabilities. Although the body appears permanent and in existence from one moment to the next, basically it constantly rises out of the bed of probabilities, hovering at your now-point of perception and experience, and its apparent stability is dependent upon the knowledge of "future" probabilities as well as "past" ones.

Your present is the result of your own poised consciousness, choosing its perception and the nature of its life from a field that is at all predictable only because of the greater area of organization available to it.

(Slower at 10:0 7:) Your body's condition at any time is not so much the result of its own comprehension of its "past history" as it is the result of its own comprehension of future probabilities. The cells precognate. This is being simplified for now. I will make it clearer later in the book. But your limited ideas of time cause conceptual barriers that operate even when you consider the structure of physical biological life.

For example: It is truer to say that heredity operates from the future backward into the past, than it is to say that it operates from the past into the present. Neither statement would be precisely correct in any case, because your present is a poised balance affected as much by the probable future as the probable past.

At no time, as a rule, is your body not here to you. Your experience seems centered within it, with the rest of the world safely outside. However, the particular selectivity of your kind of consciousness rides over lapses that you do not recognize. In a manner of speaking, your bodies blink off and on like lights. Their reality fluctuates, from your standpoint. For that matter, so does the physical universe.

You can understand what is meant by saying that your consciousness fluctuates-for each individual is aware of various intensities and concentrations. You are more alert, or, in your terms, more conscious on some occasions than others. Now the same applies to these units of consciousness-and to atoms, molecules, electrons, and other such phenomena. The world literally blinks off and on. This reality of fluctuation in no way bothers your own feeling of consistency, however. The "holes (spelled) of nonexistence" are plugged up by the process of selectivity. This process chooses significances then, again, around which experience is built, and around which "life" is felt. The very sensations of one kind of life then automatically set up barriers against other such "world-schemes" (hyphen) that do not correlate with their own.

It is impossible for you to examine an atom, a cell, or anything else except in your now. Period. Because your sense experience follows a time pattern that you can understand, then you take it for granted that a cell, for example, is the result of its past, and that its present condition arises from the past. The fetus grows into an adult, not because it is programmed from the past, but because it is to some extent precognitively aware of its probabilities, and from the "future" then imprints this information into the past structure.

From your viewpoint, however, an examination of a cell will not show you that, but only its present condition. It should appear obvious from what I am saying that neither future nor past is predetermined. From your platform of poised now-experience, you alter both the past and the future, and that alteration, that change, that action, causes your point of immediate sense life.

(Long pause.) The precious privacy of your existence, and indeed of your universe, is all the more miraculous, so to speak, precisely because its probable reality emerges from an infinite field of probabilities, each forever inviolate. (Long pause.) It is important that these ideas be considered.

Take your break.

(10:35. Jane's pace bad been slow often, but emphatic throughout. Resume in the same manner at 10:49.)

Now: Give us a moment...

You cannot separate your beliefs about reality from the reality that you experience. That is, your beliefs about reality form it. Your ideas about what is possible and what is not possible are reflected in all areas.

It is almost impossible to begin with concepts of one isolated universe, one self at the mercy of its past, one time sequence, and end up with any acceptable theory of a multidimensional soul or godhead that is anything else but a glorified personified concept of what you think man is.

Not only do your metaphysics and sciences suffer, but your daily experience as a human being is far less than it could be. There are, then, probabilities quite present, and for that matter biologically practical, that would allow for a change in individual consciousness so great as literally to propel the race into another level of experience entirely. As in your terms the cavemen ventured out into the daylight of the earth, so there is a time for man to venture out into a greater knowledge of his subjective reality, comma, to explore the dimensions of selfhood and go beyond the small areas of himself in which he has thus far found shelter.

(11:11.) In terms of history as you understand it, man felt safe and secure as a prime species under one sun, imagining that all else revolved about his being. This provided, in that framework, a stability that was dispensed with as man allowed his consciousness other freedoms. So he must now come to realize that he himself chooses from a myriad of probabilities the one that he now encounters.

The one self that he recognizes is the or4y part of himself of which he is presently aware. Other facets of consciousness available to him, and a part of his greater nature, appear foreign, or "not-self, " or "beyond self, " because of the focus of selectivity as it now operates.

This obviously does not mean that there are not entities whose selfhood is completely apart from your own. It does mean that your concepts force you to misinterpret and distort any "intrusive" information, or experience, that is part of portions of your own being that you do not recognize as your official self.

(A one-minute pause at 11:22.) Such behavior even causes a certain corporal dishonesty, for the cells' freedom from time means that on certain levels the cellular structure is aware of probable future events, as mentioned (just before break) . The body, therefore, is reacting to future and past activity as well, in order to maintain its present corporal balance.

The body's innate knowledge, then, will try to translate itself often into psychological activity that may result in hunches, premonitions, and so forth. The senses may be utilized to clarify the message. You might hear a voice mentally, for example, or see a flashing image. According to your beliefs, you may interpret such data in any of many ways, but because such experiences are not an accepted part of recognized, official activity, they can appear frightening. Period. You may assign them to "spirits" or disembodied personalities, but in such a way that these are thrown together in a confusing mass of dogma or superstition.

If you understood to begin with that you are a spirit, and therefore free of space and time yourself, then you could at least consider the possibility that some such messages were coming to you from other portions of your own reality. Such messages are often ways of allowing you to avoid certain probable actions.

Give us a moment-a good one-

(Jane paused at 11:33, still in trance, and lit a cigarette. Since starting the series of sessions that make up "Unknown" Reality, it's becoming something of a custom for her to deliver a little material on other subjects after book dictation; she did so again now, and finished the session at 11:5 1 P.M.

(Following the last session, Jane began thinking about chapter divisions and headings for the new book. Seth hasn't given any, of course. I told her that the book might not have chapters, that Seth might have something else planned. [And added later: The eventual resolution of this little dilemma is given early in my Introductory Notes.])

Session 685, February 25, 1974, 9:51 PM. P.M., Monday

(When Jane lay down for a nap late this afternoon she had quite an unusual experience. From her notes: "Just before I went to sleep, I had a sort of mental projection that seemed to be into the past, my past. I was a baby in my hometown, Saratoga Springs, N. Y. The time was about 1931 to start with. Everything was misty, gray, without color. First, 'I' looked down on 'myself' in my carriage. Then, I moved through the streets easily enough as I got 'older' during the projection. Wait-just now as I wrote this I picked up something [from a part of my consciousness other than Ruburt or Seth], to the effect that the projection environment is as focused as mine is, really, but that it's a probability of mine. Biologically I wasn't keyed into it in my 'now'; I was in it and not in it, between focused realities... traveling in or through these fluctuations of consciousness Seth talked about in the last session. He mentioned probable kinds of consciousness in that session, too. Was I trying to develop one of those here in my own physical reality? But this was definitely a waking event, taking place just before my nap. I described the whole thing to Rob as soon as I got up..."

(We'd waited for tonight's session since 9:26. As we sat talking desultorily, Jane grew more and more impatient. Once again, as she had before the 684th session and on other occasions, she said that now "something was different" in the sessions: For this book she had to "get a certain clear focus...

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now: Give us a moment... Body is also pattern. Period. While the material that composes it changes constantly, the pattern maintains its own integrity. The form is etched in space and time, and yet the pattern itself exists outside of that framework also-the body is a projection, therefore, into the three-dimensional field.

The consciousnesses of the cells within it, however, are eternal. The physical framework, then, is itself composed of immortal stuff. The projection in time and space may disappear, in your terms, wither and die. The main identity continues to exist, even as the consciousnesses of millions of cells still exist that at one time were part of the body.

(A one-minute pause at 9:59.)

While inhabited by the usual human consciousness, the living body operates as an intense focus point. The conglomeration of consciousnesses within it on all levels focuses its own network of communication. This private network is connected to all others like it. There are levels of interaction then simply between all bodies, electromagnetically and biologically. The network is more far-reaching than that, however. Not only can all cells respond to each other, but their mass activity triggers even higher centers of consciousness to respond to a given set of world conditions, rather than to other quite-as-legitimate world conditions that do not fit the accepted pattern. Probabilities to some extent, then, are determined along cellular lines. This should be obvious.

(A long pause, one of many, at 10:07.) The body's very structure will in itself set patterns for the kinds of probabilities that can be practically experienced. The source-reality out of which all else springs is never predetermined-that is, predestined, or even set. The universe in any terms is always being created. Period.

When consciousness is being specified, it always sees itself at the center of its world. All specifications of consciousness and all phenomenal appearances occur when the basic units of consciousness, the CU's, emerge into EE units, and hence into the dimensions of actuality in your terms. Your mainly accepted normal consciousness is within the matter of your body, and through it-the body-you view your world. There is nothing to prevent you from viewing your body from a standpoint outside of it, except that you have been taught that consciousness is imprisoned within the flesh.

The body is a sending and receiving organism; your home station, so to speak, and the focus for your activity. You can, however, quite consciously leap from it-and you do often, when for a while, particularly in the dream state, you view the world from another perspective.

Give us a moment... In some adventures you do visit other probable realities in which you have a body structure quite as real as "your own." Your own psychological makeup, for that matter, achieves its marvelous complexity because it draws from the rich bank of your greater probable existences. Even a small understanding of these ideas can help you glimpse how limiting previous concepts of psychology have been.

(A one-minute pause at 10:25.) The self that you know and recognize carries within it hints and traces of all of your probable characteristics that can be actualized within your system of reality. Your body is equipped to bring any of these to fulfillment. Now, because of the selectivity mentioned earlier, 1 certain directions may be easier than others, and some may appear impossible. Yet within the psychological and biological structure of your species, the roads of probabilities have more intersections than you know.

The conscious mind as you normally think of it directs your overall action, and its ideas determine the kind of selectivity you use. It is for this reason that I am trying to expand your conscious ideas, so that you become better equipped to choose your line of physical experience from all those probable ones open to you.

Now take your break.

(10:32. 1 thought Jane's trance had been a good one, even though she'd used many pauses, but she told me that she hadn't been at her best. Nor had she been aware of her slow delivery. She also felt that we'd eaten supper [at 7:30] too close to session time.

(I discussed with Jane the questions I'd thought of when Seth had commented, above, on "... how limiting previous concepts of psychology have been. ": As a discipline, why was psychology so narrowly developed? Why hadn't it continued expanding until it encompassed ideas like those Jane was delivering tonight, for instance? Her work was unique in that it was coming through her individual personality, I added-yet, why wasn't the theory of probabilities, or its equivalent, say, common knowledge, or at least considered, in psychology today? I asked if Seth cared to comment.

(After we talked for a few more minutes, Jane said, "I've got the feeling you're going to get answers to your questions about psychology-but they 71 be presented as the Preface to this book." We hadn't given the idea of a preface a thought. Making a joke, I asked Jane what was coming up next in the session. I meant generally, but she replied, "The Preface. " Even then, I don't think either of us expected Seth to carry out such a project tonight. But as he came through at 10:57:)

Now: Preface: There is an "unknown" reality, in quotes as given. I am part of it, and so are you.

New paragraph. (Long pause.) Some time ago I suddenly appeared within your space and time. Since then I have spoken to many people. Period. This is my third book. There would be nothing strange to anyone in any of this if I had been born into your world in a body of my own, in usual terms. Instead I began to express myself by speaking through Jane Roberts. Period. In all of this there has been a purpose, and part of that purpose lies in this present book.

New paragraph. Each individual is a part of the unknown reality. Because of my position, however, I am obviously more a part of it than most. My psychological awareness bridges worlds of which you are consciously aware, and others that seem, at least, to escape your notice. The woman through whom I speak found herself in an unusual situation, comma for no theories-metaphysical, psychological, or otherwise-could I adequately explain her experience. She was led to develop her own, therefore, and this book is an extension of certain ideas already mentioned in Adventures in Consciousness. To write that book, Jane Roberts drew on deep resources of energy.

(11:11.) The unknown reality, however, is unknown enough to usual reaches of the most flexible consciousness, in your terms, that it can only be approached by a personality as couched in it as I am. Once expressed, however, it can be comprehended. One of my purposes then has been to make this unknown reality consciously known.

Man thought once, historically speaking, that there was but one world. Now he knows differently, but he still clings to the idea of one god, one self, and one body through which to express it.

There is one God, but within that God are many. There is one self, but within that self are many. There is one body, in one time, but the self has other bodies in other times. All "times" exist at once. (Long pause.) Historically speaking, mankind chose a certain line of development. In it his consciousness specialized, focusing upon sharp particulars of experience. But inherent always, psychologically and biologically, there has been the possibility of a change in that pattern, an alteration that would effectively lift the race into another kind of weather.

(11:22.) Such a development would, however, necessitate first of all a broadening of concepts about the self, and a greater understanding of human potential. Human consciousness is now at a stage where such a development is not only feasible but necessary if the race is to achieve its greatest fulfillment.

Jane Roberts's experience to some extent hints at the multidimensional nature of the human psyche and gives clues as to the abilities that lie within each individual. These are part of your racial heritage. They give notice of psychic bridges connecting the known and "unknown" realities in which you dwell.

While you have highly limited concepts about the nature of the self, you cannot begin to conceive of a multidimensional godhood, or a universal reality in which all consciousness is unique, inviolate-and yet given to the formation of infinite gestalts of organization and meaning.

In my other books I used many accepted ideas as a springboard to lead readers into other levels of understanding. Here, I wish to make it clear that this book will initiate a journey in which it may seem that the familiar is left far behind. Yet when I am finished, I hope you will discover that the known reality is even more precious, more "real, " because you will find it illuminated both within and without by the rich fabric of an "unknown" reality now seen emerging from the most intimate portions of daily life. Give us a moment. (Pause at 11:35.) Your concepts of personhood are now limiting you personally and en masse, and yet your religions, metaphysics, histories, and even your sciences are hinged upon your ideas of who and what you are. Your psychologies do not explain your own reality to you. They cannot contain your experience. Your religions do not explain your greater reality, and your sciences leave you [just] as ignorant about the nature of the universe in which you dwell.

These institutions and disciplines are composed of individuals, each restrained by limiting ideas about their own private reality; and so it is with private reality that we will begin and always return, period. These ideas in this book are meant to expand the private reality of each reader. They may appear esoteric or complicated, yet they are not beyond the reach of any person who is determined to understand the nature of the unknown elements of the self, and its greater world.

So the book had a private beginning. Jane Roberts's husband, Robert Butts, wondered about the death of his mother (on November 19, 1973) . In a session (the 679th for February 4, 1974) he brought out some old photographs. Now: Life after death has usually been described quite in keeping with the old accepted ideas about one self, and limited concepts of person-hood. I took that opportunity, however, to begin this book.

(Long pause.) The self is multidimensional when it is physically alive. It is a triumph of spiritual and psychological identity, ever choosing from a myriad of probable realities its own clear unassailable focus (very intently) . When you don't realize this, then you project upon life after death all of the old-misconceptions. You expect the dead to be little different from the living-if you believe in afterlife at all-but perhaps more at peace, more understanding, and, hopefully, wiser.

(Pause at 11:51-then with much emphasis:) The fact is that in life you poise delicately and yet perfectly between realities, and after death you do the same. I used the opportunity, then, to explain the great freedom available to Robert Butts's mother after death-but also to explain those elements of her reality present during life that had been closed to him consciously because of mankind's concepts about the nature of the psyche. I comment now and then about photographs that belong to the Butts family [including Jane Roberts], yet any reader can look at old photographs and ask the same questions, applying what is said here to private experience. The "unknown reality-you are its known equivalent (again, louder) . Then know yourself. Your consciousness will expand as you become acquainted with these ideas.

I speak, myself, for those portions of your being that already understand. My voice rises from stratas of the psyche in which you also have your experience. Listen, therefore, to your own knowing. Period.

(Seth finished at midnight. Jovially:) End of Preface.

("Okay.")

End of session.

("All right. Thank you, Seth. Good night, " I said at 12:01 A.M., and Seth was gone almost at once. See the Preface at the beginning of this book. Jane said that although Seth hadn't actually considered my specific questions about psychology after all, they had served as an impetus for the Preface. She felt good. I read the Preface to her-and she felt even better.

(Although the session ostensibly ended here, there were actually several succeeding-and continuing-effects that grew out of it. Jane's Saratoga experience is involved, too. All of the relevant material is given in detail in Appendix 4.)

Session 686, February 27, 1974, 9:45 PM. Wednesday

(The effects continued to flow out of last P.M., Monday night's session. Jane was very intrigued by the material she produced "on her own "after the session, both in the sleep state that night and in the statements she wrote the next day. See Appendix 4. As we made ready for tonight's session at 9:10, and discussed the information she'd received, she began to feel a continuation of the experience. This time, however, it came through verbally, as dictation, although Seth wasn't involved. I made notes on most of what she bad to say; it's presented as Appendix 5, and I suggest that the reader review it before continuing with this session.

(It was 9:40 by the time Jane finished her dictation. She sat quietly for a few moments. "Now I'm just waiting for Seth, " she told me. Then: "It's as though I feel a lot of concepts around me right now, and I'm letting him get them organized for me... But now I think I'm about ready...."

(Softly:) Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now: Basically, the cell's comprehension straddles time as you think of it. Period.

Mankind's consciousness, however, experimented along time-specific lines. As he developed along those lines, various biological and mental methods of selectivity and discrimination were utilized. When in historic terms mankind became aware of memory, and recalled his past as a past in your terms, it was possible for him to confuse past and present. Vivid memories, out of context but given immediate neurological validity, could compete with the brilliant focus necessary in his present.

Though the past is actually quite as immediate, alive, and creative as the present is, man made certain adjustments, on several layers, that would focus definite distinctions and set past and present experience apart. While your particular kind of consciousness was developing, it began to intensify selectivity, to concentrate specifically in a small area of activity while blocking out other data. This was necessary because the particular kind of physical manipulation of corporal existence required instant physical response to immediately present stimuli.

(9:55.) Such selectivity and specialization therefore represented a pertinent method, as consciousness familiarized itself with earthly experience. Hunters had to respond at once to the present situation. In time terms, the "present" animal had to be killed for food-not the "past" animal. That animal-the past one-existed as surely as the one presently perceived, yet in man's context, physical action had to be directed to a highly specific area, for physical survival depended upon it.

(Pause, and slowly:) The cells' basic innocence of time discrimination had to be bypassed. At deeply unconscious levels the neurological structure is more highly adaptable than it appears. Adjustments were made, therefore. Basically, the neurological structure responds to both past and future data. Biologically, then, such activity is built-in. The specialized "new" kind of consciousness in one body had to respond pinpoint fast. Therefore it focused upon only one series of neurological messages.

(As Seth, Jane was enunciating the material very carefully, almost syllable by syllable, as though to give me time to write it down without error. Her diction in trance is usually excellent, though; it's not often that I have to ask her to repeat a word or phrase.)

These became more and more biologically prominent, so that man's consciousness rode them, or leaped upon them. These particular pulses or messages became the biologically and mentally accepted ones. They were clued into sense perception, then. These pulses or messages became the only official data that, translated into sense perception, formed physical reality. This selectivity gave an understandable line of reference from interior to exterior existence.

(10:10. Deliberately but intently:) Other quite-as-valid messages were ignored. They became, while present, biologically invisible. The cells still reacted to these otherwise neglected pulses, as they needed data from both the past and future to maintain the body's balance in "the present." The necessity for immediate conscious exterior action at a "definite" point of intersection with events was left to the emerging ego consciousness.

While the cells required future and past data, and used it to form from that invisible tension the body's present corporal reality, the same kind of information could be a threat then to the ego consciousness, which could be overwhelmed. Within the corporal structure, however, there are indeed messages that leap too quickly or too slowly from your viewpoint to allow for any physical response. In that way cellular comprehension is allowed its free flow; but the selectivity mentioned (in sessions 682-3) bypasses such information, so that it does not conflict with present sense data requiring physical action in time.

Other pulses, carrying messages, are quite as valid as those that you perceive and physically react to. Again, the cells respond to those constantly. The body, as mentioned (in the 685th session) is an electromagnetic pattern, poised in a web of probabilities, experienced as corporal at an intersection point in space and time.

When man, speaking in your terms of history, began to experiment with memory, there were innumerable instances where the emerging ego consciousness did not distinguish clearly enough between the past and present, as you understand them.

The past, in the present, would appear so brilliantly that man could not react adequately in circumstances of time that he had himself created. The future was blocked, practically speaking (long pause) , to preserve freedom of action and to encourage physical exploration, curiosity, and creativity. With memory, however, mental projections into the future were of course also possible so that man could plan his activities in time, and forsee probable results: "Ghost images" of the future probabilities always acted as mental stimuli for physical explorations in all areas, and of all kinds.

("Do you mean in all areas of the planet, for instance?")

These ghost images provided stimuli for mental, spiritual, and physical experience. That answers your question, I believe.

("Yes.")

The race was dealing with the creation of a new world of physical experience. To do this particular kind of experiment, it was necessary that physical manipulation be concentrated upon. Ghost images from the future were one thing, inspiring mankind. Had such data instantly appeared before him, however, man would have been deprived of the physical joys, endeavors, and challenges that were so basic to the experiment itself. Do you want to rest your hand?

(I shook my head, no. Jane had been speaking for Seth for three-quarters of an hour, and showed no real inclination to stop. As in the other sessions of this book, I was aware of an extra charge or impetus, an added determination on Seth-Jane's part. Now in trance, Jane was going through these complicated sentences without trouble, even indicating punctuation.)

It would have been quite possible for you as a race to have chosen any other "series" of neurological pulses, or messages, as the "real" ones, and to structure your experience along different lines. The biological structure and the mental consciousness together, however, chose the most comfortable sequence in which a present area of activity, brought about by neurological recognition, would be backed up by unconscious mental knowledge and other biologically invisible neurological connections.

The psyche knows itself and is aware of its parts. When ego consciousness reached a certain point of biological and mental competence, when experience in the present became extensive enough, then ego consciousness would be at the stage where it could begin to accept greater data. Indeed, it is now at that stage.

(Pause at 10:37.) Its focus in the present is now secure. That focus finally brought about, in your terms, an expansion of consciousness, and one that early man did not have to handle. In your terms, time now includes more space, and hence more experience and stimuli. Again speaking historically, in the past the private person in any given hour was aware at once only of those events happening in his immediate environment. He could respond instantly. Events were, to that extent now, manageable. And rest your hand if you want to.

(I felt all right, but Jane, still in trance, held up her empty cigarette pack. She waited quietly while I got her a fresh one.)

The ego specialized in expansions of space and its physical manipulation. It specialized with objects. As a result, now, a person in any given hour is aware of events happening at the other end of the world. No immediate physical response he or she can make seems adequate or pertinent on many occasions. Bodily physical action, then, to that extent, loses its immaculate precision in time. You cannot kick an "enemy" who does not live in your village or country; an enemy, furthermore, whom you do not even know personally. (Intently:) Again, to that extent instant physical action in time is not the same kind of life-and-death factor that it was when a man was faced with an enraged animal, or enemy, in close combat.

("Can I ask a question?" As Seth, Jane nodded. "Will you give us a definition of what you mean by early man? I think readers would be interested. "I'd been hoping Seth would go into this. Still in trance, Jane nodded again when I bad finished-and I had the distinct impression that I shouldn't have interrupted her delivery.)

Now: In the past in the same way, love could be immediately expressed. In historic terms, early man, using here your theories about the race-early man-was in intimate contact with his family, clan, or tribe. With the developing expansion of space, however, loved ones often dwell far apart, and sudden bodily response cannot be expressed at once, at a particular point of immediate contact.

(10:57.) These developments, with others, are already triggering changes in man's behavior, and inspiring him toward further alterations of consciousness. He now needs a more expansive viewpoint of past and future in order to help him deal with the ramifications of the present as it has evolved through experience.

Recognized concepts of the self are the ego's interpretation of selfhood. They are projected into concepts of God and the universe. They meet with a certain biological validity because of the selectivity earlier mentioned, whereby only one series of neurological pulses is accepted-and upon these rides the reality of the egotistical self. At one "time" a god interpreted in those terms served as a model for the egotistical behavior of one self toward another self.

(I read the last paragraph hack to Seth to check it. I had it down all right; I hadn't lost my way after all.

(Slowly:) In a world in which individuals were confined in space in a tribe or clan (a one-minute pause) , action was immediate. The environment presented a framework in which consciousness learned to deal with stimuli in a direct fashion. It learned how to focus. The necessary specialization meant that only so much data could be handled at once, emotionally or otherwise. The formation of different tribes allowed man to behave cooperatively, in small numbers. This meant that those on the outside were selectively ignored, considered strangers.

(Intently:) At that point, consciousness in those terms could not handle focused concentration, the emergence of ego consciousness, and simultaneously experience powerful feelings of oneness with other large groups. It was struggling for individuation.

Individuation, however, was dependent upon the cooperation of individuals. As the ego learned to feel more secure, the cooperative tendencies broadened so that the growth of nations was possible. It was inevitable, however, that ego consciousness would produce a reality in which it would finally need, in those terms, to accept other data and information that in the beginning it had to ignore.

I am speaking so far in historic terms, as you understand them. History, however, is but your official line of accepted stimuli. Later in the book that will be made clear.

New paragraph (and more rapidly) : As egotistical consciousness expands to include hereto largely neglected data, then it will experience, practically speaking, a new kind of identity; knowing itself differently. Its concepts of godhood will significantly alter, as will the dimensions of emotion. Your heritage includes vastly richer veins of love, yet your concepts of self and godhood have severely limited these. You often seem to hate those with different beliefs than your own, for example, and you have perpetrated cruelties upon others in the name of religion and in the name of science, because your limited ideas about the nature of the self led you to fear your emotions. Often you are afraid that love will overwhelm you, for instance.

(A one-minute pause at 11:20.) While you were so concerned with protecting what you thought of as the boundaries and integrity of one selfhood, as a race you actually arrived at a point where you were beginning to deny your own greater reality. But all of this is part of the experiment upon which the race embarked in your probability.

Where your physical survival, in those terms, once depended upon a narrowed focus while you learned physical manipulation, now the success of that manipulation necessitates a broadening of focus-a new awakening into the larger existence of the selfhood, with what will be a corresponding rerecognition of neurological activity that is now only briefly sensed by some (like Jane) , but present in the heritage of your corporal structure.

(Louder:) Now I do not think you can reasonably be expected to take any more notes without a break, and so I give you one.

("Okay. Thank you."

(11:26. Actually, this was one of those times when it seemed that I could have continued note-taking indefinitely. Seth-Jane certainly appeared able to keep going. Jane had been in trance for an hour and forty-one minutes, but even so she was out of it rapidly. "The trances have changed since he started this book, though, " she said. "Once I get on the right track, Seth just keeps going, and I don't want to change it or get off... I think it's a great development. But you know: If you think you're on to something no one else has, you 're afraid you '11 be called batty by the rest of the world. . .Seth is a great organizer, though. It's like there's a tremendous amount of work being done behind the sessions, so I can get the data-but this isn't like the channels from Seth [as described in the 616th session in Chapter 2 of Personal Reality]."

(Jane said that I might better ask questions only during break, at least for now. My inquiry about early man hadn't "seriously" disturbed her; but I'd been correct in feeling that I shouldn't have interrupted her then. She also talked about possible confusions or conflicts between Seth doing "Unknown" Reality while she was writing her own Adventures in Consciousness. She's had no trouble, however, and is still enthusiastic about her book; she's putting Chapter 4 into final form. Adventures is due at her publishers, Prentice-Hall, Inc., in September 1974.

(Resume in a quiet manner at 11:48.)

Now: Here, and throughout this book there will be sections dealing with Practice Elements-in capitals-where to some extent you can see how certain of these concepts can be practically experienced, and receive at least a hint of their application.

Centered (with gestures) :

PRACTICE ELEMENT 1

In a waking state, Ruburt found himself in Saratoga Springs, N. Y., where he grew up, in what seemed to be a kind of mental projection. (See Jane's notes at the beginning of the last session.) Everything was gray. The immediate nature of full-blast sense data was missing. Vision was clear but spotty, highly selective. Motion was, however, the strongest sense element. Ruburt was bodiless on the one hand, and on the other he perceived some of the experience through the eyes of an infant in a carriage.

Quite sharply he perceived a particular curb at the corner of a definite intersection (York Avenue and Warren Street) , and his attention was caught by the focus: a curb, a slope of dirt, and then the sidewalk; and the motion of the carriage as it was wheeled up.

The child was himself in the past on the one hand, and yet he was a probable future self in that past. (Pause.) From the standpoint of Ruburt's official mental focus, and from the standpoint of the neurologically accepted present, that past environment had to remain off-center, or blurred. He could experience it only by sidestepping officially accepted neurological activity. He visited a store that is not at that location "anymore, " and here the sense data were somewhat clearer. He had no conscious memories of the store's interior, yet it was instantly apparent to him-the dark oiled floor, spread with sawdust. Even the odors were present.

He toured his (public) grade school where he attended kindergarten to third grade, saw the children come out for recess, and felt himself one of them-while during the entire experience he knew himself as an adult, embarked upon that adventure.

He went from place to place, floating bodiless-a tour of consciousness. That same environment exists now, alternately with Ruburt's present, and as vividly as his present does. It was, however, from his viewpoint, a probable past.

The infant with whom he momentarily identified as the self he is now only opaquely and indirectly shared common experience. This was not simple regression, then. That child grew up in that probability, and Ruburt grew up in this one. (Pause.) He touched upon certain coordinates that were neurologically shared, however, by both: He and the child were familiar with the carriage and the curb, the mother who pushed the carriage, and the house into which Ruburt felt himself, as the child, being carried.

He sensed the house interior and the stairway vividly. He knew that the mother then went down the stairs to bring in the carriage, but when he tried to perceive this, the motion became too fast. The mother's figure blurred so completely that he could not follow it. He felt confused, and found himself entering the store around the corner, and then consciously circled the block and went into the school.

The school and the store were not in the infant's experience, for in that probability the family moved away. The blur of activity earlier was the result of neurological confusion, and Ruburt switched over unknowingly to an environment still in the same physical block that was meaningful to him, but not shared by the future experience of that infant. You must understand that your own past exists as vitally as does your present-but your probable pasts and presents exist in the same manner. You simply do not accept them in the strands of experience that "you" recognize.

(Pause.) Skip several spaces.

As part of the work on this book, Ruburt is just beginning to experiment with the conscious recognition of probable material, and the conscious acceptance of kinds of experience usually tabooed according to the selectivity already mentioned.

(12:19.) In the sleep state after our last session, then, he allowed his consciousness to expand enough so that it became aware of information and experience usually censored automatically through mental and neurological habit. In Adventures Ruburt uses the term "prejudiced perception"-an excellent one-that is applicable here. For you have prejudiced yourself spiritually, mentally, and physically in those terms. In the sleep state Ruburt became unprejudiced, at least to some degree, so that he encountered information that seemed alien or out of context with usual experience.

Your theories of time are connected with your usual neurological pulses. It is one thing to play with concepts of multidimensionality, or probabilities, and quite another to be practically presented with them, even briefly, when your thought patterns and neurological habits tell you that they cannot be translated. So Ruburt felt frustrated, and he told me in no uncertain terms (see Appendix 4) that his consciousness could not contain the information he was receiving.

Like a good teacher (humorously) , I took his protests into consideration. Later he wrote a statement that came to him. This was his conscious interpretation of the information he had received the night before, translated as best he could in linear terms.

I have my own existence, that is quite different from Ruburt's, and yet I also have a reality that is connected to his psyche. Each of you also have the same kind of connection with other "more knowledgeable" portions of yourself, or your greater identity, that are independently themselves and yet also alive in your psyches. They are portions of the "unknown" reality.

Now I am able to obtain information that Ruburt, in his terms, does not have. In other terms he does have it, and so do you, but you have been mentally, spiritually, and biologically prejudiced against it. As a race, you are ready to become more aware of your greater reality, however, and to explore its "unknown" aspects. Period. Hence this book.

You may experience some irritability with some of the concepts in it, simply because you have so schooled yourselves to ignore them. You should also experience an acceleration of consciousness, however, and as you read it, a growing sense of familiarity. The framework of the book itself will lead you, if you allow it, into other strata of your own greater knowledge.

(Loudly:) Period. End of session. I will have some personal recommendations next time. Ruburt's favorite television programs are good for him, and allow his mind to rest. They are his mental play, and for that reason, important.

(12:3 7 A.M. "Good night, Seth. Thank you very much."

(Jane's trance had been very deep. Now she was bleary-eyed: "I feel as though I don't want to think for two weeks..." Seth hadn't said so during the session, but Jane told me she'd "picked up from him" that she should eat an extra meal a day for a while-usually late at night, as, say, after a session. Also, she should take extra exercise each day, moving as rapidly as she could. She wasn't under any additional strain while producing "Unknown" Reality, she added, since she wanted to do it, but those simple actions would help refresh her. Her use of energy since starting the book has been lavish. Jane's comments before tonight's session about possible instructions from Seth are given in Appendix 5.

(After finishing Personal Reality in July, 1973, Jane and I took quite a bit of time off from our usual P.M., Monday-Wednesday session routine while we prepared that book for publication. We developed the habit of watching certain television programs on Wednesday evening, but since we've gone back to holding sessions regularly, we haven't been able to see them. I suggested to Jane that we shift Wednesday night's session to Thursday night.

(And once more: Many times during the night after this session, Jane discovered herself involved with dictation for "Unknown" Reality, both in the sleep state and out of it.)

Session 687, March 4, 1974, 9:42 PM. P.M., Monday

(See Appendix 6 for the material on parallel man, alternate man, and probable man that Jane began dictating to me shortly after last midnight.

(In chapters 3 and 12 of Personal Reality, I inserted notes describing how Jane and I bad seen geese during their migrations south, then north, respectively, in 1972 and 1973. Now that truly sublime and mysterious phenomenon was upon us again-and if anything we found it more meaningful than ever. For myself, I made intuitive connections between the regular travels of the geese and our own work rhythms in producing the Seth books.

(There were welcome similarities between our sighting of today and that of last March: Again, the weather was very warm for this time of year; again, a fine rain was falling. I threw open a kitchen window when Jane called my attention to that familiar honking sound. The geese came in low over the river half a block away, flying beneath the clouds and in the rain-a great wide "V" of them, heading north.

(I'd never seen so many in one flock, or gaggle, before. A certain number of birds shuttled back and forth within the formation at any one moment, changing their positions for reasons unknown to us, "talking" all the while. Once again, I found great reassurance in watching the spectacle of their flight. Those birds, I thought, knew where they were going-they knew what they were doing, in ways man could barely comprehend. I followed the formation until it disappeared in the mists and trees on the horizon.

(We'd waited for the session to begin since 9:20. At 9:37 Jane said impatiently, "Come on, Seth. . Hmm; I've done this a lot lately, haven't I?" Then: "I feel him vaguely around. . ." And Seth continued his material on Practice Element 1.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now: Such experiences as Ruburt's Saratoga episode are valuable because they begin a process in which other neurological pulses are to some degree recognized.

Over a period of time, this can bring about some conscious experience with probable realities. In the beginning the glimpses may be very brief, and the sense experience misty. Nevertheless, new patterns and cognitive endeavors are being set up between the neurological structure and the consciousness that you know.

An excellent preliminary exercise is the following:

Take any remembered scene from your own past. Experience it as clearly as possible imaginatively, but with the idea of its probable extensions. Sometime, immediately or after a few tries, a particular portion of the scene will become gray or shadowy. It is not a part of the past that you know, but an intersection point where that past served as an offshoot into a series of probabilities that you did not follow.

Instead of a shadowy element, you yourself may feel unsubstantial-"ghostly, " as Ruburt did. Period. Instead of any of those things, the imagined dialogue-if there is any-may suddenly change from the dialogue that you remember; or the entire scene and action may quickly alter. Any of these occurrences can be hints that you are beginning to glimpse the probable variations of the particular scene or action. It is, however, the subjective feeling that is the important clue here, and once you experience it there will be no doubt in your mind.

Some people will have little trouble with the exercise, and others will need to exert persistence before finding any success at all. (Pause.) This method is even more effective if you choose from your past a scene in which a choice was involved that was important to you.

In such a case, begin imaginatively, following through with the other decision or decisions that you might have made. At one point a shadowy effect-grayness, or other characteristics just mentioned-will occur. One or several of these may be involved, but again your subjective feeling is the most important clue. Imagination may bring you a clear picture, for example, that may then become fuzzy, and in that case the blurred quality would be your hint of probable action.

Until you have tried the exercise and become fully acquainted with it, you will not understand its effectiveness. You will know, for instance, when the remembered event and imagination intersect with another probability. Whether or not you have any great success, the exercise will begin a neurological reorientation that will be most important if you hope to glimpse realities that are outside of your present neurologically accepted sense-reality.

(Pause at 10:01.) This exercise is a mental and biological doorway that can expand both your concepts of yourself and reality. There may be instances in which it seems that little progress is made during the exercise itself. During the day, however, having made an important decision in one direction, you may begin to feel the reality of the opposite decision and its ramifications. The exercise may also result in a different kind of a dream, one that is recognized within the dream state, at least, as an introduction to a probable reality. You deal directly with future probabilities in the dream state in any case. (Pause.) For example, in a series of dreams you may try out various solutions to a given problem, and choose one of these. That choice becomes your physical reality.

According to the intensity of the situation, now, another also desirable solution may be worked out in a probable reality. On an unconscious level you are aware of your probable selves, and they of you. You share the same psychic roots, and your joint yet separate dreams are available to "all of you." This does not mean that you are dreaming someone else's dream, any more than it means that twins, for example, do. It does mean that your probable selves and you share in a body of symbolism, background, and ability. The multistructured nature of the dream state allows for dream dramas in which probable selves do appear. They may appear as symbolically representing strong characteristics upon which they have focused, though you have ignored them.

(Slowly:) The dream state, however, does operate as a rich web of communication between probable selves and probable existences. All probabilities spring from inner reality, from the psyche's own inner activity and structure. (Long pause.) The consciousness that you know can indeed now emerge into even greater realization of itself, but not by obsessively defending its old position. Instead it must recognize its power as the director of probable action, and no longer inhibit its own greater capacities.

In your terms, until now your consciousness has specialized in neurological patterning. As mentioned (in Session 682) , this was extremely important while it learned the art of specialized focus. Now, however, it must begin to recognize that it can indeed expand, and bring into its awareness other quite legitimate realities. The nature of probabilities must be understood, for the time has come in the world as you experience it where the greatest wisdom and discrimination are needed. Your consciousness and neurological prejudice blind you to the full dimension of physical activity. The true implications of physical action are not as yet apparent to you.

(A one-minute pause at 10:23.) You are beginning to understand the reality of your planet. You cannot plunder it, for example-something you are only beginning to learn. Opening up your consciousness to previously denied messages would bring you in direct contact with other life-forms on your planet in a way that you have formerly denied yourselves. Your cellular knowledge of past and future probabilities alone would teach you a spiritual and corporal courtesy.

(Another one-minute pause.) Give us a moment... The "unknown" reality sustains you and the web of life as you understand it. Your conscious concepts must enlarge so that the conscious self can understand its true nature. As you think of it, consciousness is barely-barely-half developed. It has learned to identify with one small group of neurologically accepted responses. Portions of the brain not used lie latent, waiting for the recognition that will trigger them into activity (intently) . When this happens, the mind will become aware of the rich bed of probabilities upon which the ego now rides so blindly.

The great latent-but-always-sensed dimensions of spiritualized creaturehood will then begin to flower. A few great men have glimpsed those abilities, comma, and their love of the race and their integrity had caused them to trigger the unused portions of the brain. In their way they sensed the great probable future and its ramifications.

In centuries past they saw your present, though through their own vision, and so it was only partially the present as you know it. Your emotional reality truly leaps into its own only now and then, for your very concepts of yourselves deny the multidimensional aspects of your being. The need and the yearning to love and to know are both biologically present within you. They are present within the animals, and within a blade of grass.

The concepts of God that you have, have gone hand-in-and with the development of your consciousness. The ego, emerging, needed to feel its dominance and control, and so it imagined a dominant god apart from nature. Often nations acted as group egos-each with its own god-picturing, its own concepts of power. Whenever a tribe or a group or a nation decided to embark upon a war, it always used the concept of its god to lead it on.

(Faster at 10:4 5:) The god concept then was an aid, and an important one, to man's emerging ego. To develop its sense of specialization, the ego forgot the great cooperative venture of the earth. If a hunter literally knows his relationship with an animal, he cannot kill it. On deeper levels both animal and man understand the connections. Biologically the man knows he has come from the earth. Some of his cells have been the cells of animals, and the animal knows he will look out through a man's eyes.3 The earth venture is cooperative. The slain beast is tomorrow's hunter. In terms of ego consciousness, however, there were stages of growth; and the god concepts that spoke of oneness with nature were not those that served the ego's purposes in the line of development as you understand it (deliberately) .

For a while such techniques worked. Always, however, there was the undeniable inner self in the background: man's dreams, his biological and spiritual integrity, and these in one way or another were always before him.

In your probability you did allow the inner self some freedom. Therefore, the so-called egotistical consciousness was not given complete sway. It remained flexible enough so that even hidden in its god concepts4 there were symbols of greater reality. Your system deals with physical manipulability, again, and the translation of creativity into physical form. An exterior separation had to occur for a while, in which consciousness forgot, egotistically speaking, that it was a part of nature, and pretended to be apart.

It was known, however-and unconsciously written in the cells and mind and heart-that this procedure would only go so far. When man's consciousness was sure of itself it would not need to be so narrowly focused. Then the true flowering of humanity's consciousness could begin. Then the ego could expand and become aware of realities it had "earlier" ignored. Period.

(Jane, in trance, sat with a band to her closed eyes as she rocked back and forth.)

A brief break.

(10:59 to 11:07.)

You have put yourselves in a position where your consciousness must now become aware of the probable pasts and probable futures, in order to form for yourselves a sane, fulfilling, and creative present.

Ego consciousness must now be familiarized with its roots, or it will turn into something else. You are in a position where your private experience of yourself does not correlate with what you are told by your societies, churches, sciences, archaeologies, or other disciplines. Man's "unconscious" knowledge is becoming more and more consciously apparent. This will be done under and with the direction of an enlightened and expanding egotistical awareness (much louder) , that can organize the hereto neglected knowledge-or it will be done at the expense of the reasoning intellect (again louder) , leading to a rebirth of superstition, chaos, and the unnecessary war between reason and intuitive knowledge.

(Pause.) When, at this point now, of mankind's development, his emerging unconscious knowledge is denied by his institutions, then it will rise up despite those institutions, and annihilate them. (Pause.) Cult after cult will emerge, each unrestrained by the use of reason, because reason will have denied the existence of rampant unconscious knowledge, disorganized and feeling only its own ancient force.

If this happens, all kinds of old and new religious denominations will war, and all kinds of ideologies surface. This need not take place, for the conscious mind-basically, now-having learned to focus in physical terms, is meant to expand, to accept unconscious intuitions and knowledge, and to organize these deeply creative principles into cultural patterns.

The great emotion of love has been thus far poorly used, yet it represents even the biological impetus of your being. Your religions in a large measure have taught you to hate yourselves and physical existence. They have told you to love God, but rarely taught you to experience the gods in yourselves.

Now: In one way or another religions have always followed, again, the development of your consciousness, and so they have served its purposes and yours; and they have always reflected, though distorted, those greater inner realities of your being. In historic terms, as you understand them, the "progression" of religion gives you a perfect picture of the development of human consciousness, the differentiation of peoples and nations, and the growth of the ideas of the "individual."

There is nothing wrong with the concept of an egotistically based individual being, colon: I am not suggesting, therefore, that your individuality is something to be lost, thrown aside, or superseded. Nor am I saying that it should be buried, submerged, or dissolved in a superself. I am not suggesting that its edges be blurred by a powerful unconscious.

(Intently:) I am saying that the individual self must become consciously aware of far more reality; that it must allow its recognition of identity to expand so that it includes previously unconscious knowledge. To do this you must understand, again, that man must move beyond the concepts of one god, one self, one body, one world, as these ideas are currently understood.5 You are now poised, in your terms, upon a threshold from which the race can go many ways. There are species of consciousness. Your species is in a time of change. There are potentials within the body's mechanisms, in your terms, not as yet used. Developed, they can immeasurably enrich the race, and bring it to levels of spiritual and psychic and physical fulfillment. If some changes are not made, the race as such will not endure.

(11:26.) This does not mean that you will not endure, or that in another probability the race will not-but that in your terms of historical sequence, the race will not endure.

(Pause.) Speaking now in those historic terms that you understand, let me say that there was no single-line development from animal to man, but parallel lines, in which for centuries animal-man and man-animal coexisted cooperatively. In the same way now, unknown amongst you, many species of what you may call probable man dwell in embryo form.

Because of the ego's particular line of development, you have experimented with artificial drugs and chemicals, both in foods and for medicinal purposes, as well as for "religious" enlightenment. Some of the effects of LSD and other artificial psychedelic drugs give you a hint of other probable directions your consciousness might have followed, or might still follow. As the experiments are conducted, however, and in the ignorance of the framework, the conscious mind takes a subordinate position. Instead, using methods other than drugs, it could be taught to expand its knowledge far more safely, to organize it in ways that could be most advantageous. Still, some of the experiments do give hints of certain aspects of one of the species' probable developments.

Give us a moment. Rest your hand...

(Very intently:) You cannot do anything, literally, that is not natural. Nevertheless, over a period of time "artificial" chemicals taken with food into the body will form a new kind of nature, in your terms. Your bodies are beautifully equipped, and will turn almost anything to their advantage. According to many schools of thought, artificial drugs, so-called, or chemicals, are considered in a very negative light, cutting you off from nature. Yet such experiments represent a strong line of probability only in its infancy, " in which man could sustain himself without draining the earth, live without killing animals, and literally form a new kind of physical structure connected to the earth, while not depleting its substance.

This does not mean that some biological confusion might not result in the meantime. It does mean that even in those terms, and consciously unknowing, mankind is experimenting with a probable species and working out quite spiritual issues. Your probable futures and your probable pasts, in larger terms, exist at once. I will begin by explaining your history to you, at least to some extent, in the historical terms you recognize. To that degree, I hope to make your unknown reality consciously known.

Now-that is the end of Section 1, to be composed of the sessions as given, except with the Preface first. Section 1 should be entitled "You and the 'Unknown' Reality, " with "Unknown" in quotes. Give us a moment...

(Pause at 11:58.) As I describe some of early man's past in historic terms, I will also show how that "heritage" is alive in your daily experience with the world as you know it. Period.

The archaeology of the soul and the blood is not buried, but alive in your experience. A photograph is no more a relic than a fossil is. Each is filled with the energy of being. Neither is buried in a past beyond your knowing. A photograph lives in the present of your psyche, and a fossil in the living vitality of your cells (spelled) .

(12:01.) Now: Section 2: "Parallel Man, Alternate Man, and Probable Man, " colon: "The Reflection of These in the Present, Private Psyche." That is the heading.

(Pause.) Separated from that-that is one heading-the next heading: "Your Multidimensional Reality in the Now of Your Being."

(Louder:) End of session-

("All right-")

-and my heartiest regards to you both. Ruburt is regenerating. I will have more to say to him shortly. I like him to get some of his goodies (on this book) first.

("Thank you, Seth. Good night."

(12:04 A.M. Jane was soon out of her trance, but it had been a very good one nevertheless. Sitting in her rocker, she began to rapidly pound her feet on the floor. I felt the vibrations. "These trances are so deep that I want to do something when I come out of them, " she said. She continued to thump away. "They're different, there's no two ways about it. .

(The next morning Jane told me that once again she'd done "a lot of book dictation" after she went to bed. But this time, she thought, she'd been alert: When she realized that the material was "running through her, "as she often puts it [meaning she isn't aware of Seth's presence], she sat up, turned on a night light, and began to record the data on the pad she keeps on her bedside table. I wasn't disturbed as I slept beside her. "Aba, " Jane told herself at last, when the information stopped flowing, "this time I got it all down. " She lay back in bed-and woke up. She bad dreamed the recording part of the experience.)

Session 688, March 6, 1974, 9:47 PM. Wednesday

(Today I showed Jane the finished version of my "ghost image" portrait of her as a male in another probability. The painting represented a new approach in art for me, and had caused me a good deal of puzzlement at first. I began it early in February. 1 won't take the space to describe the series of mistaken efforts I went through in producing the work, except to say that finally I came to the rather simple conscious understanding that I was trying to paint a probable Jane. All at once, as I watched her delivering the 684th session on February 20, 1 saw strong resemblances between my painting and certain poses she repeatedly took while in trance.

(Then came Jane's projection-probability experience involving her borne town of Saratoga Springs; she described this episode in her notes preceding the 685th session, in Section 1, and Seth elaborated upon it considerably in the next session. The ghostly qualities in that event fit in with what I was trying to do in the painting: By leaving the thick gray and white under-painting of my "portrait" of "Jane" without color, I realized, I could express not only a probable interpretation of her, but the colorless qualities of the Saratoga experience itself Once I made those conscious connections I was able to finish the painting very easily. I intend to do more work in this manner.

(A rather humorous note: Jane has decided that she prefers to continue with the scheduled Wednesday sessions, instead of switching them to Thursday night. Television on Wednesday night doesn't offer that many attractions after all. Besides, she said, tonight she 'felt stuff around, about cells and prayer, and things like that'; she announced that she wanted to bold the session.

("And now that I'm sitting here, "she said, patting the arms of her rocker, "I can feel the material getting organized. It's a great help..

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now: The beginning of Section 2. You already have the heading. Give us a moment...

The CU's, or units of consciousness, are literally in every place and time at once. They possess the greatest adaptability, and a profound "inborn" propensity for organization of all kinds. They act as individuals, and yet each carries within it a knowledge of all other kinds of activity that is happening in any other given unit or group of units.

Coming together, the units actually form the systems of reality in which they have their experience. In your system, for example, they are within the phenomenal world. They will always come under the guise of any particular pattern of reality, then. In your terms they can move forward or backward in time, but they also possess another kind of interior mobility within time as you know it.

As there are insides to apples, so think of the ordinary moment as an apple. In usual experience, you hold that apple in your hand, or eat it. Using this analogy, however, the apple itself (as the moment) would contain infinite variations of itself within itself. These CU's therefore can operate even within time, as you understand it, in ways that are most difficult to explain. Time not only goes backward and forward, but inward and outward. I am still using your idea of time here to some degree. (Pause.) Later in this book I hope to lead you beyond it entirely. But in the terms in which I am speaking, it is the inward and outward directions of time that give you a universe that seems to be fairly permanent, and yet is also being created.

This inward and outward thrust allows for several important conditions that are necessary for the establishment of "relatively" separate, stable universe systems. Such a system may seem like a closed one2 from any viewpoint within itself. Yet this inward and outward thrusting condition effectively sets up the boundaries and uniqueness of each universal system, while allowing for a constant give-and-take of energy among them.

(10:04.) No energy is ever lost. It may seem to disappear from one system, but if so, it will emerge in another. The inward and outward thrust that is not perceived is largely responsible for what you think of as ordinary consecutive time. (Pause.) It is of the utmost and supreme importance, of course, that these CU's are literally indestructible. They can take any form, organize themselves in any kind of time-behavior, hyphen, and seem to form a reality that is completely dependent upon its apparent form and structure. Yet, disappearing through one of the physicists' black holes, for example, though structure and form would seem to be annihilated and time drastically altered, there would be an emergence at the other end, where the whole "package of a universe, " having been closed in the black hole, would be reopened.

There is the constant surge into your universe of new energy through infinite minute sources. The sources are the CU's themselves. In their own way, and using an analogy, now, in certain respects at least the CU's operate as minute but extremely potent black holes and white holes, as they are presently understood by your physicists. Give us a moment...

The CU's, following that analogy, serve as source points or "holes" through which energy falls into your system, or is attracted to it-and in so doing, forms it. The experience of forward time and the appearance of physical matter in space and time, and all the phenomenal world, results. As CU's leave your system, time is broken down. Its effects are no longer experienced as consecutive, and matter becomes more and more plastic until its mental elements become apparent. New CU's enter and leave your system constantly, then. Within the system en masse, however, through their great and small organizational structures, the CU's are aware of everything happening-not only on the top of the moment (gesturing) , but within it in all of its probabilities.

Now: This means that biologically the cell is aware of all of its probable variations, while in your time and structures it holds its unique position as a part, say, of any given organ in your body. (Pause.) In greater terms the cell is a huge physical universe, orbiting an invisible CU; and in your terms the CU will always be invisible-beyond the smallest phenomenon that you can perceive with any kind of instrument. To some extent, however, its activity can be indirectly apprehended through its effect upon the phenomenon that you can perceive.

(Pause at 10:26. I got Jane a beer while she sat waiting in trance.)

The EE units mentioned earlier represent the stage of emergence, the threshold point that practically activates the CU's, in your terms. We will have more to say about these later.

It is vital that you understand this inward and outward thrust of "time, " however, and realize that from this flows the consecutive appearance of the moment. The thrusting gives dimensions to time that so far you have not even begun to realize. Again, you live on the surface of the moments, with no understanding of the unrecognized and unofficial realities that lie beneath. All of this, once more, is tied in with your accepted neurological recognition of certain messages over others, your mental prejudice that effectively blinds you to other quite valid biological communications that are indeed present all of the time.

(Intently:) I am trying to tell you something about the greater reality of your species, yet to do so with any justice, I must divest you, if possible, of certain concepts about the beginning of time, or "man's early history."

To start with, however, we will for a while lean on the old terminology, while hoping to gradually leave it behind. Give us a moment and rest your hand...

(I bad to smile. After about 30 seconds Jane, as Seth, was already waiting to continue.)

The CU's form all systems simultaneously. Having formed yours, and from their energy diversifying themselves into physical forms, they were aware of all of the probable variations from any given biological strain. There was never any straight line of development as, say, from reptiles to mammal, ape, and man. Instead there were great, still-continuing, infinitely rich parallel explosions of life forms and patterns in as many directions as possible. There were animal-men and man-animals, using your terms, that shared both time and space for many centuries.6 This is, as you all well know, a physical system in time. Here cells die and are replaced. Knowing their own indestructibility, the CU's within them simply change form, retaining however the identity of all the cells that they have been. (Intently:) While the cell dies physically, its inviolate nature is not betrayed. It is simply no longer physical.

That kind of "death" is, then, natural in one way or another within your system. I will be speaking here from many viewpoints, and later I will discuss in full your ideas of mortality. Here, however, let me state that all life is cooperative. It also knows it exists beyond its form.

The experience of your species involves a certain kind of consciousness development, highly vital. (Pause.) This necessitated a certain kind of specialization, a certain "long-term" identification with form. Cellular structure maintains brilliant effectiveness in the body's present reality, but knows itself free of it. Man's particular kind of consciousness fiercely identified with the body. This was a necessity to focus energy toward physical manipulation. To some important extent the same applies to the animals. The cell might gladly "die, " but the specifically oriented man-and-animal consciousness would not so willingly let go.

The cell is individual, and struggles for rightful survival. Yet its time is limited, and the body's survival is dependent upon the cell's innate wisdom: The cell must die finally for the body to survive, and only by dying can the cell further its own development, and therefore insure its own greater survival. So the cell knows that to die is to live.

(10:59. Jane delivered all of this material in a most forceful manner.)

Man's consciousness, and to some extent that of the animals, is more specifically identified with form, however. In order to develop his own kind of individualized awareness, man had to consciously ignore for a while his own place within the structure of the earth. His experience of time would seem to be the experience of his identity. His consciousness would not seem to flow into his body before birth, and out of it after death. He would "forget" there was a time to die. He would forget that death meant new life. A natural message had to replace the old knowledge.

Give us a moment... In the body certain cells "kill" others, and in so doing the body's living integrity is maintained. The cells do each other that service (with gestures) . In the exterior world certain animals "kill" others. You had for centuries; then, speaking in your limited terms, a situation in which men and animals were both hunters and prey. In those misty eras-from your standpoint-these activities were carried on with the deepest, most sacred comprehension. Again, the slain animal knew that it would "later" look out through its slayer's eyes-attaining a newer, different kind of consciousness. The man, the slayer, understood the great sense of harmony that existed even in the slaying, and knew that in turn the physical material of his body would be used by the earth to replenish the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

Even when you lost sight-as you knew you would-of those deep connections, they would continue to operate until, in its own way, man's consciousness could rediscover the knowledge and put it to use-deliberately and willfully, thereby bringing that consciousness to flower. In your terms this would represent a great leap, for the egotistically aware individual would fully comprehend unconscious knowledge and act on his own, out of choice. He would become a conscious co-creator. Obviously, this has not as yet occurred.

I told you (after 10:26 in this session) that you presently perceive only the surface of the moment; so you also perceive but one line of the species' development. Yet even within your system, there are hints of the other probable realities that also coexist. The dolphins are a case in point.9 In your line of probability they are oddities, yet even now you recognize their great brain capacity, and to some dim extent glimpse the range of their own communication.

At one time on your earth, in the way you look at time, there were many such species: water dwellers, with brain capacities as good as and better than your own. Your legends of mermaids, for example, though highly romanticized, do indeed hint of one such species' development. There were several species smaller than the dolphins, but generally the same structurally.

Their intelligence was indisputable, and old myths of sea gods arose from such species. There is even now an extremely rich emotional life on the part of the dolphins, to which you are relatively blind; and more than this, on their part a greater recognition of other species than you yourselves have.

(A one-minute pause at 11:24. Then at a slower pace:)

The dolphins possess a strong sense of personal loyalty, and an intimate family pattern, along with a highly developed individual and group recognition and behavior. They cooperate with each other, in other words. They go out of their way to help other species, and yet they do not take pets (softly, staring at me) . There were also, however, many varieties of water-dwelling mammals-some combining the human with the fish, though roughly along the lines of a combination chimpanzee-fish type, hyphen. These were small creatures who moved with amazing rapidity, and could emerge Onto the land for days at a time.

In other probabilities, water-dwelling mammals predominate. They farm the land as you farm the water, and are only now learning how to operate upon the land for any amount of time, as you are only now learning how to manipulate below the water.

The physical universe serves then as a threshold for probabilities, and all possible species find their greatest fulfillment within that system, each of them neurologically tuned into their own reality and their own "time." So the body itself, as it presently exists, is innately equipped with other neurological responses that to you would seem to be biologically invisible. Nevertheless, your consciousness and your beliefs are what direct this neurological recognition. At birth, and before structured learning processes begin, you are far freer in that regard.

You could (underlined twice) walk into "yesterday" as well as tomorrow at that point of birth-if you could walk-and indeed your perception brings you events both in and out of time sequence. Responses to out-of-time events do not bring the infant recognition, approval, or action, however. It immediately begins to learn to accept certain neurological pulses which bring results, and not others, and so neurological patterns are early learned. This can be a frightening process, though it is accompanied by reassurances. The infant sees, out of context, both present and future without discrimination, and (intently) I am speaking of images physically perceived.

Nightmares on the part of children often operate as biological and psychic releases, during which buried out-of-time perceptions emerge explosively-events perceived that cannot be reacted to effectively in the face of parental conditioning. The body, then, is indeed a far more wondrous living mechanism than you realize. It is the body's own precognition that allows the child to develop, to speak and walk and grow.

In the same manner, the species as you think of it is at one level aware of its own probabilities and "future" lines of development. The child learning to walk may fall and hurt itself, yet it does learn. In the same way the race makes errors-and yet in response to its own greater knowledge it continues to seek out those areas of its own probable fulfillment.

(Louder, smiling:) Either break, or end of session.

("Well, we'll take the break and see what happens."

(11:50. Jane's trance bad been profound. She was amazed to learn that it had lasted for over two hours; actually, she bad run through the whole session without a break. "it's still a different kind of trance, " she said, "and once you're in it, it's better to stay there. But it's exhilarating in ways that I can explain.

("It's wild, " she continued, "but I know that all of this is leading up to alternate man, probable man, and parallel man. [See Appendix 6.] 1 thought you were tired tonight, but I decided I wanted the session instead of looking at reruns on TV.. especially after I got that stuff while I was doing the dishes tonight, on cells and biological prayer."

(Jane decided to "wait a second" at 11:55, to see if she should resume the session. Then we declared an end to it at 12:05 A.M. Actually, I was the one who was bleary. Jane felt fine; she told me that she could cheerfully continue the session for another two hours. I was tempted, but... )

Session 689, March 18, 1974, 9:55 PM. P.M., Monday

(See Appendix 7 for an account of Jane's accomplishment of a week ago Sunday, when, in an altered state of consciousness, she received the outline for a potential new book, The Way Toward Health.

(We held just one session last week, and it did not involve work on either "Unknown" Reality or the book on health. The rest of the time we were busy with ESP class, a television show, correspondence, and other matters. Jane's rate of delivery this evening was rather slow.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: Now: To some extent the development of consciousness as you understand it follows the development of the gods through the ages; and in those stories appear the guises that man might have taken, as well as those that he did.

All animal gods hint of various experiments and species in which consciousness took different forms, in which the birth of egotistical awareness as you know it tried several areas of exploration. There were, for example, different versions of man-animal comprehension and activity.

(Long pause.) From approximately 50 million to 30 million years ago there were innumerable species that would now seem to you to be mutated forms. The distinction between man-animal and animal-man was not as clear as it is in your time. In some ways consciousness was more mobile, less centered, and more experimental. That early rapport, that early mixture, would later be remembered in myths of gods in animal form. Such a variety existed long before your paleontologists realize that it did. There were many toolmaking animal species, some predating man's toolmaking facility. Consciousness knows all of the probabilities of fulfillment open to it. Each species carries in its individual and mass psyche the blueprints of such probable actualities. These blueprints are biologically valid-that is, they allow the cells precognitive knowledge, upon which present behavior is based. This applies not only individually, so that the cell knows its future pattern, for example; but in the same way, an entire species will unconsciously have the knowledge of its own "ideal" fulfillment in its overall world environment.

As specified, ego consciousness grew. These inner patterns, native to the psyche of any species, turned into concepts, mental images-intuitive projections that were all meant to give conscious direction. The gods served, then, as stimulators of development. Seemingly outside of the self, they were meant to lead the self into its greatest area of fulfillment. The god images would change as consciousness did. The various god concepts that have fallen by the wayside, so to speak, represent areas of development that were not chosen, in your terms, but they are still latent. The totem pole, for example, is a remnant from an era where there was much greater communication between man and the animals-when, in fact, men went to the animals to learn, and from them first acquired knowledge of herbs and corrective medicinal behavior.

(Long pause.) Historically, it seems to you that mankind was born from an animal's undifferentiated kind of consciousness into egotistical self-awareness. Instead, many types of consciousness existed in the period of which I am speaking. The animals chose to develop their own kind of consciousness, as you chose your own. Animal awareness may seem undifferentiated to you. It is however highly specific, poised in the moment, but so completely that in your terms past and future are largely meaningless.

The specific concentration, however, results in an exquisite focus. Ego consciousness lost part of that focus in comparison. The totem poles date back to the time when men and animals understood each other, before that point of departure. Physical species that existed and flourished in those epochs then became probable to you, for they did not develop in your system but became extinct. Their living relics exist in the god concepts that embodied them. Give us a moment...

(A one-minute pause at 10:28.) In one way or another all mythology contains descriptions of other species existing on the earth in various forms. This includes stories of fairies and giants, for example. Mythology tells you about the archaeology of your race psychically as well as physically. There were, then, smaller and larger species of men, 4 with varying conscious connections with the rest of nature. The larger experiments involved the production of a species that would be a part of the earth, and yet become aware co-creators of it. There were innumerable considerations, innumerable experiments, with size, brain capacity, neurological structure, and with a kind of consciousness flexible enough to change with its environment, and also vigorous enough to explore and alter that environment. Do you have that?

("Yes.")

The emerging consciousness had to have, latently at least, the capacity to become aware of world conditions. When man knew no more than a simple tribal life, his brain already had the capacity to learn anything it must, for one day it would be responsible for the life of a planet.

Such leeway left room for many probabilities and for many ''errors, '' but the developing consciousness had to be free to make its own judgments. It would not be programmed any more than necessary by "instinct." It was, however, biologically locked into earthly existence, and so meant to understand its natural heritage. It could not separate itself too much, then, or become overly arrogant. Its survival was so linked to the rest of nature that it would of necessity always have to return to that base. It responds to an inborn impetus for its own greatest fulfillment, and will automatically change directions in answer to its own experiments and experiences. There are great sweeping changes in religious concepts abroad in your times, and these represent man's innate knowledge. His consciousness-his psyche-is projecting greater images of his own probable fulfillment, and these are seen in his changing concepts of God.

You may take your break.

(10:4 7 P.M. Jane's trance bad been excellent. She was quite willing to continue the session, but I was tiring; we decided not to go on.)

Session 690, March 21, 1974, 9:32 PM. Thursday

(Jane had "no idea at all" of the material in the last session. She tried reading my notes for it now, since I had only one page typed from them, but couldn't decipher my homemade shorthand. She hadn't particularly felt like having a session last night so we ran errands instead. Tonight, Jane said, she'd try letting Seth come through, although she didn't think she was at her best. By 9:28, she sat "waiting to just get it clear.")

Now, good evening-

("Good evening, Seth.")

-and dictation... To be effective within your system of reality, consciousness must of course deal with specializations.

Beneath these, so to speak, the CU's (or units of consciousness) are aware of the different kinds of consciousness of which they are part. By their nature certain kinds of organization, behavior, and experimentation exclude other quite-as-valid but different approaches. The CU's, in their freewheeling nature beneath all matter, are acquainted with all such organizations, so that some of the lessons learned by one species are indeed transferred to another.

(Long pause.) One particular experiment in consciousness may be pursued by one species, for example, and that knowledge given to another, or transferred to another, where it appears as "instinct." Here it will be used as a basis for a different kind of behavior, exploration, or experiment. I have said that evolution does not exist as you think of it, in any kind of one-line, ape-to-man time sequence.' No other species developed in that manner, either. Instead there are parallel developments. Your time perception shows you but one slice of the whole cake, for instance.

In thinking in terms of consecutive time, however, evolution does not march from the past into the future. Instead, the species is precognitively aware of those changes it wants to make, and from the "future" it alters the "present" state of the chromosomes and genes2 to bring about in the probable future the specific changes it desires. Both above and below your usual conscious focus, then, time is experienced in an entirely different fashion, and is constantly manipulated, as physically you manipulate matter.

The CU's, forming the structure later in its entirety, form all the atoms, molecules, cells, and organs that make up your world. Land changes and alterations of species are conditions brought about in line with overall patterns that involve all species, or land and water masses, at any given "time." There is a great organization of consciousness involved on such occasions-sometimes creative cataclysms, in which, again from its own precognitive information, nature brings about those situations best suited to its needs. Such biological precognition is firmly based in the chromosomes and genes, and reflected in the cells. As mentioned earlier (in the 684th session) , the present corporal structure of any physical body of any kind is maintained only because of the cells' innate precognitive abilities. To the self the future, of course, is not experienced as future. It is simply one of the emerging conditions of an experienced Now (you had better capitalize that) . The cells' practically felt "Now" includes, then, what you would think of as past and future, as simple conditions of Nowness. They maintain the body's structure in your poised time only by manipulating themselves in a rich medium of probabilities. There is a constant give-and-take of communication between the cell as you know it in present'' , , time, and the cell as it was in the past, or "will be."

The cell's comprehension leaps its present form. The reality, the physical reality of a given cell, is the focused result of its existence before and after itself in time; and from its knowledge of past and future it receives its present structure.

(Long pause.) In a larger sense the same applies to any given species. You are your selves in time, then, because of the selves that exist before and after you in time. On a cellular basis this is true. In psychic terms it is also true. Your thoughts and feelings are quite as real as your cells. They also form organizations. Your desires go out from you in time, but in all directions. On the one hand as a species your present forms your future, but in even deeper terms your precognitive awareness of your own possibilities from the future helps to form the present that will then make that probable future your reality.

In physical terms you may want a new city, so now you begin urban renewal, colon: Architects draw plans that first were dreams, of course; inside their minds, preparations are begun, buildings torn down. In very simple terms the architect's dream can be called a precognitive event, inserted from a probable future into the present. The physical planning carried out is in line with the envisioned future, and brings it about. In greater terms the race has plans for itself; only these are based on a much vaster comprehension of the probable issues, abilities, and conditions involved. (Pause.) A people's recognized god represents such a psychic plan, projected out as an ideal. It will be followed by physical organizations, structures meant on a different level to help achieve such a "spiritual" evolution.

Because you dwell in time, however, the god image will also reflect the state of your consciousness as it "is, " as well as point toward the future state desired. The god concept will operate as a psychic and spiritual blueprint just like the architect's plan, only at a different level. Each species has within it such blueprints to varying degrees, and these are important, for they carry within them the idealized probabilities. They are valid, again, psychically and biologically. They will serve as biological patterns to the cells, as well as psychic stimuli in terms of consciousness.

Rest your hand a moment, and open our friend some beer.

(10:16. Jane lit a cigarette while I performed the necessary actions. She was still in trance.)

The spiritual and the biological cannot be separated. Their purposes and reality merge. Give us a moment... (Long pause at 10:19.) I will have much more to say concerning this later in the book. For now simply let me mention that any gods appearing among you must always be of your time, while expressing ideas and concepts that must shoot beyond your time into the future, and serve as psychic stimuli strong enough to effect future changes. When, in historic terms, the race was in the process of adopting a necessary artificial separation of itself from the rest of nature; when it needed to be assured of its abilities to do so; when it took upon itself the task of a particular kind of specialization and individual focus, it needed a religion that would assure it of its abilities.

The male-female tendencies at that time became psychically alienated from each other. The differences were exaggerated. The ancient mother-goddess concept became "unconscious"; the male, purposely forgetting the great natural aggressive thrust of birth, took physical aggression and force as his prerogative-for this came to represent the quality of ego consciousness in its need to physically manipulate its environment.

While it (ego consciousness) recognized its deep oneness with the earth and all creatures, it could not at the same time develop those abilities of specialization and its own particular unique focus. The growth of separate tribal cultures, for example, and later of nations, could emerge only through a sense of separation, and a certain kind of alienation. This, however, allowed for a diversity that could not otherwise be achieved under the accepted conditions. (Pause.) The seemingly local Jewish god (Yahweh/Jehovah) ended up in one way or another by destroying the Roman Empire, and in so doing brought about a complete reorganization of planetary culture.

Give us a moment, and rest your hand...

(10:35. Once again, Jane remained in trance during a short break. A little over an hour had passed.)

Christ, as he is known historically, psychically represented man's probabilities. His theories and teachings could be interpreted in many ways; they stood for kernels that man could sow as he wished. Because of Christ, there was an England-and an Industrial Revolution. The male aspects of Christ were the ones that Western civilization emphasized. Other portions of his teachings did not follow the main line of Christian thought, and were buried.

The church ignored Christ's physical birth, for example, and made his mother an immaculate virgin, which meant that the consciousness of the species would for a longer time ignore its relationship with nature and its feminine aspects. I am speaking now of mainline Western civilization. God the Father would be recognized and the Earth Goddess forgotten. There would be feudal lords, therefore, not seeresses. Period. Man would believe he did indeed have dominion over the earth as a separate species, for God the Father had given it to him.

Rising ego consciousness then would have its religious reasons for domination and control. The pope became God the Father personified, but that god had indeed changed from the old Jewish Jehovah. Christ, historically speaking, had altered that concept enough so that at least God the Father was not quite as capricious as Jehovah. (Pause.) Some mercy came to the forefront. Growing ego consciousness could not run rampant over nature. On the other hand, holy wars and ignorance would keep the population down. The church, however-the Roman Catholic Church-still held a repository of religious ideas and concepts that served as a bank of probabilities from which the race could draw. The religious ideas served as social organization, much needed, and many of the monks managed to preserve old manuscripts and knowledge underground. Those who were allied with religious principles, now, mainly survived, and brought forth communities and descendants who were protected. Psychic and religious ideas, then, despite many drawbacks, served as a method of species organization. They are far more important in terms of "evolution" than is recognized. Religious concepts from the beginning kept tribes together, provided social structures, and insured physical survival and the protection that made descendants most probable.

Take your break (louder) , or end the session as you prefer.

("We'll take the break, then."

(10:55. Jane's trance had indeed been deep, her pace usually good. Now she felt very much better. The material had been clear, she said, coming from that "certain necessary level" that she had to reach in order to do this book.

(She said the "buried" material about Christ and mainline Christian thought had to do with occult [meaning hidden] teachings and the Essenes, who were one of the four major Jewish sects known to exist in the Holy Land early in the first century, A.D. [see chapters 21 and 22 in Seth Speaks.] Jane added that she might have read speculative matter involving Christ, the occult, and the Essenes; and probably, we thought, many "secret teachings" have been attributed to Christ.

(Then we wondered whether Seth had referred to aspects of Christ's philosophy that were truly buried-quite unknown today. Almost always I refrain from interrupting the flow of session material with questions, but now I wished I'd asked Seth about that. Jane and I also liked the idea that from their earliest times, religious forces had been operating in the development of the species; this seemed to be a very sensible concept-and quite obvious once it was mentioned.

(Resume at 11:25.)

Now: Realize that for now I am emphasizing your Western civilization.

American democracy arises directly from the birth of Protestantism, for example, and a new kind of venture. Luther is as much responsible for the United States of America as George Washington is.

(Long pause.) Other democratic societies had existed in the past, but in them democracy was still based on one religious precept, though it might be expressed in different ways-as, for example, in the Greek city-states (in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.) . The Holy Roman Empire united a civilization under one religious idea, but the true brotherhood of man can be expressed only by allowing the freedom of man's thought under the banner of cooperation; and only this will result in the fulfillment of the species, with developments of consciousness that in your terms were latent from the beginning.

(11:29.) I am telling you that so-called evolution and religion are closely connected. Further developments in your concepts will lead to greater activation in portions of the brain now not nearly utilized, and these in turn will trigger expansions in both psychic and biological terms.

The growth of ideas space-wise was a prerequisite. Men on one side of the planet had to know what men were thinking on the other side. All of this presupposed spatial manipulation. Religious incentives always served to stimulate man's spatial curiosity (intently) .

Many of the species that share your world bear within themselves latent abilities that are even now developing. Men and animals will again meet upon the earth, with the old understanding in yet a new situation. There are no closed systems, and in deep biological orders each species knows what another is doing, and its place in the overall scheme that has been chosen by each. You are perceived in one way or another by all those inhabitants of earth you may consider beneath you. Probable man is emerging now, but also in relationship with his entire natural environment, in which cooperation is a main force. You are cooperating with nature whether or not you realize it, for you are a part of it.

End of dictation.

(Pause at 11:42.) Give us a moment...

(Seth now delivered a paragraph of material for Jane and me.)

End of session, and my heartiest regards. A fond good evening.

("Thank you, Seth. Good night." 11:44 P.M. Jane bad been really out.)

Session 691, March 25, 1974, 9:35 PM. P.M., Monday

(Neither Jane nor I could remember what last Thursday's session was about, and I had but one page of it typed from my notes-a situation quite similar to that prevailing before the last session. We were ready this evening by 9:20. At 9:30 Jane said she was starting to get "bleed-tbroughs" about Seth's material for tonight.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now: Dictation-and can't you do something about this?

(Seth indicated Jane's bangs, which were close to hanging over her eyes. I'd been meaning to trim them.

("Yes."

(Amused:) A word to the wise...

Your particular society has set up such an artificial division between intuitional and intellectual knowledge that only the intellectually apparent is given credence. With all of their dire faults and distortions, religions have at least kept alive the idea of unseen, valid worlds, and given some affirmation to concepts that are literally known by the cells. Period.

The conscious mind has always been aware of the cells'-

(At 9:39, the telephone began to ring insistently. I answered it while Jane came out of trance. The call was a followup to a long-distance one she'd taken shortly after supper tonight, and concerned a missing person and a government agency. No other details need be given here, except to say that the case was a complex one.

(Although she doesn't usually do such work because of the time required, as well as her own emotional attitudes, Jane had given impressions during the earlier call. She was told now that those impressions had checked out very well, so, in an exchange that lasted for three-quarters of an hour, she gave more such information. She finished with the tentative understanding that by midnight she'd receive another call, after there bad been time to check her second set of impressions. Jane laughingly told me that if the new data "wasn't good enough, " she'd probably never again bear from the people involved-but at this time we didn't realize what was to follow.

(I read her the material Seth bad given so far this eve-fling; at 10:30 she resumed the session as though there hadn't been any interruption at all:)

-comprehension, period. The invisible reality within the cell is what gives it its structure. The remarkable organization of the body in terms of its learning abilities, and adaptability, will never be understood unless the cells' precognitive comprehension is taken into consideration.1

This (precognitive ability) steers the cell through mazes of probabilities, while allowing it to retain knowledge of its own greatest fulfillment-the idea of itself, which is always alive in any given period of your time. On a different kind of scale, then, each individual has the same sort of idealized version of the self, and so does each species. Here I mean each species, and I am not simply referring to mankind. Obviously these are not apparent to the physical senses, yet they are strong energy centers that to some degree do stimulate the physical senses toward activity. To that degree, then, there are indeed "tree gods, " gods of the forest, and "gods of being" connected with each person.

Angels have been represented in just this fashion.

At one time there were also species of birds, however, with high intelligence-this before the period mentioned earlier.2 They were not humanoid; not, for example, people with wings. They were large birds, with the capacity for dealing with concepts. They were social, could swim well (pause) , and for some time could live on the water. They had songs of great beauty, and a most extensive vocabulary. They had talons.

(Her eyes wide and dark, Jane held up her bands, fingers bent as though ready to grasp-or claw.)

When he was a cave dweller, 3 man saw these birds often, particularly in cliffs by water. Many times the birds saved children from falling. Man identified with their easy flight up the cliffsides, and followed the sounds of their songs to safe clearings. These memories turned into the angel images. In each case in those times there was the greatest cooperation, on a global scale, between species. The inner impetus toward development, however, came from the innate comprehension of future probabilities. In that picture all species alive at any time joined. This included plants and fauna. Those who cooperated survived, but they did not think in terms of the survival of their own species alone-but, in time terms, of a greater living picture, or world inviolate, in which all survived.

There are various orders of existence even within your system itself. You merely focus upon the one to which you are oriented. There are, then, "spirits" of all natural things-but unfortunately, even when you consider such possibilities you project your own religious ideas of good and evil upon them. You may simply dismiss such concepts as silly, for they seem intellectually scandalous to many. If you do entertain such ideas yourself, you must often personify such spirits, projecting upon them your own ideas of personhood. Instead, you should think of them as different kinds or orders of species that are connected with all natural living things.

They certainly have a reality in energy, and they aid in the conversion of energy into physical terms. They are active rather than passive, then. You see about you physical forces and think nothing of them. For example: You feel the wind and its effects, but you cannot see it. The wind itself is invisible. So these other forces are also invisible. In basic terms they are no more good or evil than the wind is. I say this because you usually imagine that if something is good, there must be a countering force that is evil. Such is not the case. In greater terms these forces are good. They are protective. They nourish every living thing. They have been the impetus for what you think of as evolution. They are biological in that they are to some extent composed of mass cellular knowledge-basically free of time, but directing physical activity in time, and thereby maintaining physical equilibrium.

There is great cooperation, again, between such forces. In such a way one tree in a forest knows of the entire environment and its relationship in it. Its treeness can merge with soilness, for example.

(11:02. Again the telephone began to ring. It was the expected, if somewhat early, third call in the series already described. While Jane was coming out of trance once more, the caller told me about being "impressed" by her abilities-and, I thought privately, considerably surprised. When Jane came to the phone, she was informed that insofar as it was possible to verify her earlier data, practically all of it had been correct. Encouraged, she now gave additional impressions; these were more specific and personal. By the time she was finished it was 11:38.

(I suggested that she end the session, but she decided to sit for it again to "see what happens. "So, a minute later:)

Now: A bit more dictation.

(Pause.) Because you are people, you personify what you perceive-"peopleize" it. You imagine such "spirits" to be small people, endowed with your own kind of characteristics. Instead there are simply species of consciousness, entirely different from your own, not usually perceived physically under most conditions. They are indeed connected with flora and fauna, but also with the animals and yourselves, and they are the "earth gods" that Ruburt imagined as a young person.

You each have your own earth god. The term may not be the best, but it is meant to express that portion of you that is as yet unexpressed in your terms-the idealized earth version of yourself, which you are becoming. The idealized earth version is not meant to mean a perfect self in flesh at all; instead, it represents a psychic reality in which your own abilities fulfill themselves in relationship with your earthly environment to the fullest extent possible, within the time and place you have already chosen.

That earth-god portion of yourself attempts to direct you through probabilities. Again, on deep biological levels beneath normal consciousness, and on psychic levels above normal consciousness, you are aware of the integrity of your being-but also of your great connection, while living in flesh, with the natural environment of time and space. The earth-god concept can be consciously used, but only to your greatest advantage if you understand the purposes of your conscious mind and its relationship with your biological nature.

Your conscious mind tells you where you are in time and space, and directs your activity in a world of human action. That world has its own kind of rich complication, that is as unknown to the animals as is much of their acute realization unknown to you. Because you have a conscious mind, then, other portions of your being rely upon it to give them an adequate picture of your situation, and to give the conscious orders for action. These orders will then be carried out. To do this, you must use that mind as completely as possible. The picture of reality in time and space that you give to your cells must be accurate. They must act on a minute-to-minute, second-to-second, microsecond-to-microsecond basis, even though their own orientation is not familiar with your time concept.

End of dictation (heartily) . Short break. Then a few remarks, if you are up to it.

("Okay."

(12:18. Jane's trance had been excellent, her delivery strong and sure. And since we decided that we were up to it, Seth returned in a quarter of an hour with better than two pages of material for Jane and me. The session was finally over, then, at 12:50A.M.)

Session 692, April 24, 1974, 10:03 P.M., Wednesday

(See Appendix 10 for a summary of Jane's psychic work in connection with "the affair of the missing person", as we came to call it. She first encountered the event on the evening the last session, the 691st, was held. I've added a few quotes from Jane and Seth to the appendix material.

(On Wednesday, March 27, we received from Jane's publisher the page proofs for Seth's second book, The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book. No session was held that night. Actually, correcting the proofs-carefully scrutinizing well over 500 printed pages word by word, checking and rechecking notes, spelling, punctuation, and so forth-kept us so busy that we suspended the next eight scheduled sessions, covering a period of 26 days. Ordinarily Seth would have used those sessions to deliver work on "Unknown" Reality. We disliked interrupting our creative rhythms in that fashion, although in the meantime Jane kept ESP class going as usual, coming through as Seth and as Sumari within that context. And we told ourselves that Seth was perfectly capable of resuming work on "Unknown" Reality whenever we were ready to do so, whether the time lapse involved one week or six months.

(Such was the case, of course. And once again, Seth used a "fresh "event-a dream experience of mine that transpired on the third night following the last session-as a basis for his book dictation tonight.

(On Friday morning, March 29, 1 told Jane that sometime during the previous night I had awakened with the certain knowledge that I'd just finished having two dreams at once. I retained conscious memory of one of them for just a moment before it irrevocably faded. Neither Jane nor I remembered bearing of, or experiencing, what I'll call double dreaming. I wrote an account of the phenomenon while wondering if I'd distorted some quite ordinary dream happening-and while knowing at the same time that I hadn't. I decided to ask Seth to discuss the two dreams when we went back to having sessions again, then forgot about them until I got around to rereading my first rough version of these notes last week. [When Seth discusses my "dreams" in this session, however, it turns out that from his perspective he's able to be more accurate about labeling them than I was.]

(Before finishing the notes I thought of asking a few other people if they had either heard of double dreaming, or had experienced it. The first person I talked to was our friend Sue Watkins, who bas attended ESP class almost from the time Jane started it in 1967. I was more than a little surprised when Sue said that she'd enjoyed such events several times. Jane and I have known Sue since 1965, yet as far as any of us could remember [and for whatever reasons], the subject of double dreaming had never been discussed among us.

(But not only had she done it more than once, Sue said: She could recall portions of the simultaneous dreams she'd bad on some of those occasions, which was a lot more than I could claim. Grinning, she proceeded to confound me further by describing the double dreams of another class member-since, obviously, the individual in question had also had certain dream adventures that Jane and I didn't know about. I ended up thinking that my own little experience hadn't amounted to so much after all; but still, it had made Jane and me aware of another facet of dream life. See Note 2 for any other information on double dreams that I may assemble, as well as for an excerpt from the description Sue wrote [at my request] of a multiple-dream happening of her own.

(Dreaming two at once led me to write down a second question for Seth. I wanted him to enlarge upon the statement he'd made at 11:29 in the 690th session: "Further developments in your concepts will lead to greater activation in portions of the brain now not nearly utilized, and these in turn will trigger expansions in both psychic and biological terms." I wondered what connection, if any, might exist between the capacity to have [and/or to remember] more than one dream at a time, and those "portions of the brain now not nearly utilized."

(I read my two questions to Jane as we waited for tonight's session to begin. She listened carefully, then said that "there's something there on the dreams "-meaning that Seth was around, was aware of our conversation, and would probably comment. Actually, Jane bad grown very relaxed since suppertime; so much so that she'd considered skipping the session. She decided not to because of the time we'd missed lately. We waited. Jane sipped from a glass of wine. Then, taking off her glasses, she was in trance.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now, to begin with your dream: The entity is aware of the experiences of all of its personalities. Give us a moment...

To the entity, your own consciousness could be likened to one stream of consciousness, in your terms. The greater part of your own identity, then, is completely aware of all of your conscious and unconscious living material. It is also aware of the same kind of data from all of (its and your) parts.

Because you identify your experience with the regular line of consciousness with which you are familiar, you are rarely able to "bring in" any "other-self" material and hold it while retaining your own sense of identity. Such material may at times bleed or intrude into your own thought, where it blends and is not recognized. In such cases, it takes on the coloration of your own thought patterns. It adds to the overall atmosphere of your being. Without understanding or training, you would have to "lose" your own consciousness in order to perceive the "other-consciousness."

There is a correlation here with something Ruburt said in [ESP] class last evening. He said that writing can be, first, a method of standing apart from life to some extent-in order to capture life, and preserve the unutterable uniqueness of any given day. But, he said, you can then discover that the writing itself becomes the day's experience. You are then "lost" in the writing as much as you feared being lost in normal living, with no way to step aside and view the experience. My addition, now, to those remarks is this: You would need the creation then of another "self, " who stood aside from the writing self in order to preserve the original intent.

Now: In the same way you could not, practically speaking, experience such other-consciousness (with a hyphen) unless you learned to stand somewhat aside, like the writer in Ruburt's remarks. Period. But even if you did, the very experience of other-consciousness itself would supersede your living space. You would need another self, able to hold both lines of consciousness at once, lost in neither but maintaining footing in each. This would be a very difficult achievement in normal life in any sustained fashion.

Now: In the dream state your specialized focus need not be as precise or time-oriented as in the waking state.

(10:20.) In your case, you did perform an excellent accomplishment. You were aware of the simultaneous dreams, each being experienced in alternate realities. You could not at this point remember both dreams, because the physical brain apparatus could not handle the simultaneous data. This has reference to portions of the brain not used, as mentioned in this book.

At certain levels the brain can handle simultaneous material, of course, even though you may be conscious of only a smattering of it. The body is aware of multitudinous simultaneous stimuli that consciously escape you, and is able to act on the information. This includes all kinds of sense data that are not consciously pertinent. (Intently:) Because of the particular kind of ego-orientation that the race decided upon, however, many probabilities of development inherent in the species have been latent. Inherently the physical brain is capable of dealing with more than one main line of consciousness. This does not mean the development of dual personality, by the way. It means the further expansion of the concept of identity: "You" would not only be aware of the you that you have always known, in the same way that you are now, but a deeper sense of identity would also arise.

That identity would contain the you that you have always known, and in no way threaten it. The new you would simply be more than you are now. You would just have another expansion of consciousness, another self-who-is-aware-of-being in the same way that-using an analogy, granted-the writer is aware of the self who lives, in those terms; is the self who lives while being in a position of some apartness, able to comment upon the life being lived.

Now in a very small way, admittedly, that analogy hints at the kind of deeper events that occur as selves are born Out of selves to operate in various levels of activity. In the case of entities, each such self dwells entirely in its own dimension or system of reality.

(To me:) You are, in a rudimentary fashion, beginning to open up those unused areas of the brain, or you would not have even been aware of the fact of two simultaneous dreams. Language and your verbal thought patterns make such translations highly difficult, however, even in the best of circumstances. A multilingual individual, in that regard at least, might have some idea of how concepts are structured through verbal pattern, and hence possess some additional freedom in such translations-provided of course that he or she was aware of the possibilities to begin with.

Now: One experience was a dream of your own, in usual terms. The other "dream" experienced simultaneously was, instead, your muddled interpretation of vital experienced reality on the part of another portion of yourself, in another reality entirely; a dimensional bleed-through. Once you are aware of such experience, most likely you will also have others in "your" dream state.

Now: Take a break or end the session as you prefer.

("Let's take a break, then."

(10:43. Jane took a few moments to come out of a deep trance. Her delivery bad been steady, almost fast. "I have a pretty good idea of what was said, " she told me. "And just before the session, I knew what Seth would say about your dream experience. Not that I could tell you now what be did say-but still I contained that knowledge somehow... "She alsoknew that the dream event tied in with my question about the "unused "portions of the brain.

(Jane was still very relaxed, so I asked her again if she wanted Seth to say something about her state. She decided to see what developed. Her head kept dipping down; she yawned, blinking; her bands, she said, felt "like water." At times such signs have marked the beginning of a pronounced altered state of consciousness for her, but she added that she wasn't going into "a psychedelic experience" now.

(Resume at 10:59.)

Now (quietly) : In the waking state you would find such an experience highly threatening without some suitable preparation-and I must be very cautious in my treatment of your concepts of the self and your ideas of one-personhood.

I am not speaking of you personally, Joseph, so much as I am emphasizing that the race at present identifies its individual being with highly limited concepts of the self. Those ideas are vigorously protected, and indeed must be understood and given honor even while attempts are made to expand them. Period. Certainly the quality of consciousness has changed through the centuries in many different ways, and sometimes in what would appear to be contradictory ones; but in your present you have nothing against which to compare your current consciousness of experience.

To a very limited extent, the different civilizations and cultures with which you are historically familiar represent a dim glimmering of the various qualities of consciousness and their varieties of experience. But as there are physical species, so there are what you may call species of consciousness also (intently) .

(11:08.) There are even now in your species a number of different kinds of consciousness; different in that the physical life-situation is qualitatively experienced in ways that are not native to you in your culture; different in that the entire fabric of meaning, interpretation, experience, and life itself is "alien" to the kind of experience with which you are familiar. This does not mean that such differences occur as the result of cultural backgrounds or situations, for some such individuals exist within your own culture, and some with your kind of consciousness exist in cultures where they are a minority. I am simply saying that on your earth now there are species of consciousness, though that is probably not the best term. You have been so obsessed with exterior differences, especially of color and nationality, that you have completely ignored these other far more important variations in the form that consciousness takes in relation to physical life within your race-the race of man.

(Pause at 11:15.) In terms of your personal experience, the Sumari6 is a case in point. The members of each "species"-and you had better put that in quotes-of consciousness relate to physical experience in their characteristic ways, even viewing time, space, and action differently. They orient to their bodies in their own particular manners. Each group does possess a different relationship with the body, with nature, and with the world in general.

Give us a moment... (Still in trance, Jane lit a cigarette.) Your stratified concepts of one-personhood overlook all such inherent differences, however, and you have a tendency to transpose your own concepts whenever you come in contact with those whose ideas you cannot understand. Even now in some "tribal societies, " for example, the self is experienced far differently; so that, while so-called individuality as you understand it is maintained, each self is also experienced as a part of others in the tribe, and the natural environment. To some, this seems to mean that individuality is stillborn or undeveloped. You protect your ideas of selfhood at all costs-even against the evidence of nature, which shows you that all are related.

Uniqueness, private experience, and individuality attain their dimensions of being and their true grandeur only when the inherent relationships among all elements of being are understood. You fight against your own greater individuality, and the spacious dimensions of your own being, when you overprotect your ideas of selfhood by limiting the experience of the self.

Now: That is the end of the session. My heartiest regards to you both.

("Okay. Good night, Seth."

(11:29 P.M. Jane had really been under. "Boy, I was getting that stuff through clear as a bell, " she said finally. "But then it stopped and the session was over, all at once "Her very enjoyable state of relaxation continued.)

Session 693, April 29, 1974, 9:45 PM. P.M., Monday

(Just before she went into trance, Jane said to me: "I've got something fascinating for you...)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now, give us a moment... In one way or another throughout this book, we will be dealing with history as you know it and as you do not know it. We will be discussing it in terms of the "past" of your species.

In many ways history is your built-in past, the obvious events that are significant. All of the different variations that can be played upon human consciousness, all of the racial probabilities, are in one way occurring in ages past-but they are also happening in what you think of as your present. As mentioned earlier (in sessions 680-82) , your consciousness seizes upon certain events over others and brings these into significance, and therefore into the official reality that you know.

New paragraph: Even in your private lives, however, there are clues as to other kinds of sequences in which events can occur-and do. You are usually unaware of the significance of such hints. They pass beneath your notice simply because they do not fit the ordered sequence with which you are familiar. In your idea of reality such clues appear insignificant. They make no sense, particularly in the ordered scheme of reality generally recognized.

Your cellular structure is innately able to follow such sequences. Believing such clues to be meaningless, the conscious mind does not perceive them, or calls them coincidences. Such clues in your intimate daily life, however, looked at in a different way, can tell you much about the potentials of the species, and give you glimpses of other systems of reality in which human consciousness can respond. I am here using an incident from the experience of Ruburt and Joseph, but the reader can make his or her own correlations, and discover like events from which the same conclusions can be drawn.

New paragraph. Driving through Sayre, Pennsylvania, one Sunday afternoon, Joseph noticed a house for sale in a neighborhood he knew-and remembered that it had belonged, in his memory, to a man of whom his mother had been fond. On impulse, Joseph had Ruburt call the real estate firm whose sign was on the house. The house was still owned by the man in question. Joseph only remembered his mother speaking of this gentleman in the past. In the recognized reality shared by the Butts family there had been no intimate contact between Joseph's mother and Mr. Markle (as I'll call him) . Joseph's mother had been greatly struck by the man, however, and was convinced that she could have married him instead of the husband she had chosen. Through the years she fantasized such a situation. Mr. Markle was, and is, wealthy. Now of course he is an old man, unable to tend to his home any longer. He is now in a home for the aged, but well cared for.

Joseph felt strong leanings toward Mr. Markle's home. Though the price was quite high, Ruburt and Joseph thought about buying it, and were taken through the home by the real estate people. A coincidence-a mere trick of fate that Joseph could be walking through the old man's home, 2 and that Mr. Markle would be spending his last time in a nursing home, as had Joseph's mother-meaningless but evocative that this house was for sale, and that the old man was insisting upon a price higher than the house is worth, just as Joseph's mother insisted upon a high price for her own home, and determined to get it.3 Period. That is how it looked from the outside. It appeared to be one of life's curious incidents.

(10:12.) Instead you have a rich interweaving of probabilities; for in one probability the two were indeed married, and that Stella [Butts] saw the house go to the eldest son (myself) . In this probability, this Joseph instead comes upon the house of a relative stranger, finds it for sale, and can or cannot purchase it according to the new set of probabilities then emerging. There is a cross-blending of "effects." In this probability Joseph's mother left little in financial terms, relatively speaking, and her house was sold. The family did not get it.

(Humorously:) Now, all probabilities are related. Joseph's mother is dead, in your terms, and aware to some extent of the nature of her own reality beyond the physical. She is able, again to some extent, to follow through with her own probable existences: That is, she is conscious of her own being outside of the official framework.

Her own psychology and characteristic methods of behavior are still hers, however, and operate, so that "she" "tunes into" those areas of probabilities that concern her own desires and interests. In this system she wanted Joseph to have her own house (see Note 1) , but for many reasons that did not develop.

(Pause.) It was, then, at her behest to some strong degree that Joseph happened upon the (Markle) house in question, felt that he did indeed want it, and took the steps that he did in his reality.

(Her eyes dark, Jane held up her empty glass.)

Keep him in trance...

(She bad been sipping beer. Now she sat quietly waiting while I got another bottle from the refrigerator.)

Do you want to rest your fingers?

("No.")

If your mother did not get the man and the wealth, then-to her way of thinking, now-you can still get the house that she fantasized was her own during her life.

(I had to laugh a bit, for Seth's description of my mother's thinking processes was so very characteristic of her.)

She often dreamed of living in it. On a mental level and an emotional one, she used that probability in this life to enrich her own hours through daydreaming-but without, of course, any realization that those daydreams had their own reality.

Even now she wants Joseph to have a finer home than either of his brothers has-(emphatically and amused:) you can cut that if you want.

New paragraph: This is, however, a clear case of the interweaving of probabilities. In this one Joseph can choose whether to buy or not, so there is no coercion (by Stella Butts) , for example. Joseph and Ruburt were also shown a second house in Sayre-one a good deal cheaper, but generally much like the one in which Joseph's mother lived in this life. They saw both houses on the same day. The second, like the first, was for sale because of age: An elderly couple recently moved from the second house to a home for the aged. Again, the "official" mind says, "Coincidence. All of this is quite natural: Many homes are for sale because the elderly can care for them no longer."

(Pause at 10:33.) The second house had no garage, and was not in as fashionable a neighborhood, but it had its own elegance. It made Ruburt, now, laugh, with its odd nooks and crannies. Give us a moment... That house did not have the weight of Stella's intent upon it, yet it was also a house that she had noticed, thinking it more grand than her own-one in which she could have been happy. It was her second choice.

The real estate couple (the Johnsons) were also connected. Again, the official mind says that it was a coincidence that this couple were, in their way, artistically inclined, enjoyed painting and writing, free-lanced, and still lived in an apartment after some years of marriage-and that the man was relatively quiet in contrast to the woman (with amusement) . Yet again probabilities merge, for the woman could well have been a writer, the man an artist; and seeing Ruburt and Joseph, they related with other probabilities inherent in their own natures.

The intent [that] Joseph's mother had lives beyond the grave, in those terms. She still wants Joseph to have a house, and one that will be more fashionable and wealthy than her own. Now Mr. Markle, a wealthy businessman, also had strong artistic abilities. He was a dealer in precious stones and fine antiques.

These qualities attracted Joseph's mother, Stella, and with the situation as she set it up in that life she was impressed, knowing that the man's talents would bring him wealth. His artistic leanings caused him to choose real estate people who had latent artistic abilities of their own.

Give us a moment... (Jane, as Seth, took the time to light a cigarette.)

As the two couples talked, it turned out that there were other "coincidences": Ruburt and Joseph had recently thought of taking a weekend vacation at a particular resort motel, within the general area but not especially close by. This real estate couple had been forced to spend a night at the same resort due to poor weather, at a time when a psychic was featured as an entertainer.

This psychic startled the couple by correctly identifying some specific elements of their experiences, so there was some kind of psychic connection also. Again, of course, coincidence. So says the officially organized mind. The rich interweavings of probabilities are apparent in all of your lives if only you stop organizing your perceptions and experience in prepackaged ways (emphatically) .

The many directions possible for the species exist now. Joseph reacted on a cellular level in one respect. The cells recognized the probable reality involved, 6 and he, Joseph, felt that he was "at home" (in the Markle place) , and yet consciously could not explain the feeling. In certain terms his mother will feel vindicated if Joseph buys that house, but the choice is still his and Ruburt's. If you pay more attention to what you think of as coincidences, you will discover another kind of order that underlies the recognized order you follow. This has all kinds of implications biologically as far as the species is concerned; you can perhaps understand, then, that there are also probable histories beneath your lives, individually and en masse.

The neurologically unrecognized orders can show themselves once you recognize their reality. Then your sense data will begin to confirm what has not been confirmed thus far.

Take your break. (Smiling:) I have mercy on your fingers.

(10:58. "I feel funny, "Jane said. Her trance had been very deep, her delivery rather fast for the most part. She inhaled repeatedly now, as though taking in extra air. "I was really out-he could have kept me under for four hours.. ." She explained that just before the session began she'd received glimmerings of the material to come, but hadn't had time to tell me about it. Certainly neither of us had expected Seth to go into the affair involving the two houses in Sayre.

(We haven't talked a great deal about the probable ramifications inherent in the whole house episode-rather, we expected such concepts to operate if the Seth material has any validity. Our ways of thinking have changed considerably since these sessions began over a decade ago. Every so often Jane and I remind ourselves of just how much of a change there has been for each of us; this helps us relate our individual worlds to those of others. Neither of us believes in chance or coincidence in usual terms, for instance-nor have we since Seth began discussing the elements behind such qualities some years ago. We always assign reasons, even if they're bidden at times, for any action. [And often, we've discovered, further observation will bear out those reasons.] This way of thinking led to our taking the chain of circumstances involving the two houses almost for granted; each unfolding had seemed to fall so effortlessly into place that deep questioning hadn't been called for: "Oh, of course-things would work out that way..."

(As of now we think it unlikely that we'll buy either of the houses. We haven't asked Seth what to do, and do not plan to. There are more "coincidences" involved than those Seth described tonight, none of them consciously known to Jane and me before the Sayre adventure: Mr. Markle is in a nursing home but a few miles from where we live in Elmira, and my mother spent her last days in a similar home less than 15 miles away; one of Mr. Markle's children lives in Elmira, and is connected with a store Jane and I have visited; Mr. Johnson, of the real estate couple that conducted us about in Sayre, did sign painting and truck lettering as a younger man, as I did; he and I had several mutual acquaintances in Sayre, among them an older artist of some reputation-and now deceased-that we bad known in our high school days; and so forth.

(Then Seth went into another "house connection" after break ended at 11:24:)

Give us a moment... The apartment house in which Ruburt and Joseph presently reside has a shared driveway.

In certain terms it is the connection, the symbol, between the two probability systems, for Mr. Markle's house also has a shared drive. Ruburt and Joseph live in double apartments, in a large old mansion redone into such quarters. The driveway is shared with a very wealthy family next door, in which the same size house is a home to one family. Joseph's mother wanted Joseph to be very wealthy. The drive symbolically connects the two realities, and is a point where the two merge.

Give us a moment...

(Pause at 11:28. This was the end of book dictation. As we bad requested that be do just before the session, Seth directed his final delivery to some other material for Jane and me. He finished at exactly midnight.

(A note: Since the next session was held before I was through typing this one from my notes, I can add that in the 694th session Seth deals with some of the obvious questions we had about my mother's role in our house affairs.)

Session 694, May 1, 1974, 9:29 PM. Wednesday

("Well, " Jane said, indicating two points in front of her as we sat waiting for the session to begin, "there's book stuff there [to the left], and stuff on me there [to the right]. But that's funny: I don't think of Seth being over there-just the information. It's as though I wait for the material to fall into a slot; then Seth, who's here"-she touched her belly-" deals with it.

("I can sense the information outside of me, say, but I can't get it in my regular state of consciousness. When Seth comes through he's at the same level the material's at, and be-or I-can then pull it in... It's as though there's a store of information there, but I have to go through a door of consciousness to reach it."

(Jane's delivery was rather slow as the session started.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now: Dictation (whispering, eyes closed) . Give us a moment...

The relatively insignificant example of probable events and their interaction just given (in the last session) provides a few important clues to the nature of probabilities in general. An organization is definitely present, but it is not the kind of order you are used to recognizing. This small private experience is repeated endlessly with different variations in all areas of daily living-that is, probable events constantly interact, and (intently) through their interaction you end up with one recognized series of episodes that you accept, called physical reality.

Underneath this recognized order of events, however, there is actually a Vast field of ever-occurring action. These fields of probabilities are action sources for your reality; but your world-action is also a source for these other probabilities.

This applies at all levels, mental and biological. Probabilities involve the atoms and molecules, therefore, and the cells. They involve thoughts also, as well as more obviously physical events. Your bodies are probable-constructs (hyphenate that if you want to) , in that they exist only because of the atoms' appearance at certain points of probability. At other levels the atoms do not exist at those same points, and your bodies there (Jane leaned forward for emphasis) are not the same physical constructs. They do not, then, exist there.

Scientifically, with all your instruments, you are thus far able to perceive the atom's presence only in the field of your own system of probability. Since you perceive physically through the body, which is atomically structured, then of course your sense perceptions lead you to block out recognition of other probable stimuli or reactions. In his book Adventures in Consciousness, Ruburt mentions what he calls "prejudiced perception." It is an excellent term in this regard.

(Long pause.) Give us a moment... (Another long pause.) Some of this is difficult to verbalize. The EE units within matter, within the atoms and molecules, are aware of the probable fields of action that are possible. While the body's integrity must lie in a constant reiteration in one probability, and maintain within that probable system a certain "constant, " and while physically perception is largely directed there, the basic integrity of the body system and consciousness comes from outside the system into it. Period.

(Seth-Jane finished the last sentence on a note of triumph, after indicating all of its punctuation.)

The atoms, while behaving properly within the system, and seeming to adhere to its rules and assumptions, nevertheless actually straddle probabilities. Your time structures, then, are intimately connected with probable action and fields of actuality. In your terms, for example, it would seem as if Joseph could not have seen that house for sale until after a given series of events had occurred. It would seem as if all of this was dependent upon earlier events: his mother's prior meeting with Mr. Markle years ago, when both were young; her daydreams and fantasies in later years; her own death; Mr. Markle's old age, and his own abandonment of the home.

(10:00.) In your terms it seems that all of that had to happen before the house was put up for sale, so that Joseph, passing by only a few days ago, could see the sign and decide to look at the house. In much more basic terms all events exist at once, even as atoms and molecules appear at once in all probable positions. The body, behaving in time, uses a time structure and acts in it naturally as its "constant" structure endures in time. So in that framework time was experienced-and using that organizational structure, time seems to unite those events.

Give us a moment... Those events then arise into significance because of the peculiar kind of organization chosen. Other quite-as-valid events do not seem significant-they do not rise into perception, or reality. They exist, however. In one reality, for example, Joseph's mother married Mr. Markle. Joseph inherited the home. In that reality Mr. Markle died before Joseph's mother did, so there was no need for a Joseph, here, to even look for a house; he had one. In that reality Joseph did not marry Ruburt. And in this reality [the one you and Ruburt know] Ruburt instinctively felt apart from that house.

("Can I ask a question?" I disliked interrupting the flow of material, but this was a good time to mention what bad been on my mind since P.M., Monday night.)

Yes.

("Well, I know you said in the last session [just before 10:33] that from her non physical reality my mother isn't trying to coerce Jane and me into buying Mr. Markle's house-yet I keep wondering what others will think about the idea of influence being felt in our reality from 'the other side, ' you might say-")

Write your question down, and I will answer it.

("Go ahead. I can write it out later. "And Seth proceeded to deal with the question in his own way.)

I made it clear that the decision rested with Joseph and Ruburt. But more than that, the whole question of a house of that kind brought into their own lives questions of values and prerogatives that were of great importance. They needed to encounter their own positions on such issues. Joseph was unconsciously aware of the first house [of the two in Sayre] , and could have chosen not to drive down that particular street, for example. Both he and Ruburt have thought relatively little about money or social status. They have lived an apartment life instead, with little care for appearances. Yet there is always pressure in your society toward the acquisition of fashionable homes, and material possessions are often considered the medal of ability.

Give us a moment... Financially, Ruburt and Joseph were beginning to do well. Only then did conventional ideas come to the forefront. Those ideas themselves emotionally attracted certain aspects of Joseph's mother. Quite simply, in her terms, she wanted her son to do well, and to her that meant possessing an excellent home. Period. On her part it was an innocent enough ambition.

When she sensed any strong feelings that Joseph also wanted such a home, then - in your terms now - she began, from her different framework after death, to bring that opportunity into his experience. This is not manipulation. It does show, however, that one portion of Joseph's mother, the portion connected to her son, still relates to him in a certain fashion. It also shows that his desires for a house in Sayre (deeper and stronger) helped bring about certain events: He could have such a house if he wanted one.

The episode also mirrored his beliefs, for to his way of thinking he would have to relinquish certain freedoms, and this he was not ready to do. The events basically exist at once, though at your level you have to perceive them in time. As your intimate daily reality can be involved with and colored by probabilities, brought into your experience by your own desires and beliefs, so is your mass culture, world history, and species orientation colored by probable events that do not fit into your officially recognized idea of physical reality.

Alternate man, probable man, alternate you's, probable you's - these issues apply individually as well as in terms of the species, and they apply to your future as well as to your past.

Give us a moment, and give yourself a moment.

(A one-minute pause.) The greatest scientific discoveries are always "accidents." They come from intuitional creativity, when suddenly a new kind of significance is seen that was not "earlier" predictable. You accept all data that fit your theories, and ignore clues to the contrary. Yet underneath it all you are significance-making creatures, pattern-formers, immersed in time but basically apart from it, and so new insights come into your awareness and literally change the quality of any given reality at any given time.

Take your break.

(10:34. Jane, in a deep trance, had spoken for over an hour. I told her I thought "Unknown" Reality was excellent. "But I'm out of it on this one, " she said, explaining that she didn't know it well consciously, had little idea of its structure, and couldn't particularly say what was to come in it. In contrast. her involvement with Seth's last book, Personal Reality, bad been much more intimate during its production.

(We discussed the general implications of Seth's material on my mother-that she was not only "alive" after her "death, " but that a portion of her was focused upon Jane and me. Jane had allowed Seth to talk about the whole situation in a more personal way than she usually does; the result is that we already have more data on Stella Butts than on the earlier deaths of Jane's own parents [in 1971 and 1972], for instance.4 We knew that Seth wouldn't continue describing my mother and her present reality indefinitely; such a study could easily grow into a book by itself. In addition, Jane holds deeply felt convictions about giving material on survival personalities; the information in Appendix 10 at (2. has a bearing here. I also think that Seth will be able to say more on the beliefs behind her feelings as this book progresses.

(Seth delivered the information in the next three paragraphs quite forcefully. Resume at 10:50)

Joseph's mother is not only alive in another level of reality, but still learning. She is quite aware, therefore, of his decision not to buy the [Markle] house. In her level of reality, she was aware of the fact that Joseph wanted the house strongly; that one portion of him thought of possessing a large home, even though this would require upkeep and attention that another part of him did not want to provide because he felt it would take too much time from his painting and our work.

The portion that momentarily desired the house immediately attracted the same kind of desire always felt on the part of Joseph's mother. This, on another level of activity than physical, reactivated old conflicts between them. For a while their desires united them. Now, however, Stella Butts is better able to understand her son's reactions. Through his decision in this reality, she is finally beginning to glimpse the reasons for his actions in the past, that before were incomprehensible to her.

Try to understand that all of these reactions are really happening at once... Joseph's desire at this end attracted his mother's like desire. (Pause.) In your terms, however, the reactions continue.

Now give us a moment...

(11:00. Book work was over for the evening. Jane paused in trance, then proceeded to deliver a good amount of material on several other matters. The session ended at 11:43 P.M.)

Session 695, May 6, 1974, 9:29 PM. P.M., Monday

(On Saturday evening, May 4, Jane briefly came through with some trance information of her own. At least Seth wasn't overtly present. The last time she'd done this had been early on March 4; her material then was on parallel man, alternate man, and probable man; Seth mentioned it that same eve-fling in the 687th session, and it furnished the basis for Section 2 of this volume. [The material itself is presented as Appendix 6.]

(It isn't necessary to quote Jane's delivery of Saturday evening, however. It came about because we'd been discussing our deceased parents and probabilities, in connection with the first two sessions [6 79-80] of "Unknown" Reality. To launch his book Seth bad used a childhood photograph of each of us. The night before last, then, I told Jane about my idea of asking Seth to comment upon early photographs of her parents, Marie and Delmer, to see what would develop in the material.

(We discussed the data given above as we waited for tonight's session to begin. "Seth's book reminds me of an old-fashioned diary, " I remarked, "but with a new twist-that of probabilities." I continued that I was somewhat concerned because the notes for Unknown" Reality were running considerably longer than they bad for either Seth Speaks or Personal Reality. Yet I felt there were reasons for this, and had chosen to go along. Jane agreed. She said the notes were intended to furnish a mundane account of our lives that would "parallel" Seth's more complicated data on probabilities and other concepts. She thought he would have more to say on the subject of notes later in the book.

(Right after this exchange ended tonight at 9:03, Jane told me that she was going to dictate additional material "herself. "She asked me to write it down:

("What we know of the species can be compared to what we know about ourselves as individuals. In one way both concepts are on the same level, and deal with realities in consecutive time sequences. The individual, like the species, exists in multidimensional terms; and hovers around focuses of probabilities, weaving in and out of alternate realities constantly.

("A photograph of a given person represents one experienced probable identity, focused in a recognized time sequence. Its validity is dependent upon the other invisible snapshots not taken, even as the given notes that make up a symphony are important because of the implied notes not actually used.

("In the same way, a 'picture' of the species represents only one version of the species, 'snapped' in a particular time sequence, valid because of the invisible realities not focused upon, but upon which reality rides."

(In a few moments Jane left her altered state of consciousness. "I don't know where that came from, " she said, laughing, "but anything you want to know, just ask... "At this time we're content to keep a record of such instances while "Unknown" Reality grows. Echoes of Saturday night's experience do show up in tonight's session, although it doesn't appear that the material will have the long-range effects of Jane's March 4 delivery.

(At 9:15 1 read the last session to Jane from my notes, since I hadn't started typing it yet. She was in a most relaxed state as she listened, yet intended to have a session. "I'm just waiting to get it clear...

Now, Good evening-("Good evening. Seth. ", )

-and dictation:

PRACTICE ELEMENT 2

I would like each reader to try two exercises. First of all, take any incident that happens to you the day you read this page. See the particular chosen event as one that came into your experience from the vast bank of other probable events that could have occurred.

Examine the event as you know it. Then try to trace its emergence from the thread of your own past life as you understand it, and project outward in your mind what other events might emerge from that one to become action in your probable future. This exercise has another part: When you have finished the procedure just given, then change your viewpoint; see the event from the standpoint of someone else who is also involved. No matter how private the experience seems, someone else will have a connection with it. See the episode through his or her eyes, then continue with the procedure just given, only using this altered viewpoint.

No one can do this exercise for you, but the subjective results can be most astonishing. Aspects of the event that did not appear before may be suddenly apparent. The dimensions of the event will be experienced more fully.

Give us a moment...

(Now Seth went into material that Jane had touched upon during our conversation last Saturday evening, in addition to giving her dictated information.)

PRACTICE ELEMENT 3

For the second exercise, take a photograph of yourself and place it before you. The picture can be from the past or the present, but try to see it as a snapshot of a self poised in perfect focus, emerging from an underneath dimension in which other probable pictures could have been taken. That self, you see, emerges triumphantly, unique and unassailable in its own experience; yet in the features you see before you-in this stance, posture, expression-there are also glimmerings, tintings or shadings, that are echoes belonging to other probabilities. Try to sense those.

PRACTICE ELEMENT 4

Now: Take another photograph of yourself at a different age than the first one you chose. Ask yourself simply:

"Am I looking at the same person?" How familiar or how strange is this second photograph? How does it differ from the first one you picked this evening? What similarities are there that unite both photographs in your mind? What experiences did you have when each photograph was taken? What ways did you think of following in one picture that were not followed in the other one? Those directions were pursued. If they were not pursued by the self you recognize, then they were by a self that is probable in your terms. In your mind follow what directions that self would have taken, as you think of such events. If you find a line of development that you now wish you had pursued, but had not, then think deeply about the ways in which those activities could now fit into the framework of your officially accepted life.2 Such musings, with desire-backed up by common sense-can bring about intersection points in probabilities that cause a fresh realignment of the deep elements of the psyche. In such ways probable events can be attracted to your current living structure.

(9:40.) We have been speaking about probable men, and do intend to deal more deeply with probable man [or woman], as that is applied to your species. The events of the species begin with the individual, however. All of the powers, abilities, and characteristics inherent in the species are inherent in any individual member of it. Through understanding your own unknown reality, therefore, you can learn much about the unknown reality of the species.

PRACTICE ELEMENT 5

Now: Choose another photograph. I want you to look at this one somewhat differently. This should also be a photograph of yourself. See this as one picture of yourself as a representative of your species in a particular space and time. Look at it as you might look at a photograph of an animal in its environment. If the photograph shows you in a room, for example, then think of the room as a peculiar kind of environment, as natural as the woods. See your person's picture in this way: How does it merge or stand apart from the other elements in the photograph? See those other elements as characteristics of the image, view them as extended features that belong to you. If the photograph is dark, for example, and shows shadows, then in this exercise see those as belonging to the self in the picture.

Imaginatively, examine your image from the viewpoint of another place in the photograph. See how the image can be seen as a part of the overall pattern of the environment-the room or furniture, or yard or whatever.

When you see a picture of an animal in its environment, you often make connections that you do not make when you see a picture of a human being in his or her environment. Yet each location is as unique as the habitat of any animal-as private, as shared, as significant in terms of the individual and the species of which that individual is a part. Simply to stretch your imagination: When you look at your photograph, imagine that you are a representative of a species, caught there in just that particular pose, and that the frame of the photograph represents, now, "a cage of time." You, from the outside looking down at the photograph, are now outside of that cage of time in which your specimen was placed. That specimen, that individual, that you, represents not only yourself but one aspect of your species. If you hold that feeling, then the element of time becomes as real as any of the other objects within the photograph. Though unseen, time is the frame.

Now: Look up. The picture, the photograph, is but one small object in the entire range of your vision. You are not only outside yourself in the photograph, but now it represents only a small portion of your reality. Yet the photograph remains inviolate within its own framework; you cannot alter the position of one object within it. If you destroy the photograph itself, you can in no way destroy the reality that was behind it. You cannot, for instance, kill the tree that may be depicted in the picture.
Give us a moment...

(10:11. In trance, Jane abruptly fell silent/or well over a minute. Her eyes remained closed as she gently rocked back and forth. Her delivery had been good since the start of the session.)

The person within the photograph is beyond your reach. The you that you are can make any changes you want to in your experience: You can change probabilities for your own purposes, but you cannot change the courses of other probable selves that have gone their own ways. All probable selves are connected. They each influence one another. There is a natural interaction, but no coercion. Each probable self has its own free will and uniqueness. You can change your own experience in the probability you know - which itself rides upon infinite other probabilities. You can bring into your own experience any number of probable events, but you cannot deny the probable experience of another portion of your reality. That is, you cannot annihilate it.

As you are looking at one photograph in your personal history, that represents your emergence in this particular reality-or the reality that was accepted as official at the time it was taken-so you are looking at a picture of a representative of your species, caught in a particular moment of probability. That species has as many offshoots and developments as you have privately. As there are probable selves in private terms, there are probable selves in terms of the species. As you have your recognized, official personal past, so in your system of actuality you have more or less accepted an official mass history (see Note 2) . Under examination, however, that history of the species shows many gaps and discrepancies, and it leaves many questions to be answered.

Now take your break.

(10:23. And during break, neither of us realized that Seth had just ended Section 2.)

(Break was over at 10:45.)

This is the beginning of the next section-

("3.")

-to be called (pause) : "The Private Probable Man, the Private Probable Woman, the Species in Probabilities, and Blueprints for Realities."

Give us a moment... We have been using Ruburt and Joseph's private experience here. For now, however, I would like each reader to consider the members of his or her family, so that in a more direct fashion the reader can find in private experience a realization of some ideas I want to present.

PRACTICE ELEMENT 6

(Pause.) In your terms, think of those ancestors in your family history. Now think of yourself and your contemporary family. For this, try to imagine time as being something like space. If your ancestors lived in the 19th century, then think of that century as a place that exists as surely as any portion of the earth that you know. See your own century as another place. If you have children, imagine their experience 50 years hence as still another place.

Now: Think of your ancestors, yourself, and your children as members of one tribe, each journeying into different countries instead of times. Culture is as real and natural as trees and rocks, so see the various cultures of these three groups as natural environments of the different places or countries; and imagine, then, each group exploring the unique environment of the land into which they have journeyed. Imagine further of course that these explorations occur at once, even though communication may be faulty, so that each group has difficulty communicating with the others. Imagine, however, that there is a homeland from which our groups originally came. Each expedition sends "letters" back home, commenting upon the behavior, customs, environment, and history of the land in which it finds itself.

These letters are written in an original native language that has little to do with the acquired language that has been picked up in any given country. (Pause, then humorously:) Mama and Papa, back at the homestead, know where their children have gone, in other words; they read with amusement, amazement, and wonder the communications from their offspring. In this homespun analogy, Mama and Papa send letters back-also in the native language-to their children. As time goes by, however, the children lose their memories of their home tongue. Mama and Papa know that times are like places or countries, but their children begin to forget this, too, and so they grow to believe that they are far more separate from each other than they actually are. They have "gone native" in a different way. Mama and Papa understand. The children forgot that they can move through time as easily as through space.

Give us a moment... Remember, in this analogy the various children represent your ancestors, yourself, and your own children. They are exploring the land of time. Now in your physical world it is obvious that nature grows more of itself. In the land of time, time also grows more of itself. As you can climb trees, both up and down the branches, so you can climb times in the same way. Back home, Mama and Papa know this. The family tree exists at once-but that tree is only one tree that appears in the land of time. It has branches that you do not climb and do not recognize, and so they are not real to you. There are probable family trees, then. The same applies to the species.

(A pause lasting almost two minutes, starting at 11:12.) Give us a moment... There are alternate realities, and these exist only because of the nature of probabilities. Now give us a moment...

The potentials of the true self are so multidimensional that they cannot be expressed in one space or time. Any person who loves another recognizes the infinite potential within that other person. That potential needs infinite opportunity; the true self's reality needs an ever-new, changing situation, for each experience enriches it and, therefore, enhances its own possibilities. En masse, in your terms, the same is true of the race of man. Mama and Papa, in our analogy, represent the infinite potential within one basic unit (CU) of consciousness.

Then think of your ancestors, your immediate family, and your children, and sense in them the vast potential that is there. Now: Imagine your species as you think of it, and the literally endless capacities for expression and creation simply in the areas of which you are aware. No single time or space dimension could contain that creativity. No single historic past could explain what you are now as an individual or as a member of a species. Period.

Now give us a moment... End of dictation.

(11:23. Once again, Seth wound up the evening with some material on another subject. Lately Jane and I have taken to requesting that be finish each session this way, until we re caught up on some projects we've been letting go. End at 11:33 P.M.)

Session 696, May 8, 1974, 9:58 PM. Wednesday

(Today is Jane's birthday. She is 45 years old. I didn't ask her to have a session tonight, but she volunteered. While we waited for Seth to come through, she talked about the deaths of her parents.' Her father, Delmer, died on November 16, 1971, when be was 68; her mother, Marie, died on May 10, 1972, at the same age.

(When Jane was young Marie had in all seriousness often warned her: "When I die, I'll come back and haunt you. During those years Marie was in her late 20's and early 30's, and already incapacitated by arthritis; and, to quote Seth from a session held in 1964, she bad 's.. often spoken vehemently of Ruburt's birth being a source of disease, and pain, that is of her arthritis... If Ruburt's mother had it to do over, she would not have the child-and the child bidden within the adult still feels that the mother actually has the power, even now, to force the child back into the womb and refuse to deliver it.

(Jane said tonight that she still feels a strong emotional charge in connection with the idea of the "dead" returning in those stereotyped, banal terms. Yet, although Seth has said very little to date about ghosts, hauntings, and possession [we link them together], it doesn't seem that Jane's early family experiences have led her to set up any blocks against such topics. "Seth just hasn't gotten around to them yet, "she said. "When he does, they 71 make a great series of chapters-or maybe a whole book some day.")

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now: Dictation... Each probability system has its own set of "blueprints, " clearly defining its freedoms and boundaries, and setting forth the most favorable structures capable of fulfillment.

These are not "inner images of perfection, " and to some extent the blueprints2 themselves change, for the action within any given system of probabilities automatically alters the entire picture, enlarging it. The blueprints are actually more like inner working plans that can be changed with circumstances, but to some extent they are idea-lizations, with a hyphen.

As an individual you carry within you such a blueprint, then; it contains all the information you require to bring about the most favorable version of yourself in the probable system that you know. These blueprints exist biologically and at every level-psychically, spiritually, mentally. The information is knit into the genes and chromosomes, but it exists apart, and the physical structures merely represent the carriers of information. In the same fashion the species en masse holds within its vast inner mind such working plans or blueprints. They exist apart from the physical world and in an inner one, and from this you draw those theories, ideas, civilizations, and technologies which you then physically translate.

Platonic thought saw this inner world as perfect. As you think of it, however, perfection always suggests something done and finished, or beyond surpassing, and this of course denies the inherent characteristics of creativity, which do indeed always seek to surpass themselves. The Platonic, idealized inner world would ultimately result in a dead one, for in it the models for all exteriorizations were seen as already completed-finished and perfect.

Many have seen that inner world as the source for the physical one, but imagined that man's purpose was merely to construct physically these perfect images to the best of his abilities. (Very forcefully:) In that picture man himself did not help create that inner world, or have any hand in its beauty. He could at best try to duplicate it physically-never able, however, to match its perfection in those terms. In such a version of inner-outer reality the back-and-forth mobility, the give-and-take between inner and outer, is ignored. Man, being a part of that inner world by reason of the nature of his own psyche, automatically has a hand in the creation of those blueprints which at another level he uses as guides.

(Long pause, eyes closed.) To some extent great artists not only capture a physical picture of Inner Idea, capitalized, but they also have a hand in creating that idea or inner model to begin with.

In your terms, the inner world does represent Idea Potential as yet unrealized-but those ideas and those potentials do not exist outside of consciousness. They are ideals set in the heart of man, 5 yet in other terms he is the one who also put them there, out of the deeper knowledge of his being that straddles physical time. Existence is wise and compassionate, so in certain terms consciousness, knowing itself as man, sent future extensions of itself out into the time scheme that man would know, and lovingly planted signposts for itself to follow "later."

Give us a moment... Man is himself made as much of God-stuff as earth-stuff, so in those terms now the god in himself yearned toward the man in the god, and earth experience. Not understanding yourselves, you have tried to put the idea of God outside of yourselves and your living framework. Through various exercises in this book, I hope to acquaint each of you with the inherent oneness of the inside and outside realities, to give you a glimpse of your own infinite nature even within the bounds of your creaturehood-to help you see the god-stuff in the man-stuff. In other terms, this can help you see the potentials of your species and break down the barriers of limiting thoughts. I would like to change your ideas of human nature. To some extent this will entail humanizing your idea of divinity. But oddly enough, if that is done you will end up seeing the divinity in man.

Ideals that before seemed beyond the reach of individuals or of the species will change their character, and become working models that can be used effectively and joyfully.

Now take your break.

(10:35. Jane's delivery had been average; and, she said now, the session would be a short one. It was. When Seth came through again in a few minutes be said, humorously: "Tell Ruburt I said 'Happy birthday' "-then gave a page of material for Jane on another subject. End at 10:48 P.M.

(Within that deleted information were a few lines I'd like to present here for the record. When Jane finished with certain challenges, Seth remarked, "... there will be a 'birth' of seemingly new concepts, simply because his [Jane '5] old mental barriers kept him from making certain important connections, and an increasing system of communication between waking and dreaming states.

(Perhaps the latter happening is already underway: Jane's recall of, participation in, and benefits from such an exchange between her waking and dreaming selves has increased considerably in recent weeks. So have her records, since she keeps detailed accounts of all of her dream activities and correlating "conscious" events. All of this activity appears to be more than transient.)

Session 697, May 13, 1974, 9:18 PM. P.M., Monday

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now: Dictation .. . These idealizations (as discussed in the last session) are certain kinds of psychic patterns, then, occurring at different levels. In certain terms they become the cell's private "idea" of its own growth and development, a picture alive within the cell in terms of physical information, a part of its structure. Such idealizations provide their own impetus; that is, they will grow toward their own greatest fulfillment.

The idealizations themselves are made of "conscious" stuff. These are not inert data, then. The nature of probabilities determines the framework in which these fulfillments can take place, and "frames" living developments. The structure of probabilities provides on the one hand a system of barriers, in which practical growth is not chosen or significant; and on the other hand it insures a safe, creative, rich environment-a reality-in which the idealization can choose from an almost infinite variety of possible actions those best suited to its own fulfillment.

In any system the idealization has already accepted certain kinds of events as significant, and has rejected other (quite-as-probable events) as nonsignificant. This simply provides a workable focus in which achievement and experience can happen.

(9:2 7.) In simple terms, you will not try to achieve something that you believe impossible within your concepts of reality. The conscious mind, with its normally considered intellect, is meant to assess the practicality of action within your world. You will literally see only what you want to see. If the race believed that space travel was impossible, you would not have it. That is one thing; but if an individual believes that it is literally impossible for him to travel from one end of the continent to another, or to change his job, or perform any act, then the act becomes practically impossible. The idealization of motion, however, in that person's mind, or of change, may be denied expression at any given time-but it will nevertheless seek expression through experience. This applies in terms of the species as well as individuals. Because you are now a conscious species, in your terms, there are racial idealizations that you can accept or deny. Often at your particular stage of development as a race, these appear first in your world as fiction, art, or so-called pure theory.

Thoughts have their own kind of structure, as cells do, and they seek their own fulfillment. They move toward like thoughts, and you have as a species an inner mass body of thought. Privately your thoughts are expressions of your idealizations; and while expressing those inner patterns they also modify and creatively change them. Each cell in your body is to some extent altered with each thought that you think. Each reaction of the cells alters your environment. The brain then responds to the alteration. There is a constant give-and-take. As the cells respond at certain levels to ever-changing streams of probabilities, so do your thoughts. Your body responds as you think it should, however, and so your conscious beliefs about reality have much to do with those probable experiences that you accept as a part of your intimate living.

The private blueprint, yours at birth, is in certain terms far greater than any one physical materialization of it that could occur in your space and time. This provides you with areas of choice, gives you manipulability, and allows for the myriad of probable activities "possible." You are the judge and the final word in that regard, so that as your ideas change, as you move toward one probable self and decide upon that as your official3 self, you will always have a rich bank of probable actions to choose from. If only one were provided you would have no choice. The same applies to the species. Now give us a moment...

(9:45. A pause lasting well over a minute.) Your current decisions to accept one specific line of consciousness as real, and to ignore others, makes such concepts difficult to understand. You train yourselves-biologically, even-to inhibit certain stimuli, yet often the body itself responds to the very stimuli that you consciously ignore. By opening up your minds to new kinds of significances, however, you can begin to glimpse other orders of events4 with which you are quite intimately concerned.

Often, for instance, you handle probabilities very well, while remaining consciously blind to them because of your concepts. Even then, however, on other levels your unconscious reaction will follow your own conscious intents. You may make a move in physical life, for example, seemingly for one reason. You may also be unconsciously reacting to quite pertinent data regarding the probable actions of others. Because you do not really fully accept the fact that you can so react, you may block this unofficial information on the one hand, even while on the other you take it into consideration. You are far more aware than you realize of the probable future in areas with which you are concerned. This is true on all levels. If your purposes do not involve illness, for instance, and yet if you believe in contagion, you will automatically avoid circumstances that can lead to epidemics. In terms of probabilities that particular kind will not enter your experience.

Give us a moment... All of this applies en masse in terms of diseases, for example, that run rampant through a species.

Take your break.

(10:00. Jane said that noise in the house bad interfered with her trance state toward the end of her delivery, then added that she wasn't at her best tonight anyhow. As far as I could tell, though, neither the noise nor her feelings bad had any influence on the material. Resume quietly at 10:14.)

I will have more to say concerning illnesses, epidemics, and mass disorders in this book.

Consciousness, by its nature, continually expands. The nature of consciousness as you understand it as a species will, in one way or another, lead you beyond your limited ideas of reality, for your experience will set challenges that cannot be solved within your current framework. Those problems set by one level of consciousness will automatically cause breakthroughs into other areas of conscious activity, where solutions can be found.

Many of your global dilemmas seem so desperate only because in those areas you have gone as far as you can go-without going further. The problems act as stimuli in that regard. This doesn't mean that you have to experience disasters. They are not preordained. It does mean that you have chosen certain experiences, but that these will automatically lead to further creative development if you allow them to. The idealization is one of brotherhood, in terms of your species. Biologically, in your terms, such "brotherhood" operates instinctively in the cooperation of the body's cells, as they function together to form the private corporal structure. At your viewpoint you lose appreciation for the great individuality of each cell. You take it for granted that because the cells work so well together, they have no private uniqueness.

In other terms, however-social terms-you have yet to achieve the same kind of spiritual brotherhood possessed by your cells; and so you do not understand that the experience of your world is intimately connected with your own private experience. If you burn your finger it hurts immediately. Your body instantly begins a cooperative venture, in which adjustments are made so that the wound begins to heal. If a portion of the race is hurt it may take a while before "you" feel the pain, but the entire unconscious mechanism of the species will try to heal the wound. Consciously you can facilitate that development, and admit your brotherhood with all other living beings. The healing will take place far quicker if you do. A biological brotherhood exists, an inner empathy on cellular levels, connecting all individuals of the species with one another. This is the result of a biological idealization. It exists in all species, and connects all species.

The race suffers when any of its members die of starvation or disease, even as a whole plant suffers if a group of its leaves are "unhappy." In the same way all members of the species are benefited by the happiness, health, and fulfillment of any of those individuals who compose it. Man can be aware of the vast medium of probabilities in which he exists, and therefore consciously choose those best suited to those idealizations that point toward his greatest fulfillment. One part of the species cannot grow or develop at the expense of the other portions for very long.

(10:3 6.) Give us a moment... A photograph is to some extent a materialization of an idealization carried to a certain degree. At another level, your body and your experience is a far richer fulfillment, a living, presently experienced materialization. The picture of your world is still another.

PRACTICE ELEMENT 7

If you can, find a photograph of yourself as a member of a class-a graduation picture, perhaps, or a photograph of club members. Examine what you see there. Then contemplate what is not seen. Imagine the emotional reality of each person present, in the time that the photograph was taken. Then try to feel the emotional interactions that existed between the various individuals. Take your time. When you are finished, try to get a glimpse of those intimate relationships that each person had with other persons not present in the picture, but contemporary. Let your mind, after that, follow through by imagining contacts involving family interactions reaching back through time prior to the taking of the photograph. Then think of all of the probable actions that were either accepted or discarded, so that in time terms these people assembled (for the photograph) .

Biologically, there were illnesses avoided, deaths that could have occurred but did not. In space there were endless varieties of probabilities and decisions. People could have moved and did not, or others did move, and so came into that particular space area. There were an infinite number of ideas behind all of those decisions. You form your own experience. In greater terms, therefore, those people decided to be at that particular time and place, so that the photograph is the result of multitudinous decisions, and represents a focus of experience, rising from myriad probabilities. The picture of the world represents in a greater dimensional fashion the same kind of focus. Your most intimate decision affects the species. You are the creator of yourself in space and time. You also have your hand in the larger creativity of mankind's experience.

Now give us a moment, and that is the end of dictation. Take your break.

("Okay."

(10:5 0. Jane said her trance state bad been "much better" for the second delivery; certainly her manner was more forceful. Returning at 11:03, Seth finished his evening's work by speaking on other subjects until 11:28 P.M.)

Session 698, May 20, 1974, 9:28 P.M., Monday

(The regularly scheduled session for last Wednesday night wasn't held because of Jane's very relaxed state. She's been enjoying this letting-down often during the past couple of weeks. On Friday, however, while in an altered state of consciousness, she tuned into some material on Seth, dreams, and other species of consciousness; she calls it The Wonderworks, and excerpts from it are presented as Appendix 11.

(Jane had been in another lackadaisical mood most of the day, yet she'd told me after supper that she wanted to have a session tonight. At 9:15, as we sat waiting, she bad her first intimation from Seth that a session would actually take place. "And it'll be on the book... I'm not used to being so relaxed beforehand, though..." What developed was a very short session, and contrary to her expectations, Seth devoted half of it to Jane herself I bad two questions prepared, both growing out of material in "Unknown" Reality, but had to lay them aside until next time.)

Now, good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: These blueprints for reality are relatively invisible because you have allowed yourselves to forget their existence.

To pursue certain goals, you pretended that they did not exist. Now, however, your global situation as a race requires the new acquisition of some "ancient arts." These can help you become aware again of those inner idealizations that form your private reality and your mass world. They can permit you to become acquainted with other inward orders of events, and the rich bed of probabilities from which your physical existence emerges.

These arts are useless if they are not practiced-useless in that they lie ever latent, that they are not brought out into the exterior framework of your world. To use these arts requires first of all the knowledge that beneath the world you know is another; that alongside the focus of consciousness with which you are familiar there are other focuses quite as legitimate.

You dream, each of you, but there are few great dream artists. Many of the true purposes of dreams' have been forgotten, even though those purposes are still being fulfilled. The conscious art of creating, understanding, and using dreams has been largely lost; and the intimate relationship between daily life, world events, and dreams almost completely ignored. The "future" of the species is being worked out in the private and mass dreams of its members, but this also is never considered. The members of some ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians, knew how to be the conscious directors of dream activity, how to delve into various levels of dream reality to the founts of creativity, and they were able to use that source material in their physical world.2

(9:4 1.) Cellular life is affected by your dreams. Healings can take place in the dream state, where events at another order of existence alter the cells themselves. Ruburt has been exploring the reality of dream levels, and in so doing he is beginning to glimpse their significance. To some extent each reader can initiate such private journeys. They will, these dream expeditions, throw great light on the nature of personal daily experience, and they will also provide personal knowledge of the ways in which probabilities operate.

Give us a moment.. . I said earlier in this book that the world you know arises from basic unpredictability, from which significances then emerge.4 No system of reality is closed. The particular string of probable actions that you call your official experience does not just dangle, then, out in space and time-it interweaves with other such strands that you do not recognize. In the waking state the conscious mind must focus rather exclusively upon that one particular point of concentration that you call reality, simply so that it can direct your activities properly in temporal life. It is quite equipped, however, also to direct you to some extent in other levels of reality when it is not needed for specific survival duties.

Because you have in the past convinced yourselves that the conscious mind must of necessity be cut off from inner reality, you think that it must be alienated from the dream state. Following such beliefs, you find yourselves thinking of dreaming as chaotic, unreasonable, and as completely divorced from normal conscious direction, purpose, or function. It often seems that sleep is almost a small death, and psychologists have compared dreaming with controlled insanity. You have so divorced your waking and dreaming experience that it seems you have separate "lives, " and that there is little connection between your waking and dreaming hours. The rich tapestry of probable actions from which you choose your official life becomes just as invisible. This is quite needless.

Take your break.

(9:56. See the notes at the beginning of the session. As stated, Seth returned after break with a discussion of the reasons for Jane's excellent state of relaxation. Most of his material is deleted here, but I can write that her situation was tied in to her work with the challenges presented by her physical symptoms [as described in Note 8 for the 6 79th session, in Section 1]. As she comes to understand her own belief systems more and more, Jane very gradually continues her physical improvement. In the personal part of this session, then, Seth explained how her very beneficial state of ease "now began in a dream state last night, was further accelerated this morning, and further so in the relaxation just before the session... The [recent] dreams also provide additional assurance; and while dreaming, body states are altered-something physicians do not recognize."

(Seth's last statement had to do with his contention that "hormones are also automatically released into the system, encouraging either periods of activity or tranquilizing periods, according to the specific portions of the overall process [of healing]. The dreams provide a steady give-and-take between conscious and so-called unconscious activity. This is also a time of deep unconscious creativity...

(End at 10:43 P.M.)

Session 699, May 22, 1974, 9:20 PM. Wednesday

(The moods of relaxation that Jane has been experiencing often since early this month seemed to have passed, at least for now. The evening was very warm as we waited for tonight's session to start. I reminded Jane of the two questions I'd put off from P.M., Monday's abbreviated session, but Seth made only a brief reference to them at the end of tonight's material.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: In your terms a photograph freezes motion, frames the moment-or all of the moment that you can physically perceive.

In usual circumstances you may remember the emotions that you felt at the time a picture of yourself was taken, and to some extent those emotions may show themselves in gestures or facial expression. But the greater subjective reality of that moment does not appear physically in such a photograph. It completely escapes insofar as its physical appearance within that structure is concerned. In the same way the past or the future is dosed out. The particular focus necessary to produce such a picture then necessitates the exclusion of other data. That certainly is obvious. Because you must manipulate within specific time periods, you do the same kind of thing in daily life, and on a conscious level ignore or exclude much information that is otherwise available.

In a way, one remembered dream can be compared to a psychological photograph, one picture that is not physically materialized, not frozen motion, not framed by either space or time; therefore many of those ingredients appear that are necessarily left out of any given moment of waking conscious activity.

A remembered dream is a product of several things, but often it is your conscious interpretation of events that initially may have been quite different from your memory of them. To that extent the dream that you remember is a snapshot of a larger event, taken by your conscious mind. There are many kinds or varieties of dreams, some more and some less faithful to your memories of them-but as you remember a dream you automatically snatch certain portions of subjective events away from others, and try to "frame" these in space and time in ways that will make sense to your usual orientation. Even then, however, dream events are so multidimensional that this attempt is often a failure. It might be easier here, perhaps, if you compare a scene from a dream with a scene in a photograph. A photograph will show certain events natural to the time in which it was taken. It will not show, for example, a picture of a Turk at the time of the Crusades. A dream scene might portray just such a motif, however.

It will help if now and then you imaginatively think of vivid dream imagery' as if it appeared in a photograph instead. As during your lifetime you collect a series of photographs of yourself, taken in various times and places, so in the dreaming state you "collect" subjective photographs of a different kind. They do not appear in sequence, however. Nevertheless, at a conscious level they can provide you with valuable information about your future and your past.

In those normal, generally accepted terms, the images in photographs do not change, move, or alter their relationships.

The living subjective photography of dreams, however, provides a framework in which these "images" have their own mobility. They represent creativity in far different terms than you usually understand. You know what physical issue is (intently) , because you see the children of your loins, but you do not experience the children of your dreams in the same physical way, nor understand that your dream life is continuous. It has organization on its own levels that you do not comprehend, and from its rich source you draw much of the energy with which you form your daily experience. Your conscious mind is the director of that experience.

In your terms, however, you dream whether you are living or dead. When you are alive, corporally speaking, what you think of as dreaming becomes subordinate to what you refer to as your conscious waking life. You always examine your dreams then from an "alien" standpoint, one prejudiced in favor of the ordinary waking state. However, the dreaming condition is consequently experienced in distorted form. Often it does not seem clear. By contrast to waking consciousness it can appear hazy, not precise, or off-focus. This does not always apply, because in some dreams the state of alertness is undeniable.

(9:50.) For many reasons, some mentioned here and some not as yet discussed, you have closed your dreams out of your lives to a large extent. While you must of course hold accurate focus in time and place, there is still no basic reason why you must so divorce yourselves from dream experience.

Give us a moment... Some inventors, writers, scientists, artists, who are used to dealing with creative material directly, are quite aware of the fact that many of their productive ideas came from the dream condition. They see the results of dream activity in practical physical life. Many others, though untrained, can clearly trace certain decisions made in waking life to dreams. Few understand, however, that private reality is like a finished product, rising out of the immense productivity that occurs in the dreaming condition. Ruburt calls this The Wonder-works, 2 and with good reason. In waking life there are fluctuations in your consciousness, periods when you are more or less alert, in your terms, when your attention wanders from issues at hand; or when, instead, you are certainly brilliantly focused in the moment. So there are gradations of consciousness in the waking state. Usually you pay little attention to them.

The official line of consciousness that you accepted blithely ignores any deviations, and when such events occur usually continues merrily on as if nothing had happened. In the dreaming state, such fluctuations also happen. It should be obvious that there you can leap from time to time.

Much more is involved, however, for there are "separate" strands, if you prefer, of consciousness that are naturally pursued in the dream state, and these can be followed with some training and diligence. They involve probable "series" of events. For example, if one particular dream event is chosen for physical materialization, then in your reality other events will appear in due time, and in serial fashion.

You may take your break.

(10:05 to 10:25.)

Dictation: You have yourselves painted a pretty enough picture of what you think of as your own reality, as individuals and as a species. All of your institutions, beliefs, and activities seem to justify your picture, because everything within the overall "frame" will of course seem to agree.

The picture is a relatively simple one, all in all-one in which each consciousness is assumed to be directed toward a particular focus, is ensconced in one body, with its existence bounded by birth at one end and by death at the other. (Pause.) Unfortunately, that picture is as limited as any one of your photographs. You are used to examining your dream state from the viewpoint of your "waking" condition, but some time in the dream state try to examine your normal waking reality. Simply give yourself the instructions to do so. You may be quite surprised with the results. Speaking as simply as I can, and using concepts that you can understand, let me put it this way: From the other side-within what is loosely called the dream state-there is an existence quite as valid as your own, and from that viewpoint you can be considered as the dreamer. "You" are the part of you concentrating in this reality. You form it through information and through energy that on the one hand has its source outside this system, and that on the other constantly flows into this system-and so in that respect the systems are united.

Give us a moment... The same applies to all consciousness of any type or variety. In a manner of speaking, then, your cells dream. There are minute variations of electrical discharge, not now perceivable, that could pinpoint this kind of fluctuation on the part of cells, and also on the part of atoms and molecules.

In your terms, obviously, atoms do not dream of cats chasing dogs, yet (intently) there are indeed "lapses" from physical focus that are analogous to your dreaming state. Give us a moment... In those conditions the atoms pursue their own probable activities, and indeed make astounding calculations, bringing into your actuality the necessary probable actions to insure official life forms. But neither are they limited otherwise, for their other probable directions are also actualized. Period. On different levels in the dream state, then, you are also subjectively aware of other probable realities. Your conscious intent is unconsciously brought into the dreaming condition, and that intent helps you sort the data. (See Note 4.)

So, from other streams of actuality you choose those events that you want physically materialized; and you do this according to your beliefs about the nature of reality. A photograph is taken, and you have before you then a picture of an event that in your terms has already happened. In dreams you take many subjective "photographs, " and decide which ones among them you want to materialize in time. To a certain extent, therefore, the dreams are blueprints for your later snapshots.

Now take a brief break-and (humorously) tell Ruburt he will be amazed with the organization of this book.

(10:50. Jane's state of dissociation bad been excellent, her delivery rather fast around the indicated pauses. She said that Seth's last remark came about because at the supper table this evening she'd told me, as she has before, that she still hasn't read this book straight through, and has little idea of its organization. [See the appropriate note at 10:34 in the 694th session.] Then, as we ate, Jane bad asked me once again if "Unknown" Reality had any organization-or purpose: "Where's Seth going with it?" I suggested she forget such worries and let the work come out in its own way, explaining that portions of these notes were concerned with recording the circumstances surrounding just that procedure.

(After the end of break at 11:17, Seth came through with a fairly long block of material on another matter. He closed out the session at 11:43 P.M. with this line about the questions I bad waiting for him: "I bid you a fond good evening-and I know when your material will fit. "Since I take this to mean that some time may pass before the questions enter into the scheme of this book, I'll briefly note their subjects below.

(1. Seth's reference, after 9:27 in the 697th session, to our race as "a conscious species." I wanted to get his comments as to how, in our terms at least, we could be in a state other than a "conscious" one. I bad trouble visualizing such a situation.

(2. A photograph of Jane and her parents, Marie and Delmer. It was taken in the summer of 1932, when Jane was 3 years old, and as far as we know it's the only one of the Roberts family in existence. I anticipated hearing what Seth would say about some of the probable paths since taken by the photograph's three subjects. I've bad the question in mind ever since Seth discussed separate, childhood snapshots of Jane and me in the same terms during the first session for "Unknown" Reality. [See the 6 79th session, with the notes relevant to Jane and her family background. In that session, Seth told us that the 12-year-old Jane in the photo under discussion was to become probable to the one I eventually met and married.] Beside whatever Seth could tell us about her parents, I was curious to know whether the Jane who was shown at the age of 3 might be-or was destined to become-another probable Jane.)

Session 700, May 29, 1974, 9:28 PM. Wednesday

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

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

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

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

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

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

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

(9:53.) The true art of dreaming is a science long forgotten by your world.' Such an art, pursued, trains the mind in a new kind of consciousness-one that is equally at home in either existence, well-grounded and secure in each. Almost anyone can become a satisfied and productive amateur in this art-science; but its true fulfillment takes years of training, a strong sense of purpose, and a dedication-as does any true vocation.

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

Give us a moment, and rest your hand... A practitioner of this ancient art learns first of all how to become conscious in normal terms, while in the sleep state. Then he becomes sensitive to the different subjective alterations that occur when dreams begin, happen, and end. He familiarizes himself with the symbolism of his own dreams, and sees how these do or do not correlate with the exterior symbols that appear in the waking life that he shares with others. I will have more to say about these shared symbols later, for they can become agreed upon signposts.

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

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

(Heartily:) Take your break.

(10:10. "He just stopped so you could rest your fingers, " Jane said after coming out of an excellent trance. The rate of her delivery had been average. "It's sure funny: I can feel a whole lot more right there now, waiting to be given-but before the session, nothing. This book is different. I have to get into it in a certain deliberate way that I didn't have to for the others [Seth Speaks and Personal Reality]." Jane snapped her fingers several times. "In ESP class Seth comes through trigger fast, like be did all those times last night. But not here; yet once I get started I want to keep going. .

(Resume in the same manner at 10:26.)

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

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

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

(10:35.) Give us a moment... The true scientist understands that he must probe the interior and not the exterior universe; he will comprehend that he cannot isolate himself from a reality of which he is necessarily a part, and that to do so presents at best a distorted picture. In quite true terms, your dreams and the trees outside of your windows have a common denominator: they both spring from the withinness of consciousness.

(10:39.) Simply as an analogy, look at it this way:

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

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

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

(Through Seth, Jane now proceeded to deliver three pages of information for herself The session ended at 11:02 P.M.

(Much of tonight's private material is the kind that eventually appears in Jane's "own" works, such as Adventures, or is translated in her poetry. Within it are a few hints about certain more general aspects of her abilities, and those can be presented here. "Ruburt, " Seth commented, "is just beginning his own dream endeavors, which could not seriously start until be learned to have faith in his own being. " [Appendix 11 contains excerpts from The Wonderworks, the paper Jane wrote almost two weeks ago on Seth, dreams, and the creation of our reality. In my notes for The Wonderworks I described her own recent dream series-which still continues, by the way.] And: "In our case, "Seth said a bit later, "Ruburt almost 'becomes' the material be receives from me. If certain other beneficial alterations occur, and further understanding on Ruburt's part, we may be able to meet at other levels of consciousness-in the dream state, when he is not cooperating in the production of our book material. "For Jane has never met Seth, face to face, you might say, in a dream. The closest she's come to this situation is in giving a session for him in the dream state, as she does in waking life.

(Now for a couple of references concerning portions of the book material in tonight's session. Like the dream information given above, these instances demonstrate how "Unknown" Reality and the events of Jane's daily living are interwound.

(1. At the end of the paragraph of material begun at 10:35, where Seth touched upon the "withinness of consciousness": I thought his data there echoed Jane's own, as she recorded it in The Wonderworks.

(2. Then almost immediately after 10:39, when Seth referred to "chaos": His rather sly emphasis on the word didn't escape me. Currently Jane and I are reading a book written by a biologist. It has many good things in it, but we 're disturbed when we come to passages in which the author describes "life" as opposed to "nonlife "; or in which he postulates an ultimate chaos-the running-down of our universe into a final random distribution of matter-as inevitable. Such ideas are surely the projections of a limited human view, we think, and are quite misleading. Also, as we grew up independently of each other, Jane and I gradually dispensed with conventional scientific ideas that life bad occurred by chance; the emotional natures of our creative endeavors led us to question the theory. Now we don't think it's true even in ordinary scientific terms.

(Nor is the biologist's chaos the same thing as Seth's "unpredictability." As Seth tells us in the 68 1st session in Section 1: "Science likes to think that it deals with predictable action. It perceives such a small amount of data, however... that the great inner unpredictability of any molecule, atom, or wave, is not apparent... ." In connection with this, we suggest the reader study especially Seth's material from 10:00 to 10:36 in the 681st session.)

Session 701, June 3, 1974, 9:17 PM. P.M., Monday

(I finished typing last Wednesday night's session after supper this evening; in fact, Jane just bad time to read it before we sat for this one at 8:50.

(Softly:) Good evening.

("Good evening. Seth.")

Now: Give us a moment... We are speaking quietly to keep Ruburt in a particular state-but (humorously, leaning forward) , we will not whisper.

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

The exteriorization has great purpose and meaning, then, and brings forth a different kind of expression. Though I may emphasize the importance of inner reality in this book, therefore, I am in no way denying the great validity and purpose of earthly experience. Any exercises in this book should help you enrich that experience, and understand its framework and nature. None of the exercises should be used to try to "escape" the connotations of your own earthly reality.

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

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

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

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

(Pause at 9:40. Jane's voice had very gradually increased to a near-normal volume.)

PRACTICE ELEMENT 8

Using your conscious mind as a threshold, however, you can discover still more. Figuratively speaking, stand where

You are. Think of that moment of conscious awareness as a path. Imagine many other such paths, all converging; again, imaginatively take one of them in your mind and follow it. Accept what you experience uncritically. To some small extent you are "altering" your consciousness. (Half humorously:) Of course, you are not "altering" it at all. You are simply using it in a different fashion, and focusing it-however briefly-in another direction. This is the simplest of exercises.
Suppose that you stood in one spot all of your physical life, and that you had to do this because you had been told that you must. In such a case you would only see what was directly before you. Your peripheral vision might give you hints of what was to each side, or you might hear sounds that came from behind. Objects-birds, for example-might flash by you, and you might wonder at their motion, significance, and origin. If you suddenly turned an inch to the right or the left you would not be altering your body, but simply changing its position, increasing your overall picture, turning very cautiously from your initial position. So the little exercise above is like that.

Give us a moment... You are presently little aware of the dimensions of consciousness-your own or those seemingly "beneath" your own. The true physicist is one who would dare turn around inside his own consciousness.

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

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

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

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

(10:08. Very forcefully all through here:) But most physicists do not trust felt answers. Feeling is thought to be far less valid than a diagram. It seems you could not operate your world on feelings-but you are not doing very well trying to operate with diagrams, either!

In many cases your scientists seem to have the strange idea that you can understand a reality by destroying it; that you can perceive the life mechanism of an animal by killing it; or that you can examine a phenomenon best by separating yourself from it. So, often, you attempt to examine the nature of the brain in man by destroying the brains of animals, by separating portions of the animal brain from its components, isolating them, and tampering with the overall integrity of both the animal in question and of your own spiritual processes. By this I mean that each such attempt puts you more out of context, so to speak, with yourself and your environment, and other species. Period. While you may "learn" certain so-called facts, you are driven still further away from any great knowledge, because the so-called facts stand in your way. You do not as yet understand the uniqueness of consciousness.

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

Are your hands tired?

("No, "I said, although I was feeling the pace a bit. But Jane was doing well.)

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

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

Take a brief break.

(10:28 to 10:45.)

Now: Even in your terms of history and serial time, as a race you have tried various methods of dealing with the physical world. In this latest venture you are discovering that exterior manipulation is not enough, that technology alone is not "the answer." Please understand me: There is nothing wrong with a loving technology.

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

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

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

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

(Abruptly:) End of dictation.

(10:56. With hardly a pause, Seth-Jane switched over to some material for me; the session ended at 11:16P.M. Jane's trances had been excellent throughout the evening.)

Session 702, June 10, 1974, 9:19 PM. P.M., Monday

(Last Tuesday afternoon, in our living room, Jane and I participated in a filmed television interview that is to be aired by a New York City station. The program's host and his cameraman stayed to film Jane's ESP c/ass that night. Seth came through during class, as be often does, and was at his jovial-and serious-best. Jane also sang in her trance language, Sumari.

(This will be the first time Seth has appeared on television since we did some promotional work for The Seth Material after its publication in 1970. At that time Jane spoke for Seth on two occasions from cities in the East. Reactions were excellent; she still receives an occasional call or letter about one of those shows in particular. I might add that since Seth launched "Unknown" Reality in February of this year, Jane and I have fu/filled another television commitment, and that she was the subject of a lengthy radio interview. But the pressures of work, plus our own conservative attitudes about personal publicity. have led us to pass by other such opportunities.

(The regularly scheduled session for the next night, Wednesday, was not held so that Jane could rest.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now to begin with, dictation. Give us a moment...

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

They help you interpret the universe in horizontal terms, so to speak. In studying the deeper realities within and "behind" that universe, the instruments are not only useless but misleading. I am not suggesting that their use is futile, however-merely pointing out the limitations inherently involved.

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

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

(9:42.) Give us a moment... Without an identification with the land, the planet and the seasons, all of your technology will not help you understand the earth, or even use it effectively, much less fully. Without an identification with the race as a whole, no technology can save the race. (Pause, during an intent delivery.) Unless man also identifies himself with the other kinds of life with which he shares the world, no technology will ever help him understand his experience. I am speaking in very practical terms. Gadgets will, ultimately, teach you nothing about the dimensions of your own consciousness. When you use them (biofeedback, for instance) even to attain alterations of consciousness, you are programming yourselves, stepping apart from yourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Pause.) The blueprints for reality lie even beneath the electrons' activity. As long as you think in terms of [subatomic] particles, you are basically off the track-or even when you think in terms of waves. The idea of interrelated fields comes closer, of course, yet even here you are simply changing one kind of term for one like it, only slightly different. In all of these cases you are ignoring the reality of consciousness, and its gestalt formations and manifestations. Until you perceive the innate consciousness behind any "visible" or "invisible" manifestations, then, you put a definite barrier to your own knowledge.

Take your break.

(10:20. "1 don't know what be said about electrons and things like that, "Jane told me as soon as she was out of her hour-long trance state, "but all of this is general, and it's leading up to something more. I carried it as far as I could. Maybe we'll get more on it after break..."

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

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

Ruburt's vocabulary is not an official scientific one. Nor for our purposes should it be-for that vocabulary is limiting.

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

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

(10:34. The ringing persisted for almost two minutes. I found the situation very irritating-especially since I'd forgotten to turn off the telephone's bell before the session. If there was one time when we didn't need an interruption, I thought, it was while Jane was dealing with the present kind of material. Yet she continued to speak for Seth:)

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

Take your break.

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

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

(A note: Jane's very rich and vivid dream series is still underway, and she continues to keep detailed records. At times the paperwork involved keeps her busy for a couple of hours a day. She recorded five dreams last night, for instance. I last mentioned her recent dreams in Appendix 11, for Session 698. That appendix contains excerpts from The Wonderworks-material which Jane wrote last month while in an altered state of consciousness, and which was at least partly inspired by her dream series. In some of the deleted portions of these sessions, Seth has rather extensively discussed Jane's dream work and related activity. He did so again tonight. It's important to note here that Jane's dream-connected experiences include some new, and very exciting, psychic developments for her.)

Session 703, June 12, 1974, 10:01 P.M., Wednesday

(In a whisper:) Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

We will begin, at least, with dictation. Give us a moment...

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the entire gestalt from cellular to "self" consciousness, there is a vast field of knowledge-much of it now "unconsciously" available-used to maintain the body's integrity in space and time. With the conscious mind as director, there is no reason why much of this knowledge cannot become normally and naturally available. There is, therefore, a quite valid, vital, real and vastly creative inner reality, and an inward sequence of events from which your present universe and life emerges. Any true scientist will ultimately have to learn to enter that realm of reality. So-called objective approaches will only work at all when you are dealing with so-called objective effects-and your physicists are learning that even in that framework many "facts" are facts only within certain frequencies, or under certain conditions.

You are left with "workable facts" that help you manipulate in your own backyard, but such facts become prejudice when you try to venture beyond your own cosmic neighborhood and find that your preconceived, native ideas do not apply outside of their context.

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

(10:36.) Your medical technology may help you "conquer" one disease after another-some in fact caused by that same technology-and you will feel very efficient as you do heart transplants, as you fight one virus after another. But all of this will do nothing except to allow people to die, perhaps, of other diseases still "unconquered." People will die when they are ready to, following inner dictates and dynamics. A person ready to die will, despite any medication. (Emphatically:) A person who wants to live will seize upon the tiniest hope, and respond. The dynamics of health have nothing to do with inoculations. They reside in the consciousness of each being. In your terms they are regulated by emotions, desires, and thoughts. A true doctor cannot be scientifically objective. He cannot divorce himself from the reality of his patient. Instead, usually, the doctor's words and very methods literally separate the patient from himself or herself. The malady is seen almost as a thing apart from the patient's person-but thrust upon it-over which the patient has little control.

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

The blueprints for reality: In greater terms they reside within you. In private terms they are part of your being.

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

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

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

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

The "unknown" reality. Unknown or not, it is what you are working with.

You may take your break.

(11:09. Jane had been in a deep trance for over an hour, yet she was out of it before I finished writing Seth's last sentence. While delivering the material she'd bad an overall glimpse of the plan of "Unknown" Reality, but lost it as soon as break came. We had been talking about the book '.c organization before the session.

(Once again now, Jane wondered why the "more elaborate or complicated qualities" of her trances [she couldn't really explain what she meant here] were necessary in order for her to deliver this book, as opposed to the "easier" ones she'd experienced for Personal Reality. I suggested she forget such comparisons and think that "Unknown" Reality simply required a different approach, for whatever subjective reasons, and that perhaps her constant questioning would be taken care of as her work on it progressed.5

(During her delivery Jane had also "picked up" that Seth would soon finish this third section, and that the first three sections would make up Part 1 of the book. So far, Seth hasn't designated or titled a Part 1. Jane had received more, but she was vague on it: ".. . something to do with how each of us could be our own dream-art scientist, mental physicist, and complete physician. And there's more to come on the three classifications of man that Seth gave in that earlier session... And stuff on the lands of the mind, I think, which leads to our ancient civilizations and bow they're embedded in our minds now...

(That "earlier session" is the 68 7th, in Section 1, and in it Seth mentioned parallel man, probable man, and alternate man. But actually his material therein [and part of the beading for Section 2] grew out of the discourse Jane bad come through with on her own the night before the 68 7th session was held. See Appendix 6.

(Seth returned now at 11:40, delivered some material on my painting, among other subjects, and ended the session at 12:15A.M.)

Session 704, June 17, 1974, 9:27PM. P.M., Monday

Now - good evening.

("Good evening, Seth."

(With many pauses:) Dictation... The unknown reality, probable man, dreams, the spin of electrons, the blueprints for reality-all of these are intimately related.

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

Unpredictability does not mean chaos. All order rises out of the creative elements of unpredictability. In fact, the behavior of any object in your universe is "predictable" only because you concentrate upon such a small portion of its reality.

Unpredictability assures uniqueness, and is the opposite of predetermined motion. The great saga of recognized physical activity arises from a vast unrecognized, unpredictable dimension in which probabilities are allowed full freedom.

The full practical implication here should be understood: No course is irrevocably set or beyond change. Within the limited framework of your usual operations, however, so-called predictions may be made. They will be workable to some degree. In deeper terms however no action is set beyond alteration. The unknown reality is the source for the known one. If you want to "discover" how things work, then your journey must eventually lead you into the dimensions that lie within the world you know.

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

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

I am aware that some of this sounds "retrogressive, " for I am even suggesting a situation in which politicians or statesmen would learn to "dream wisely"-and become aware of the psyche, the mass psyche, of their people, and tune into the "private oracle."

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

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

The physical organism itself is so equipped. Blood pressure rises in whole populations-stress signals in terms of hormones are activated, but you are not taught to recognize these natural signals. There is a give-and-take between all portions of nature. You are as natural as an animal, and as "tuned in" to the deep rhythms of the earth-those that you consciously perceive and those that are perceived by your body consciousness, but are screened out by the "official mind."

I am simply suggesting that you become more natural. Because science has made an effective barrier to that method of approach, the power seems to reside in the gadgets rather than in man. Man no longer identifies with a storm, for example, and has lost his sense of relationship with it, and therefore his natural power over it. The same applies to storms of the psyche. The dream-art scientist, the true mental physicist, the complete physician-such designations represent the kinds of training that could allow you to understand the unknown, and therefore the known reality, and so become aware of the blueprints that exist behind the physical universe. The proof is in the pudding, of course. Largely, it seems that your techniques work a good deal of the time. Let us look at medicine, for instance.

(10:16.) Your physicians can point to lives saved by sophisticated technology. You can point to diseases stamped out because of inoculations or other preventive measures, such as the intake of certain vitamins, or sanitary procedures. It seems the worst kind of idiocy to suggest that the individual has any kind of effective protection against illness or disease. (Long pause.) Almost anyone can name a family member or friend who died 30 or 40 years ago of a disease that is now completely conquered. It seems that such lives would have been saved with modem procedures. In your society a medical checkup is a must every so often.

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

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

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

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

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

You may take your break.

(10:42 to 11:05.)

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

Such a journey will illuminate not only the private aspects of reality, but the experience of the species as well. Period. End of section.

(11:06. And [added later] end of Volume 1 of "Unknown" Reality. This 704th session continues briefly in Volume 2, where Seth gives the beading for Section 4 [which opens that second volume]; then be adds a few words of personal material for Jane and me before saying good night at 11:21 P.M. The notes for tonight's session are presented below, however, since all of them refer to material already given.)

Session 705, June 24, 1974, 9:09 P.M., Monday

(The 704th session was held a week ago. In it Seth gave the heading for Section 4, just before finishing his evening's work with a few minutes of personal information for Jane and me. He's remarked more than once that he'll close a session by dictating the heading for the next chapter, or whatever, "so that Ruburt [Jane] knows what Jam doing It gives him confidence." But I'd say his procedure also helps satisfy Jane's spontaneous impatience about learning what's coming next in the material.

(In this case, though, too much time passed between sessions. The regularly scheduled session for last Wednesday night wasn't held while we made ready for several approaching events, and as the days went by Jane [and I] simply forgot about what was coming up in "Unknown" Reality. I read her the heading for Section 4 now, while we waited for Seth to come through. "I haven't the vaguest idea, even, of what all that means, " she said. Usually a certain kind of serene existence makes the best kind of day-by-day framework for these sessions and our other creative work, even while those days may contain within them points of unusual interest or excitement [such as Jane's weekly ESP class]. But given that right kind of equanimity, time-our ordinary time-slides by; then, looking back periodically, we discover that we've accomplished at least something of what we wanted to do.

(One of the events we've been preparing for is the visit tomorrow of Tam Mossman, Jane's editor at Prentice-Hall, Inc He plans to attend ESP class tomorrow night, then stay over Wednesday to read and discuss the two works Jane has in progress, Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology, and "Unknown" Reality Tam will also look at my first rough sketches for Jane's book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time.1 Then on Wednesday night he'll witness the scheduled 706th session. If Seth comes through with material for "Unknown" Reality Tam will be the first "outsider" to sit in on a session for this work Almost always Jane dictates book material without witnesses other than myself and uses the framework of ESP class for emotional interactions involving herself Seth, and others. That rather formal division in her trance activities suits us well; we enjoy doing most of our work by ourselves, no matter what kind it may be.

(The atmosphere in our second-story living room was very pleasant and prosaic this evening We had lights on in the approaching dusk From the busy intersection just west of our apartment house the sounds of traffic rose up through the open windows. Jane smoked a cigarette and sipped a beer as she waited for the session to start she was in the process of turning her consciousness inward, actually, on her way to meet Seth in a nonphysical journey that had nothing to do with our ordinary concepts of space or distance.

(When that meeting took place, Jane was in trance; off came her glasses; once again she'd met Seth on the psychological bridge the two of them had established when these sessions began, over a decade ago. Seth has explained such a connective as "a psychological extension, a projection of characteristics on both of our parts, and this I use for our communications... it is like a road that must be kept clear of debris.'

(As is usually the case in our private sessions, Jane's Seth voice was only a little deeper than her own regular one. Her Seth accent however, was quite unique. I often think it bears traces of a European heritage-but one that's impossible to pinpoint by country. Her eyes in trance were much darken and seemingly without highlights.)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Dictation: Let us begin this section with a brief discussion concerning "evolution."

For now think of it as you usually do, in a time context It has been fashionable in the past to believe that each species was oriented selfishly toward its own survival. Period. Each was seen in competition with all other species. In that framework cooperation was simply a by-product of a primary drive toward survival. One species might use another, for instance. Species were thought to change, and "mutants" form, because of a previous alteration in the environment, to which any given species had to adjust or disappear. The motivating power was always projected outside (underlined) .

All of this presented a quite erroneous picture. Physically speaking, earth itself has its own kind of gestalt consciousness. If you must, then think of that earth consciousness as grading (spelled) upward in great slopes of awareness from relatively "inert" particles of dust and stone through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Even then, remember that those kingdoms are not so separate after all. Each one is highly related to each of the others. Nothing happens in one such kingdom that does not affect the others. A great, gracious cooperation exists between those seemingly separate systems, however. If you will remember that even atoms and molecules have consciousness, then it will be easier for you to understand that there is indeed a certain kind of awareness that unites these kingdoms.

In your terms, consciousness of self did not develop because of any exterior circumstances in which your species won out, so to speak. In fact, that consciousness of self in any person is dependent upon the constant, miraculous cooperations that exist between the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds.3 The inner intent always forms any exterior alteration. This applies on any scale you use. Consciousness forms the environment The environment itself is conscious (forcefully) . Atoms and molecules themselves operate in their own fields of probabilities. In their own ways, they "yearn" toward all probable developments. When they form living creatures they become a physical basis for species alteration. The body's adaptability is not simply an adjusting mechanism or quality. The cells have inner capabilities you have not discovered. They contain within themselves memory of all the "previous" forms they have been a part of.

I would like to make an aside here: In certain terms, you cannot destroy life by a nuclear disaster. You would of course destroy life as you know it, and in your terms bring to an end, if the conditions were right (or wrong) , life forms with which you are familiar. In greater terms, however, mutant life would emerge-mutant only by your standards-but life quite natural to itself.

(9:38.7 To return to our main subject of the moment The fact is that the so-called process of evolution is highly dependent upon the cooperative tendencies inherent in all properties of life and in all species. There is no transmigration of souls, in which the entire personality of a person "comes back" as an animal. Yet in the physical framework there is a constant intermixing, so that the cells of a man or a woman may become the cells of a plant or an animal, 4 and of course vice versa. The cells that have been a part of a human brain know this in their way. Those cells that now compose your own bodies have combined and discombined many times to form other portions of the natural environment

This inner and yet physical transmigration of consciousness has always been extremely important, and represents a natural method of communication, uniting all species and all physical life. Inside all physical organisms, therefore, there is a thrust for development and change, even as there is also a pattern of stability within which such alterations can take place.

Give us a moment... Historically, of course, you follow a one-line pattern of thought, so you see a picture in which fish left the oceans and became reptiles; from these mammals eventually appeared, and apes and men. That is, I admit, a simple statement, but it is the way most people think evolution occurred. The terms of "progression" are tricky. You never imagine the situation being reversed, for example. Few of you ever imagine a conscious reptilian man. It seems to you that the direction you took is the only direction that could have been taken.

Give us a moment... You identify a highly evolved self-consciousness with your own species development, and with your own kind of perceptive mechanisms. You apply these as rules or conditions whenever you examine any other kind of life. In your system of probabilities there are no reptilian men or women, yet in other probabilities they do indeed exist I mention this only to show you that the evolutionary system you recognize is but one such system. (Intently:) The physical basis rests latently within your own cellular structure, however. You think that evolution is finished. Its impetus, however, comes from within the nature of consciousness itself It always has. In some quarters it is fashionable these days to say that man's consciousness is now an element in a new kind of evolution-but that "new consciousness" has always been inherent You are only now beginning to recognize its existence. Every consciousness is aware of itself as itself.5 Each consciousness, then, is self-aware. It may not be self-aware in the same way that you are. It may not reflect upon its own condition. On the other hand, it may have no need to.

(10:02.) Give us a moment... So-called future developments of your species are now dependent upon your ideas and beliefs. This applies genetically in personal terms. For instance, if you believe that you can live to a health and happy old age, well into your nineties, then even in Western civilization you will do so. Your emotional intent and your belief will direct the functioning of your cells and (emphatically) bring out in them those properties and inherent abilities that will ensure such a condition. There are groups of people in isolated places who hold such beliefs, and in all such cases the body responds. The same applies to the race-or the species, to be more exact There is an inexhaustible creativity within the cells themselves, that you are not using as a species because your beliefs lag so far behind your innate biological spirituality and wisdom. Your ideas are beginning to change. But unless you alter your framework you will continue to emphasize medical and technological manipulation. Period. In isolated cases this will show you some of the results possible on a physical basis alone. However, such techniques will not work in mass terms, or allow you, say, to prolong effective, productive life unless you change your beliefs in other areas also, and learn the inner dynamics of the psyche.

(The telephone started to ring. I jumped. Once again, I'd forgotten to turn off the bell before the session began. As Seth, Jane stared up at me.)

Take your break.

(10:14. The call was from out of town. A young man had finished reading The Seth Material this evening He had many questions-and was too impatient to finish the letter to Jane that he'd just started. His enthusiastic response was one we'd experienced many times before. I talked to him for a few minutes while Jane rested after coming out of trance, and suggested that he call her later in the week Resume at 10:36.)

Now: It is true, then, that the cells do operate on the one hand apart from time, and on the other with a firm basis in time, so that the body's integrity as a time-space organism results.

It is true that on a conscious level you do not as yet operate outside of time, but are bound by it. When you learn to free yourselves from those dimensions to some extent, you are not simply duplicating or "returning" to some vaster condition, but adding a new element to that condition. The kind of self-awareness you have is unique, but all kinds are unique. Each triumph you make as an individual is reflected in your species and in its cellular knowledge.

Give us a moment... In a way you are all your own mutants, creatively altering cellular formations. Period. When your fate seems dependent upon heredity, for example, then the transmission of ideas and beliefs operates; these give signals to the chromosomes. They cause miniature self-images, so to speak, that are mirrored in the cells. In many cases these images can be altered, but not with the technology that you have.

(Long pause at 10:48.) Give us a moment... (Over a one-minute pause. Then quietly:) Basically, cellular comprehension straddles time. There is, then, a way of introducing "new" genetic information to a so-called damaged cell in the present' This involves the manipulation of consciousness, basically, and not that of gadgets, as well as a time-reversal principle. First the undesirable information must be erased. It must be erased in the "past" in your terms. Some, but very few, psychic healers do this automatically without realizing what they are doing. The body on its own performs this service often, when it automatically rights certain conditions, even though they were genetically imprinted. The imprints become regressive. In your terms, they fade into a probable series of events that do not physically affect you.

End of dictation, .

(Pause at 10:57. After delivering material on several other subjects, Seth said good night at 11:20 P.M.)

Session 707, July 1, 1974, 9:21 P.M., Monday

(The 706th session was held as scheduled last Wednesday night and our guest, Tam Mossman, did witness it-but since Seth didn't come through with any dictation for "Unknown" Reality during the session, it's hereby deleted.

(Earlier this evening I reminded Jane of the conversation about cells, versus their components, that we'd had because of Seth's material at 9:38 in Session 705. Some of tonight's book work refers to the questions growing out of our talk, I think, as does Seth's brief clarification near the end of the session.)

Now: Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Dictation... The cells of course are changing. The atoms and molecules within them are always in a state of flux. The CU's that are within all matter have a memory bank that would far surpass any computer's. As cellular components, the atoms and molecules, therefore, carry memory of all the forms of which they have been part

At deep levels the cells are always working with probabilities, and comparing probable actions and developments in the light of genetic information. The most intricate behavior is involved and calculations instantly made, for instance, before you can take one step or lift your finger. This does not involve only the predictive behavior of the physical organism alone, however. At these deeper levels the cellular activity includes making predictive judgments about the environment outside of the body. The body obviously does not operate alone, but in relationship with everything about it. When you want to walk across the room, the body must not only operate using hindsight and "prediction" as far as its own behavior is concerned, but it must take into consideration the predictive activity of all of the other elements in that room.

Give us a moment... At basic levels, of course, the motion of a muscle involves the motion of cells and of cellular components. Here I am saying that the atoms and molecules themselves, because of their characteristics, not only deal with probabilities within the body's cellular structure, but also help the body make predictive judgments about entities or objects outside of itself.

(Pause, then humorously:) You "know" that a chair is not going to chase you around the room, for instance-at least the odds are against it You know this because you have a reasoning mind, but that particular kind of reasoning mind knows what it knows because at deep levels the cells are aware of the nature of probable action. The beliefs of the conscious mind, however, set your goals and purposes. "You" are the one who decides to walk across the floor, and then all of these inner calculations take place to help you achieve your goal. The conscious intent, therefore, activates the inner mechanisms and changes the behavior of the cells and their components.

In far greater terms, the goals set consciously by your species also set into operation the same kind of inner biological activity. The goals of the species do not exist apart from individual goals. As you go about your life, therefore, you are very effectively taking part in the "future" developments of your species. Period. Let us look for a moment at the private psyche.

(9:48.) The "private psyche" sounds like a fine term, but it is meaningless unless you apply it to your psyche. A small amount of self-examination should show you that in a very simple way you are always thinking about probabilities. You are always making choices between probable actions and alternate courses. A choice presupposes probable acts, each possible, each capable of actualization within your system of reality. Your private experience is far more filled with such decisions than you usually realize. There are tiny innocuous instances that come up daily: "Shall I go to the movies, or bowling?" "Shall I brush my teeth now or later?" "Should I write to my friend today or tomorrow?" There are also more pertinent questions having to do with careers, ways of life, or other deeper involvements. In your terms, each decision you make alters the reality that you know to one degree or another.

PRACTICE ELEMENT 9

For an exercise, keep notes for a day or so of all the times you find yourself thinking of probable actions, 2 large or small. In your mind, try to follow "what might have happened" had you taken the course you did not take. Then imagine what might happen as a result of your chosen decisions. You are a member of the species. Any choice you make privately affects it biologically and psychically.

You can literally choose between health and illness; between a concentration upon the mental more than the physical, or upon the physical more than the mental. Such private decisions affect the genetic heritage of the species. Your intent is all-important-for you can alter your own genetic messages3 within certain limits. You can cause a cell, or a group of cells, to change their self-image, for example; and again, you do this often-as you healed yourselves of diseases because of your intent to become well. The intent will be conscious, though the means may not be. Period. In such a case, however, the self-healing qualities of the cells are reinforced, and the self-healing abilities of the species are also strengthened.

Take your break.

(10:05 to 10:32.)

Now: Your private psyche is intimately concerned with your earthly existence, and in your dream state you deal with probable actions, and often workout in that condition the solutions to problems or questions that arise having to do with probable sequences of events.'

On many occasions then you set yourself a problem-"Shall I do this or that?"-and form a dream in which you follow through the probable futures that would "result" from the courses available. While you are sleeping and dreaming, your chemical and hormonal activity faithfully follows the courses of the dreams. Even in your accepted reality, then, to that extent in such a dream you react to probable events as well as to the events chosen for waking physical experience. Your daily life is affected, because in such a dream you deal with probable predictabilities. You are hardly alone, however, so each individual alive also has his and her private dreams, and these help form the accepted probability sequence of the following day, and of "time to come." The personal decisions all add up to the global happenings on any given day.

Give us a moment... (Long pause, eyes closed.) There are lands of the mind. That is, the mind has its own "civilizations, " its own personal culture and geography, its own history and inclinations. But the mind is connected with the physical brain, and so hidden in its [the brain's] folds there is an archaeological memory. To some extent what you know now is dependent upon what will be known, and what has been known, in your terms. The "past" races of men live to that extent within your Now, as do those who will seemingly come after. So, ideally speaking, the history of your species can be discovered quite clearly within in the psyche; and true archaeological events are found not only by uncovering rocks and relics, but by bringing to light, so to speak, the memories that dwell within the psyche.

Now that is the end of dictation.

(10:4 5. Next, Seth came through with a page of information for Jane and me. In it were these lines: "I believe, incidentally, that I cleared up your question for you. Cells, as entities, do not drop off [the physical form] like apples. I was using I suppose, a kind of shorthand I believed was clear in the context given."

(End at 11:01 P.M.)

Session 708, September 30, 1974, 8:58 P.M., Monday

(Jane and I hadn't realized it at first but we were to take a long rest from work on "Unknown" Reality following the 707th session, for July 1. We were busy during the next 14 weeks of course; there follow a few notes about some of our activities, grouped together by subject matter rather than chronology.

(We did have a few "deleted" sessions for ourselves. Jane also kept her ESP class going and within that spontaneous format she often spoke for Seth, or sang in Sumarz, 1 her trance language. The break in book dictation gave me time to begin attending class regularly, and I plan to continue doing so. And when I began sitting in on class, I discovered anew that its loose structure served as a catalyst for certain little psychic events that I find most enjoyable: Tuesday night is class nigh4 and often such an experience takes place as I rest for ha If an hour late that afternoon. I record each episode [no matter when I have it]. Sometimes I make a drawing also, and use that to supplement my description of the event in class.

(Following the conference with her editor late in June, Jane has devoted herself to finishing her manuscript for Adventures, while I've worked steadily on the diagrams for it as well as on the drawings for Dialogues. I completed the detailed pencil guides for both sets of art this week. Next comes the finished work for publication, which I'll produce by placing a sheet of clear acetate over each guide, then rendering on that untouched surface the final version in "line, " or pen and ink. This is my own system, the acetate, riding above the penciled outlines, leaves me free to search for various spontaneous effects that are quite inhibited if I try to follow those preliminary images too literally. Then in late August, long before I had the 16 diagrams [plus two other pieces of art] done for Adventures, I mailed to Prentice-Hall Jane's completed manuscript for that book. Adventures is scheduled for publication in mid-1975, but I'll continue referring to it in these notes.

(In the meantime, on Saturday morning July27, Jane received her first copy of The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book, from her publisher. She was delighted. So was I. The book's physical appearance was most pleasing to us. As an artist, I'm very conscious of whether I think the "package" equals its contents, though since she is verbally oriented this is less important to Jane.

(However, the emergence of Personal Reality into the marketplace soon resulted in an increase in the number of letters and calls that we'd been receiving requests for personal appearances also mounted. We're no longer into that activity for a number of reasons; yet when the host for a Miami, Florida, radio show called Jane early this morning [September30] about the possibility of a taped interview, she impulsively suggested to that rather startled individual that the tape be made then-and so for ha If an hour she exchanged with him a free, unrehearsed dialogue about her work for later airing.

(Just as I had some small psychic adventures during our time off from "Unknown" Reality Jane did too. One of hers that I'll mention here is related to published material. During the night following the arrival of that first copy of Personal Reality while lying quietly beside me in an altered state of consciousness, Jane received information of how "the ancients paralyzed the air." It could then be walked upon and manipulated in various other ways. She woke me up to tell me about the experience, and to remind her to write an account of it the next day. She couldn't identify its source, except to say that she hadn't been dreaming. At the breakfast table, I told her I thought the material was connected to the sessions in Personal Reality on the interior sound, light;. and electromagnetic values "around or from which" the physical image forms. Involved here also, I added, were certain ideas in her novel, The Education of Oversoul Seven.

(I haven't read "Unknown" Reality since I finished typing the last session for it over three months ago; Jane had reviewed all of Seth's material on the book last week, yet still had to remind herself today of the contents of that [70 7th] session. While we went over it this afternoon I became aware of a familiar, though infrequent, sound: the honking of geese. It was the kind of transient commotion I could listen to indefinitely. The southbound flight was soon out of sight in the rainy sky, and in another few moments it was out of hearing.

(I took the sign of migration as a good omen, though, for the circumstances of the flight were strongly reminiscent of those described at the beginning of the 68 7th session, in Volume 1 of "Unknown" Reality. It had been raining then, too, on that day last March-and as I wrote at the time in some half-romantic fashion I've hooked up the flights of geese with Jane's and my work on the Seth books. I'm still surprised that I've done so, for whatever reasons; but we're ready to dig in for a winter's work.

(As we sat waiting for the session at 8:50 Jane felt a little nervous; she often does after a lay off from book dictation. But she laughed, as she has before in such cases: "I just want to get it-the beginning-over with." At 8:5 5, moving closer to that familiar dissociated state, approaching that psychological bridge which serves as a common meeting ground for Seth and herself she announced that she felt "a rather generalized idea of what Seth will say on the book stuff" Less clear were some data about herself but she thought Seth would cover all of that along with his material on "Unknown" Reality. "I guess we'll start out with the book...."

(Jane's delivery as Seth was good. Indeed, it was oft en fast;, with no sense of the three-month break that had ensued since the 70 7th session.)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Now, dictation: Consciousness operates with what you may call code (spelled) systems. These are beyond count Consciousness differentiates itself; therefore, by operating within certain code systems that help direct particular kinds of focus, bringing in certain kinds of significances3 while blocking Out other data.

These other data, of course, might well be significant in different code systems. In their way, however, these systems are interrelated, so that at other levels there is communication between them-secondary data, you might say, that is supportive but not primarily concentrated upon.

These code systems involve molecular constructions and light values, 4 and in certain ways the light values are as precisely and effectively used as your alphabet is. For example, certain kinds of life obviously respond to spectrums with which you are not familiar-but beyond that there are electromagnetic ranges, or rather extensions of electromagnetic ranges, completely unknown to you, to which other life forms respond.

Again, all of these code systems5 are interrelated. In the same way, the private psyche contains withinifl7iints and glimpses of other alternate realities. These operate as secondary codes, so to speak, beneath the existence that you officially recognize. Such secondary systems can tell you much about the potentials of human reality, those that are latent but can at any time be "raised" to primary importance. Such secondary systems also point toward the probable developments possible for individuals or species.

All of the probabilities practically possible in human development are therefore present to some extent or another in each individual. Any biological or spiritual advancement that you might imagine will of course not come from any outside agency, but from within the heritage of consciousness made flesh. Generally, those alive in this century chose a particular kind of orientation. The species chose to specialize in certain kinds of physical manipulation, to devote its energies in certain directions. Those directions have brought forth a reality unique in its own fashion. Man has not driven himself down a blind alley, in other words. He has been studying the nature of his consciousness-using it as if it were apart from the rest of nature, and therefore seeing nature and the world in a particular light6 That light has finally made him feel isolated, alone, and to some extent relatively powerless (intently)

(Rapidly:) He is learning how to use the light of his own consciousness, and discovering how far one particular method of using it can be counted upon. He is studying w at he can do and not do with that particular focus. He is now discovering that he needs other lights also, in other words-that he has been relying upon only a small portion of an entire inner searchlight that can be used in many directions. Let us look at some of those other directions that are native to man's consciousness, still waiting to be used effectively.

I am speaking in your historical terms because before the historical system that you recognize, man had indeed experimented with these other directions, and with some success. This does not mean that man in the present has fallen from some higher spiritual achievement to his current state.

(Pause at 9:16.) There are cycles in which consciousness forms earthly experience, and maps out historical sequences. So there have been other species of mankind beside your own, each handling physical data in its own way. Some have taken other directions, therefore, than the one that you have chosen. Even those paths are latent or secondary, however, within your own private and mass experience. They reside within you, presenting you with alternate realities7 that you may or may not choose privately or en masse, as you prefer.

Each system, of course, brings forth its own culture, "technology, " art, and science. The physical body is basically equipped to maintain itself as a healthy long-living organism far beyond your present understanding, medically speaking. The cellular comprehension provides all kinds of inner therapeutics that operate quite naturally. There is a physical give-and-take between the body and environment beyond that which you recognize; an inner dynamics here that escapes you, that unites the health of plants, animals, and men. In the most simple and mundane of examples, if you are living in a fairly well-balanced, healthy environment, your houseplants and your animals will also be well. You form your environment and you are a part of it You react to it, often forgetting that relationship. Ideally the body has the capacity to keep itself in excellent health-but beyond that, to maintain itself at the highest levels of physical achievement The exploits of your greatest athletes give you a hint of the body's true capacity. In your system of beliefs, however, those athletes must train and focus all of their attention in that direction, often at the expense of other portions of their own experience. But their performances show you what the body is capable of.

The body is equipped, ideally again now, to rid itself of any diseases, and to maintain its stability into what you would call advanced old age, with only a gradual overall change. At its best, however, the change would bring about spiritual alterations. When you leave for a vacation, for example, you dose down your house. In these ideal terms, death would involve a dosing down of your [physical] house; it would not be crumbling about you.

(Pause at 9:34.) Now, certain individuals glimpse this great natural healing ability of the body, and use it. Doctors sometimes encounter it when a patient with a so-called incurable disease suddenly recovers. "Miraculous" healings are simply instances of nature unhampered. Complete physicians, as mentioned earlier, ' would be persons who understood the true nature of the body and its own potentials-persons who would therefore transmit such ideas to others and encourage them to trust the validity of the body. Some of the body's abilities will seem impossible to you, for you have no evidence to support them. Many organs can completely replace themselves; diseased portions can be replaced by new tissue.

(Pause, in a slower delivery.) Many people, without knowing it, have developed cancer and rid themselves of it Appendixes removed by operations have grown back. These powers of the body are biologically quite achievable in practical terms, but only by a complete change of focus and belief. Your insistence upon separating yourselves from nature automatically prevented you from trusting the biological aspects of the body, and your religious concepts further alienated you from the body's spirituality.

In your reality, your consciousness is usually identified with the body, on the other hand-that is, you think of your consciousness as being always within your flesh. Yet many individuals have found themselves outside of the body, fully conscious and aware (including Jane and me) .

(9:4 5. Jane left her trance state very easily, as she usually does. "Well, " I asked her, "how do you feel now?"

("It's good to be back with the book sessions, " she replied; smiling.

(We sat quietly. We could hear the automobiles swooshing across the new Walnut Street Bridge that lifted gracefully over the Chemung River, less than a quarter of a block from our apartment house; it had been raining earlier this evening and the traffic noise was softened Incidentally, in a brief ceremony, the four-lane span had been opened to the public just this morning. Its old-fashioned predecessor had been destroyed by Tropical Storm Agnes in June 1972; see my notes for the 613th session in Chapter 1 of Personal Reality.

(Resume at a slower pace at 9:5 6.)

Under certain conditions, therefore, the body can maintain itself while the "main consciousness" is away from it. The body consciousness is quite able, then, to provide the overall equilibrium. At certain levels of the sleep state this does in fact happen. In sleepwalking the body is active, but the main consciousness is not "awake." It is not manipulating the body. The main consciousness is elsewhere. Under such conditions the body can perform tasks and often maneuver with an amazing sense of balance. This finesse, again, hints at physical abilities not ordinarily used. The main consciousness, because of its beliefs, often hampers such manipulability in normal waking life.

Let us look for a moment at the body consciousness.

It is equipped, as an animal is, to perform beautifully in its environment You would call it mindless, since it would seem not to reason. For the purpose of this discussion alone, imagine a body with a fully operating body consciousness, not diseased for any reason or defective by birth, but one without the overriding ego-directed consciousness that you have. There have been species of such a nature. In your terms they would seem to be like sleepwalkers, yet their physical abilities surpassed yours. They were indeed as agile as animals-nor were they unconscious. They simply dealt with a different kind of awareness.

In your terms they did not have [an overall] purpose, yet their purpose was simply to be. Their main points of consciousness were elsewhere, in another kind of reality, while their physical manifestations were separate. Their primary focuses of consciousness were scarcely aware of the bodies they had created. Yet even those bodies learned, in quotes now, "through experience, " and began to "awaken, " to become aware of themselves, to discover time, or to create it Period.

(Pause.) The sleepwalkers, as we will call them, were not asleep to themselves, and would seem so only from your viewpoint There were several such races of human beings. Their [overall] primary experience was outside of the body. The physical corporal existence was a secondary effect. To them the real was the dream life, which contained the highest stimuli, the most focused experience, the most maintained purpose, the most meaningful activity, and the most organized social and cultural behavior. Now this is the other side of your own experience, so to speak. Such races left the physical earth much as they found it The main activity, then, involved consciousness apart from the body. In your terms, physical culture was rudimentary.

Now the physical organism as such is capable of that kind of reality system. It is not better or worse than your own. It is simply alternate behavior, biologically and spiritually possible. No complicated physical transportation systems were set up. In the physical state, in what you would call the waking state, these individuals slept To you, comparatively speaking, their waking activities would seem dreamlike, and yet they behaved with great natural physical grace, allowing the body to function to capacity. They did not saddle it with negative beliefs of disease or limitation. Such bodies did not age to the extent, now, that yours do, and enjoyed the greatest ease and sense of belonging with the environment

(10:24.) Consciousness connected with the flesh, then, has great leeway spiritually and biologically, and can focus itself in many ways with and through the flesh, beside your own particular orientation. There have been highly sophisticated, developed civilizations that would not be apparent to you because the main orientation was mental or psychic, while the physical race itself would seem to be highly undeveloped.

In some of their own private dreams, many of my readers will have discovered a reality quite as vivid as the normal one, and sometimes more so. These experiences can give you some vague hint of the kind of existence I am speaking of." There are also physical apparatuses connected with the hibernation abilities of some animals that can give further dues as to the possible relationships of consciousness to the body. Under certain conditions, for example, consciousness can leave the corporal mechanism while it remains intact-functioning, but at a maintenance level. When optimum conditions return, then the consciousness reactivates the body. Such behavior is possible not only with the animals. In systems different from your own, there are realities in which physical organisms are activated after what would seem to you to be centuries of inactivity-again, when the conditions are right To some extent your own life-and-death cycles are simply another aspect of the hibernation principle as you understand it. Your own consciousness leaves the body almost in the same way that messages leap the nerve ends.'3 The consciousness is not destroyed in the meantime.

Now in the case of an animal who hibernates, the body is in the same state. But in the greater hibernation of your own experience, the body as a whole becomes inoperable. The cells within you obviously die constantly. The body that you have now is not the one that you had 10 years ago; its physical composition has died completely many times since your birth, but, again, your consciousness bridges those gaps (with gestures) . They could be accepted instead, in which case it would seem to you that you were, say, a reincarnated self at age 7 (intently) , or 14 or 21. The particular sequence of your own awareness follows through, however. In basic terms the body dies often, and as surely as you think it dies but once in the death you recognize. On numerous occasions it physically breaks apart, but your consciousness rides beyond those "deaths." You do not perceive them. The stuff of your body literally falls into the earth many times, as you think it does only at the "end of your life."

Again, your own consciousness triumphantly rides above those deaths that you do not recognize as such. In your chosen three-dimensional existence, however, and in those terms, your consciousness finally recognizes a death. From the outside it is nearly impossible to pinpoint that intersection of consciousness and the seeming separation from the body. There is a time when you, as a consciousness, decide that death will happen, when in your terms you no longer bridge the gap of minute deaths not accepted.

(Pause at 10:43, during a strong delivery.) Here consciousness decides to leave the flesh, to accept an official14 death. You have already chosen a context, however, and it seems that that context is inevitable. It appears, then, that the body will last so long and no longer. The fact remains that you have chosen the kind of consciousness that identifies with the flesh for a certain period of time.

Other species of consciousness-of a different order entirely, and with a different rhythm of experience-would think of a life in your terms as a day, and have no trouble bridging that gap between apparent life, death, and new life.

Some individuals find themselves with memories of other lives, which are other days to the soul. Such persons then become aware of a greater consciousness reaching over those gaps, and realize that earthly experience can contain [among other things] a knowledge of existence in more than one body. Inherently then consciousness, affiliated with the flesh, can indeed carry such comprehensions. The mind of man as you know it shows at least the potential ability for handling a kind of memory with which you are usually not acquainted. This means that even biologically the species is equipped to deal with different sequences of time, while still manipulating within one particular time scheme. This also implies a far greater psychological richness-quite possible, again, within corporal reality-in which many levels of relationships can be handled. Such inner knowledge is inherent in the cells, and in ordinary terms of evolution is quite possible as a "future" development

Knowledge is usually passed down through the ages in your reality, through books and historic writings, yet each individual contains within himself or herself a vast repository direct knowledge of the past, in your terms, through unconscious comprehension.

The unknown reality Much of that reality is unknown simply because your beliefs dose you off from your own knowledge. The reaches of your own consciousness are not limited. Because you accept the idea of a straight-line movement of time, you cannot see before or after what you think of as your birth or death, ' yet your greater consciousness is quite aware of such experience. Ideally it is possible not only to remember "past" lives, but to plan future ones now. In greater terms, all such lives happen at once. Your present neurological structure makes this seem impossible, yet your inner consciousness is not so impeded.

(Louder:) Take your break, or end the session as you prefer.

("We'll take the break."

(11:00. Jane's trance had been excellent She vaguely remembered that Seth had talked about "sleepwalkers. "I described the material briefly, then added, "It would be a joke if that information applied to our own ancestors, our cavemen, as we think of them." Whereupon Jane said she thought it did at one level, but she didn't elaborate.

(She wanted Seth to discuss a couple of her own questions, now that he had "Unknown" Reality underway again, so I suggested we ask for that material now. Jane hesitated. "I sense stuff on both the book and me; I don't know what to do. Wait-there's a practice element involved..."

(Resume at 11:25.)

Now:

PRACTICE ELEMENT 10

You can hold within your conscious attention far more data than you realize. You have hypnotized yourselves into believing that your awareness is highly limited.

Think back to yesterday. Try to remember what you did when you got up; what you wore. Attempt to follow the sequence of your activities from the time you awakened until you went to sleep. Then flesh in the details. Try to recall your feelings at all of those times. Most of you will be lucky to get this far. Those who do, go even further and try to recall the daydreams you might have had also. Try to remember what stray thoughts came into your mind.

At first, doing this will take all of your attention. You might do the exercise sitting quietly, or riding a bus or waiting for someone in an office. Some of you might be able to do the exercise while performing a more or less automatic series of actions-but do not try to carry it out while driving your car, for example.

As you become more expert at it, then purposely do something else at the same time-a physical activity, for instance. When most of you begin this exercise it will almost seem as if you were a sleepwalker yesterday. The precise, fine alignment of senses with physical activity will seem simply lost, yet as you progress the details will become dear, and you will find that you can at least hold within your mind certain aspects of yesterday's reality while maintaining your hold in today.

In larger terms there are other entire lives, which for you are forgotten essentially as yesterday is. These too, however, are a secondary series of activities, riding beneath your present primary concern. They are as unconsciously a part of your present, and as connected with it, as yesterday is.

Now: the second part of the exercise.

Imagine vividly what you will do tomorrow, and in detail plan a probable day that will rise naturally from your present experience, behavior, and purposes. Follow through as you did with the first part of the exercise. (Pause.) That day's reality is already anticipated by your cells. Your body has prepared for it, all of its functions precognitively projecting their own existences into it. Your "future" life exists in the same manner, and in your terms grows as much out of your present as tomorrow grows out of your today.

Doing the exercise will simply acquaint your normal consciousness with the sense of its own flexibility. You will be exercising the invisible muscles of your consciousness as certainly as you might exercise your body with gymnastics.

To other portions of yourself you would seem to be a sleepwalker. Full creative participation in any moment, however, awakens you to your own potentials, and therefore allows you to experience a unity between your own consciousness and the comprehension of your physical cells. Those cells are as spiritual as your soul is.

(11:40.) Now give me a moment. A good one... This is not dictation.

(What followed were three and a half pages of material for Jane and me. Here are a few condensed, more generalized excerpts:)

To one extent or another in your society, you are taught to not trust yourself. There are various schools and religions that try to express the self's validity, but their distortions have smothered the basic authenticity of the teachings.

In those terms, Ruburt started from scratch as a member of your society who finally threw aside, as you did [Joseph], the current frameworks of belief. For some time he was simply between belief systems, discarding some entirely, accepting portions of others; but mainly he was a pioneer-and this while carrying the largely unrealized, basic belief of society that you cannot trust the self...

While that emotionally invisible belief is carried, then anything the self does must be scrutinized, put to the test, in the meantime beliefs that have sustained others are suspended. The development of Ruburt's abilities would, therefore, lead him away from comforting structures while he searched for others to sustain him...

He has put to the test much of what he has learned. His own personality has blossomed in all aspects, especially in terms of relating with others and in personal creativity... He has been testing out our information in the world that he knows. He felt that it was necessary... For how could the self, taught that it was bad, bring forth good?

There were frameworks that could have offered help, but he saw that they were not intrinsically valid, and so did not depend upon them....

(Seth said good night at 12:18A.M. Jane's deliveries had been very energetic throughout the session.

(In his material above, concerning Jane's search for newer, larger frameworks of belief once she began to dispense with her old "comforting" ideas, Seth very lucidly dealt with certain aspects of the role she's chosen for this 4fè. However, I want to emphasize here the emotional terms of Jane's search-and state that at times those qualities have been very difficult for her to contend with. To some degree I've been involved in many changes of belief also, but I'm a participator in the development of the Seth material not its originator; the pressures and challenges weren't-aren't-as demanding. [With a humor born out of many a struggle, however, I note that it isn't easy to give up certain cherished old beliefs, even when they're demonstrably wrong; they may fit the personality all too well...]

(In connection with these notes, and Seth's excerpts after 11:40, then, I recommend a review of the following in Volume 1:

(1. The material on Jane, religion, and mysticism in the Introductory Notes, the 679th session, and Appendix 1 for that session.

(2. Note 8 for the 6 79th session, on Jane's beliefs and physical symptoms.

(3. Appendix 10 [for Session 692], on Jane's efforts to make a "middle ground" between the extremes of society's reactions to her psychic abilities: rejection by the conventionally closed-minded at one end, and gullible acceptance at the other.

(And added the next day: Now see Appendix 14 for the little episode that developed on Jane's part as we retired for the evening.)

Session 709, October 2, 1974, 9:21 P.M., Wednesday

(At 9:18 Jane said "I feel him around." Then. "I have an idea of what he's going to talk about-but I haven't quite got it yet so I have to wait..." Then, very quietly:)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Now: Dictation: Everything that is apparent three-dimensionally has an inside source, out of which its appearance springs. Some of this, again, is difficult to explain-not because Ruburt does not have the vocabulary, but because serial-word language automatically prepackages ideas into certain patterns, and to escape prepackaging can be a task. We will try our best, however.

The cell as you understand it is but the cell's three-dimensional face. The idea of tachyons as currently understood is basically legitimate, though highly distorted. Before a cell as such makes its physical appearance there are "disturbances" in the spot in which the cell will later show itself. Those disturbances are the result of a slowing down of prior effects of faster-than-light activity, and represent the emergence into your space-time system of energy that can then be effectively used and formed into the cellular pattern.

The very slowing-down process itself helps "freeze" the activity into a form. At the death of a cell a reverse process occurs-the death is the escape of that energy from the cell form, its release, the release itself triggering certain stages of acceleration. There is what might be called a residue, or debris energy, "coating" the cell, that stays within this system. None of this can be ascertained from within the system-that is, the initial faster-than-light activity or the deceleration afterward. Such faster-than-light behavior, then, helps form the basis for the physical universe. This characteristic is an attribute of the CU's, which have already slowed down to some extent when they form EE units.2

(Pause, one of many, at 9:37.) While operating through the body structures, consciousnesses such as your own focus largely upon the three-dimensional orientation. In out-of-body states, however, consciousness can travel faster than light-often, in fact, instantaneously.

This frequently happens in the dream state, although such a performance can be achieved in varying altered states of consciousness. At such times consciousness simply puts itself in a different relationship with time and space. The physical body cannot follow, however. It is by altering its own relationship with the physical universe that consciousness can best understand its own properties, and glimpse from another vantage point that physical universe, where it will be seen in a different light. Operating outside the body, consciousness can better perceive the properties of matter. It cannot (intently) experience matter, however, in the same fashion as it can when it is physically oriented.

From your ordinary point of view the traveling consciousness is off-focus, not locked into physical coordinates in the designated fashion. The so-called inner world can be at least theoretically explored, however, in just such a way. Consciousness "unlocks" itself for a while from its usual coordinates. When this happens the out-of-body traveler is not simply out of his or her corporal form. The person steps out of usual context Even if an individual leaves the body and wanders about the room no more than a few feet away from where the body is located, 3 there are alterations, dash-the relationship of consciousness to the room is different The relationship of the individual to time and space has altered. Time out of the body is "free time" by your standards. You do not age, for example, although this effect varies according to certain principles. I will mention these later.4

(9:48.) Such a traveling consciousness may journey within physical reality, colon: While not relating to that system in the usual manner, it may still be allied with it From that viewpoint matter itself will seem to appear differently than it does ordinarily. On the other hand, an out-of-body consciousness may also enter other physically attuned realities: those operating "at different frequencies than your own." The basically independent nature of consciousness allows for such disentanglement5 The body consciousness maintains its own equilibrium, and acts somewhat like a maintenance station.

Any discussion of the unknown reality must necessarily involve certain usually dismissed hypotheses about the characteristics of consciousness itself. The world as you know it is the result of a complicated set of "codes" (as given at the beginning of the last session) , each locked in one to the other, each one in those terms dependent upon the others. Your precise perceived universe in all of its parts, then, results from coded patterns, each one fitting perfectly into the next. Alter one of these and to some extent you step out of that context (underlined) . Any event of any kind that does not directly, immaculately intersect with your space-time continuum, does not happen, in your terms, but falls away. It becomes probable in your system but seeks its own "level, " and becomes actualized as it falls into place in another reality whose "coded sequence" fits its own. Period.

(Pause at 10:10.) When consciousness leaves the body, therefore, it alters some of the coordinates. There are various questions involving the nature of perception that then occur, and these will be discussed somewhat later (but see Note 4) . Consciousness is equipped to focus its main energy, in your terms at least, generally within the body, or to stray from it for varying amounts of time. Theoretically, your human consciousness can take many different roads while still maintaining its physical base. In far-past historical times, different kinds of orientation were experimented with (as by the "sleepwalkers" described in the last session, for instance) . Your own present private experience can give hints and clues about such other cultures, for those abilities reside within the natural framework. now, but are underdeveloped.

To one extent or another, therefore, all of the potentials of the species are now latent within each individual. Often these spring to the surface through events that may seem bizarre. The "unknown" reality is unknown only because you have not looked for its aspects in yourself. You have been taught to pay almost exclusive attention to your exterior behavior. Privately, then, much of your inner life escapes you. You often structure your life according to that exterior pattern of events. These, while important, are the result of your own inner world of activity. That inner world is your only real connection with the exterior events, and the objective details make sense only because of the subjectivity that gave them birth.'

In the same way, when you look at the current state of the world, or at history, you often structure your perceptions so that only the topmost surfaces of events are seen. Using the same kind of reasoning, you are apt to judge the historic past of your species in very limited terms, and to overlook great dues in your history because they seem to make no sense.

(Long pause, eyes closed.) While you believe, for example, that technology as you understand it (underlined) alone means progress, and that progress necessarily requires overriding physical manipulation of the environment that must forever continue, you will judge past civilizations in that light This will blind you to certain accomplishments and other orientations to such an extent that you will not be able to see evidence of achievement when it appears before your eyes.

(Well over a one-minute pause at 10:30, eyes closed.) Give us a moment... You have not worked with the power of thought or feeling, but only with its physical effects. Therefore, to you only physically materialized events are obvious. You do not accept your dreams as real, for example, but as a rule you consider them fantasies-imaginative happenings. Until very recently you generally believed that all information came to the body through the outer senses, and ignored all evidence to the contrary. It was impossible to imagine civilizations built upon data that were mentally received, consciously accepted, and creatively used. Under such circumstances scientists could hardly look for precognition in cells.8 They did not believe it existed to begin with.

The human body itself has limitless potentials, and great variations that allow for different kinds of orientation. Probable man represents alternate man from your viewpoint, alternate versions of the species. The same applies individually. In out-of-body states many people have encountered probable selves and probable realities. They have also journeyed into the past and the future as you think of them. The private psyche contains within itself the knowledge of its own probabilities, and it contains a mirror in which the experience of the species can at least be glimpsed.

You are used to a particular kind of orientation, accustomed to using your consciousness in one particular manner. In order to study the "unknown" reality, however, you must try to see what else your consciousness can do. This really means that you must learn to regain the true feeling of yourself.

There are two main ways of trying to find out about the nature of reality-an exterior method and an interior one. The methods can be used together, of course, and from your vantage point must be for the greatest efficiency. You are well acquainted with the exterior means, that involve studying the objective universe and collecting facts upon which certain deductions are made. In this book. therefore, we will be stressing interior ways of attaining, not necessarily facts, but knowledge and wisdom. Now, facts may or may not give you wisdom. They can, if they are slavishly followed, even lead you away from true knowledge. Wisdom shows you the insides of facts, so to speak, and the realities from which facts emerge.

Much of the remainder of "Unknown" Reality, then, will deal with an inside look at the nature of reality, and with some exercises that will allow you to see yourself and your world from another perspective. Later I intend to say far more about some civilizations that, in your terms, came before your own (but see the last sentence in Note 4) . Before you can understand their orientation, we will have to speak about various alternate kinds of consciousness and out-of-body experience. These will help you to understand how other kinds of cultures could operate in ways so alien to your own.

(Louder:) You may take a break or end the session as you prefer.

("We'll take the break"

(10:5 5. Jane's delivery had become somewhat faster and very absorbed as it progressed. Just as they had before our three-month layoff from book work [after Session 707], her trances for "Unknown" Reality were proving to be more "difficult" to initiate than those for the previous Seth books.' She often had to wait for just the right moment to get back into dictation following a break, too; so tonight, after we'd shared an apple. she sat rather impatiently anticipating Seth's return. Resume, finally, at 11:25.)

Dictation: We will be discussing alternate methods of orientation that consciousness can take when allied with flesh, trying to give the reader some personal experience with such altered conditions, along with a brief history of some civilizations that utilized these unofficial orientations as their predominant method of focus.

To become familiar with the "unknown" reality you must to some extent grant that it exists, then, and be willing to step aside from your usual behavior. All of the methods given are quite natural, inherent in the body structure, and even biologically anticipated. Your consciousness could not leave your body and return to it again unless there were biological mechanisms that allowed for such a performance.

I have said (as at 9:48) that the body can indeed carry on, performing necessary maintenance activities while the main consciousness is detached from it. To some extent it can even perform simple chores. (Pause.) In sleep, in fact, it is not at all necessary that the main consciousness be alert in the body. Only in certain kinds of civilizations, for that matter, is such a close body-and-main-consciousness relationship necessary. There are other situations, therefore, in which consciousness ordinarily strays much further, returning to the body as a home station and basis of operation, relying upon it for certain kinds of perception only, but not depending upon it for the entire picture of reality. Physical life alone does not necessarily require the kind of identification of self with flesh that is your own.

This does not mean that an alienation results in those realities-simply a relationship in which the body and consciousness relate to other events. Only your beliefs, training, and neurological indoctrination prevent you from recognizing the true nature of your consciousness while you sleep. You close out those data. In that period, however, at an inner order of events, you are highly active and do much of the interior mental work that will later appear as physical experience.

(Slowly at 11:43:) While your consciousness is so engaged, your body consciousness performs many functions that are impossible for it during your waking hours. The greatest biological creativity takes place while you sleep, for example, and certain cellular functions10 are accelerated. Some such disengagement of your main consciousness and the body is therefore obviously necessary, or it would not occur. Sleeping is not a by-product of waking life.

In greater terms you are just as awake when you are asleep, but the focus of your awareness is turned in other directions. As you know, you can live for years while in a coma, but you could not live for years without ever sleeping. Even in a coma there is mental activity, though it may be impossible to ascertain it from the outside. A certain kind of free conscious behavior is possible when you are not physically oriented as you are in the waking state, and that activity is necessary even for physical survival.

This also has to do with pulsations of energy in which consciousness as you know it, now, exercises itself, using native abilities that cannot be expressed through physical orientation alone.

Your own main consciousness has the ability to travel faster than light (as noted at 9:37) , but those perceptions are too fast, and the neurologically structured patterns that you accept cannot capture them. For that matter, cellular comprehension and reaction are too fast for you to follow. The poised framework of physical existence requires a particular platform of experience that you accept as valid and real. At that level only is the universe that you know experienced. That platform or focus is the result of the finest cooperation. Your own free consciousness and your body consciousness form an alliance that makes this possible.

(With many pauses:) Give us a moment... Such a performance actually means that physical reality clicks off and on.1' In your terms, it exists only in your waking hours. The inner work that makes it possible is largely done in the sleep state. The meeting of body consciousness and your main consciousness requires an intense focus, in which the greatest manipulations are necessary. Perceptions must be precise in physical terms. To some extent, however, that exquisite concentration means that certain limitations occur. Cellular comprehension is not tuned into by the normally conscious self, which is equally unaware of its own free-wheeling nature at "higher" levels. So a disengagement process must happen that allows each to regenerate. The consciousness then leaves the body. The body consciousness stays with it.

Give us a moment... We are about to end the session after a few remarks.

(Pause at 12:07. Seth's comments were for Jane, and took up another page of notes. End at 12:19A.M.

(After the session we had something more to eat, then relaxed by playing with our cat, Willy. When we did get to bed Jane fell asleep at once. As I lay beside her in a most pleasant daze, I heard quite clearly in the cool night air the honking of geese as they flew south. Drowsily I remembered the flight I'd listened to in the rain the day before yesterday...)

Session 710, October 7, 1974, 9:31 P.M., Monday

(We have two compositions, both of them by Jane, to add to this session. She produced the first very short one, given below, yesterday. Seth briefly mentions it in the excerpted material at the end of tonight's session, with a promise to say more later.

(Those excerpts, in turn, came from his remarks about Jane's second composition, which she wrote late this afternoon after we'd finished reading certain material. Since this [second] piece is much longer, it's presented as

Appendix 15. I suggest that it be read now, or at least before reaching the end of ~ this session.

(From Jane's dream journal, then, for Sunday, October 6, 1974:

("I heard Seth's voice, very loud and powerful, as I lay asleep in bed last night [Saturday]. This was the first time I've had such an experience. The voice was coming from the area of the room next door or just beyon4, but also from above; like out of the sky or something. It wasn't speaking through anyone-that is, it wasn't coming from inside my head or through me as it always has so far, even in the dream state. I tried to understand what was said.

The word.c didn't seem to be directed at me, particularly, but just to be there. It seemed that Seth was really laying it on somebody. At first I thought he was angry but then I realized I was interpreting the power of the voice that way. This wasn't part of a dream, but I awakened almost at once as I tried to make out the words. Subjectively, I wasn't aware of Seth's presence in any way. The sound was like a supervoice; maybe like Nature speaking or somet/dng not the way a person would speak ")

Now, good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Dictation (quietly) : To explore the unknown reality you must venture within your own psyche, travel inward through invisible roads as you journey outward on physical ones.

Your material reality is formed through joint cooperation. Period. Your own ideas, objectified, become a part of the physical environment. In this vast cooperative venture the thoughts and feelings of each living being take root, so to speak, springing up as objectified data. I said (in the 708th session) that each system of reality uses its own codified system. This effectively provides a sort of framework Generally speaking, then, you agree to objectify certain inner data privately and en masse at any given "time." In those terms the airplane objectified the inner idea of flying in "your" time, and not inA.D. 1500, for example.

You may have heard people say of an idea: "Its time has not yet come." This simply means that there is not enough energy connected with the idea to propel it outward into the world of physical experience as an objective mass-experienced event

In the dream state and in certain other levels of reality, ideas and their symbols are immediately experienced. There is no time lag, then, between a feeling and its "exteriorized" condition. It is automatically experienced in whatever form is familiar and natural to the one who holds it The psyche is presented with its own concepts, which are instantly reflected in dream situations and other events that will be explained shortly. if you dream of or yearn for a new house in physical life, for instance, it may take some time before that ideal is realized, even though such a strong intent will most certainly bring about its physical fulfillment. The same desire in the dreaming state, however, may lead to the instant creation of such a house as far as your dream experience is concerned. Again, there is no time lag there between desire and its materialization.

(Pause, one of many, at 9:49.) There are levels within dreams, highly pertinent but mainly personal, in that they reflect your own private intents and purposes. There are other levels, further away in your terms, that involve mass behavior on a psychic level, where together the inhabitants of the physical world plan out future events. Here probabilities are recognized and utilized. Symbolism is used. There is such an interweaving of intent that this is difficult to explain. Private desires here are magnified as they are felt by others, or minimized accordingly, so that in the overall, large general plans are made having to do with the species at any given "time." Here again, these desires and intents must fit into the codified system as it exists.

(Pause, in a quiet but intent delivery.) At these levels you are still close to home. Beyond, there are layers of actuality in which your psyche is also highly involved, and these may or may not appear to have anything to do with the world that you know.

When you travel into such realms you usually do so from the dream state, still carrying your private symbols with you. Even here, these are automatically translated into experience. This is not your own codified system, however. You may journey through such a reality, perceiving it opaquely, layering it over with your own perceived symbols, and taking those for the "real" environment In these terms the real environment will be that which was generally perceived by the natural inhabitants of the system.

To begin with, your own symbols rise from deep levels of the psyche, and in certain terms you are a part of any reality that you experience-but you may have difficulty in the interpretation of events.

If you are in a world not yours, with your consciousness drifting, you are in free gear, so to speak, your feelings and thoughts flowing into experience. You have to learn how to distinguish your psychological state from the reality in which you find yourself, if you want to maintain your alertness and explore that environment. Many of my readers find themselves in just such situations while they are sleeping. While still dreaming they seem to come suddenly awake in an environment that appears to make no sense. Demons may be chasing them. The world may seem topsy-turvy. The dead and the living may meet and speak.

(10:16.) Now: In almost all instances, demons in dreams represent the dreamer's belief in evil, instantly materialized. They are not the inhabitants of some nether world, then, or underground. We will be giving some instructions that will enable readers to experiment with the projection of consciousness at least to some extent. It is very important for you to realize that even in dreams you form your own reality. Your state of mind, freed from its usual physical focus, creatively expresses itself in all of its power and brilliance. The state of mind itself serves as an intent, propelling you into realities of like conditions.

(Pause.) In your world you travel from one country to another, and you do not expect them to be all alike. Instead, you visit various parts of the world precisely because of the differences among them-so all out-of-body journeys do not lead to the same locale.

Instinctively you leave your body for varying amounts of time each night while you sleep, but those journeys are not "programmed." You plan your own tours, in other words. As many people with the same interests may decide to visit the same country together, on tour, so in the out-of-body condition you may travel alone or with companions. If you are alert you may even take snapshots-only as far as inner tours are concerned, the snapshots consist of clear pictures of the environment taken at the time, developed in the unconscious, and then presented to the waking mind.

There are techniques for using cameras, 1 and a camera left at home will do you little good abroad. So it is the conscious alert mind that must take these pictures if you hope to later make sense of your inner journeys. That conscious reasoning mind must therefore be taken along. There are many ways of doing this, methods not really difficult to follow. Certain techniques will help you pack your conscious mind for yourjourney as you would pack your camera. It will be there when you need it, to take the pictures that will be your conscious memories of your journey.

Do you want to rest your hand?

(10:22. "No, " I said, although I'd been writing pretty steadily for the better part ofan hour. Jane, in trance, held up afresh bottle of beer. I opened itfor her. Then.)

You must remember that the objective world also is a projection from the psyche.2 Because you focus in it primarily, you understand its rules well enough to get along. A trip in the physical world merely represents the decision to walk or to choose a particular kind of vehicle-a car will not carry you across the ocean, so you take a ship or a plane. You are not astonished to see that the land suddenly gives way to water. You find that natural alteration quite normal. You expect time to stay in its place, however. The land may change to water, for example, but today must not change into yesterday in the same fashion, or into tomorrow in the beginning of today's afternoon.

Walking down the avenue, you expect the trees to stay in their places, and not transform themselves into buildings. All of these assumptions are taken for granted in your physical journeys. You may find different customs and languages, yet even these will be accepted in the vast, overall, basic assumptions within whose

boundaries physical life occurs. You are most certainly traveling through the private and mass psyche when you so much as walk down the street. The physical world seems objective and outside of yourself, however. The idea of such outsideness is one of the assumptions upon which you build that existence. Interior traveling is no more subjective, then, than a journey from New York to San Francisco. You are used to projecting all destinations outside of yourself Period. The idea of varied inward destinations, involving motion through time and space, therefore appears strange.

Now take your break.

(10:36. Jane's delivery had remained quiet and steady. "Boy, he was going strong "she said. "He kept me under a good long time because of the noise [in the apartment] upstairs-and because of those phone calls, too, I'll bet..." Here she referred to a number of out-of state calls she'd taken after supper this evening she'd found two of them in particular to be rather upsetting

(Resume in the same manner at 10:5 8.)

Generally speaking, you have explored the physical planet enough so that you have a good idea of what to expect as you travel from country to country.

Before a trip, you can produce travel folders that outline the attractions and characteristics of a certain locale. You are not traveling blind, therefore, and while any given journey may be new to you, you are not really a pioneer: The land has been mapped and there are few basic surprises.

The inner lands have not been as well explored. To say the least, they lie in virgin territory as far as your conscious mind is concerned. Others have journeyed to some of these interior locales, but since they were indeed explorers they had to learn as they went along. Some, returning, provided guidebooks or travel folders, telling us what could be expected. You make your own reality. If you were from a foreign land and asked one person to give you a description of New York City, you might take his or her description for reality. The person might say: "New York City is a frightful place in which crime is rampant, gangs roam the streets, murders and rapes are the norm, and people are not only impolite but ready to attack you at a moment's notice. There are no trees. The air is polluted, and you can expect only violence." If you asked someone else, this individual might say instead: "New York City has the finest of museums, open-air concerts in some of the parks, fine sculpture, theater, and probably the greatest collection of books outside of the Vatican. It has a good overall climate, a great mixture of cultures. In it, millions of people go their way daily in freedom." Period. Both people would be speaking about the same locale. Their descriptions would vary because of their private beliefs, and would be colored by the individual focus from which each of them viewed that city.

One person might be able to give you the city's precise location in terms of latitude and longitude. The other might have no such knowledge, and say instead: "I take a plane at such-and-such a place, at such-and-such a time, giving New York City as my destination, and if I take the proper plane I always arrive there."

(Pause at 11:13.) Explorers traveling into inner reality, however, do not have the same kind of landmarks to begin with. Many have been so excited with their discoveries that they wrote guidebooks long before they even began to explore the inner landscape. They did not understand that they found what they wanted to find, or that the seemingly objective phenomena originated in the reflections of the psyche.

You may, for example, have read books numbering the "inner realms, " and telling you what you can expect to encounter in each. Many of these speak of lords or gods of the realm, or of demons. In a strange way these books do provide a service, for at certain levels you will find your own ideas materialized; and if you believe in demons then in those terms you will encounter them. The authors, however, suppose that the devils have a reality outside of your belief in them, and such is not the case. The demons simply represent a state of your own mind that is seemingly out there, objectified. Therefore, whatever methods the authors used to triumph over these demons is often given as proof not only of the demons' reality, but of each method's effectiveness.

Now if you read such books you may often program your activity along those lines, in the same way that a visitor to New York City might program experience of the city in terms of what he or she had been told existed there.

That kind of structuring also does a disservice, however, for it prevents you from coming in contact with your own original concepts. There is no reason, for example, to encounter any demons or devils in any trance or out-of-body condition.3 (Pause.) In such cases your own hallucinations blind you to the environment within which they are projected. When your consciousness is not directly focused in physical reality, then, the great creativity of the psyche is given fuller play. All of its dimensions are faithfully and instantly produced as experience when you learn to take your "normally alert" conscious mind with you; and when you are free of such limiting ideas, then at those levels you can glimpse the inner powers of your own psyche, and watch the interplay of beliefs and symbols as they are manifested before your eyes. Until you learn to do this you will most certainly have difficulty, for you will not be able to tell the difference between your projections and what is happening in the inner environment.

Any exploration of inner reality must necessarily involve a journey through the psyche, and these effects can be thought of as atmospheric conditions, natural at a certain stage, through which you pass as you continue. Period.

(Louder at 11:31:) Now give us a moment....

("I'm in between, "Jane said after apause, and in her "own" voice. "I don't know what's coming. I'm sort of half in trance and half out... ." She lit a cigarette.

("Do you want me to get you some more beer?"

("I don't think it'll last that long" she said. Seth returned-and stayed longer, probably, than she'd anticipated he would. His material was for Jane, and grew out of the paper she wrote this afternoon on Eastern religious thought [see Appendix 15]. The more personal parts of Seth's delivery aren't given here, yet enough remains to show Jane's main challenges some 11 years after she began speaking for him.

(The quotations also indicate how pervasive the regular Western view of "reality" is in our society, and what an undertaking it is to step outside of that framework. or just to enlarge upon iL Jane is still in the process of that objective, intellectual-and yet very emotional-movement of her psyche [as I am], but she's made considerable progress. in each of her books she tries to more dearly communicate the details and developments of her journey. [I note also that neither one of us is trying to get rid of our Western orientation, or to desert it-but to understand it more fully.]

(Now Seth said in part, beginning at 11:33:)

Ruburt is working through the philosophical problems that were really only questions not completely asked. All of the writing he did today is important He is preparing to go ahead in all directions.

There are too many levels here to discuss all at once... One such level reinforces a trust in himself. The trust is accepted, however, because he is finally ready to work through the issues. As given [at various times over the years, mostly in personal material], they involve cultural training and religious indoctrinations.4 He is challenging, finally, the old beliefs that say that the self's spontaneity is not to be trusted. He is challenging those ideas emotionally and philosophically, uniting physical action and inner mobility. In the past he was still afraid to touch those beliefs with any but the slightest of hands.

Give us a moment... What he wrote is pertinent. Before he could go fully ahead he had to accept the challenges of the past, and this meant he had to examine those old beliefs. He is only now really beginning to do so....

They were not only his private religious beliefs, but those of his contemporaries generally-and (loudly:) the foundations upon which your present civilization was made. He had to find the courage to encounter those old beliefs boldly, and he is finally doing so. I will have more to say to him in the dream state this evening, and I will shortly explain his experience with my voice.

In away, then, the session will continue at another level of communication. It will all be down in black and white for you before too long, however.

My heartiest wishes to you both, and a fond good evening.

("Thank you, Seth, and the same to you. Good night."

(11:46 P.M. AllJane could say the next morning was that she had no conscious memory of any contact Seth might have made with her in the dream state. Looking ahead a bit: In tomorrow night's session, though, Seth does explain her weekend sleep-state encounter with his voice.)

Session 711, October 9, 1974, 9:17 P.M., Wednesday

(ESP class had really jump ed last night. The 32 people crowded into our living room enjoyed rich, active, loud, and even profane exchanges among themselves, with Jane, and with Seth. "Fuck you, Seth."' one girl screamed-which daunted that worthy not at all: Class members hardly agree with Seth or anyone else all of the time. As usual, Jane found herself learning along with her students. She also took time to sing very delicately in Sumari, in contrast to Seth's powerfid deliveries. All was recorded of course. Class lasted from 7 P.M until after midnight, and by the time it was over everyone involved was, ~f not exhausted, certainly well exercised emotionally. We're to get a transcript of the evening's Seth material at next week's class. *)

Good evening (whispering.

("Good evening Seth.")

Now: Dictation (still whispering) . Never as dramatic as our noisy class sessions.

Your world, again, is the result of a certain focus of consciousness, without which that world cannot be perceived. Period. The range of consciousness involved is obviously physically oriented, yet within it there are great varieties of consciousness, each experiencing that seemingly objective world from a private perspective. The physical environment is real in different terms to an animal, a fish, a man, or a rock, for example, and different portions of that environment are correspondingly unreal [to each of those forms]. This is highly important.

If an inhabitant from another reality outside of your own physical system entirely were to visit it, and if "his" intelligence was roughly of the same degree as your own, he would still have to learn to focus his consciousness in the same way that you do, more or less, in order to perceive your world. He would have to alter his native focus and turn it in a direction that was foreign to him. In this way he could "pick up your station."1 There would be distortions, because even though he managed such manipulations he might not have the same kind of native physical structure as your own, of course, through which to receive and interpret those data his altered consciousness perceived.

Your visitor would then be forced to translate that information as best he could through his own native structure, if it were to make any sense to his consciousness in its usual orientation. All realities axe the result of certain unique focuses taken by consciousness, therefore. In those terms, there is no outside. The effects of objectivity are caused as the psyche projects its experience into inner dimensions that it has itself created.

(9:35.) Within, those frameworks are ever expanding, so that in your terms at least it seems that greater and greater distances are involved. Travel to any other land of physical reality must then involve alterations of consciousness.2

New paragraph. While all of your own thoughts and feelings are "somewhere" materialized, only some of them become physical in your terms. They are then accepted as physical reality. They provide the basis for the physical events, objects, and phenomena upon which you all agree. Therefore your world has a stability that you accept, a certain order and predictability3 that works well enough for daily concerns. At that point you are tuned in precisely on your "home station." You ignore the ghost symbols or voices, the probable actions that also occur, but that are muffled in the clear tones of your accepted reality. When you begin to travel away from that home station, you become more aware of the other frequencies that are buried within it. You move through other frequencies, but to do this you must alter your own consciousness. *

The probable realities connected with your own system are like the suburbs, say, surrounding a main city. If for simplicity's sake you think of other realities as different cities, then after you leave your own you would pass through the suburbs, then into the country, then after a time into other suburbs until you reached another metropolis. Here each metropolis would represent a conglomeration of consciousnesses operating within an overall general frequency of clearest focus, a high point of psychic communication and exquisite focus in the given kind of reality. Unless you are tuned in to those particular frequencies, however, you could not pick up that reality. You might instead perceive the equivalent of jumbled sound or meaningless static (as Jane has done) , or jigsaw images (as I have done) . You might simply realize that some kind of activity was there, but without being able to pinpoint it.

Now all consciousness, including your own, is highly mobile. While you focus your attention primarily in your own world, certain portions of your consciousness are always straying. When you are sleeping, then, your consciousness often ventures into other realities, usually in a wandering fashion without tuning itself in to any precise frequencies. Beneath many seemingly chaotic dreams there are often valid experiences in which your consciousness "lights" in another reality, without being attuned to it with the necessary precision that would allow for clear perception. The information cannot be sifted or used effectively and is translated into dream images, as your consciousness returns toward your own home station. Therefore, it has been difficult to achieve any kind of clear picture of such other realities.

(Pause at 9:5 9.) Certain particular focuses then bring in different worlds, but unless your consciousness is tuned in with exquisite precision you will not be able to perceive dearly. You will instead pick up at best the ghost images, probabilities, and private data that are not officially recognized as part of the main reality's official structure of events.

New paragraph. Basicall'5~, however, consciousness is freewheeling. Such realities therefore always exist-in your own psyche-outside of your "home station, " and some portion of your own consciousness is always involved in them. Period. There are bleedthroughs, so to speak, in the form of unofficial perceptions that often occur, or "impossible" events that are seemingly beyond explanation. (Pause.) For now think of your own psyche, which is a consciousized identity, as a kind of "supernatural radio." All ofiiTh stations exist at once within the psyche. These do not come through with sound alone, but with all the living paraphernalia of the world. The "you" that you recognize is but one signal on one such station, tuned in to a certain frequency, experiencing that station's overall reality from your own viewpoint-one that is unique and like no other, and yet contributing to the whole life of the station.

(Smile:) The supernatural radio that is your entire psyche contains many such stations, however. These are all playing at the same time. It would be highly confusing in this analogy to experience or hear all of these at once, however, so different portions of the psyche tune in to different stations, concentrate upon them, and tune out the others for immediate practical purposes. Because these stations all operate within the same psyche or supernatural radio, the overall quality of the programs will have much to do with the nature of the psyche itself. Radios are wired and contain transformers and transistors. The overall reception is dependent upon the wiring and the inner workings of the radio-and (intently) those workings exist apart from the stations they are meant to pick up. In the same way, the "supernatural psyche" exists apart from the stations of consciousness that it contains. In this case indeed the psyche itself makes the radio, adding ever-new connections and stations.

(10:18.) New paragraph. Pretend that you have a radio with which you can clearly pick up 10 stations. First imagine that during the daily programming there are three soap operas, four news programs, several excellent dramas, a few operas, some popu-. lar music, several religious sermons, and some sports programs. Each of these has its own commercials or messages, which may or may not have anything to do with the programs given.

First of all, it would be nearly impossible for you to sample all of these programs with any effectiveness while going about your own affairs. To make matters more complicated, again, these programs do not involve only sound. Each one has its own dimensional realities. Beside that, there is a give-and-take between programs.

For example: Say that you have a certain Wilford Jones, who is a character in one of the soap operas. This Wilford, while canying on within his own drama as, say, a sickly grocer in Iowa, with a mistress he cannot support, and a wife that he must support (with amusement)-this poor, besieged man on station KYU is also aware of all the other programs going on at the other stations. All of the other characters in all of the other plays are also aware of our grocer. There is a constant, creative give-and-take between the day's various programs. Period.

When our Wilford dramatically cries out to his mistress: "I am afraid my wife will learn of our affair, " then the symphony playing on another station becomes melodramatic, and the sports program shows that a hero fumbles the football. Yet each character has its own free will. The football player, unconsciously picking up the grocer's problem, for example, may use it as a challenge and say: "No. I will not fumble the ball." The crowds then cheer, and our grocer in his soap opera may smile and say: "But it will all work out after all."

In other words, there is in the psyche constant interaction between all of the stations, and marvelous, literally unlimited creativity-in which, in your terms, all actions in one station affect all others in the other stations.

Now take a break.

(10:34. Jane's trance had been excellent, her delivery steady and rather quiet for the most part "I knew what Seth was talking about~, "she said, "because I had the images to go along with what he was saying. Not that I could repeat him now, word for word. . .

(I reminded Jane that during P.M., Monday's session, the 710th, Seth had promised to "shortly explain" her hearing his booming voice in her sleep state last Saturday night. See Jane's description of the event preceding that session.

(Resume at 10:5 4.)

Now: Dictation: Still using the same analogy As he falls asleep some night our grocer, Wilford, might suddenly hear the full strains of a symphony in his head, or instead catch a quick glimpse of a football player; or on the other hand one of the musicians in the symphony orchestra may suddenly find himself thinking about how difficult it would be to have a mistress and a wife at the same time.

From the point of view of the perceiver these would be unofficial events, and yet they could serve as important clues to the nature of reality. The separate programs existing at once each have their own schedules, and from your reality you could not play them all at once. It seems to you that you are outside of the psyche, so you think of someone as yourself operating this radio from that external position. From your point of view you could not pick up the grocer's escapades and the symphony, for instance, if both came through at 8 o'clock in the evening, without switching from one to the other:

You would have to choose which program you wanted.

It is very easy of course to expand our analogy, changing the radio to a television set. In this case the projections on the screen would be fully dimensional, aware of each viewer in each living room. (Pause.) Not only this, but the screen people would understand the relationship between you the viewer, and, say, the other viewers in the same town. Behind the scenes not only would the performers, as performers in all of the programs, all know each other, but the characters portrayed by them would know each other and be aware of each other's roles in the programs, and even now and then stray into one another's dramas.

At levels beyond the comprehension of the viewer, all of the dramas and programs would be related. Again, because of the specific poise of your consciousness, it seems to you that you are outside of all these programs. You tune in to them, making choices, for example, if more than one favorite plays at the same hour.

In greater terms you are a part of the same "set, " and at another level someone sees you as a character in a living room turning on a television set. Intrinsically the psyche, the private psyche, contains all such programs and realities. Certain portions of it, however, choose to take different focuses in order to bring those aspects in more clearly.

(Pause at 11:13.) To some extent, signals from all of the other stations are always in the background of any given program, and by momentarily altering the direction of your own attention you can learn how to bring other stations into focus. Psychically and psychologically, those other stations upon which you do not concentrate form the structure of the psyche as you understand it, from which your earthly experience springs into focus. Studying yourself and the nature of your own consciousness, then, will automatically lead you to some extent to an understanding of the "unknown" reality. The unknown reality is composed of those blocked-out portions of your own psyche, and the corresponding frameworks of experience they form.

(Long pause.) New paragraph. For the sake of imagery, you can imagine your normal consciousness as your connection with this home planet-the familiar station that you tune in to every day. When you project your consciousness away from it, then you will encounter various kinds of atmospheric conditions. Once you understand what these are, and what effects can be expected, such journeys can be undertaken consciously, with the conscious mind that you know acting as the astronaut, for example, and the rest of your consciousness acting as the vehicle. Such journeys lead to quite valid realities, but as an astronaut must know the best landing conditions, so you must learn how to "come in" at the most auspicious time and under the best conditions.

Such journeys take you through the nature of the psyche itself, as well as to those other realities that exist as the result of the psyche's concentration within particular frequencies.

Projecting your consciousness out of your body, therefore, provides at the same time an inner probing of consciousness itself, as well as experience of its manifestations. There are then inner lands of the mind, and other worlds quite as legitimate as your own. They are intimately connected, however, with mental states which are then materialized, and so your own mental processes are highly involved.

Take your break.

(11:28. "He's really going though, I'm telling you, "Jane said, after remarking upon the shorter delivery. "I'm hoping he says something about when I heard his voice in my sleep." Resume at a faster pace at 11:40.)

Now First of all, I have been speaking of the psyche as if it were a completed thing, with definite boundaries. The private psyche is ever creative, actually-expansive and literally without beginning or end.

Your experience of yourself marks the seeming boundaries of yourself. In a manner of speaking, I am one personality and one program or station. Ruburt is another. We have learned to be aware of each other, * to communicate between stations, to affect each other's programs and to change each other's worlds. I do not speak alone to Ruburt and Joseph, for example, but my words go out to the world that you know. Still within your framework, Ruburt tunes in to another station, translates it and broadcasts the information. To do this, however, he has to alter his own consciousness, withdraw momentarily from the official station to bring in this one. That means tuning in to other portions of the psyche, as well as another kind of reality. The final translation of my material has to come through his organism, however, or it would be meaningless to you.

Through him I am aware of the nature and condition of your world, and offer from my viewpoint comments meant to help you. Through Ruburt, then, I am permitted to view the earth "again~~ in your terms. I exist apart from him, as he exists apart from me, yet we are together a part of the same entity-and that simply carries the idea of the psyche further.

The other [Saturday] evening while he was in bed Ruburt had a somewhat surprising experience. He was not dreaming. His body was asleep but his consciousness was drifting. He clearly heard my voice, it seemed to come literally from out of the sky, down into another room outside of (next-door to., actually) the one in which his

body slept For a moment the power frightened him, for it sounded like a radio turned up to an incredible degree-louder than thunder. At the time words were clearly distinguishable, though later he forgot what they said. For an instant he was tempted to interpret the power as anger, for in your world when someone is shouting they are usually angry. He realized, however, that something else was involved. He did not sense my presence, but only heard the thunder of the voice. It shocked him because he is used to hearing my words from within his head-he had never before been aware of my voice as existing apart from him. In the dream state he has heard me giving him information. In these instances, however, he was the channel through which my voice came. He has often wondered about the nature of my own independence, and the kind of reality in which I exist.

He was also aware at the time that while the voice literally boomed out, no one else would have heard it. Yet the voice definitely came from outside of himself, and he certainly seemed to hear it with his physical ears.

("Can you tell us what the voice said?"

(Whispering:) Let me continue...

Ruburt acts as a receiver when I speak, and so I must make certain adjustments so that my message can be channeled under conditions that involve, among other things, his nervous system and physical apparatus. That evening, through using what I call interior sound, 5 I let Ruburt become acquainted with the power at my disposal so that he could realize that it did, basically now, come from beyond his personality as he understands it.

(12:02.) In regular sessions, as now, he and I again both make adjustments, and so in sessions I am what I call a bridge personality, composed of a composite self-Ruburt and I meeting and merging to form a personality that is not truly either of us, but a new one that exists between dimensions. Beyond that is my real identity.

Ruburt does extremely well with interior sound, and so I use that method rather than, say, an image to make my independent existence known. Now Ruburt called me originally (last Saturday night) at unconscious levels because he was upset with "earth programming." He thought that you needed some help from the outside, so to speak. That intent set up certain signals that reached into other realities or stations, and I answered. I was not speaking to Ruburt personally when he heard me, but addressing myself to the world at large in a program that was indeed picked up by others.

This program spread out and was translated by others in dream states. In physical terms, however, the message given that evening is still to be presented through these books.

Give us a moment... End of dictation.

(12:09. And so in his own way Seth answered my question ofafew minutes ago. Now Jane paused, then came partially out of trance. "I know he said that was the end of book work, "she told me, "but I think there's more on it. So fyou'llget me a new pack of cigarettes... ." Then:)

Continue dictation: Now: In your local programming you have hosts of familiar characters, and at different times, in your terms, you have them play different roles. They take different roles. These often represent strong idealizations alive in the private and mass psyche. (Humorously:) Let me give you a brief example that will also show you how well I have learned your culture.

(Seth proceeded to name three current lyfamous television detectives.)

In their own ways, these are heroes representing the detective who is out to protect good against evil, to set things right. Now these characters exist more vividly in the minds of television viewers than the actors do who play those roles. The actors know themselves as apart from the roles. The viewers, however, identify with the characters. They may even dream about the characters. These have their own kind of superlife because they so clearly represent certain living aspects within each psyche.

The aspects are personified in the character. Through the centuries, in your terms, there have been different personalities, some physical and some not, with whom the species identified. Christ is one of these: in some respects the most ideal detective-in a different context, however-out to save the good and to protect the world from harm. In certain ways man also projected outward the idea of a devil or devils, and for somewhat the same reasons, so that he could identify with what he thought of as the unsavory portions of the psyche as he understood them at any given time. In between there are a multitude of such personalities, all vividly portraying parts of the psyche.

(12:21.) These characters become portions of the inner literature of the mind. Suppose an inhabitant from another reality saw [one of those three programs] and realized that people were watching it. Pretend he wanted to add more depth to the show. He might then come on himself in the guise of [the hero detective], but enlarging upon the characterization, adding more dimension to the plot. So, often when some personality from another station wants to help change the programming, he comes on in the form of a personality already known in fact or fiction. However, you must realize that that personality is larger than fact or fiction. "It" is independent at its own level, yet it is also a part of the portion of the private and mass psyche that is so represented.

I am Seth in those terms.

There are many myths connected with my name.6 They all represent portions of the psyche as they were understood at various times in man's history. Those portions were originally projected out of the psyche as it began to understand itself, and personified its abilities and characteristics, forming superheroic characters of one kind or another, to which the psyche could then correspond and relate.

End of dictation.

(12:29. Then, after producing a couple of paragraphs on another matter:)

End of session-("Okay.")

-and a fond good evening. 1 stop to give you a rest.

("I'm all right.

(With much amusement:) It shows you that I have concern.

("Yes. Well, thank you, Seth. Good night."

(End at 12:35 A.M. As we ate breakfast several hours later, Jane told methat during the night she'd kept waking up with ideas she thought were connected to "Unknown" Reality. When I asked her to write down what she could remember of them, she produced these items, with whatever distortions they may contain:)

"1. Some of the (hypnagogic) images you see in your mind prior to sleeping, and those at other times, are alternates-that is, you could see those pictures physically if you opened your eyes, instead of the ordinary reality you 'know' is there. Inner vision evolves physical sight, lining up exterior data into the kinds of images that correlate.

"2. Each reality is surrounded by its probabilities, but this is obviously relative...

"3. Our experience of the present is enriched by our memory of past perceptions. In some systems it works the other way:

Inhabitants are aware of the future as we are of the past. On the other hand their 'memory' of the past fades almost at once.

"4. Again I received information on Atlantis, only to forget it right away. I'd wanted to tell Rob about it this morning.

(Jane also came through with material about Atlantis right after the 708th session was held, less than two weeks ago; see Appendix 14. We'd described that episode briefly in ESP class the night before this [711th] session was held-so had our doing so caused her second Atlantis pickup? But it's also quite interesting to note that on both occasions Jane tuned in to data on Atlantis within hours after Seth had discussed ideas involving alternate realities.)

Session 712, October 16, 1974, 9:13 P.M., Wednesday

(No session was held P.M., Monday night, October 14, as scheduled. Jane was busy instead doing aprogramfor a radio station in a western state, live, via telephone from our living room in Elmira. She sat at her desk and was interviewed by the program's host, then answered questions from listeners. The show went well. In Volume 1, see the notes leading off the 702nd session.

(After supper this evening Jane received from Seth [without subjectively hearing his voice] information that the session would contain material about '~probability clusters." We liked the term. But not until Seth began discussing the subject did I realize that Jane had tuned in to it herselffollowing last Wednesday night's session. it appears at the end of that [711th] session as item No. 2 on the list of topics she came up with during the sleep state.

(In ESP class yesterday evening Jane engaged in one of her periodic and unusual "long-sound experiences, " as we call them. Seth goes into her adventure in consciousness after first break.)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Now: Dictation: As per Ruburt's notes, each system of reality is indeed surrounded by its probable realities, though any one of those "probable realities" can be used as the hub, or core reality; in which case all of the others will then be seen as probable. In other words, relativity certainly applies here.

The rockbed reality is the one in which the perceiver is focused. From that standpoint all others would seem peripheral. Taking that for granted, however, any given reality system will be surrounded by its probability clusters. These can almost be thought of as satellities. Time and space need not be connected, however-that is, the attractions that exist between a reality and any given probability cluster may have nothing to do with time and space at all. The closest probability satellite to any given reality may, for example, be in an entirely different universe altogether. (Pause.) In that regard, you may find brethren more or less like yourselves outside of your own universe-as you think of it-rather than inside it. You imagine your universe as extending outward in space (and backwards in time) . You think of it as an exteriorized manifestation, expanding perhaps, but in an exterior rather than an interior fashion.1

(Slowly:) Your idea of space travel, for example, is to journey over the "skin of your universe." You do not understand that your system is indeed expanding within itself, bringing forth new creativity and ç~~gy (underlined) .

Give us time.. . Your universe is only one of many. Each one creates probable versions of itself. When you journey on the earth you move around the outside of it. So far, your ideas of space travel involve that kind of surface navigation. Earth trips, however, are made with the recognition of their surface nature.2 When you think in terms of traveling to other planets or to other galaxies, though, the same kind of surface travel is involved. As closely as I can explain it in your terms, your concepts of space travel have you going around space rather than directly through it.

(9:40.) Give us time.. . You are also viewing your solar system through your own time perspective, which is relative. You "look backward into time, " you say, when you stare outward into the universe. You could as well look into the future, of course. Your own coordinates3 close you off from recognizing that there are indeed other intelligences alive even within your own solar system. You will never meet them in your exterior reality, however, for you are not focused in the time period of their existence. You may physically visit the "very same planet~' on which they reside, but to you the planet will appear barren, or not able to support life.

In the same way, others can visit your planet with the same results. There is then a whole great inner dimension even to the space that you know, that you do not perceive. There are intelligent beings outside of your own galaxy, "adjacent" to you. Theoretically, you can visit them with some vast improvements in your technology, but great amounts of time would be involved. Others have visited your own planet in that particular fashion. Yours is still a linear technology. Some intelligent beings have visited your planet, finding not the world you know but a probable one.4 There are always feedbacks between probable systems. A dominant species in one may appear as a bizarre trace species in another. More will be said about this and your planet later in the book.5 The closest equivalent to your own kind of intelligence and being can actually be found not by following the outer skin of space, but by going through it, so to speak.

Give us time... There are, again, inner coordinates having to do with the inner behavior of electrons. If you understood these, then such travel could be relatively instantaneous. The coordinates that link you with others who are more or less of your kind have to do with psychic and psychological intersections that result in a like space-time framework.

Here I would like to give a very simple example, evocative of what I mean. The other day Ruburt received a telephone call from a woman in California who was in difficulty. Ruburt promised to send [healing] energy. Hanging up, he dosed his eyes and imagined energy being sent out from a universal source through his own body, and directed toward the person in need. When he did so, Ruburt mentally saw a long "heavy" beam extending straight to the west from a point between his eyes. It reached without impediment. He felt that this extension was composed of energy, and it seemed so strong that a person could walk upon it without difficulty. Subjectively he felt that this beam of energy reached its destination. And so it did.6

Energy was almost instantly transmitted across the continent from one specific individual to another. When you are dealing with that kind of energy, and particularly when you believe in it, space does not matter. Emotional connections are set up and form their own set of coordinates. (Pause.) That beam of energy is as strong and real as a beam of steel, though it moves faster than a beam of light.

(10:09.) If Ruburt had tried to visit the woman by plane he would have followed the curve of the earth, but in those terms the energy went through in the "straightest" way.

("But not through the earth?" I asked. Whereupon Seth repeated his last sentence three times. That was the answer he wanted to give.)

The psychic and emotional communication, then, cut through physical coordinates. Ruburt was momentarily allied with the woman.

Now: In the same way you can be allied and in tune with other probabilities that do not coincide with your space-time axis. The exterior universe with its galaxies-as you understand it, and on that level of activity-can be encountered on certain rigid space-time coordinates. You can visit other planets only in your present (underlined) . Your present may be the past or the future as far as inhabitants of a given planet are concerned. Your physical senses will only operate in their and your present.

"Effective" space travel, creative space travel on your part, will not occur until you learn that your space-time system is one focus. Otherwise you will seem to visit one dead world after another, blind to civilizations that may exist on any of them. Some of these difficulties could be transcended if you learned to understand the miraculous multidimensionality of even your own physical structure, and allowed your consciousness some of its greater freedom.

To some extent you have neurologically blinded yourselves. You accept only a certain range of neurological impulses as "reality."8 You have biologically prejudiced yourselves. The physical structure is innately aware of many more valid versions of reality than you allow ito be.

Theoretically, a thoroughly educated space traveler in your time, landing upon a strange planet, would be able to adlust his own consciousness so that he could perceive the planet in various "sequences" of time, if you land upon a planet in a spaceship and find volcanos, you would, perhaps, realize that other portions of that planet might show different faces. You have confidence in your ability to move through space, so you might then explore the terrain that you could not see from your original landing point. If you did not understand the change in qualities of space, you might imagine that the whole planet was a giant volcano.

You do not understand as yet, however, that in a way you can move through time as you move through space-and until you understand that, you will not know the meaning of a truejourney, or be able to thoroughly explore any planet-or any reality, including your own.

You imagine that your own earth is mapped out, and all frontiers known, but the linear aspects of your planet's life represent a most minute portion of its reality.

Take your break.

(10:24. Jane told me that Seth had been "really there, " although

her delivery hadn't seemed to be any stronger or faster, say, than it usually is when she's under She added that the material had appeared to be endless, and that Seth had called for a break now only so that we could rest before he launched into the next block of data-for that too was already "there."

(Rain had fallen in afine drizzle throughout most of the day; and now, I saw from our second-story living room windows, a heaty fog lay over the street corner below and the newly finished Walnut Street Bridge just south of the intersection. The whole area had a warm disp ersed glow from the bridge's lights.

(Resume in the same manner at 10:4 5.)

The portions of the psyche reflect and create the portions of the universe from its most minute to its greatest part. You identif~r with one small section of your psyche, and so you name as reality only one small aspect of the universe.

New paragraph. In class last evening Ruburt "picked up" messages that seemed to be too slow for his neurological structure. He was convinced that it would take many hours of your time in order to translate perhaps a simple dear paragraph of what he was receiving. He experienced some strain, feeling that each vowel and syllable was so drawn out, in your terms of time, that he must either slow down his own neurological workings to try to make some suitable adjustments. He chose the latter. Messages, therefore, perceptions, "came through" at one speed, so to speak, and he managed to receive them while translating them into a more comfortable, neurologically familiar speed.

One part of Ruburt accepted the "slow" [or "long"I perceptions, while another part quickened them into something like normal speech patterns. Some communication did result.'

What he was sensing, however, was an entirely different kind of reality. He was beginning to recognize another synapse [neuronal] pattern not "native"; he was familiarizing himself with perceptions at a different set of coordinate points. Such activity automatically alters the nature of time in your experience, and is indicative of intersections of your consciousness with another kind of consciousness. That particular type of consciousness operates "at different speeds" than your own. Biologically, your own physical structures are quite able to operate at those same speeds, though as a species you have disciplined yourselves to a different kind of neurological reaction. By altering such neurological prejudice, 10 however, you can indeed learn to become aware of other realities that coincide with yours. Period.

Now Electrons themselves operate at different "speeds." The structure of the atom that you recognize, and its activity, is in larger terms one probable version of an atom.1' Your consciousness, as it is allied with the flesh, follows the activity of atoms as far as it is reflected in your system of reality.

Ruburt is learning to minutely experience-change that-Ruburt is learning to minutely alter his experience with the probable atomic correlations that exist quite as validly as does the particular kind of atomic integrity that you generally recognize. When he does so, in your terms, he alters atomic receptivity. This automatically brings probabilities to the forefront. To perceive other realities you alter your own coordinates, tuning them in to other systems and attracting those into your focus.

Now take a break or end the session as you prefer.

("We'll take the break."

(11:08 to 11:26.)

Now: To some extent or another there are counterparts'2 of all realities within your psyche. When you slow down, or quicken your thoughts or your perceptions, you automatically ~ to alter your focus, to step aside from your officially recognized existence. This is highly important, for in certain terms you are indeed transcending the time framework that you imagine to be so real.

In other terms, certain portions of your own reality have long since "vanished" in the unrecognized death that your own sense of continuity has so nicely straddled. Your personal cluster of probable realities surrounds you, again, on a cellular basis, and biologically your physical body steers its own line, finding its balance operating in a cluster of probabilities while maintaining the focus that is your own. You can even learn to tune in to the cellular comprehension. It will help you realize that your consciousness is not as limited as you suppose. All realities emerge from the psyche, and from the CU's (the units of consciousness) that compose it.

(Heartily:) End of dictation. Give us amoment....

(11:38. Now Jane came through with several pages of material for herself Some of it was quite personal, but one part consisted of Seth's response to an assessment she'd written after supper tonight, wherein she examined her progress since the inauguration of her psychic abilities late in 1963. Seth, here, adds to our understanding ofJane's reactions to some of the challenges she took up 11 years ago. His material is also an extension of much that he gave in the 6 79th session for Volume 1 of "Unknown" Reality when he discussed the early background of the probable Jane who chose to live in this physical reality, and how that Jane began to contend with her strongly mystical nature. See especially Note 8for Session 679, and Appendix 1.)

The paper Ruburt wrote this evening is pertinent, and highly significant. Have him show it to you. Indeed, though he dislikes the word, he is finishing the first portion of his "apprenticeship"-in which he became acquainted with a different kind of reality, and had to learn how to equate it with the "normal" one.

Certain strains were involved that in one way were as natural as growing pains. This has nothing to do with so-called psychic phenomena, but the natural growth and development of a personality whenever it tries to go beyond its space and time context, and takes on challenges of such a nature.

In one way, on one level, such a personality seems to be operating "blind, " while in another it is aware of its accomplishments and challenges. Often a situation of unbalance is set up that would not exist had the personality not accepted the challenges and, hence, the potentials for an even greater development.

The more prosaic elements of the personality then take whatever measures seem necessary at the time, while new orientation is tried out. These methods may seem to lead to great distortions, particularly in contrast with the sensed possibilities of development. In one way or another, however, they still provide a framework in which the personality feels itself free to pursue its goals. The built-in impetuses provide clue points. When the new sensed reality is strong enough to provide not only greater cornprehensions but also to construct a new framework, then the old framework is seen as limiting, and discarded.

Elements in your lives were experienced as negative simply because Ruburt was not sure of himself. Pleas for help (directed to Jane as well as Seth) were seen as demands-not as opportunities to use abilities-so he felt hounded. He was not sure enough of his new world; he was still enough a part of the old one so that he often saw his life and abilities through the eyes of the "old world inhabitants"-the others who might scorn him, or set him up for ridicule.'3 They represented portions of his own psyche still at that level of consciousness, not having quite assimilated the greater knowledge or experience, so he felt he needed protection-the protection that would.., cleverly.., serve all of his purposes, allowing him to go ahead as he wanted to... that would keep him at home working, and yet also serve as a control against too much inner spontaneity until he learned that he could indeed trust the new world of experience.

(Then later:) There is far more I could say. The time this evening does not permit it, though I can talk as long as you can write.

My consciousness does not normally operate at the same speeds as yours, either (see Note 9) , so in my terms what I am saying has long ago been said, while in your present it is new, or just reaching you.

(And later yet:) Ruburt should have another experience involving me or my voice...

And now (emphatically, but with a smile) I bid you a fond-and indeed the most fond of good evenings.

("Thank you. Seth. Good night."

(End at 12:01 A.M.

(A note added after Seth had completed his dictation for "Unknown" Reality in April 1975: the 712th session was held on October 16, 1974. In her notes at the beginning of the 710th session, Jane described how she'd heard Seth's very poweiful voice in her sleep state during the night of October 5. I can write now that she has yet to have any subsequent, similar kind of encounter with Seth or his voice.)

Session 713, October 21, 1974, 9:28 P.M., Monday

("The truth is, "Jane said to me the other evening. "I'm alone in this psychic thing. I'm the one who's got to do it...." We were discussing the material Seth had given after 11:38 in the last [712th] session; he'd talked about some ofthe strains Jane had experz~'nced while sewing "thefirst portion of her app renticesh~p" in the development of her psychic abilities. I've heard her say the same thing before, of course; see Note 13 for the 712th session. Basically, her examination of her inner dimensions must be a solitary one. When she began the sessions over 11 years ago, we requested advice and help from afewpeople2 but as we slowly began to understand the very personal nature of her gifts we realized that she'd have to find her own answers as she went along. with whatever help I could learn to offer~

(Those circumstances might have acted as a leavening factor in the early years, perhaps to a mild degree helping determine the direction of some of Jane's psychic explorations, with and without Seth. Much more important is that she's always wanted to do her own thing Besides, how would she ask advice from another about such an individua4 intuitive quality as, say, the next step to

take in her psychic growth? These notes make her quest appear to be much simpler than it actually was-and is.2

(This afternoon Jane told me that in her sleep last night she'd had bleed-throughs from Seth about the material to come next in his booI She described it to me-and tonight Seth followed that subject matter very closely in the first part of the session. I suggest the reader review the 711th session in connection with this evening's data to 11:26.)

Good evening.

("Good evening. Seth.")

Dictation. Give us a moment...

(Long pause.) It might help here if you imagine the psyche again as some multidimensional living television set. In what seems to be the small space of the screen many programs are going on, though you can tune in to only one at a time.

In a manner of speaking, however, all of the other programs are "latent?' in the one you are watching. There are coordinates that unite them all. There is a give-and-take quite invisible to you between one program and another, and action within one, again, affects the action within each of the others.

Like this imaginary multidimensional television, the psyche contains within it other programs than the one in which you are acting-other plots, environments, and world situations. Theoretically you can indeed momentarily "walk out oP' your program into another as easily, when you know how, as you now move from one room to another. You must know that the other programs exist or the possibility of such action will not occur to you. In larger terms all of the programs are but portions of one, colon: The various sets are real, however, and the characters quite alive.

Now: Actors playing parts are obviously alive, as actors, but in a fictional play, for example, the characters portrayed by the actors are not alive, in your terms, in the same fashion that the actors are. In the psyche, however, and in its greater reality, the characters have their own lives-quite as real as those of the actors.

Think again of the psyche in the manner mentioned, taking it for granted that the program now on the screen is a fully dimensioned reality, and that hidden somehow in its very elements are all of the other programs not showing. These are not lined up in space behind the "front" program, but in a completely different way contained within it. The point of any image at any given time in the picture showing might represent, for example, a top hat on a table. Everyone acting in that scene would view the hat and the table, and react accordingly with their own individual characteristics.

Give us a moment... The hat on the table, while possessing all of the necessary paraphernalia of reality for that scene, might also, however, serve as a different kind of reference point for one of the other progiams simultaneously occurring. In that reality, say program two, the entire configuration of hat and table may be meaningless, while still being interpreted in an entirely different way from a quite different perspective. There in program two the table might be a flat natural plain, and the hat an oddly shaped structure upon it-a natural rather than a manufactured one. Objects in your reality have an entirely different aspect in another. Any of the objects shown in the program you are watching, then, may be used as a different kind of reference point in another reality, in which those objects appear as something else.

(9:50.) We are trying to make an analogy here on two levels, so please bear with me. In terms of your psyche, each of your own thoughts and actions exist not only in the manner with which you are familiar with them, but also in many other forms that you do not perceive, colon: forms that may appear as natural events in a different dimension than your own, as dream images, and even as self-propelling energy. No energy is ever lost. The energy within your own thoughts, then, does not dissipate even when you yourself have finished with them. Their energy has reality in other worlds.3

Now imagine that the picture on , the television screen shows your own universe. Your idea of space travel would be to send a ship from one planet, earth, outward into the rest of space that you perceive on that "flat" screen. Even with your projected technology, this would involve great elements of time. Imagine here, now, that the screen's picture is off-center to begin with, so that everything is distorted to some extent, and going out into space seems to be going backward into time.

(Pause.) If the picture were magically centered, then all "time" would be seen to flow out from the instant moment4 of perception, the private now; and in many ways the mass now, or mass perception, represents the overall now-point of your planet. From that now, "time" goes out in all probable directions. Actually it also goes inward in all probable directions.

(Slowly:) The simple picture of the universe that you see on our screen, therefore, represents a view from your own nowperspective-but each star, planet, galaxy or whatever is made up of other reference points in which, to put it simply, the same patterns have different kinds of reality. True space travel would of course be time-space travel, 5 in which you learned how to use points in your own universe as "dimensional clues" that would serve as entry points into other worlds. Otherwise you are simply flying like an insect around the outside of the television set, trying to light on the fruit, say, that is shown upon the screen-and wondering, like a poor bemused fly, why you cannot. You use one main focus in your reality. In the outside world this means that you have a "clear picture." (Humorously:) There is no snow! That physical program is the one you are acting in, alive in, and it is the one shown on the screen. The screen is the part of your psyche upon which you are concentrating. You not only tune in the picture but you also create the props, the entire history of the life and times, hyphen-but in living three-dimensional terms, and "you, ~ are within that picture.

The kind of reality thus created by that portion of your consciousness forms a given kind of experience. It is valid and real. When you want to travel, you do so within the dimensions of the reality thus created. If you drive or fly from one city to another, you do not consider the journey imaginary. You are exploring the dimensions given.

(10:18.) Now If you alter that picture a little so that the images are somewhat scrambled-and you do this by altering the focus of your consciousness-then the familiar coordination is gone. Objects may appear blurred, ordinary sounds distorted. It seems as if you are on the outskirts of your own reality. In such a state, however, it is easy to see that your usual orientation may be but one of many frames of reference. (Pause.) If you did change the focus of your consciousness still further, you might then "bring in" another picture entirely. On the outside this would give you another reality. (Intently:) In it your "old" reality might still be somewhat perceivable as a ghost image, 6 if you knew what to look for and remembered your former coordinates. On the inside, however, you would be traveling not around or about, but through one portion of the psyche with its reality, into another portion of the psyche with its reality. That kind ofjourney would not be any more imaginary than a trip from one city to another.

There are space-time coordinates that operate from your viewpoint-and space travel from the standpoint of your time, made along the axis of your space, will be a relatively sterile procedure. (In parentheses: Some reported instances of UFO's happened in the past as far as the visitors were concerned, but appeared as images or realities in your present This involves craft sightings only. *)

Give us time... When you change your ordinary television set from one station to another you may encounter snow or distortion. If something is wrong with the set you may simply tune in patterns that seem meaningless and carry no particular program. You may have sound without a picture, and sometimes even a picture but sound from another program. So when you begin to experiment with states of altered consciousness you often run into the same kind of phenomena, when nothing seems to make sense.

(10:32.) Currently, physicists have made some important breakthroughs, but they do not recognize their significance. The universe that you know is full of microscopic black holes and white holes, 7 for example. Since your scientists have themselves given these labels, then using those terms I will say (with much gentle humor) that there are red, green, orange and purple holes-that is, the so-called black holes and white holes only represent what physicists have so far deduced about the deeper properties of your universe, and the way that certain coordinate points in one world operate, as providing feed-through into another.

Nothing exists outside the psyche, however, that does not exist within it, and there is no unknown world that does not have its psychological or psychic counterpart. Man learned to fly as he tried to exteriorize inner experience, for in out-of-body states in dreams he had long been familiar with flight All excursions into outer reality come as the psyche attempts to reproduce in any given "exterior" world the inner freedom of its being.

Men have also visited other worlds through the ages. Others have visited your world. In dreams, and in altered states through history as you accept it, men have been taken upon such journeys. On their return they almost always interpreted their experiences in terms of their home programs, intertwining what happened into what ended up as great myths and stories-real but not real.

Take your break.

(10:4 5. "Man, " Jane said after quickly leaving an excellent dissociated state, "is he going to town. There's just tons of material there, all ready and waiting...." I could tell that this was the case: Her delivery had reached a steady, quiet yet driving level that she seemed capable of maintaining indefinitely.

(Jane commented here on something I'd also become aware of in recent sessions. For whatever reasons since holding the 709th session, size hasn't had to wait for that certain, more "c4jicult" kind of trance to develop before launching into Seth's book material, see the note at 10:55 for that session. In some fashion she can't describe, Jane is now able to reach the "right" trance state, or to arrive at it, much more easily. For other contrasting examples, in Volume I see the notes closing out sessions 688 and 703, as well as related material in Appendix 4, wherein I wrote about the translation challenges she's often faced since beginning "Unknown" Reality: "-hence her talk before many of these sessions.., about attaining that 'certain clear focus, ' or 'the one clearest place in consciousness, ' before she began speaking for Seth."

("I get the strangest feeling of folded time' during the sessions, " Jane continued. "I'm caught. I can get more on the book, or some on me. I don't know what to do. I know the book st uff is all right there-but it takes time to get it. It's too bad I can't get it instantaneously.8 I really want both sets of mat erial, so I guess I'll wait and see what happens...."

(Resume in the same manner at 11:01.)

While all of this may sound quite esoteric, it is highly practical, and we are dealing with the nature of creativity itself.

Your thoughts, for example, and your intents, have their own validity and force. You set them into motion, but then they follow their own laws and realities. All creativity comes from the psyche. I [recently] suggested a project to Ruburt's class-one that will ultimately illuminate many of the points I am making in "Unknown" Reality. I suggested that Ruburt's students create a "city"9 at another level of reality. This is not to be a pie-in-the-sky sort of thing, or some "heaven" hanging suspended above, but a very valid meeting place between worlds. A psychic marketplace, for example, where ideas are exchanged, a place of psychic commerce, a pleasant environment with quite definite coordinates, established as an "orbiting satellite" on the outskirts of your world.

Initially, all worlds are created injust that fashion.

In certain terms, then, this involves in a very small way the creation and colonization of a different kind of reality-consciously accepted, however, from your perspective. On an unconscious level, the world as you know it expands in just such a fashion.'0 Several students have had dreams involving their participation in such a project. Ruburt found himself in an out-of-body state, looking at ajacket. It had four rectangular pockets. It was giant-sized. As he looked at it the front flap was open. In the dream he flew through this flap literally into another dimension, where the point of the flap was a hill upon which he landed. From that second perspective, the pockets of the jacket in the first perspective became the windows of a building that existed in a still-further, third dimension beyond the hill. Standing on the hill, he knew that in Perspective One the windows of the building in Perspective Three were jacket pockets, but he could no longer perceive them as such. Looking out from the hill in Perspective Two, Perspective One was invisibly behind him, and Perspective Three was still "ahead" of him, separated from him by a gulf he did not understand.

(11:15) He knew, however, that if the shades were pulled in the windows in Perspective Three, then the jacket-pocket flaps would appear to be closed in Perspective One. He also realized he had been directing the erection of the building in Perspective Three by making thejacket (in Perspective One) .

When he approached the hill in Perspective Two, he spoke to the contractor who was there before him. Ruburt said that he wanted to change the design. The contractor agreed, and shouted orders to people who were working in Perspective Three, where the building stood.

Now: Ruburt was validly involved in the erection of that building, and he did indeed travel through various dimensions in which the objects in one represented something entirely different in another. He used the particular symbols, however, simply to bring the theory home to him, but it represented the fact that any given object in one dimension has its own reality in another. You cannot move through time and space without altering the focus of your psyche. (Intently:) When you so alter that focus, however, you also change the exterior reality that you then experience.

Give us a moment. Rest your hand... Later you will realize the startling nature of what has been given this evening.

(Still in trance, Jane poured herself more beer. As Seth, she'd recited without hesitation all of the dfficult, complicated material connected with her own dream.)

The following is for Ruburt, yet also for others, and can serve as a brief essay on the nature of will.

(11:26. But in our opinions a lot of what Seth had to say was pretty personal-so much so that only certain parts of it are given below, along with a few bracketed changes I've made to help tie it together. These excerpts still furnish characteristic insights into aspects ofJane's personality, as well as my own, and I might add that the deleted portions are even more meaningful to us. We're making good use of all of this materiaL)

Ruburt directed his will in certain areas. Your will is your intent. All of the power of your being is mobilized by your will, which makes its deductions according to your beliefs about reality. Each of you use your will in your own way. Each of you have your own way of dealing with challenges. Ruburt used his will to solve [a series of) challenges.

He was determined to find the kind of mate that would best suit him and his own unique characteristics. That intent was in his mind. When that challenge was met he used his will and mobilized all of his power to fulfill his abilities, and to bring about conditions in which he hoped Joseph (as Seth calls me) could also fulfill his. The will, again, operates according to the personality's beliefs about reality, so its desires are sometimes tempered as those beliefs change. In his own way Ruburt always concentrated upon one challenge at a time-boring in, so to speak, and ignoring anything else that might distract him.

He wanted to write, to use his creative and psychic abilities to the fullest, and so he cut down all distractions. His literal mind led him to... a rich diet of creativity and psychic experience, and to a situation in which Joseph and he could finally be financially free [to some extent], and not in that way threatened.

To his way of thinking he cut out all excess baggage, so he had a spare diet, physically spe~ng... The power of his will is amazingly strong. He is not one to work in many areas at once. Each person lives by their intent, which springs up about the force of their being. In all of this probabilities are involved, so in all moments of the past he touched points of probable healings.1' No one can be healed against his or her will. There is no such coercion.

Ruburt does not like [some personal aspects] of his plan on the one hand. On the other it was part of his method, a way of intensifying focus, increasing perception in a small area while also ensuring safety, so that inner excursions would be balanced by [conditions in his exterior environment]... He sees that the challenge has been won, and now it is time to take up the next one, to apply the power of the will to certain physical areas.

Now many people never learn to apply the power of the will at all.

You Uoseph] were determined to fInd the kind of relationship you have with Ruburt, the kind of bond your parents never had, i2 and you applied the power of your will in that direction. At the same time you were determined to set yourself apart from the world to some extent, while still maintaining and developing an emotional contact with a mate that would be unlike any in your earlier experience. Creativity would have to be involved. You were also intrigued, determined to travel into the nature of reality, and at least glimpse a vague picture of what it could be. In this probability you provided yourself with a background th~iiincluded sports and the love of the body, knowing [those qualities] would sustain you.

One of your beliefs, then, was a strong joint one that you had to protect your energy at all costs, and block out worldly distractions. Ruburt with his practical mind interpreted this more literally than you did, and physical restriction was a part of his natural early environment [because of his mother's chronic illness], as it was not in yours. But he is amazingly res~ient... The power of his will is indeed awesome, and he is just now beginning to feel it. With that awareness, it can be used in a new physically orI~iTted directive. The altered directive is all that is necessary. The rest will unconsciously foflow... The point of power is in the present"; this kind of material and its understanding [by Ruburt and others] is more important than "past" causes.

There has been a series of challenges that Ruburt has met through using the power of his will, and this [physical one] is simply the next one to be conquered. Again, many people are not even familiar with that power.

Ibid you a fond good evening.

(End at 12:23 A.M. At the breakfast table some hours later, Jane told me that once again she'd "worked on Seth's book all night."

(And added a year later: Seth also discussed the will in a personal

session that was held just six months after he'd finished dictating "Unknown"

Reality in April 1975. As soon as Jane came through with the material, I

thought of adding some of its more generalized portions to this session. Setk)

... you cannot equivocate. You have a will for a reason. When you are born, that will is directed toward growth and development. You literally will yourselves alive. That will-to-be triggers all bodily activity, which then operates automatically, with the same power from which the will itself emerged.

In infancy and childhood the will singleheartedly directs the body to go full thrust ahead, sweeping aside obstacles in the great impetus toward growth and development. The will is meant to assess the conditions into which the organism grows, however-to also seek out the best areas for expansion.

There are times in history when the species deals with different kinds of challenges. In programmed societies where "each man or woman knows his or her place, " then the will knows which directions to follow, though other conditions and prerogatives might be ignored. Actually, in your own society there are many preroga~ves...

Ruburt wanted to go in one particular direction, but with no clear-cut known ways of getting there. He wanted to pursue a course that was unconventional. He felt he needed protection while he learned, and until he attained enough wisdom. i4 The search itself would lead to a completely different set of values and a new belief system.

You see about you others dealing with life's challenges, following the old beliefs. They must see for themselves that those beliefs do not work.

The universe is with you, and uotagainst you, .Your fellow men are with you and not against you. When [each of] you realize that, then you reach those portions of your fellows that are with you. You meet them at a different level that is illuminating to them also, and starts them developing... The will's power is impressive, and it is "distributed" throughout the body. The body depends upon it for direction. The will's beliefs, again, activate the body's automatic resources.

End of session.

Session 714, October 23, 1974, 9:36 P.M., Wednesday

(This afternoon Jane called Tam Mossman, her editor at Prentice-Hall, and told him~ "I've got my next book." She's calling it Psychic Politics. Already she thinks of it as another aspect psychology book, a sequel to Adventures in Consciousness.'

(Jane, in an obvious state of altered or enhanced consciousness, not only outlined all of Politics today, but wrote four manuscript pages that will eit/zergo into its Introduction or Chapter 1. All of the materialpoured out ofher in a most remarkable, unimpeded way-'~... as though it was already finished somewhere else, just waitingfor me to get it down. But Iliad to do itjust so, right to the last word, " she sai4 then added enthusiastically, "I think it's a classic. "Involved with Politics is her perception of another version of herself in a psychic "libraiy. "from which, evidently, she is to acquire a sign ~/icant portion of her new book.

(There were clear-cut connections between her creative petfo7-mance today and her reception of the outline for The Way Toward Health last March; see the notes at 10:45, as well as Note 8, for Session 713; and in

Volume 1, see Appendix 7. But there was even more creative expression to come through Jane this evening; not only in the session itself ofcourse, but after it, as I try to explain in the concluding notes.

(As we sat waiting at 9:32, Jane reported that she was getting her '~/iyramid" or cone~~ effect At such times she feels that subjective shape come down just over her head-always pointed upward, symbolically perhaps, toward other realities. She also thought she might go into her "massive"feelings at any moment. "But I don't think any of this has to do with Seth Two, "2 she said. She was still exhilarated from her work on Politics. "I'm getting two things: The sessions's going to be book dictation, which surprises me, but it's also going to be on what's happening to me now.. . And I am getting the massive thing... ."

(She had something of a cold, but had told me earlier in the evening that she wanted to hold the session. She fell quiet now after reassuring me that she was all right. The evening was quite warm; we had a window open; the traffic noises rushed up to our second-floor living room. Using many pauses, Jane began speaking very soft lyfor Seth. 3)

Good evening.

("Good evening~ Seth.")

This is somewhat of a momentous evening for Rubu~... As I speak he is experiencing certain sensations, in which his body feels drastically elongated (pause) , the head reaching out beyond the stars, the whole form straddling realities.

Now in a sense the physical body does this always-that is, it sits astride realities, containing within itself dimensions of time and being that cannot be even verbally described. The cells themselves are "eternal, " though they exist in your world only "for a time"

The unknown reality and the psyche's greater existence cannot be separated from the intimate knowledge of the flesh, however, for the life of the flesh takes place within that framework. As earlier mentioned, 4 the conscious self generally focuses in but one small dimension. Period. That dimension is experienced as ftilly as possible, its clear brilliance and exquisite focus possible only because you tune in to it and bring it to the forefront of your attention. In your terms, when you understand how to do this, then you can begin to tune in to other "stations" as well.

You know where physical reality is, then, on the dial of your multidimensional television set. While focused within that living scene you can learn to travel through it, leaving the "surface" picture intact and whole. In a way you program yourself, going about your daily duties as conscientiously and effectively as usual-but at the same time you discover an additional portion of your own reality. This does not diminish the physical self. Instead, in fact, it enriches it. You discover that the psyche has many aspects. While fully enjoying the physical aspect you find that there is some part of you left over, so to speak; and that part can travel into other realities. It can also then return, bringing the physically oriented self "snapshots" of its journeys. These snapshots are usually interpreted in terms of your home program. Otherwise, they might make no sense to the physical self.

Throughout the ages people have taken such journeys. The snapshots5 are developed in the "darkroom" that exists between your world and those visited. The people who have journeyed into the unknown reality have always been adventurous. Yet many had already seen the snapshots sent to your world by others, and so they began to clothe their own original visions of their journeys in the guise of those other pictures. A group of handy ideas, concepts, and images then formed. The clear vision of such explorers became lost. Those travelers no longer tried to make their own original snapshots of the strange environments and realities through which they passed. It was easier to interpret their experiences through the psychic penny postcards.

(Pause at 9:5 9.) At one time these postcards represented initial original visions and individual interpretations. Later, however, they began to serve as guidebooks consulted ahead of time. For instance: If you plan to travel to a distant country in your own world, you can find such publications to tell you what to expect. When you journey into other realities, or when your consciousness leaves your body, you can also rely upon guidebooks that program your activities ahead of time. Period.

Instead of telling you that you take an airplane from a certain airport at a certain time for a particular earthly destination, leaving one latitude and longitude and arriving at another set, instead of telling you that you leave your country for another ruled by a dictator, or a president, or by anarchy, they will tell you that you leave this astral plane for any one of a number of others, ruled as the case may be by lords or masters, gods and goddesses. instead of pointing out to you, as in earthly travel booklets, the locations of art galleries and museums, they will direct you to the Akashic Records.6 Instead of leading you to the archaeological sites of your world (intently) , and its great ruins of previous civilizations, they will tell you how to find Atlantis and Mu7 and other times in your past.

So you take a psychic guided tour into other realities; the unknown seems known, so that you are not an explorer after all, but a tourist, taking with you the paraphernalia of your own civilization, and beliefs that are quite conventional.

There are inner conventions, then, as there are outer ones. As the exterior mores try to force you to conform to the generally accepted ideas, so the interior conventions try to force you to make your inner experience conform to preconceived packaging.

There are good reasons for Conventions. Generally, they help organize experience. If they are lightly held to and accepted, they can serve well as guidelines. Applied with a heavy hand they become unnecessary dogma, rigidly limiting experience. This applies to inner and outer activity. Conventions are the results of stratified and rigid "spontaneity." At one time, in your terms, each custom had a meaning. Each represented a spontaneous gesture, an individual reaction. When these become a system of order, however, the original spontaneity is lost, and you project an artificial order that serves to stratify behavior rather than to express it. So there are psychic customs as there are physical ones, religious and psychic dogmas, guided tours of consciousness in which you are told to follow a certain line or a certain program. You become afraid of your private interpretation of whatever reality you find yourself experiencing.

Ruburt has thus far insisted upon his private vision and his unique expression of the unknown reality as he experiences it, and so he brings back bulletins that do not agree with the conventional psychic line.

Take your break.

(10:18. Jane's trance had been good, her deliveiy quiet and rather fast; her voice had become a little rough because of her cold, though. When Seth talked about Jane's private psychic vision he reminded me ofher own remarks on the same subject; see the notes opening the 713th session.

(Jane was aware of the elongated, giant-sized feeling now, as she had been just before the session began. "Everything's in proportion, though, "she said. "It's crazy, but Ifeel that when I stand up my head could go through the ceiling." But she looked quite normal to me, and of course nothing out of character happened when she stood up.

(Resume at 10:25.)

The psychic postcards and travel folders are handy and colorful. They are also highly misleading.

(Long pause.) Once individual travelers took those snapshots, and they represented original interpretations of other realities. They stood for individual versions of certain travelers taking brief glimpses of strange worlds, and interpreting their experiences to the best of their abilities. As such they were very valid. (Louder:) They were as valid as any snapshot that you might take of your backyard in the morning. That picture, however, would vary considerably from one taken by an inhabitant of your planet in a different part of the world, and in a different environment.

If there were discrepancies among the snapshots, however, people worried. While you expect pictures of your own reality to be diverse, those whojourneyed into the unknown reality became concerned if their snapshots did not agree, so they tried desperately to make all of the pictures look alike. They touched them up, in other words.

First of all, in your own world those travelers into unknown realms were considered outcasts, so to speak, as if they were picking up television programs that no one else saw.8 If their stories of their experiences did not jibe, who would believe them? They felt threatened. They felt that they had to tell the same story or they would be considered insane, so they made a tacit agreement, interpreting their experiences in the terms used by those who had gone "before."

You make your own reality. So, programmed ahead of time, they perceived [data] according to the psychic conventions that had been established. There are tigers in Asia, but you can travel through Asia and if you do not want to you'll never see a tiger. It's according to where you go. In the unknown reality your thoughts are instantly made apparent and real, materialized according to your beliefs. There, if you believe in demons, you will see them-without ever realizing that they are part of the environment of your psyche, formed by your beliefs, and thrown out as mirages over a very real environment that you do not perceive. You will believe the psychic tour books and go hunting for demons instead of tigers.

Give us a moment... Individually and en masse, you form the world that you know, yet it has an overall individual and mass basis so that some things are agreed upon. You view those things through your own unique vision. You form the reality. It is a valid one. It is experience. It is not therefore unreal, but one of the appearances that reality takes. It has a valid basis-an environment that you all accept, in which certain experiences are possible.

The same applies to other realities. You know there is a difference between, say, the picture before your eyes and a postcard, "artificial, " rendition of it. So there is a difference between the unknown reality and the postcards that have been given to you to depict it.

In your terms, Ruburt has been out for the real thing-to experience the unknown reality directly through his own perceptions, as divorced from the scenes given him by the postcards. Period.

Give us a moment...

(10:47. "I'm out of it, "Jane said abruptly, coughing Then: "I'm on to something Wait a minute. I don't know fI can get it, or what.... "She coughed again and again; her voice had become very hoarse since break, so much so that afew minutes ago I'd been on the verge of asking her to end the session. Now, over my protests, she wanted a fresh pack of cigarettes. See Note 3 in connection with the following materiaL)

"If I can get this it'll be something, I'll tell you, "Jane said, lighting up. She sipped her beer. "Bob-what I'm getting is something like it would be in real fast, quick beautiful sounds that I can't duplicate-very quick, very musical-connected with the spin of electrons9 and cellular composition.

"The spin of electrons is faster than the cellular composition. The faster speed of the electrons somehow gives the cells their boundaries. And there's something that's in a trance, say, in crystals, that's alive in the cells.

"Wait a minute, "Jane exclaimed again. "What I'm getting is a fantastic sound that's imprisoned in a crystal, that speaks through light, that's the essence of personality. Pm getting almost jewel-like colored sounds... I'll see what I can do with it. I want to get it in verbal stuff-and I'm getting it fast." Pause.

"-and we're speaking of personality now, " Jane said, coughing again. "As the seed falls, blown by the wind in any environment, so there's a seed of personality that rides on the wings of itself and falls into the worlds of many times and places. Falling with a sound that is its own true tone, struck in different chords."

(10:58.) "Sounds are aware of their own separateness, gloriously unique, yet each one merging into a symphony. Each sound recognizes itself as itself, striking the dimensional medium in which it finds its expression; yet it's aware of the infinite other multitudinous sounds it makes in other realities-the instruments through which it so grandly plays. Each cell, c-e-l-l, strikes in the same fashion, and so does each self s-el-f, in a kaleidoscope in which each slightest variation has meaning and affects the individual notes made by all.

"So we strike in more realities than one, and I hear those notes together yet separately, perhaps as raindrops, and attempt to put them together and yet hear each separate note...

"Seth-or somebody's saying-maybe it's just me-relates to the people in our time. I've tried to do the same thing, but I suddenly heard my own true tone, which I'm bound to follow.., to go beyond the conventionalized postcards... I'm done, Bob."

(11:03 P.M. "Wow, I'm out, I'm telling you, "Jane said rather groggily after afew moments. "I don't know how you're going to put this together with the Seth stuff It's like a note that finds its own true tone, and when it does nothing else makes sense. That's all I can say. But once you strike it, you know that's it."

(Except for afew instances in which I eliminated rep etitive phrases, all of the material Jane gave after 10:47 is unchanged here. At times, because her delivery had become so steady, even precise, I'd wondered ~f she had entered into a Seth trance, but one without Seth's usual voice effects. I had also been concerned lest she speak so rapidly that I wouldn't be able to keep up with her in my notes, but that hadn't happened. Nor had she spoken for Seth, I realized by the time she finished. Her enhanced state of consciousness had been her own.~~

("I know there's a universe between my chair here [in the living room] and the kitchen floor, "Jane said as she got up, "but I can walk it okay. When you strike your own true tone, you recognize it and you've got it made. You know your own meaning in the universe, even ~fyou can't verbalize it...."

(Jane told me that herfeelings of massiveness had left her by the time she began her own dissertation. 1 was surprised to suddenly notice that her voice was much clearer now, cold or no. She did feel unsettled. She didn't quite know what to do. She let our cat, Willy, into the living room from the second apartment we rent across the haiL I suggested she eat something "It's strange, " she commented. "Ifeel that no matter which way I turn, there's a path laid out for me-and I never felt that way before." Then she announced that she was going to bed. "But as soon as Iget over there [in the other apartment] I'll turn around and come back here, I'll bet." She left I decided to have a snack myself and to work on these notes while waiting to see fshe would return.

(Now here's how I "put this together with the Seth stuff" meaning that from my viewpoint I'll briefly discuss the various states of consciousness Jane enjoyed today, as well as her massive sensations and her psy chic perceptions of sound in connection with tonight's session. [The session itself of course, embodied yet another altered state.] At the same time, the reader can make his or her own intuitive connections in assembling such materials, even ~f "only" in unconscious ways.

(Much ofJane's day had been made up of a series of altered, and at times even near-ecstatic states of consciousness, each one expressing a unique and creative facet of her essentially mystical nature.'0 Even though not at her best, she'd been able to draw upon lavish amounts of energy. I think that her experience with inner sound after the session represented her interpretation of the information Seth gave on feeling-tones, some two years ago; see the 613th session for Chapter 1 ofPersonal Reality. There are certainly deep connections between Jane's apprehension of her true tone, and Seth's statement in that session that each of us possesses certain qualities of feeling uniquely our own, '~ . . that are like deep musical chords." He went on to say at 10:06:

"These feeling-tones, then, pervade your being. They are the form your spirit takes when combined with flesh. "I also think thatJane's sensing ofher true path reflects her understanding of Seth's subsequent remark at 10:16 [in that 613th session]: "The feeling-tone is the motion andfiber-and timbre-ofyour energy devoted toyourphysical experience."

(So, given Jane's satisj5ing yet exhilarating expressions of consciousness throughout the day, I hardly regard it as surprising that she plunged into additional excellent states this evening Paradoxically, her inspired reception of the materialfor Psychic Politics came about not only because of her innate knowledge offeeling-tones, but because she gave that basic creative phenomenon expression in Politics

(And she's quite conscious of the fact that her massive sensations are one of the ways by which, as she has written, she tries to "view our threedimensional existence and this universe from outside this framework, " or to travel beyond the conventionalized psychic post cards.

(A note in closing out the evening's work.~ Jane didn't come back to join me in the living room while I ate and wrote. I found her sleeping deeply....)

Session 715, October 28, 1974, 9:25 P.M., Monday

(See Note 1 for descriptions of the [two] unusual mental events I experienced Sunday and today: I may have seen myself as a Roman military officer in the first century A. D.

(In the opening notes for last Wednesday's session I described how Jane had started her new book, Psychic Politics, that same day while she had been immersed in a state of high creativity; I added that at the same time she'd become aware of a slightly dfferent Jane in a psychic library from which, it seemed, she was to get much of the materialfor Politics. Jane visited her library several times on Thursday, without actually transcribing anythingfrom it. Then on Friday morning she received another, shorter passage of library material. I quote in parfr "There are ever-changing models for physical reality, transforming themselves constantly in line with new equations instantly set up with each new stabilization... We tune in to these models, and our intersections with them alter them at any given point, causing new dimensions of actuality that then reach out from that new focus."2

(Jane didn't really understand what she'd written. Neither of us realized it at the time, but she was to soon embark upon one of the key episodes3 of her psychic lfe: "My later experiences that day were a practical lesson in how models work, "she wrote after it was all over.

(At noontime that Friday, then, Jane told me that she was going into another altered or enhanced state of consciousness. We were eating lunch. She compared her feelings with those heightened perceptions she'd enjoyed so much yesterday and Wednesday in connection with the birth of Politics. Even though her state of awareness was still growing Jane decided that she wanted to ride downtown with me after we'd finished eating; I planned to pick up one of our typewriters at a repair shop, then buy some groceri es. Already she was so "loose" that she noticed an unsteadiness in her walking "It's as though the floor's rising up beneath my feet, supporting my weight, but in a way that I'm not used to, " she said. She was enchanted.

("Watch it when we go out to the car, " I joked. "Ifpeople see you staggering around they'll think you're loaded."

(As I drove east on Water Street, heading for the center of Elmira, Jane exclaimed again and again over the new beauty she was discovering in her world. A bit later I plan to quote from her own notes some of the details of her transcendent perceptions; but by the time I'd secured the typewriter, then driven over to the supermarket at Langdon Plaza, she didn't think she could get out of the car. Nor did she want to try doing anything that might interrupt the magnficence of her greatly expanded state of consciousness. For all the while she was having the most profound group of experiences in seeing feeling and knowing the ordinary physical world about her.

(We searched the glove compartment of the carfor paper and apencil or pen, so that Jane could make notes about some of her perceptual changes-but to my amazement we could find nothing to use in spite of our efforts to keep writing tools in that very place. Among other papers Ifinally turned up ha If a sheet of blank paper, and gave Jane the pen I usually used to cross out items on the grocery list. We were parked in front of a drugstore; I hurried in there to buy pens and a notepadfor her. So, while I busied myself in the familiar market next door, she sat in the car writing-looking quite ordinary, a small black-haired woman with her head bent forward... When I'd finished shopping perhaps 30 minutes later she was still writing She had covered haifa dozen pages.

(Now here are some excerpts from Jane's notes, as I've put them together. [And added later: I remind the reader to see her own much-longer account of the whole experience in Chapter 2 of Politics])

"Then, between one moment and the next, the world literally changed for me. I'm viewing it from an entirely different perspective. It's like the old world but infinitely richer, more 'now, ' built better, and with much greater depth.

"Words aren't describing this at all. Each person who passes the car is more than three-dimensional, super-real in this time, but part of a 'model' of a greater self... and each person's reality is obviously and clearly more than three-dimensional. I know I'm repeating myself here, but it's as if before I've seen only a part of people or things. The world is so much more solid right now4 that by contrast my earlier experience of it is like a shoddy version, made up of disconnected dots or blurred focus...

And: "Qualitatively, the tsupermarket plazaj was so different than usual that I could hardly believe it. While Rob did the shopping I kept looking-and looking-and looking. I knew that each person I saw had free will, and yet each motion was inevitable and somehow there was no contradiction. I could look at each person and sense his or her 'model' and all the variations, and see how the model was here and now in the person. I saw these people as True People in the meaning of a whole people. These people were 'more here, ' fuller somehow, more complete. People seemed to be classics of themselves.

"I faced a group of shops and saw these also as models and their variations. The same applied to everything I looked at. I thought: 'I'm being filled to the brim'; and for a moment I wondered if I'd been fitted with a spectacular new pair of glasses. It was an effort to write these notes to begin with. I wanted to just look forever."

(Jane was still deeply within her great experience during our ride back to the apartment house. "Wow, " she exclaimed, "I wouldn't touch acid [LSD] for anything after this. Who needs to?" I laughed: "How to go on your own free trip, huh?" She does not use hallucinogenic drugs of any kind.

("What would happen ~fyou opened your eyes and really saw the world?" Jane mused. "It's indescribable.. . ." And later today she wrote:

"Driving home with Rob, for example, I felt the earth support the road which supported the tires and the car. I felt this physically, in the same way that we sense, say, temperature; a positive support or pressure that held the road up and almost seemed to push up of its own accord in a long powerful arch, like a giant animal's back."

(Jane's "adventure in consciousness" was so rich, 5 even from my observor's viewpoint, that my attempts to describe it seem terribly inadequate by comparison. In this session Seth discusses to some extent the whole subject of her psy chic growth. )

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Give us a moment for dictation.

Isaid at our last session that the evening was momentous for Ruburt, and that is true for many reasons. This book6 deals with the unknown reality, and Ruburt began a different excursion into other dimensions last week.

Ihope in these sessions to show the indivisible connections between the experience of the psyche at various levels and the resulting experience in terms of varying systems-each valid, each to some extent or another bearing on the life you know.

Ruburt has allowed a portion of his this-life consciousness to go off on a tangent, so to speak, on another path into another system of actuality (L e., into his psychic library) . His life there is as valid as his existence in your world. In the waking state he is able, now, to alter the direction of his focus precisely enough to bring about a condition in which he perceives both realities simultaneously. He is just beginning, so as yet he is only occasionally conscious of that other experience. He is, however, aware of it now in the back of his mind more or less constantly. It does not intrude upon the world that he knows, but enriches it.

The concepts in "Unknown" Reality will help expand the consciousness of each of its readers, and the work itself is presented in such a manner that it automatically pulls your awareness out of its usual grooves, so that it bounces back and forth between the standardized version of the world you accept, and the unofficial7 versions that are sensed but generally unknown to you.

Now as Ruburt delivers this material, the same thing happens in a different way to him, so that in some respects he has been snapping back and forth between dimensions, practicing with the elasticity of his consciousness; and in this book more than in previous ones his consciousness has been sent out further, so to speak. The delivery of the material itself has helped him to develop the necessary flexibility for his latest pursuits.

Clear understanding or effective exploration of the unknown reality can be achieved only when you are able to leave behind you many "facts" that you have accepted as criteria of experience. "Unknown" Reality is also written in such a way that it will, I hope, bring many of your cherished beliefs about existence into question. Then you will be able to look even at this existence with new eyes.

Ruburt is taking this new step from your perspective, and from that standpoint he is doing two things.

(At a slower pace:) He is consciously entering into another room of the psyche, and also entering into the reality that corresponds to it. This brings the two experiences together so that they coincide. They are held, however, both separately and injoint focus. As a rule you use one particular level of awareness, and this correlates all of your conscious activities. I told you that the physical body itself was able to pick up other neurological messages beside those to which you usually react.8 Now let me add that when a certain proficiency is reached in alterations of consciousness, this allows you to become practically familiar with some of these other neurological messages. In such a way Ruburt is able to physically perceive what he is doing in his "library."

He first saw this library from the inside last Wednesday. He was simultaneously himself here in this living room, watching the image of himself in a library room, and he was the self in the library. Period. Before him he saw a wall of books, and the self in the living room suddenly knew that his purpose here in this reality was to recreate some of those books. He knew that he was working at both levels. The unknown and the known realities merged, clicked in, and were seen as the opposite sides of each other.

He has been working with me for some time, in your terms, yet I do not "control" his subjective reality in any way. I have certainly been a teacher to him.9 Yet his progress is always his own challenge and responsibility, and basically what he does with my teaching is up to him. (Humorously:) In parentheses: (Right now I give him an "A.")

(Pause at 10:01.) Like many, however, he was brought up to believe that the intellect's function was mainly to dissect, criticize, and analyze, rather than for instance to creatively unite and build, colon: and analysis was thought of as separating the elements of a concept rather than restricting original concepts. New concepts were thought of as intuitional or psychic, as opposed to the conventional duties of the intellect, so the two seemed separate. Therefore, Ruburt felt duty-bound to question any intuitive construct most vigorously as a matter of principle. This actually provided an excellent transitory working method, for what he thought of as intuitions would instantly come up with a new psychic construct in answer to what he thought of as intellectual scrutiny and skepticism.

Period.

Actually, the intellect and intuitions go hand in hand. In Ruburt's experience, '0 the two finally began to work together as they should. What I call the high intellect then took over, a superb blend of intuitional and intellectual abilities working together so that they almost seem to form a new faculty (intently) .

The development freed Ruburt from many old limitations, and allowed him to at last have practical experience with the unknown reality in intimate terms. Ruburt's library does exist as surely as this room does. It also exists as unsurely as this room. It is one thing to be theoretically convinced that other worlds exist, and to take a certain comfort and joy from the idea. It is quite another thin to find yourself in such an environment, and to feel the worlds coincide. Reality is above all practical, so when you expand your concepts concerning the nature of reality, you are apt then to find yourselves scandalized, appalled, or simply disoriented. So in this work I am presenting you not only with probabilities as conjecture, but, often, showing you how such probabilities affect your daily lives, and giving examples of the ways in which Ruburt's and Joseph's lives have been so touched.

For a while, many of you will play with the concepts while avoiding all direct encounters with any other experience, save that already acceptable. Yet the immensities of your own abilities speak in your dreams, in your private moments, as even inaudibly in the knowledge of your own molecules.

There are civilizations of the psyche, " and only by learning about these will you discover the truth about the "lost" civilizations of your planet, for each such physical culture coincided with and emerged from a corresponding portion of the psyche that you even now possess.

Take your break.

(10:19 to 10:43.)

Many of you are fascinated by theories or concepts that hint at the multidimensionality of your beings, and yet you are scandalized by any evidence that supports it.

Often you interpret such evidence in terms of the dogmas with which you are already familiar. This makes them more acceptable. Ruburt was often almost indignant when presented with such evidence, but he also refused to cast it in conventionalized guise, and his own curiosity and creative abilities kept him flexible enough so that learning could take place while he maintained normal contact with the world you know.'2

He has had many experiences in which he glimpsed momentarily the rich otherness within physical reality. He has known heightened perceptions of a unique nature. Never before, however, has he stepped firmly, while awake, into another level of reality, where he allowed himself to sense the continual vivid connection between worlds. He hid his own purpose from himself, as many of you do. At the same time he was pursuing it, of course, as all of you are working toward your own goals.

To admit his purpose, however, to bring it out into the open, would mean for Ruburt a private and public statement of affiliation such as he was not able to make earlier. The goals of each of you differ. Some of you are embarked upon adventures that deal with intimate family contact, deep personal involvement with children, or with other careers that meet "vertically" with physical experience. So journeys into unknown realities may be highly intriguing, and represent important sidelights to your current preoccupations. These interests will be like an avocation to you, adding great understanding and depth to your experience.

Ruburt and Joseph chose to specialize, so to speak, in precisely those excursions or explorations that are secondary to others. The focus of each of their consciousnesses therefore was made up of a certain kind of mixture that made such probabilities, in your terms, possible as prime incentives.

(Long pause, eyes closed, at 10:56.) Each person is at his place or her place. You are where you are because your consciousness formed that kind of reality. Your whole physical situation will be geared to it, and your neurological structure will follow the habitual pattern. As you learn to throw aside old concepts you will begin to experience the evidence for other levels of reality, and become aware of other "messages" that you have previously blocked. A certain portion of Ruburt's training period is over. The entire focus of his personality now accepts the validity of many worlds-and this means in practical terms.

Ihave told you many times that your consciousness is not stationary, but ever-moving and creative, so that each of you through your life moves through your psyche. Your physical experience is correspondingly altered.

During these years, then, Ruburt's position within his psyche has gradually shifted until he found a new, for him better, firmer point of basis. From this new framework he can more effectively handle different kinds of stimuli, and form these together to construct an understandable model of other realities. I will continue to speak from my own unique viewpoint, but in your terms Ruburt is one of you, and his explorations, taken from your perspective, can be most valuable.

Give us moment... These books, those written and not yet written, of his and mine, will provide frameworks for others to follow if they wish, as they wish.

End of dictation.

(11:08.) Give us a moment...

(Seth discussed another matter involving Jane; after delivering about apage of material he ended the session at 11:19 P.M.)

Session 716 October 30, 1974 9:33 P.M., Wednesday

(In Note 1, I described my third "Roman, " which took place this afternoon.

("I guess I'm confused "Jane said as we waited/or the session to begin. "I think Seth's going to start another section tonight-but I don't think he's quite finished with the last one.... "However, Section 4 was finished after alL)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Dictation. The next section (5) : "How toJourney Into the 'Unknown' Reality, " colon: "Tiny Steps and Giant Steps. Glimpses and Direct Encounters."

This section will deal with various methods that will allow you to come in contact with the unknown reality to one extent or another. We have spoken of probable man, hinted at probable civilizations, and mentioned alternate systems of actuality.2 Yet these do not exist completely apart from the world that you know, or entirely cut off from the psyche. If you have no experience with such realities, then their existence remains delightful or speculative conjecture.

(Pause.) The unknown reality is a variation of the one that you know, so that many of its features are latent rather than predominant in your own private and mass experience. Any encounter with such phenomena will then include a bringing-into-focus of elements that are usually not concentrated upon. Your consciousness must learn to organize itself in more than one fashion-or rather, you must be willing to allow your consciousness to use itself more fully. It is not necessarily a matter of trying to ignore the contents of the world, or to deny your physical perception. Instead, the trick is to view the contents of the world in different fashions, to free your physical senses from the restraints that your mental conventions have placed upon them.

Each particular "station" of consciousness perceives in a different kind of reality, and as mentioned earlier (in Session 711, /or instance) , you usually tune in to your home station most of the time. If you turn your focus only slightly away, the world appears differently; and if that slightly altered focus were the predominant one, then that is how the world would seem to be. Each aspect of the psyche perceives the reality upon which it is focused, and that reality is also the materialization of a particular state of the psyche projected outward. You can learn to encounter other realities by altering your position within your own psyche.

In order to begin, you must first become familiar with the working of your own consciousness as it is directed toward the physical world. You cannot know when you are in focus with another reality if you do not even realize what it feels like to be in full focus with your own. Many people phase in and out of that state without being aware of it, and others are able to keep track of their own "inner drifting." Here, simple daydreaming represents a slight shift of awareness out of directly given sense data.

If you listen to an FM radio station, there is a handy lock-in gadget that automatically keeps the station in clear focus; it stops the program from "drifting." In the same way, when you daydream you drift away from your home station, while still relating to it, generally speaking. You also have the mental equivalent, however, of the FM's lock-in mechanism. On your part this is the result of training, so that if your thoughts or experience stray too far this mental gadget brings them back into line. Usually this is automatic-a learned response that by now appears to be almost instinctive. Period.

You must learn to use this mechanism consciously for your own purposes, for it is extremely handy. Many of you do not pay attention to your own experience, subjectively speaking, so you drift in and out of clear focus in this reality, barely realizing it. Often your daily program is not nearly as clear or well-focused as it should be, but full of static; and while this may annoy you, you often put up with it or even become so used to the lack of harmony that you forget what a clear reception is like. However, in this world you are surrounded by familiar objects, details, and ideas, and your main orientation is physical so that you can operate through habit alone even when you are not as well focused within your reality as you should be.

(9:5 6.) When you go traveling off into other systems, however, you cannot depend upon your habits. Indeed, often they can only add to your mental dutter, turning into "static~~-so you must learn first of all what a clear focus is.

You will not learn it by trying to escape your own reality, or by attempting to dull your senses. This can only teach you what it means not to focus, and in whatever reality you visit the ability to focus clearly and well is a prerequisite. Once you learn how to really tune in, then you will understand what it means to change the direction of your focus.

One of the simplest exercises is hardly an original one, but it is of great benefit.

PRACTICE ELEMENT 11

Try to experience all of your present sense data as fully as you can. This tones your entire physical and psychic organism, bringing all of your perceptions together so that your awareness opens fully. Body and mind operate together. You experience an immediate sense of power because your abilities are directed to the fullest of their capacities. In a physical moment you can act directly on the spot, so to speak.

Sit with your eyes open easily, letting your vision take in whatever is before you. Do not strain. On the other hand, do explore the entire field of vision simultaneously. Listen to everything. Identify all the sounds if you can, mentally placing them with the objects to which they correspond even though the objects may be invisible. Sit comfortably but make no great attempt to relax. Instead, feel your body in an alert manner-not in a sleepy distant fashion. Be aware of its pressure against the chair, for example, and of its temperature, of variations: Your hands may be warm and your feet cold, or your belly hot and your head cold. Consciously, then, feel your body's sensations. Is there any taste in your mouth? What odors do you perceive?

Take as much time as you want to with this exercise. It places you in your universe clearly. This is an excellent exercise to use before you begin-and after you finish with-any experiment involving an alteration of consciousness.

Take a brief break

(10:19. Jane's delivery had been quite a bit/aster than usual-which means she'd kept me writing at a steady pace even though I was recording the material with my homemade "shorthand." She said she felt that in this section Seth would have a series of exercises related to the one he'd just given; these would help people glimpse at least some of the alternate or probable realities discussed in Section 4.

(Break, though, was hardly brief Resume in the same manner at 10:42.)

Now: Bring all of those sensations together. Try to be aware of all of them at once, so that one adds to the others. If you find yourself being more concerned with one particular perception, then make an attempt to bring the ignored ones to the same clear focus. Let all of them together form a brilliant awareness of the moment.

When you are using this exercise following any experiment with an alteration of consciousness, then end it here and go about your other concerns. You may also utilize it as an initial step that will help you get the feeling of your own inner mobility. To do this proceed as given, and when you have the moment~s perception as clearly as possible, then willfully let it go.

Let the unity disappear as far as your conscious thought is concerned. No longer connect up the sounds you hear with their corresponding objects. Make no attempt to unify vision and hearing. Drop the package, as it were, as a unified group of perceptions. The previous clarity of the moment will have changed into something else. Take one sound if you want to, say of a passing car, and with your eyes dosed follow the sound in your mind. Keep your eyes dosed. Become aware of whatever perceptions reach you, but this time do not judge or evaluate. Then in a flash open your eyes, alert your body, and try to bring all of your perceptions together again as brilliantly and clearly as possible.

When you have the sense world before you this time, let it dimax, so to speak, then again close your eyes and let it fall away. Do not focus. In fact, unfocus. Period.

When you have done this often enough so that you are intimately aware of the contrast, you will have a subjective feeling, a point of knowing within yourself, that will clearly indicate to you how your consciousness feels when it is at its finest point of focus in physical reality.

As you go about your day, try now and then to recapture that point and to bring all data into the clearest possible brilliance. You will find that this practice, continued, will vastly enrich your normal experience. You find it much easier to concentrate, to attend. To attend is to pay attention and take care of. So this exercise will allow you to attend-to focus your awareness to the matters at hand as clearly and vividly as possible. The subjective knowledge of your own point of finest focus will also serve as a reference point for many other exercises.

(Pause at 10:5 8.)

PRACTICE ELEMENT 12

Exercise two [in the session]. For your benefit, Joseph, this entire section will be made up of practice elements, with comments and directions.

You must work from your own subjective experience, so when you find your own finest focus point, that is your dearest reception for your own home station. You may feel that it has a certain position in your inner vision, or in your head, or you may find that you have your own symbol to represent it You might imagine it, if you want to, as a station indicator on your own radio or television set, but your subjective recognition of it is your own cue.

In our just-previous exercise, when I spoke of having you let your dear perception drop away, and told you to disconnect vision from hearing, you were driffing in terms of your own home station. Your consciousness was straying. This time begin with the point of your own finest focus, which you have established, then let your consciousness stray as given. Only let it stray in a particular direction-to the right or the left, whichever seems most natural to you. In this way you are still directing it and learning to orient yourself. In the beginning, 15 minutes at most for this exercise; but let your awareness drift in whatever direction you have chosen.

Each person will have his or her own private experience here, but gradually certain kinds of physical data will seem to disappear while others may take prominence. For example, you might mentally hear sounds, while knowing they have no physical origin. You may see nothing in your mind, or you may see images that seem to have no exterior correlation, but you may hear nothing. For a while ordinary physical data may continue to intrude. When it does, recognize it as your home station, and mentally let yourself drift further away from it. What is important is your own sensation as you experience the mobility of your consciousness. If ever you grow concerned simply return to your home station, back to the left or right according to the direction you have chosen. I do not suggest that you use "higher" or "lower" as directions, because of the interpretations that you may have placed upon them through your beliefs.

Do not be impatient As you continue with this exercise over a period of time you will be able to go further away, orienting yourself as you grow more familiar with the feeling of your mind. Gradually you will discover that this inner sense data will become dearer and clearer as you move toward another "station." It will represent reality as perceived from a different state of consciousness.

The first journey from one home station to another, unfamiliar one may bring you in contact with various kinds of bleedthroughs, distortions, or static These can be expected. They are simply the result of not yet learning how to tune your own consciousness clearly in to other kinds of focus. Before you can pick up the "next" station, for example, you may see ghost images in your mind, or pick up distorted versions from your own home station. You have momentarily dispensed with the usual, habitual organizational process by which you unite regular physical sense perceptions, so while you are "between stations, " you may well encounter mixed signals from each. When you alter your conscious focus in such a fashion, you are also moving away from the part of your psyche that you consider its center. You are journeying through your own psyche, in other words, for different realities are different states of the psyche-materialized, projected outward and experienced. That applies to your home station or physical world as well.

Are you tired?

(11:20. "No, " I saidJ Seth-Jane's pace had been good) , though-quiet yet forcefuL)

Even your home station has many programs, and you have usually tuned in to one main one and ignored others. Characters in your "favorite program" at home may appear in far different guises when you are between stations, and elements of other programs that you have ignored at home may suddenly become apparent to you.

(Pause.) I will give you a simple example. At home you may tune in to religious programs. That means that you might organize your daily existence about highly idealistic principles. You may try to ignore what you consider other programs dealing with hatred, fear, or violence. You might do such a good job of organizing your physical data about your ideal that you shut out any emotions that involve fear, violence, or hatred. When you alter your consciousness, again, you automatically begin to let old organizations of data drop away. You may have tuned out what you think of as negative feelings or programming. These, however, may have been present but ignored, and when you dispense with your usual method of organizing physical data they may suddenly become apparent

If you tell yourself that sexual feeling is wrong, and organize your daily programming in that fashion, then when you "meditate, " or dispense with that orientation, you may suddenly find yourself presented with material that you consider unsavory. You cannot deny the reality of the psyche, or those natural feelings that you experience in the flesh. When you begin to alter your perception, then, and your habitual picture of reality drops away, you may well find yourself encountering in distorted fashion elements of your own reality that you have up to then studiously denied or ignored.

This is most apparentwith those who use the Ouijaboard or automatic writing as methods to alter consciousness.

Do you want a break?

(11:34. "No, " I said again, in answer to Seth-Jane's obvious concern. It was a warm night/or the end of October. and we had the windows opern the traffic noise from the busy intersection just one house removed was bothering me more than anything else.)

In your home station, events are encountered clearly in space and time. When you move away, however, you may meet events in time but not in space, and reality that you have tried to deny may then appear vividly. If you understand this you can gain immeasurably, for as you move your focus away from your organized reality, other portions of it upon which you have not concentrated will come into view.

This can show you what was missing from your home station if you know how to read the clues. You form your home station according to your beliefs, if you firmly believe, again, that sex is wrong, then your home station may involve you in a life "programming" in which you constantly try to deny the vitality of the flesh. The sight of a nude body might upset you. You might undress in the dark, or think, if you are married, of the sexual act of intercourse as dirty. If you are a man, you might be ashamed of what you consider to be your need.

Ihave an example in point A young man I will call Joe wrote Ruburt a letter. He left his home in San Francisco to travel to India to study with a guru. He has been told that sexual desire mitigates against spiritual illumination. His home program involves him with no sex whatsoever. Joe tries desperately to abstain. At the same time, when he meditates and alters his consciousness, he immediately finds himself with a blinding headache, images of nude women, and fantasies of female goddesses out to tempt him from his celibate state.

Joe thinks of such images as very wrong. Instead, they are telling him something-that his home program is impoverished, for he has been denying the reality of his being.3 If he ignores the advice of his psyche, then his journeys into the unknown reality will be highly distorted. Seductive goddesses will follow him wherever he goes.

Take your break or end the session as you prefer.

(11:46 P.M. Break turned out to mark the end of the session, though. Jane was surprised at the time; she'd been in trance for over an hour. "My God-he's got the whole thing all laid out, " she exclaimed. She too had been bothered by the rush and clatter of traffic, even in trance, and we talked about moving to quieter surroundings before next summer.4

(Jane wanted to continue the session, but she was also hungry. "I feel guilty, " she laughed. "I want a nice big snack, but Ifeel all this stuff that Seth's got ready, right on the line... 0/i, to hell with it-let's eat!")

Session 718, November 6, 1974, 9:50 P.M., Wednesday

(On P.M., Monday, November 4, I mailed toJane's publisher all of the art due for her Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology: the 16 diagrams I'd just finished, plus two older pieces of work. All are in "line, " or pen-and-ink I thought it interesting that as I was completing work for Jane's first book on aspect psychology, she was starting Psychic Politics, the second one in the series. But now I can return to my longer project-the 40 line drawings for Jane's book ofpoetty, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Adventures and Dialogues are to be published by Prentice-Hall in the spring and/all, respectively, of 19 75. Other references to both books can be found in Note 1 for Session 714.

(Our last session, the 71 7th, is deletedfrom "Unknown" Reality For it was and wasn't a Seth session, and it was and wasn't book dictation, as the following notes will show.

(Before what we expected to be our regular session for P.M., Monday evening Jane told me that she'd awakened in the middle of the previous night with insights about two practice elements1 Seth would discuss-but we didn't hear from Seth even though she felt him "around" as wepreparedfor the session. (Instead a development took place that left us puzzled, intrigued, and more than a little upset. Yet at this writing [immediately following the 718th session], I can note that we've been somewhat relieved by subsequent events. Now, in/act, I'm veering toward the idea that P.M., Monday night's scssion marked a distinct step in the further development ofJane's abilities. She may also use some of that new material in Politics3

(It seems that a combination of/actors led to those oddly disturbing yet challenging events in the 717th session. One is probably just the state of Jane's recent exceptional psy chic receptivity. Another is my own longtime interest in the American psychologist and philosopher, William James [1 842-1910]; he wrote the classic The Varieties of Religious Experience.3 A third is a letter received last week from aJungian psychologist who had been inspired by Seth's material on the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, Carl Jung [1875-1961], in Chapter 13 of Seth Speaks. And a fourth/actor would be a most evocative exp erience Jane had P.M., Monday afternoon, in which she found herself experiencing consciousness as an ordinary housefly4: From that minute but enthralling viewpoint she knew "herself" crawling up a giant-sized blade of grass. She was exploring the "world view" of a fly. This adventure was certainly a preparation for developments in the 71 7th session.

(Other reasons must enter in, of course. But/or now let's say that Jane knows of James and his work, she's read parts of his Varietie~, for instance, but seemed rather put off by it, where I reread passages from it frequently.

(The letter from the Jungian psychologist evidently provided the immediate impetus/or the fly episode and for P.M., Monday evening's events, though. The author requested additional material from Seth on Jung or his works. I hardly think it accidental now that such an inquiry came just when Jane's abilities seemed about to ripen in the particular way they did that night.

(We were discussing the letter and halffacetiously wondering whether Seth might respond in any way, when Jane suddenly told me that she was picking up material on the "essence" of William James. Because of his own persistent melancholy, she said, James had been able to understand others with the same kind of disposition. As she continued to give her imp ressionsj. though, I wondered: Why James? He wasn't mentioned in the psychologist's letter, for instance. Why this picking up on, and ident~i5ing with, a famous dead personality? Most likely my own interest in James's work exerted some kind of influence upon Jane's newly developing abilities, I thought; but still, that didn't answer my questions.

(What had happened to Seth? That individual would have to waiL "I was gettingjust now, "Jane said at 8:5 8, "thatJames called his melancholy 'a cast of souL' "Her eyes were closed. "Now I'm getting a book. Why, it's a paperback. I see this printed material, only it's very small, almost microscopic, and oddly enough the whole thing is printed on grayish-type paper. I see it really smal4 in my mind."

(And with that, in an altered state of consciousness, Jane began delivering last P.M., Monday evening the material from the book she mentally saw. Before I fully realized what was happening I was taking her words down verbatim.

(The material itself was beautijlilly done, rather quaint in expression but of excellent quality. When I typed it the next day [yesterday], there were over 10 pages of double-spaced prose. Here's a small quotation from it, dealing with part of a vision "James" had following his physical death:

("There was a procession, a procession of the gods that went before my very eyes. I wondered and watched silently. Each god or goddess had a poet who went in company, and the poets sang that they gave reason voice. They sang gibberish, yet as I listened the gibberish turned into a philosophical dialogue. The words struck at my souL A strange mirror-image type of action followed, for when I spoke the poets' words backwards, to my intellect they made perfect sense."

(At one of our breaks Jane said that she had picked up the title v/the James book from which she'd been "reading": The Varieties of Religious States-with only States d~7èring from Experience in the name v/James's book in our physical reality. She'd also felt Seth around, like a supervisor, perhaps. She added: "Ifelt as f the James stuff was coming from a person who was very intent about trying to say something."

(Which pointed up our dilemma, I thought at the time. I said little to Jane, but I was most uneasy that she was delivering material supposed lyfrom a member of the famous dead. Actually, we'd always thought that such performances were somehow suspecL Not that mediums~, or others, couldn't communicate with the "dead"-but to us, anyhow, exhibitions involving well-known personages usually se~... psychologjcally tainted So our feelings about the night's affair weren't v/the best at that poinL

(The events to come didn't help matters any, either. No sooner had Jane finished with the lengthy James material than she promptly began to get impressions from "Carl Jung" This time she was almost apologetic. We decided to go ahead, though. Jane didn't see a book or have any visual data. The words just came to her along with strong emotional feelings that she connected with Jung

(The material seemed endless. It was afew minutes before midnight when Jane just stopped, saying that she'd more or less "had it"for the evening The Jung materialfelt much more animated, she added, with a lot v/vitality and energy to it. "'He' really seemed excitable." Neither of us found the Jung passages as evocative as the James materia4 however. This is a briefJungian excerpfr

("Numbers have an emotional equivalent, in that their symbols originally arose from the libido that always ident~ies itself with the number 1, and/eels all other numbers originating out v/itself The libido knows itself as God, and therefore all fractions fly out v/the self structure v/its own reality."

(Jane said she had the impression v/someone very compact, loaded with energy, almost wildly adolescent in a way, going off in too many directions at once.

(We both wondered right then fJane was going off in too many directions at once. She'd always refused to try to "reach the dead" in this way before. Both of us were more than a little troubled-but as usual, we were intrigued even as we questioned our own reactions. We were also quite aware of the humorous aspects v/the situation, since Jane does speak/or at least one v/ the "dead": Seth. And v/course, as we sat/or tonight's session we wondered ~f Seth would discuss what had happened P.M., Monday night.

(I'd just begun typing the 'games and Jung" material. so from my original notes I read the rest 0/it to Jane as we waited/or Seth to come through. I also thought she discussed an excellent idea v/her own, saying that she believed the James-Jung episode itself was an exercise in making the unknown reality known. She'd already done some writing yesterday, for Psychic Politics, leading toward this view 5; so whatever we learned through Seth this evening we already felt reasonably sure that in usual trite terms Jane hadn't been communicating directly with two such famous personalities. Instead, she was involved in something quite a bit dfferent-and much more believable.)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Now. This section lof "Unknown" Reality~ deals with the various exercises that will, I hope, provide you with your own intimate glimpses into previously unknown realities.

Isaid (in sessions 711 and 716, for instance) that your normal focus of consciousness can be compared to your home station. So far, exercises have been described that will gently lead you away from concentration upon this home base, even while its structure is strengthened at the same time. You can also call this home station or local program your world view, since from it you perceive your reality. To some extent it represents your personal focus, through which you interpret most of your experience. As I mentioned (in Session 715, for instance) , when you begin to move away from that particular organization, strange things may start to happen. You may be filled with wonder, excitement, or perplexity. You may be delighted or appalled, according to whether or not your new perceptions agree or disagree with your established world view.

Instead of a regular session (last P.M., Monday night) , the framework of the session was used in a new kind of exercise. It was meant as an example of what can happen under the best of circumstances, when someone leaves a native world view and tunes in to another, quite different from the original.

You always form your own experience. Ruburt picked up on the world view of a man known dead. He was not directly in communication with William James.

(Slowly:) He was aware, however, of the universe through WilliamJames's world view. Period. As you might dial a program on a television set, Ruburt tuned into the view of reality now held in the mind of William James. Because that view necessarily involved emotions, Ruburt felt some sense of emotional contact-but only with the validity of the emotions. Each person has such a world view, whether living or dead in your terms, and that "living picture" exists despite time or space. It can be perceived by others.

(Pause, one of many.) Each world view exists at its own particular "frequency, " and can only be tuned in to by those who are more or less within the same range. However, the frequencies themselves have to be adjusted properly to be brought into focus, and those adjustments necessitate certain intents and sympathies. It is not possible to move into such a world view if you are basically at odds with it, for example. You simply will not be able to make the proper adjustments.

Ruburt has been working with alterations of consciousness (/~r Psychic Politics) , and wondering about the basic validity of religion. He has been trying to reconcile intellectual and emotional knowledge. James is far from one of his favorite writers, yet Ruburt's interests, intent, and desire were close enough so that under certain conditions he could experience the world view held byJames. The unknown reality is unknown only because you believe it must be hidden. Once that belief is annihilated, then other quite-as-legitimate views of reality can appear to your consciousness, and worlds just as valid as your own swim into view.

To do this, you must have faith in yourself, and in the framework of your known reality. Otherwise you will be too afraid to abandon even briefly the habitual, organized view of the world that is your own.

Even in your life as you understand it, if you are insecure or frightened, you cannot properly see your family or your neighbors. If you are afraid, then your own fear stands between yourself and others. You do not dare take your eyes off yourself for a second. You cannot afford to be friendly, for instance, because you are terrified of being rebuffed.

In the same way, if you are overly concerned about the nature of your own reality, and if you are looking to others to justify your existence, you will not be able to abandon your own world view successfully, for you will feel too threatened. Or, traveling in psychic exercises even slightly away from your own home station, you will still try to take your familiar paraphernalia with you, and interpret even entirely new situations of consciousness in the light of your own world view. You will transpose your own set of assumptions, then, into conditions in which they may not really fit at all.

(10:22.) Ruburt picked up on WilliamJames's world view because their interests coincided. A letter from aJungian psychologist helped serve as a stimulus. The psychologist asked me (deeper and with humor) to comment about lung. Ruburt felt little correspondence withJung. In the back of his mind he wondered aboutJames, mainly because he knew that Joseph (Rob) enjoyed one of James's books.

It is quite possible to tune in to the world view of ~y person, living or dead in your terms. The world view of any individual, even not yet born from your standpoint, exists nevertheless. Ruburt's experience simply serves as an example of what is possible.

Quite rightly, he did not interpret the event in conventional terms, andJoseph did not suppose thatJames himself was communicating in the ~y usually imagined (but see the opening notes for this session) . Joseph did recognize the excellence of the material. James was not aware of the situation. For that matter, James himself is embarked upon other adventures. Ruburt picked up on James's world view, however, as in your terms at least it "existed" perhaps 10 years ago.6 Then, in his mind, James playfully thought of a bobk that he would write were he "living, " called The Varieties of Religious States-an altered version of a book he wrote in life.

He felt that the soul chooses states of emotion as you would choose, say, a state to live in. He felt that the chosen emotional state was then used as a framework through which to view experience. He began to see a conglomeration of what he loosely called religious states, each different and yet each serving to unify experience in the light of its particular "natural features." These natural features would appear as the ordinary temperaments and inclinations of the soul.

Ruburt tuned in to that unwritten book. It carried the stamp of James's own emotional state at that "time, " when he was viewing his earthly experience, in your terms, from the standpoint of one who had died, could look back, and see where he thought his ideas were valid and where they were not. At that point in his existence, there were changes. The plan for the book existed, and still does. In Ruburt's "present, " he was able to see this world view as expressed withinJames's immortal mind.

To do this, Ruburt had to be free enough to accept the view of reality as perceived by someone else. To accomplish this, Ruburt allowed one portion of his consciousness to remain securely anchored in its own reality while letting another portion soak up, so to speak, a reality not its own.

(Pause.) The unknown reality, colon: Again, because of your precise orientation you are often theoretically intrigued by the contemplation of worlds not your own. And while you may often yearn for some evidence of those other realities, you arejust as apt to become scandalized7 by the very evidence that you have so earnestly requested.

Ruburt has embarked upon his own journeys into the unknown reality. I cannot do that for him. I can only point out the way, as I do for each reader. In his own new book (Politics) Ruburt has his personal way of explaining what he is experiencing, and since he shares the same reality with you, then you will be able to relate-perhaps better, even-to his explanations than to mine.

However, it is quite possible for him to tune in to James's complete book if he desires to, for that work is indeed a psychic reality, a plan or a model existing in the inward order of activity (as Jane had explained to me in similar terms this afternoon) .

Such creative "architect's plans" are often unknowingly picked up by others, altered or changed, ending up as entirely new productions. Most writers do not examine their sources that closely. The same applies, of course, to any field of endeavor. Many quite modern and sophisticated developments have existed in what you think of now as past civilizations. The plans, as models, were picked up by inventors, scientists, and the like, and altered to their own specific directions, so that they emerged in your world not as copies but as something new. Many so-called archaeological discoveries were made when individuals suddenly tuned in to a world view of another person not of your space or time. Before you have the confidence to leave your own particular home station, however, you must be secure within it. You must know it will "be there" when you get back.

Take your break.

(10:52. Jane's trance had been deep, her delivery for the most part just about as fast as I could write. I told her that Seth's material was excellent, that it backed up her ideas as to the nature oftheJames-Jung "communications, " and added more data as well.

("I felt out of the James thing until you read it to me before the session, " she said, "then a lot of aspects about it came back. We won't bother doing that book of his, I know, but 1 could get it-the whole thing. It's right there in the library.. . ." We talked about what an interesting product The Varieties of Religious States would be, and the many implications involved, without intending to do anything more about such a work.

(We also discussed the parallels-and differences-revolving around Jane's perception of the James book this week and her development eight months ago of the outline and chapter headings for the possible book, The Way Toward Health Two months later~ in May, she produced the summary for The Wonderworks, which would be a shorter dissertation on her own dreams, Seth, and the dream-formation of the universe as we know it. [See appendixes 7 and 11 in Volume 1 of "Unknown" Reality.]Jane hasn't taken the time to concentrate upon either of those projects, interesting as they are, although she would ~fone-or both-of them "caughtfire"for her. Neither Jane nor Seth had delivered their respective world-view ideas when she came through with Health and Wonderworks, so another significant aspect of her abilities has since become conscious. Once more questions arise. For instance: Whose world view was Jane tuning in to for the health book? Her own? In turn, of course, all three potential endeavors-Religious States, Health, and Wonderworks-must have origins that are closely related to the source of information behind the "psychic library"Jane tells of visiting in Politics.

(Resume in the same manner at 11:14.)

Now~ Ruburt has trained himself to deal with words as a writer. When he picks up a world view that belongs to someone else, he can quite automatically translate it faithfully enough in that idiom of language. Many artists do the same thing, translating inner "models" into paint, lines, and form.

So do scientists and inventors often tune in to the world views of others-living or dead, in your terms-that correlate with their own intents, talents, and purposes.

These "other, " reinterpreted world views form a matrix from which new creativity emerges. The same thing applies in more mundane endeavors in ordinary life. For example: You may be in a predicament that seems beyond solving. It may be highly individual, since it is yours. It is unique, and has happened in no other way before. No one else has viewed your particular dilemma through your eyes, yet others have been in similar situations, solved the challenges involved, and gone on to greater creativity and fulfillment. If you can momentarily abandon your private world view, that focus from which you experience reality, then you can allow the experience of others who have had similar challenges to color your perception. You can tune in to their solutions and apply them to your particular circumstances. You often do this unconsciously. I do not want you to think, then, that such occurrences work only in esoteric terms.

Many people working with the Ouija board or automatic writing receive messages that seem, or purport, to come from historic personages. Often, however, the material is vastly inferior to that which could have been produced by the person in question during his or her existence. Any comparison with the material received to the written books or accounts already existing would immediately show glaring discrepancies.

Yet in many such instances, the Ouija board operator or the automatic writer isto some extent or another tuning in to a world view, struggling to open roads of perception free enough to perceive an altered version of reality, but not equipped enough through training and temperament, perhaps, to express it.

(Long pause at 11:30.) The most legitimate instances of communication between the living and the dead occur in an intimate personal framework, in which a dead parent makes contact with its offspring9: or a husband or wife freshly out of physical reality appears to his or her mate. But very seldom do historic personages make contact, except with their own intimate circles.

(Emphatically:) There is great energy, however, in those who have persevered enough to become generally known in their time, and the great impetus of that psychic and mental energy does not cease at death, but continues. In their way others may tune in to that continuing world view; and, picking it up, can be convinced that they are in contact with the physical personality who held it.

Give us a moment.. . You are so used to your own private interpretation of reality that when you allow yourselves to ~y from it, you immediately want to interpret your new experience in terms that make sense to your familiar orientation. You are also highly involved with symbols. In ordinary life you often hamper your own creativity. When you use the Ouija board or trance procedures, you frequently free philosophical areas of your mind that have been frozen. The resulting information then definitely seems to come from outside of yourself, and because you are literal-minded you try to interpret such experiences in a literal way. The material must come from a philosopher, therefore (amused) , and since it certainly seems profound to your usual mudane organization, then it appears that such information must originate with a profound mind certainly not your own.

You may signif~r this to yourself symbolically, so that the board or the automatic writing designates its origin as being Socrates10 or Plato. If you are spiritualistically oriented, the information may come from a famous psychic recently dead. Instead, you yourself have momentarily escaped from your accustomed world view, or home program; you are reaching out into other levels of reality, but still interpreting your experience in old terms. Therefore much of its creativity escapes you.

You are each as valid as Socrates or Plato. Your influences reach through the entire framework of actuality in ways that you do not understand. Socrates and Plato-and William James (note that I smiled)-specialized in certain fashions. You know those individuals as names of people that existed-but in your terms, and in your terms onl~, those existences represented the flowering aspects of their personalities. (Louder:) They often dwelled nameless upon the face of the earth, as many of you do, in your terms only, now, before reaching what you think of as those summits.

Wait a moment. End of dictation-though I will have something to say about Ruburt's experience as a ~y.

(11:49. Jane rested a minute or so, still in trance. Her fly experience of last P.M., Monday afternoon is mentioned in the opening notes for this session. When Seth returned, he delivered half a page of mat erialfor Jane and mc, including this passage: "He [Ruburt] has made an extraordinary leap into his [psychic] library, and it is freeing him physically. You have made as vital a leap, and it is freeing you artistically. The library is valid, and in the most legitimate of terms it is far more important, for example, than a physical library.... Seth finished his personal material at 12:10A.M., and we thought the session was over. Jane was very tired, much more so than she usually is after a session. She wanted only to sleep.

(We keep our typewritten transcripts of the sessions in a series of three-ring binders. I not only record the current session in the latest one, of course, but have in there a page or two of comments and questions so that from time to time I can ask Seth to clear them up. In closing the notebook tonight, I noticed the query I'd written following the 697th session for May 13, 1974, in Volume 1. In that session Seth told us: "Because you are now a conscious species, in your terms, there are racial idealizations that you can accept or deny."

(I've never really forgotten that statement of almost six months ago, nor Seth's saying at the end of the 699th session that he'd go into my questions about it "when your material willflt."

("What, " I wrote at the time, "would a state other than a conscious one be? I have dfficulty conceiving of such a situation-which, perhaps, is more revealing of the way I think than of anything else. But how could the species, or its individual members, not be 'conscious'? Since I think our collective and individual actions are self-consciously designed for survival, in the best meaning of that word, I'm curious to know in what other state these functions could be perj?) rmed, for existence's sa~... There are many ramVications here, as I discovered when I started making notes about this concept, so I'm purposely keeping them short."

(When Jane first read my question after she'd held the 697th session, she told me that she "didn't get it"-that perhaps I was drawing inferences from Seth's material that weren't intended. I tried to explain the point at issue to her on several d~(ferent occasions, and discovered each time that it was an oddly elusive one to put into words.

(Idly now, not intending that Jane do any more work this evening I read my question aloud. She raised a hand in dismay. "I'm tired, " she said, "but wait a minute-I've got the answer. Seth's all ready. Get me a pack of dgarettes~, and I'll do it...."

(12:14.) Now: I have been using your terms as I understood your meaning of them.

There are, in those terms, gradations. When I used the word "conscious" (or "consciousness") , I meant it as I thought you understood it. I thought that you meant: conscious of being conscious, or placing yourself on the one hand outside of a portion of your own consciousness-viewing it (intently) and then saying, "I am conscious of my consciousness."

Consciousness is always conscious of itself, and of its validity and integrity, and in those terms there is no unconsciousness.

When I use the term time-wise, I refer itto the formation of a structure from which one kind of consciousness then views itself, sees itself as unique, and then tries to form other kinds of conscious structures. A fly is conscious of itself, fulfilled within that reality, and feels no need to form an "extension" of that awareness from which to view its own existence.

In your terms, time considerations involved extensions of that kind of consciousness, in which separations could occur and divisions could be made. In terms of an organic structure, this could be likened to developing another arm or leg, or protrusion or filament-another method of locomotion through another kind of dimension.

The fly is intensely conscious, at every moment engrossed in itself and its environment, precisely tuned to elements of which you are unconscious." There are simply different kinds of consciousness, and you cannot basically compare one to the other any more than you can compare, say, a toad to a star to an apple to a thought to a woman to a child to a native to a suburbanite to a spider to a cat. They are varieties of consciousness, each focused upon its own view of reality, each containing experience that others exclude.

(Louder, humorously:) End of explanation.

(With a laug/v "Thank you very much." 12:19 A.M. And so it turned out that I brought up my questions about self-consciousness, and Seth answered them, when that material didfit.

(A note added in December 1977: The 718th session on world views proved to be a cornerstone in Jane's own development, and in Seth's thematic structure as welL Jane's The World View of Paul Cezanne: A Psychic Interpretatior~, was published earlier this year, and as I type this final manuscript for Volume 2 of "Unknown" Reality I can add that she's also completed The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher:

The World View of WilliamJames. It came out in 1978.

(In a sense, both world-view books were "born" in the 718th session and the odd previous one that took place under Seth's auspices. I write this although Jane had no idea ofproducing such works when those two sessions were held [but see my speculations in Note 6]. Nothing has been forthcoming on any additional material concerning CarlJung however-nor has Jane tn edfor this.

(The entire world-view concept is extremely interesting of course, and worthy of continuous investigation.

(Oddly enough, the original pages of the James material that Jane saw mentally during the 717th session [and later presented in Chapter 6 of Psychic Politics] never appeared in Afterdeath Journal. There were two different James books in her "library. "Jane said. She transcribed only one 'of them.)

Session 719, November 11, 1974, 9:36 P.M., Monday

(Jane was so relaxed and 'floppy" before the session that lashed her ~/' she'd rather not have it. She decided that she wanted to try. She's been experiencing many muscular changes and releases in recent days. I read parts of the last session to her, to remind us both of what Seth had discussed. At 9:30 Jane saick "There-I'm just beginning to feel him arouncL...

Now: Good evening-("Good evening Seth.")

-and dictation. I consider my own book, The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book, as a prerequisite for the exercises given here in this volume.

In that previous book I discussed the ways in which you form your private experience through your beliefs. You have certain pet ideas, therefore, and you use them to structure your own world view of the reality you know. It is important that you understand what your own beliefs are. Many of them might work quite well "at

home, " but when you begin to journey away from that home station you may find that those same ideas impede your progress.

Other concepts are really not basically workable even in your own physical reality. A rigid, dogmatic concept of good and evil will force you to perceive physical existence as a battleground of opposing forces, with the poor unwasy soul almost as a buffer. Or you will think of the poor soul as a blackboard eraser, slapped between two hands-one good and one evil.

Upon the blackboard, in this homey analogy, would be written the soul's earthly experiences. With the eraser the "evil hand" would try to rub out all of the good, and at the same time the "good hand" would be trying to erase all of the evil. In such a case all of your experience becomes suspect You will have a tendency to consider the body with its natural appetites wrong, and deny them, while at the same time the physical part of you will look upon your "good intents" as wrong, and infringements upon its own existence.

If you do not understand the natural grace of your being, ' then when you try some of the exercises given here you may automatically translate them into a quite limiting set of beliefs.

You are familiar with your own view of the world. As you leave your usual orientation, however, altering the focus of your consciousness, you may very well structure your new experience just as you do your physical one. At the same time, you are more free. You have greater leeway. You are used to projecting your beliefs onto physical objects and events. When you leave your home station, those objects and events no longer present themselves in the same fashion.

(Intently:) You often find yourself encountering your own structures, no longer hidden in the kind of experience with which you are familiar. These may then appear in quite a different light You may be convinced that you are evil simply because you are physical. You may believe that the soul "descends" into the body, and therefore that the body is lower, inferior, and a degraded version of "what you really are." At the same time your own physical being knows better, and basically cannot accept such a concept2 So in daily life you may project this idea of unworth outward onto another person, who seems then to be your enemy; or upon another nation. In general, you might select animals to play the part of the enemy, or members of another religion, or political parties.

In any case, in your private life you may hardly ever encounter your belief in your own unworth, or evil. You will not realize that you actually consider yourself the enemy. You will be so convinced that your projection (onto others) is the enemy that there will be no slack to take up, for all of your feelings of self-hate or self-fear will be directed outward.

When you begin to leave your home station and alter your focus, however, you leave behind you the particular familiar receptors for your projections. Using the Ou~ja board or automatic writing, you may find yourself immediately confronted with this material that you have suppressed in the past. When it surfaces you may then project it outward from yourself again, but in a different fashion. Instead of thinking you are in contact with a great philosopher or "ancient soul, " you may believe that you are instead visiting with a demon or a devil, or that you are possessed of an evil spirit.

In such a case, you will have already been convinced of the power of evil. Your natural feelings, denied, will also carry the great charge of repression. You may be filled with the feeling that you are in the midst of a great cosmic struggle between the forces of good and evil-and indeed, this often represents a valid picture of your own view of the world.

(Long pause.) None of this is necessary. There is no danger in the exercises I suggest You are in far greater danger the longer you inhibit your natural feelings, and alterations of consciousness often present you with the framework in which these come to light If they do not in one way or another come to your attention, then it is very possible that the denied energy behind them will erupt in ruptured relationships or illnesses.

(Long pause at 10:11.) "Psychic explorations" never cause such difficulties, nor do they ever compound original problems. On the contrary, they are often highly therapeutic, and they present the personality with an alternative-an alternative to continued repression that would be literally unbearable.

If you are normally capable of dealing with physical reality, you will encounter no difficulties in alterations of consciousness, or leaving your home station. Be reasonable, however: If you have difficulties in New York City, you are most apt to encounter them in a different form no matter where else you might travel. A change of environment might help clear your head by altering your usual orientation, so that you can see yourself more dearly, and benefit The same applies when you leave your home station. Here the possible benefits are far greater than in usual life and travel, but you are still yourself It is impossible not to structure reality in some fashion. Reality implies a structuring.

If you take your own world view with you all of the time, however, as you travel, even in your own world, then you never see the "naked culture." You are always a tourist, taking your homey paraphernalia with you and afraid to give it up. If you are American or English, or European, then when you visit other areas of the world you stay at cosmopolitan hotels. You always see other cultures through your own eyes.

Now when you leave your home station and alter your consciousness, you are always a tourist if you take your own baggage of ideas along with you, and interpret your experiences through your own personal, cultural beliefs. There is nothing unconventional about gods and demons, good spirits or bad spirits. These are quite conventional interpretations of experience, with religious overtones. Cults simply represent counter-conventions, and they are as dogmatic in their way as the systems they reiect. Underline that sentence.

Give us a moment... When you try these exercises, therefore, make an honest attempt to leave your conventional ideas behind you. Step out of your own world view. There is an exercise that will help you.

PRACTICE ELEMENT 13

Close your eyes. Imagine a photograph of yourself (in parentheses: Yes, we are finally back to photographs) .3 In your mind's eye see the photograph of yourself on a table or desk. If you are working mentally with a particular snapshot, then note the other items in the picture. If the photograph is strictly imaginary, then create an environment about the image of yourself.

Look at the image in your mind as it exists in the snapshot, and see it as being aware only of those other objects that surround it. Its world is bounded by the four edges of the picture. Try to put your consciousness into that image of yourself. Your world view is limited to the photograph itself. Now in your mind see that image walking out of the snapshot, onto the desk or table. (Pause.) The environment of the physical room will seem gigantic to that small self The scale and proportion alone will be far different. Imagine that miniature image navigating in the physical room, then going outside, and quite an expanded world view will result

Take your break.

(10:37. Jane's delivery had been rather fast throughout, except for an occasional long pause. She felt more alert now, she said, but still wasn't as wide-awake as usual. She'd been taking a little wine during her trance. At her request Igot her a glass of milk-which she didn't finish before Seth returned.

(During break I saw a certain look pass across Jane's tired face. I couldn't describe the expression, but it reminded me of the internal "vision" I'd

had this afternoon when I lay down to sleep: Ifound myself looking at a very old, very probable future man~è station of myself in this l~fei, who rested quietly in bed. Just before supper tonight Ifinished writing an account of what I'd seen, and Jane read it while we ate. See Note 4. Now as we discussed the event in a little more detail, I made a quick sketch of that possible self of mine.

(Resume at 11:01.)

Dictation: Many of you do not really want to step out of the photograph, or leave your world view, yet in the dream state you are far freer. You can pretend that dreams are not "real, " however, so you can have your cake and eat it too, so to speak.

Different varieties of dreams often provide frameworks that allow you to leave your own world view under "cushioned conditions." You step out of the normal picture that you have made of reality.

(As Seth, Jane took a swallow of milk. She promptly made a most disapproving face. Her features wrinkled up. her lips drew back distastefully. She held the half-empty glass of milk up to me, her Seth voice booming out:)

This is far different from any milk that I ever drank! It is like a chalk with chemicals, far divorced from any cow!

(Still in trance, Jane set the milk aside. She didn't return to it, but sipped her winefor the rest of the session. I was tempted to ask Seth to explain his idea of what good milk was liked, and in what life [or lives] he'd enjoyed such a potion, but I didn't want to interrupt the flow of the materiaL While tasting the milk during break, however, Jane "herself' had had no such reaction.)

Your alterations of consciousness frequently occur in the dream state, therefore, where it seems to you at least that your experiences do not have any practical application. You imagine that only hallucinations are involved. Many of your best snapshots of other realities are taken in your dreams.5 They may be over-or-underdeveloped, and the focus may be blurred, but your dreams present you with far more information about the unknown reality than you suppose. In the most intimate of terms your body is your home station, so when you leave it you often hide this fact from yourselves.

In your sleep, however, your consciousness slips out of your body and returns to it frequently. You dream when you are out of your body, even as you dream inside it You may therefore form dream stories about your own out-of-body travel, while your physical image rests soundly in bed. The unknown reality, you see, is not really that mysterious to you. You only pretend that it is. Sometimes you have quite clear perceptions of your journeys, but the actual native territories that you visit are so different from your own world that you try to interpret them as best you can in the light of usual conditions. If you remember such an episode at all it may well seem very confusing, for you will have superimposed your own world view where it does not belong.

(11:16.) In dream travel it is quite possible to journey to other civilizations-those in your past or future, or even to worlds whose reality exists in other probable systems. There is even a kind of "cross-breeding, " for you affect any system of reality with which you have experience. There are no closed realities, only apparent boundaries that seem to separate them.' The more parochial your own world view, however, the less you will recall of their dreams or their activities, or the more distorted your "dream snapshots" will be.

Now here is another brief but potent exercise.

PRACTICE ELEMENT 14

Before you go to sleep, tell yourself that you will mentally take a dream snapshot7 of the most significant dream of the night Tell yourself that you will even be aware of doing this while asleep, and imagine that you have a camera with you. You mentally take this into the dream state. You will use the camera at the point of your clearest perceptions, snap your picture, and-mentally again-take it back with you so that it will be the first mental picture that you see when you awaken.

You will, of course, try to snap as good a picture as possible. Varying results can be expected. Some of you will awaken with a dream picture that presents itself immediately. Others may find such a picture suddenly appearing later in the day, in the middle of ordinary activities. If you perform this exercise often, however, many of you will find yourselves able to use the camera consciously even while sleeping, so that it becomes an element of your dream travels; you will be able to bring more and more pictures back with you.

These will be relatively meaningless, however, if you do not learn how to examine them. They are not to be simply filed away and forgotten. You should write down a description of each scene and what you remember of it, including your feelings both at the time of the dream, and later when you record it. The very effort to take this camera with you makes you more of a conscious explorer, and automatically helps you to expand your own awareness while you are in the dream state. Each picture will serve as just one small glimpse of a different kind of reality. You cannot make any valid judgment on the basis of one or two pictures alone.

Now this is a mental camera we are using. There is a knack about being a good dream photographer, and you must learn how to operate the camera. In physical life, for example, a photographer knows that many conditions affect the picture he takes. Exterior situations then are important: You might get avery poor picture on a dark day, for instance. With our dream camera, however, the conditions themselves are mental. If you are in a dark mood, for example, then your picture of inner reality might be dim, poorly outlined, or foreboding. This would not necessarily mean that the dream itself had tragic overtones, simply that it was taken in the "poor light" of the psyche's mood.

(Pause at 11:40.) Inner weather changes constantly, even as the exterior weather does. One dream picture with a dreary cast, therefore, is not much different from a physical photograph taken on a rainy afternoon.

Many people, however, remembering a dark dream, become frightened. You even structure your dreams, of course. For that matter, your dream world is as varied as the physical one. Each physical photographer has an idea of what he wants to capture on film, and so to that extent he structures his picture and his view. The same applies to the dream state. You have all kinds of dreams. You can take what you want, so to speak, from dream reality, as basically you take what you want from waking life. For that reason, your dream snapshots will show you the kind of experience that you are choosing from inner reality.

(Pause at 11:46.) Give us a moment... End dictation.

(Seth spent the next si.'c minutes or so giving some personal material for Jane. Then, as he was about to wind up the session.~

("Can I ask a question?")

You may indeed.

("What about my little view of myself this afternoon, as a very old man?")

Now: It represented two things: an association with a definite past old-age sensation, and a"precognitive" moment in this life that you have not as yet encountered. Because you were [psychically] open, the position of your body and head acted as the associative bridge between the two events. You were not senile in either.

My heartiest regards and a fond good evening.

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

(11:56 P.M. Seth's comments on my experience certainly illustrate his notions of simultaneous time to some extent, since from my 'present" I perceived aspects of myself in the reincarnational 'past" as well as in the 'future" in this lfe. See Note 4.

(In ordinary terms I can only wait, of course, to see ~f I decide to create that distant probable moment in this reality. In the meantime, I have no conscious memory of being an old man, let alone one in the specific, dependent situation in which I saw myself Howeve, ~, aside from the idea of simultaneous time, I do believe that an individual can touch upon at least some of his or her earlier lives, provided enough long-term effort is given to the endeavor. Since through my internal vision I evidently looked in upon a particular past 4fe of my own, however unaware I was of what I was doing, it seems that the knowledge of that existence may not be too deeply buried within my psyche. I might try jogging my memory through suggestion, to see what else about that lfe I can recall. It would also be interesting to see whether the same technique could help me tune in to my future in this hfe.

(But the big thing is finding the physical time to try everything I'd like to do-just as it is with Jane.)

Session 720, November13, 1974, 9:55 P.M., Wednesday

(Just as she had this afternoon, Jane "picked up" a little material from Seth at 9:00 this evening I'll cover both episodes in the notes at the end of the session.)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Dictation (whispering) . Now, if you take a physical camera with you today and snap pictures as you go about your chores, walk, or talk with friends, then you will have preserved scenes from the day's activities.

Your film, however, will only take pictures today, of today. No yesterday or tomorrow will suddenly appear in the snapshots of the present. The photographer in the dream world, though, will find an entirely different situation, for there consciousness can capture scenes from entirely different times as easily as the waking photographer can take pictures of different places. Unless you realize this, some of your "dream albums" will make no sense to you.

In waking life you experience certain events as real, and generally these are the only ones that can be captured by an ordinary photographer. The dream world, 1 however, presents a much larger category of events. Many [events] may later appear as physical ones, while others just as valid will not. The dream camera, therefore, will capture probable events also.

When you awaken with a dream photograph in mind, it may appear meaningless because it does not seem to correlate with the official order of activities you recognize. You may make one particular decision in physical and waking consciousness, and that decision may bring forth certain events. Using your dream camera, you can with practice discover the history of your own psyche, and find the many probable decisions experienced in dreams. These served as a basis from which you made your physical decision. There is some finesse required as you learn to interpret the individual pictures within your dream album. This should be easy to grasp, for if you tried to understand physical life having only a group of snapshots taken at different places and in different times, then it would be rather difficult to form a clear idea of the nature of the physical world.

The same applies to dream reality, for the dreams that you recall are indeed like quick pictures snapped under varying conditions. No one picture alone tells the entire story. You should write down your description of each dream picture, therefore, and keep a continuing record, for each one provides more knowledge about the nature of your own psyche and the unknown reality in which it has its existence.

Give us a moment... When you take a physical photograph you have to know how your camera works. You must learn how to focus, how to emphasize those particular qualities you want to record, and how to cut out distracting influences. You know the difference between shadows, for example, and solid objects. Sometimes shadows themselves make fascinating photographic studies. You might utilize them in the background, but as a photographer you would not confuse the shadows with, say, the solid objects. No one would deny that shadows are real, however.

Now, using an analogy only, let me explain that your thoughts and feelings also give off shadows (intently) that we will here call hallucinations.2 They are quite valid. They have as strong a part to play in dream reality as shadows do in the physical world. They are beautiful in themselves. They add to the entire picture. A shadow of a tree cools the ground. It affects the environment. So hallucinations alter the environment, but in a different way and at another level of reality. In the dream world hallucinations are like conscious shadows. They are not passive, nor is their shape dependent upon their origin. They have their own abilities.

Physically, an oak tree may cast a rich deep shadow upon the ground. It will move, faithfully mirroring the tiniest motion of the smallest leaf, but its freedom to move will be dictated by the motion of the oak. Not one oak leaf shadow will move unless its counterpart does.

Following our analogy, in the dream world the shadow of the oak tree, once cast, would then be free to pursue its own direction. Not only that, but there would be a creative give-and-take between it and the tree that gave it birth. Anyone fully accustomed to inner reality would have no difficulty in telling the dream oak tree from its frisky shadow, however (humorously) , any more than awaking photographer would have trouble distinguishing the physical oak tree from its counterpart upon the grass.

When you, a dream tourist, wander about the inner landscape with your mental camera, however, it may take a while before you are able to tell the difference between dream events and their shadows or hallucinations. So you may take pictures of the shadows instead of the trees, and end up with a fine composition indeed-but one that would give you somewhat of a distorted version of inner reality. So you must learn how to aim and focus your dream camera.

(Pause.) In your daily world objects have shadows, and thoughts or feelings do not, so in your dream travels simply remember that there "objects" do not possess shadows, but thoughts and feelings do.

Since these are far more lively than ordinary shadows, and are definitely more colorful, they may be more difficult to distinguish at first. You must remember that you are wandering through a mental or psychic landscape. You can stand before the shadow of a friend in the afternoon, in waking reality, and snap your fingers all you want to, but your friend's shadow will not move one whit. It will certainly not disappear because you tell it to. In the dream world, however, any hallucination will vanish immediately as soon as you recognize it as such, and tell it to go away. It was cast originally by your own thought or feeling, and when you withdraw that source, then its "shadow" is automatically gone.

Do you want a break?

(10:40. "No, "I saic4 although Seth's pace had been good)

Give us a moment... A stone's physical shadow will faithfully mirror its form. In those terms, little creativity is allowed it. Far greater leeway exists, however, as a thought or feeling in the dream world casts its greater shadow out upon the landscape of the mind.

Moods obviously exist when you are dreaming as well as when you are waking. Physically the day may be brilliant, but if you are in a blue mood you may automatically close yourself off from the day's natural light, not notice it-or even use that natural beauty as counterpoint that only makes you feel more disconsolate. Then you might look outward at the day through your mood and see its beauty as a meaningless or even cruel façade. Your mood, therefore, will alter your perception.

The same applies in the dream state; but there, the shadows of your thoughts may be projected outward into scenes of darkest desolation. In the physical world you have mass sense data about you. Each individual helps form that exterior environment. No matter how dark your mood on any given sunny day, your individual thoughts alone will not suddenly turn the blue skies into rainy ones. You alone do not have that kind of control over your fellows' environment. In the dream world, however, such thoughts will definitely form your environment.

Stormy dream landscapes are on the one hand hallucinations, cast upon the inner world by your thoughts or feelings. On the other hand, they are valid representations of your inner climate at the time of any given dream. Such scenes can be changed in the dream state itself if you recognize their origin. You might choose instead to learn from such hallucinations by allowing them to continue, while realizing that they are indeed shadows cast by your own mind.

Take your break.

(10:52 to 11:12.)

Now: If you are honest with your thoughts and feelings, then you will express them in your waking life, and they will not cast disturbing shadows in your dreams.

You may be afraid that a beloved child or mate will die suddenly, yet you may never want to admit such a fear. The feeling itself may be generated because of your own doubts about yourself, however. You may be depending upon another such person too strongly, trying to live your own life secondhandedly through the life of another. Your own fear, admitted, would lead you to other feelings behind it, and to a greater understanding of yourself.

Unencountered in waking life, however, the fear might cast its dim shadow, so that you dream of your child's death, or of the death of another close to you. The dream experience would be cast into the dream landscape and encountered there. Period.

If you remembered such a dream, therefore, you might think that it was precognitive, and that the event would become physical. Instead, the whole portent of the dream event would be an educational one, bringing your fear into clear focus. In such cases you should think of the dire dream situation as a shadow, and look for its source within your mind.

Shadows can be pleasant and luxurious, and on a hot sunny day you are certainly aware of their beneficial nature. So some dream hallucinations are beautiful, comforting, refreshing. They can bring great peace and be sought after for themselves. You may believe that God exists as a kindly father, or you might personify him as Christ or Buddha. In your dreams you might then encounter such personages. They are quite valid, but they are also hallucinations cast by your own thoughts and feelings. Dreams of Heaven and Hell alike fall into the same category, in those terms, as hallucinations.

Now: The physical shadow of a tree bears witness to the existence of a tree, even if you see only the shadow; so your hallucinations appearing in dreams also bear witness to their origin, and give testimony to a valid "objective" dream object that is as "solid" (slowly) in that reality as the tree is in your world.

(Long pause at 11:32.) In physical reality there is a time lag that exists between the conception of an idea, say, and its materialization. Beside that, other conditions operate that can slow down an idea's physical actualization, or even impede it altogether. If not physically expressed, the thought will be actualized in another reality. An idea must have certain characteristics, for example, that agree with physical assumptions before it turns into a recognizable event. It must appear within your time context.

In the dream world, however, each feeling or idea can be immediately expressed and experienced. The physical world has buildings in it that you manufacture-that is, they do not spring up naturally from the ground itself In the same way, your thoughts are "manufactured products" in the dream world. They are a part of the environment and appear within its reality, though they change shape and form constantly, as physically manufactured objects do not.

The earth has its own natural given data, however, and you must use this body of material to form all of your manufactured products. The dream world also possesses its own natural environment. You form your dreams from it (long pause) , and use its natural products to manufacture dream images. Few view this natural inner environment, however.

Give us a moment... End of dictation.

(11:44. Speaking as Seth, Jane now delivered two pages of material for herself and me. Embedded within it were these lines: "Ruburt's idea did come from me, abo ut your reincarnational episodes involving the Roman officer; and your personal experience illustrates what I am saying in "Unknown" Reality-the individual's history is written in the psyche; and can indeed be uncoveredJ " Note Seth's headingfor this Section 5, for example.

(Twice today Jane had tuned in to very similar concepts while going about her daily business. "I'm sure I got that from Seth, " she told me after the first such instance had taken place this afternoon. "Not only about your reincarnational stuff but your thing as the old man [as described in Note 4for the 719th session]. And the history of the species is written in the mass psyche in just the same way....

(My "three Roman?' are presented in the first notes for sessions 715-16. I'm quite concerned by some of the questions these experiences have raised-especially the possible time contradictions with some of my other supposed past lives.[Iplan to soon explain these rather cryptic references.] In the meantime, my little psychic adventures continue to flow. I regret that I seldom seem to find the physical time for more than very quick sketches relative to any of them.

(Tonight's session ended, then, at 12:04A.M.)

Session 721, November 25, 1974, 9:14 P.M., Monday

(At the conclusion of the 720th session I mentioned the Roman-soldier visions I'd had near the end of October, and added that I would soon go into my questions about them. Before I could do so, however, I had another experience with psychic perceptions three days later-on November 1 6-that led to more questions. This one wasn't a "Roman, " though, but a series of very vivid impressions of myself as a black woman on the island ofJamaica, in the Caribbean Sea. The time period was-is-the 19th century. See Note 1.

('Yamaica" took place on a Saturday, and Seth referred to it briefly in the next session, on P.M., Monday night. That session turned out to be private, rather than one for book dictation~ Seth came back to Jamaica in Jane's ESP class the next evening [on November 19]; at the same time he began discussing his concept of "counterparts, " which he formally introduces in tonight's [721st] session for "Unknown" Reality. His material enhances my Roman and Jamaican visions [and others]-which saves me considerable effort in figuring them out for myself of course. Ant4 obviously, Seth does a much better job of putting them all together than I could.

(I'd like to add that I hardly think it a coincidence, howeve, ; that within less than a month from my 'first Roman, " Seth was to initiate a body of information in which he began to clarify many of the questions I had about certain of my own psychic adventures. I don't think those events directly led Seth into beginning his new materic4, but in retrospect Jane and I agree that they certainly played some considerable part in establishing afoundation, or imp etus~, for such a development.

(Last Wednesday night's scheduled session wasn't hela givingJane some rest the day after class. Then yesterday, Sunday, she gave a very long session on her own for a visiting scientist. When I write "on her own, " I not only mean that Seth didn't come through, but that Jane wasn't aware of his presence even though she didn't give voice to it.

(Yesterday's '~Jane" session seemed to run itself to take place outside of time as we usually think of that quality. It last edfrom 2:00 P.M. until after 12:30A.M., with interruptions only for a casual supper ofscrambled eggs, and an occasional short break We estimate, then, that in a slightly altered state of consciousness Jane gave impressions for something like nine hours out of the actual ten and a half involved.

(She enjoyed the exchange a great &a4~ she made sketches while speaking on such subjects as the many facets of the electron and its behavior; time and its variations; gravity, its changes with motion, and its attributes in the past, present and future; the velocities of light; mathematical equations; astronomy, including perceptions by telescope of the future as well as ofthepast, ~ the structure of the earth's core; earthquakes and "black"sound/light; language.

including glossolalia and her own Sumari; pyramids, coordination points, and soforth~ Our guest recorded it all and is to send us a transcript [which he did].

Jane plans to quote parts of it in Psychic Politics.2 These bits are from her material about gravity and age: "There is a dffferent kind of gravity that surrounds older objects than that which surrounds younger ones, but we don't perceive this at the level of our instruments. We can pick it up, however, ~f we know where to look Age affects gravity... Older objects are heavier. This is ordinary gravity-not some new kind."

(I asked Jane to write a paragraph about the predominant mode of

consciousness she'd experienced during the long session, and here's what she produced.)

"It seems to be an easy natural state for me to take; I go into it 'like a duck takes to water, ' I guess, but it's difficult to explain. It's a state in which hardly any resistance is encountered; answers are 'just there.' The only problem is in getting the information across to another person in terms of his or her vocabulary. I enjoy this particular 'alteration of consciousness, ' although I don't really recognize it as alien to my regular one; it's just different. It's an accelerated condition mixed with passivity, poised. If [our scientist's]

attitude had been critical, I probably wouldn't have done as well, though."

(I'll finish the references to yesterday's session by quoting the comments Seth made at the end of some material we've deleted from the 712th session in Section 4. Afew weeks ago, through a magazine we subscribe to, Jane joined a science club. Now each month she receives a little kit to be assembled; this in turn is used to carry out the scientfic experiment for the month. Set/v "Ruburt's science kit is something picked up, in your terms, from another probability-in which he learned all there is to know about science as you know it That is why he can enter into the reality of electrons so easily."3

(And separately: Over the weekend Jane remarked more than once that "Unknown" Reality might prove to be so long that it could go into two volumes-a probable development I hardly took seriously. [Her statements turned out to be exactly praphetic, of course, as I noted five months later in the 741st session. Also see the beginning of the Introductory Notes for Volume 1.])

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Now: Dictation: When you look into a mirror you see your reflection, but it does not talk back to you. In the dream state you are looking into the mirror of the psyche, so to speak, and seeing the reflections of your own thoughts, fears, and desires.

Here, however, the "reflections" do indeed speak, and take their own form. In a certain sense they are freewheeling, in that they have their own kind of reality. In the dream state yourjoys and fears talk back to you, perform, and act out the role in which you have cast them.

If, for example, you believe that you are possessed of great inner wealth, you may have a dream about a king in a fine palace. The king actually need not look like you at all, nor need you identify with him in the dream. Symbolically, however, this would represent one way of expressing your feelings. Inner wealth would be interpreted here in the same terms as worldly luxury. The dream, once created, would go its own way. If you have conflicts over the ideas connected with good and evil, or wealth and poverty, then the king might lose his lands or goods, or some catastrophe might befall him.

If you suspect that abundance is somehow spiritually dangerous, ' then the king might be captured and punished. All kinds of other events might be involved: groups of people, for example, representing bands of "rampaging" desires. The entire drama would involve the "evolution" of an emotion or belief In the dream state you set it free and see what will happen to it, how it will develop, where it will go.

The reflections of your ideas and intimate emotions are

then projected outward in a rich drama You can observe the play, take a role in it, or move in and out of its acts as you prefer. You will use your own private symbols. These represent your psychic shorthand. They are connected with your personal creativity, so dream books will not help you in deciphering those meanings if they attach a specific significance to any given symbol. Symbols themselves change. If you had before you your entire dream history and could read-as in a book-the story of all of your dreams from birth, you would discover that you changed the meaning of your symbols as you went along, or as it suited your purposes. The content of a dream itself has much to do with the way you employ any given symbol.

The king, for example, may be at one time the symbol of great inner wealth. He may be kingly but poor, signifying the idea that wealth does not necessarily involve physical goods. He might at another time appear as a dictator, cruel and overbearing, where he would represent an entirely different framework of feeling and belief. He might show himself as ayoung monarch, signaling a belief that "youth is king." At various times in history the same image has been used quite differently. When people are fighting dictatorial monarchs then often the king appears in dreams as a despicable character, to be booted and routed out.

Give us a moment... Whether or not you remember your dreams, you are educating yourself as they happen. You may suddenly "awaken" while still within the dream state, however, and recognize the drama that you have yourself created. At this point you will understand the fact that the play, while seeming quite real, is to a certain extent hallucinatory. If you prefer, you can clear the stage at once by saying, "I do not like this play, and so I will create it no longer." You may then find yourself facing an empty stage, become momentarily disoriented at the sudden lack of activity, and promptly begin to form another dream play more to your liking.

If, however, you pause first and wait a moment, you can begin to glimpse the environment that serves as a stage: the natural landscape of the dream reality. In waking life, if you want to disconnect yourself from an event or place, you try to move away from it in space. In dream reality events occur in a different fashion, and places spring up about you. If you meet with people or events not of your liking, then you must simply move your attention away from them, and they will disappear as far as your experience is concerned. In physical reality you can move fairly freely through space, but you do not travel from one city to another, for example, unless you want to. Intent is involved. This is so obvious that its

significance escapes you: but it is intent that moves you through space, and that is behind all of your physical locomotion. You utilize ships, automobiles, trains, airplanes, because you want to go to another place, and certain vehicles work best under certain conditions.

(9:53.) In the waking state you travel to places. They do not come to you. In dream reality, however, your intent causes places to spring up about you. They come to you, instead of the other way around. You form and attract "places, " or a kind of inner space in which you then have certain experiences.

This inner space does not "displace" normal space, or knock it aside. Yet the creation of a definite inner environment or location is concerned.

Those of you who are curious, try this experiment.

PRACTICE ELEMENT 15

In a dream, attempt to expand whatever space you find yourself in. If you are in a room, move from it into another one. If you are on a street, follow it as far as you can, or turn a corner. Unless you are working out ideas of limitations for your own reasons, you will find that you can indeed expand inner space. There is no point where an end to it need appear.

(Long pause.) The properties of inner space, therefore, are endless. Most people are not this proficient in dream manipulation, but surely some of my readers will be able to remember what I am saying, while they are dreaming. To those people I say: "Look around you in the dream state. Try to expand any location in which you find yourself. If you are in a house, remember to look out the window. And once you walk to that window, a scene will appear. You can walk out of that dream house into another environment, and theoretically at least you can explore that world, and the space within it will expand. There will be no spot in the dream where the environment will cease.~~

Now What you think of as exterior space expands in precisely the same manner. In this respect, dream reality faithfully mirrors what you refer to as the nature of the exterior world.

Earth experience, even in your terms, is far more varied than you ever consciously imagine. The intimate life of a person in one country, with its culture, is far different from that of an individual who comes from another kind of culture, with its own ideas of art, history, politics or religion or law. Because you focus upon similarities of necessity, then the physical world possesses its coherence.5

There are unknown gulfs that separate the private experience of a poor Indian, a rich Indian, a native in New Guinea, an American tailor, an African nationalist, a Chinese aristocrat, an Irish housewife. These differences cannot be objectively stated. They bring about qualitative differences, however, in the experience of space and time.

There are jet travelers and those who have never seen a train, so your own system of reality contains vast contrasts. The dream state, however, involves you with a kind of communication that is not physically practical, for there (intently) no man or woman is caught without a given role; no individual's ideas in the dream state are limited by his or her cultural background, or physical experience.

Even those who have never seen an airplane can travel from place to place in the twinkling of an eye, and the poor are fed, the ignorant are wise, the sick are well. The creativity that may be physically hampered is expressed. It is true that the hungry man, awakening, is still hungry. The ill may awaken no healthier than they were before. In deeper terms, however, in the dream state each person will be working out his or her own problems or challenges. Dreaming, a person can cure himself or herself of a disease, working through the problems that caused it. Dreaming, the hungry individual can discover ways to find food, or to procure the money to buy it. Dreaming is a practical activity. If it were understood as such, it would be even more practical in your terms.

Animals also dream, for example, and whole herds of starving animals will be led by their dreams to find better feeding grounds. In the same way, the dreams of starving people point toward the solution of the problem. Such data are largely ignored, however. (With emphasis:) In the dream state any individual can find the solution to whatever challenge exists.

The great natural cooperation that exists between the waking and the dreaming self has been mostly set aside. The conscious mind is quite equipped to interpret dream information.

You may take your break.

(10:26 to 10:39.

(Humorously:) You forget that dreaming is a part of life. You have disconnected it in your thoughts, at least, from your daily experience, so that dreams seem to have no practical application.

You live in a waking and dreaming mental environment, however. In both environments you are conscious.

Give us a moment... Your dream experience represents a pivotal reality, like the center of a wheel. Your physical world is one spoke. You are united with all of your other simultaneous existences through the nature of the dream state. The unknown reality is there presented to your view, and there is no biological, mental, or psychic reason why you cannot learn to use and understand your own dreaming reality.

In your dreams, in your terms, you find your personal past appearing in the present, so in those terms the past of the species also occurs. (Long pause.) Future probabilities are worked out there also so that individually and en masse the species decides upon its probable future. There is a feeling, held by many, that a study of dream reality will lead you further away from the world you know. Instead, it would connect you with that world in most practical terms.

I said (in connection with Practice Element 15) that inner space expands, but so does inner time. Those of you who can remember, try the following experiment

PRACTICE ELEMENT 16

When you find yourself within a dream, tell yourself you will know what happened before you entered it, and the past will grow outward from that moment. Again, there will be no place where time will stop. The time in a dream does not "displace" physical time. It opens up from it. Exterior time, again, operates in the same fashion, though you do not realize it.

(Pause at 10:52.) Give us a moment... Now (with a smile) :

The following material may be used here in our book, or in your own book.6 There will be no gap in this book if you do not use it here.7

Time expands in all directions, and away from any given point8 The past is never done and finished, and the future is never concretely formed. You choose to experience certain versions of events. You then organize these, nibbling at them, so to speak, a bit "at a time."

The creativity of any given entity is endless, and yet all of the potentials for experience will be explored. The poor man may dream he is a king. A queen, weary of her role, may dream of being a peasant girl. In the physical time that y~ recognize, the king is still a king, and the queen a queen. Yet their dreams are not as uncharacteristic or apart from their experiences as it might appear. In greater terms, the king has been a pauper and the queen a peasant You follow in terms of continuity one version of yourself at any given

Many people realize intuitively that the self is multitudinous and not singular. The realization is usually put in reincarnational terms, so that the self is seen as traveling through the centuries, moving through doors of death and life into other times and places.

The fact is that the basic nature of reality shows itself in the nature of the dream state quite clearly, where in any given night you may find yourself undertaking many roles simultaneously. You may change sex, social position, national or religious alliance, age, and yet know yourself as yourself

Lately Joseph has found himself embarked upon a series of episodes that seem to involve reincarnational existences. There was a catch, however. He saw himself as a woman-black. Last month he also saw himself as a Roman soldier aboard a slave ship. He previously had experience that convinced him that he was a man called Nebene.9 All of this could have been accepted quite easily in conventional terms of reincarnation, but Joseph felt that Nebene and the Roman soldier had existed during the same general time period, and he was not sure where to place the woman (but see Note 1) .

In all of these episodes definite emotional experience was involved. Also connected was an indefinable but unmistakable sense of familiarity. Space and time continually expand, and all probabilities of any given action are actualized in one reality or another. All of the potentials of the entity are also actualized.

(11:11.) Give us a moment... quite literally, you live more than one life at a time. You do not experience your century simply from one separate vantage point, and the individuals alive in any given century have far deeper connections than you realize. (Intently:) You do not experience your space-time world, then, from one but from many viewpoints.

(Pause at 11:13.) If you are glutted-sated-with a steak dinner, for example, in America or Europe, then you are also famished in another portion of the world, experiencing life from an entirely different viewpoint. You speak of races of men. You do not understand how consciousness is distributed in that regard. You have counterparts10 of yourself.

Give us a moment... Generally speaking, the people living within any given century are related in terms of consciousness and identity. This is true biologically and spiritually, through interrelationships you do not understand.

Joseph was "picking up" on lives that "he" lived in the same time scheme. In this way and in your terms, he was beginning to recognize the familyship that exists between individuals who share your earth at any given time.

(11:20.) Give us a moment.., because this is difficult to.........

Each identity has free will, and chooses its environment as a physical stance in space and time. Those involved in a given century are working on particular problems and challenges. Various races do not simply "happen, " and diverse cultures do not just appear. The greater self "divides" itself, materializing in flesh as several individuals, with entirely different backgrounds-yet with each embarked upon the same kind of creative challenge.

The black man is somewhere a white man or woman in your time. The white man or woman is somewhere black. The oppressor is somewhere the oppressed. The conqueror is somewhere the conquered. The primitive is somewhere sophisticated-and, in your terms, somewhere on the face of the same earth in your general time. The murderer is somewhere the victim, and the other way around-and again, in your terms of space and time.

Each will choose his or her own framework, according to the intents of the consciousness of which each of you is an independent part. In such a fashion are the challenges and opportunities inherent in a given "time" worked out.

You are counterparts of yourselves, but as Ruburt would say (amused) , living "eccentric"" counterparts, each with your own abilities. SoJoseph "was" Nebene, a scholarly man, not adventurous, obsessed with copying ancient truths, and afraid that creativity was error; authoritative and demanding. He feared sexual encounter, and he taught rich Roman children.

At the same time, in the same world and in the same century, Joseph was an aggressive, adventurous, relatively insensitive Roman officer, who would have litde understanding of manuscripts or records-yet who also followed authority without question.12

In your terms, Joseph is now a man who questions authority, stamps upon it and throws it aside, who rips apart the very idea structures to which he "once" gave such service.

In greater terms, these experiences all occur at once. The black woman followed nothing but her own instincts (and very vividly, too) . I do not want to give too much background here, and hence rob our Joseph of discoveries that he will certainly make on his own-but (louder) the woman bowed only to the authority of her own emotions, and those emotions automatically put her in conflict with the [British colonial] politics of the times.

Give us a moment... Joseph's focus of identity is his own. He will follow it. He was not Nebene, or the Roman officer or the woman. Yet they are versions of what he is, and he is a version of what they "were, " and at certain levels each is aware of the others. There is constant interaction."

The Roman soldier dreams of the black woman, and of Joseph. There is a reminiscence that appears even in the knowledge of the cells, and a certain correspondence.'4 There are connections then as far as cellular recollection is concerned, and dreams. Now the Roman soldier and Nebene and the woman went their separate ways after death, colon: They contributed to the world as it existed, in those terms, and then followed their own lines of development, elsewhere, in other realities. So each of you exists in many times and places, and versions of yourselves exist in the world and time that you recognize. As you are part of a physical species, so you are a part of a species of consciousness. That species forms the races of mankind that you recognize.

Now: Give us a moment.., and shortly we will end. This material is indeed endless (as Jane had remarked at break) .

(11:44. Seth proceeded to deliver a block of material for Jane and me, which is deleted from this recorct At 12:06 he presumably closed out the session, after remarking that I had access to as much energy as he did. I said good night. Then Jane told me that Seth could "continue forever"-whereupon he returned to touch upon Jane's and my reincarnational "histoiy"from another angle:)

Now: In your terms only, [neither of~ you.., has a reincarnational future. Give us a moment... You have accepted this as your breaking-off point. In other terms there are three future lives, but your greater intents, as of now, break you off from this system of reality, and you have already journeyed, both of you, into another; and from that other reality I speak. In those terms I am a part of both of your realities. Think of this in terms of other information given this evening, and you may see what I mean."

(End at 12:08A.M. Jane's trances had been excellent.

("Well, " I said after discussing the session with her, "it's my understanding that our whole self or entity experiences a group of simultaneous physical lives in various historicalperiods, and that in ordinaiy terms we think of those lives as following one after another. That includes so-called future lives, too. But each of those incarnations will have its cluster of cou~riterpart lives, revolving around it like planets around a sun. Within that context, of course, each counterpart personality thinks of itself as being the sun, or the center of things...."'6 Yawning Jane agreed.

(I fell asleep almost at once when we went to bed. Sitting up beside me, though, smoking a cigarette, Jane got more material on reincarnation and counterparts. "In fact, " she told me the next morning "I was getting stuff on 'Unknown' Reality each time I woke up during the night. I was also reading solid copy in the dream state. "In those cases she received the material "herself" while knowing that it caine from Setk

(Jane's own counterpart material included variations of Seth's basic concept. Here's one of her examples as she described it to me: "We can span a period like a century ~f we want to. We can be a child at one end of it and an old man or woman at the other... Michelangelo [who lived for 89 years, from 1475 to 1564] decided to span a century himself instead of as three counterparts, say. Since there aren't any laws about all of this, a great man could choose to do it that way in order to affect our world more with his gzfis, from his own personal angles. He wouldn't necessarily want or need the counterparts, at least for those purposes. He'd have more than enough to offer on his own."

(This session on counterparts represents a key point in Seth's discussion of the unknown reality. The reader is directed to Appendix 21 for related materialfrom the recent past, which antict~ated tonight's new concept. Some earlier intimations of the counterpart concept are also briefly discussed there.)

Session 722, November 27, 1974, 9:18 P.M., Wednesday

("C'mon, Set/i, "Jane said impatiently at 9:15; we'd been waiting since 9:00 for the session to begin. "Ifeel stuff there, but I haven't got it clear yeL..." Thew)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth."

(Qyietly:) I told you to take a moment while you were within a particular dream, and to use it to try to discover what had been happening within the dream before you experienced it.'

(Still quietly:) It is true that you create your own dreams, but it is also true that you only focus upon certain portions of your dream creations. Even in the dream state, any present expands into its own version of past and future; so in those terms the dream possesses its own background, its own kind (underlined) of historic past, the moment you construct it.

You need not experience those past dream events, although if you just turn your attention in that direction then the dream's past will become apparent. Mental impressions of any kind therefore are not simply imprinted, or written, as it were, in a medium of space and time. They have a greater dimensionality. The past and future ripple outward from any event, making it "thicker" than it appears to be.

In greater terms, the past is definitely created from the present In your system of reality this does not seem to be the case at all, since your senses project a forward kind of motion outward upon events. "Subatomic particles, " however, appear in your present, rippling into your system's dimensions, creating their own "tracks, " which scientists then try to observe. In some cases, unknowingly, your scientists are close to observing the birth of time effects within your system. (Pause.) Since your brains are composed of cells with their atoms and molecules, and since these are themselves made of certain invisible partides, 2 then your memories are already structured by the biological mechanisms that make them possible in your terms. (In parentheses: After death, for example, you still possess a memory, though it does not operate through the physical organism as you understand it.)

Psychologically, then, while you are living your memories follow a pattern of past into present. It seems, therefore, quite inconceivable that in certain terms any present event can bring about a memory of a similar event that occurred before, while instead each actually occurs at once.

Give us a moment... In the dream state, the freedom of events from time as you understand it can be more apparent. If you are alert and curious while dreaming (and you can learn to be) , then you can catch yourself in the act of creating a dream's past and future at once.

Give us a moment... Physicists know that waves can appear as particles upon certain conditions, and that particles can behave like waves.3 So moments as you understand them are like waves experienced as "particles"-as small bubbles, for example, each one breaking and another forming. Subatomic partides also behave like waves sometimes; in fact, it is usually only when they act like ~ that they are perceived at all.

(9:42.) Physicists think of atoms as particles. Their wavelike characteristics are not observed. At other levels of reality, atoms behave in a wavelike manner... Give us a moment... Subjectively, you will think of your own thoughts as waves rather than as particles. Yet in the dream level of reality those waves "break" into partides, so to speak. They form pseudo-objects from your viewpoint. While dreaming you accept that reality as real. Only upon awakening do the dream objects seem not-real, or imaginary. The nervous system itself is biologically equipped to perceive various gradations of physical matter, and there are "in-between" impulse passageways that are utilized while dreaming. From your point of view these are alternate passageways, but in the dream state they allow you to perceive as physical matter objects that in the waking state would not be observable.

Again, from the waking standpoint these other neurological recognitions could be thought of as ghost or trace methods of perception. Waking, you do not usually use them. They are utilized to some extent in daydreaming, however, and in certain alterations of consciousness while you perceive as real, or nearly real, events that are not immediately happeningwithin your space-time structure.

Give us a moment... The dream world is as organized as your own, but from the waking state you do not focus upon that inner organization. Your dream images exist. They are quite as real as a table or a chair. They are built up from partides, invisible only from the waking situation.

Physicists are beginning to study the characteristics of "invisible" particles.4 They seem to defy space and time principles. This is precisely why they form the basis for dream reality, semicolon; why objects in a dream can appear and disappear.

In your physical universe such particles are invisible components, deduced but never directly encountered. To a certain extent they are latent. In some other realities, however, their characteristics rule rather than the attributes of the visible particles that you see. Dream images, therefore, exist at a different range of matter.

You may take your break.

(10:01. Jane's trance had been good, but still she'd been bothered by the sounds of traffic rising up from the busy intersection close by our living room windows. Someone had made considerable noise while cleaning the halls of the apartment house, also-'s.. all while Seth wanted me to get that material just right, "Jane said a bit ruefully. "Maybe I can get better at it, but you need such afine control.... "Finally she laughed~ "I don't know who's going to read this book, but they'll sure find a lot in it to study."

(Resume in a slower manner at 10:26.)

Now: Many of these invisible particles (CU's) can be in more than one place at a time-a fact that quite confounds the physically tuned brain perceiving a world in which objects stay where they are supposed to be.

(Pause.) Basically, however, each "appearance" of such a partide is a self-version, for it is altered to some extent by its "location." Period. So can the human self appear in several places at once, 5 each such appearance subtly altering the "human" particle, so that each appearance is aversion of an "original" self that as itself never appears in those terms.6 When you look at an electron-figuratively speaking-you are observing a trace or a track of something else entirely, and that appearance is termed an electron. So the self that you know is a physical trace or intrusion into space and time of an "original" self that never appears. In away, then, you are as ghostly as an electron.

The unknown self, the "original self, " straddles realities, dipping in and out of them in creative versions of itself, taking on the properties of the system in which it appears, and the characteristics native to that environment. Waves and particles are versions of other kinds of behavior taken by energy. Using that analogy, you flow in wavelike fashion into the physical particleized versions that you call corporal existences.

Give us a moment... I am putting this as simply as possible; but when your "original self" enters [part of] itself into three-dimensional life from an inner reality, the energy waves carrying it break-not simply into one particle, following our analogy, but into a number of conscious particles. In certain terms these are built up using the medium at hand-the biological properties of the earth. They spread out from the "point of contact, " forming individual lives. In your conception of the centuries, then, there are other counterparts of yourself living at the same time and in different places-all creative versions of the original self. There is a great intimate cooperation that exists biologically and spiritually between all of the beings on your planet "at any given time. 'You are all connected psychically in terms of inner and outer structures. A certain identity and cohesiveness is also maintained because of these inner connections.

(10:5 1.) There are psychic structures quite as effective as physical ones, and these underlie the reality of your objective world. They merge together beautifully to form an inner picture of the world at any given "time, " even while that picture is ever-changing. In greater terms, the picture of your world at any given time can be compared to the position, behavior, and characteristics of an invisible particle as it is "caught?' intruding into your reality.

Your dream adventures, however exciting, remain "invisible" from your waking standpoint. Within dreams space and time expand, again, as I have mentioned, 7 but in a way that you cannot physically pinpoint. Your own exterior space exists in precisely the same manner from the standpoint of any other reality (emphatically) . For that matter, you yourself are so richly creative that your own thoughts give birth to other quite legitimate systems of which you have no knowledge.

Take the break.

(11:00. Seth's words just above,..... your own thoughts give birth..." reminded me of one of my favorite passages from Seth Speaks. While discussing probabilities in the 565th session for Chapter 16 of that book, he said "Each mental act opens up a new dimension of actuality. In a manner of speaking your slightest thought gives birth to worlds."8 I also found an opportunity to insert the same lines in Chapter 10 of Personal Reality; see the 64 1st session.

(Resume at 11:1 7.)

Now: You are each members of a particular race, and you do not feel any the less individualistic because of that affiliation.

You consider yourselves, further, members of a species. The races are alive together at any given time on your earth in varying proportions, so there are physical organizations, biologically speaking, that you recognize. You do not feel threatened because you do not have your particular race to yourself. So there are inner psychic "races" to which you belong, or psychic stocks, so to speak, each providing physical variations.9

In those terms each living person has other counterparts of himself or herself alive, generally speaking, at the same time, sharing the physical face of the earth. There are psychic pools of identity, therefore; and generally speaking those alive in any given century are as much a part of that inner pool as they are a part of the particular race to which they may belong. Each member of the species is an individual, and each member of a psychic pool of identity is an individual.

Again, your idea of personhood limits you when you think of these concepts. You imagine personhood to be a kind of mental particle that must have definite boundaries, or it will lose its identity. The identity of even the smallest consciousness is always maintained-but not limited. If you can think of your present idea of identity as if it were but one shape or one motion of a moving particle, a shape or a motion that never loses its imprint or meaning, then you could also see how you could follow it forward or backward to the shape or motion taken "before or afterward."

You could retain the identity of yourself as you know yourself, and yet flow into a greater field or wave of reality that allowed you to perceive your own other motions or shapes or versions. You could become aware of a larger structure in which you also have your own validity, and therefore add to your own knowledge and to the dimensions of your experience.'0

You can do this the easiest way, perhaps, by observing yourself in the dream state, for there you create versions of yourself constantly. In the morning you are enriched, not diminished.

Give us a moment... (Humorously, to me:) You are the living version of yourself in space and time, around which your world revolves." The great potentiality that exists in the unknown self, however, also actualizes other such focuses, and in the same space-time framework. They are not you, any more than you are the black man, or the white woman, or the Indian woman, or the Chinese man.

(Intently:) As certain races possess their own characteristics and shared biological background, and come from the same biological pooi, however, so these counterparts come from the same psychic pool, and physically seed the members of the races at any given "time." In such a way mental abilities and propensities are given a greater range, and distributed about the earth.

(Heartily:) End of dictation. And end of session, unless you have questions.

("No, I guess not.")

Ianswered some of them.

("Yes." Here Seth referred to some comments about reincarnation and counterparts that I'd made to Jane this evening at the supper table.)

Ibid you then a fond good evening. My heartiest wishes... Have him (Jane) read the latest material I gave for him (which we'd deleted from its spot at 11:44 in the last session) every day until our next one.

("Okay, Seth. Thank you ve~y much. Good night."

(11:43 P.M. An aside: Lately I'd delayed typing these sessions from my notes because I've been so busy doing the flnis/wd pen-and-ink drawings for Jane's Dialogues. Currently I'm working on the 12th one out of the 40 planned. Jane hasn't had a book session to read since the 718th, for November 6, was held almost four weeks ago. Now she reminded me that she misses keeping up with Seth's dictation-that she has trouble deczphering my personal shorthand, and that not knowing what Seth has been saying makes her feel "uneasy." This even though she and Seth have demonstrated often by now that as a team they're most capable of producing a work "blind, "as it were, and on a continuing basis. But I'd become so involved with artwork that I hadn't appreciated her own interests and concerns.

(During the whole of last month [October] Jane also had to go without reading a block of sessions [708-15] in Section 4; I used the time I'd have spent typing them to complete the diagrams for Adventures. Tonight we decided, then, that from my notes I'd begin reading to her the four sessions following the 718th. Once we were caught up, I'd read her the Seth material received each week on the succeeding Saturday or Sunday until Igot back to the twice-weekly routine oftranscribing early next year; I expect to do the last of the Dialogues illustrations late inJanuaiy 1975.)

Session 723, December 2, 1974, 9:42 P.M., Monday

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: Your world view is your personalized interpretation of the physical universe.

Your home station' does not simply present programming for you to view. Instead you help create the program, of course, even while you are part of it. On any given afternoon certain elements of experience will be "given, " roughly sketched in. There are certain cues to set the stage, colon: It may be a snowy, humid, or dry and sunny day, for instance; the location may be city or town. Yet within that loose framework you create the program of the day according to your own world view.

If that view is expansive, then you have far greater leeway in creating your experience. You can add greater depth, so to speak, to the characterization. You can, in other words, take advantage of the unknown reality by letting it add to your home station.

In the dream state you range beyond your waking world view. You are able to bring into focus other interests and activities. These can remain in the background during waking life-or you can decide to enlarge your world view by taking advantage of your dreaming activities. Many of the exercises given here are geared in that direction.

You are not alone in physical reality, so obviously your picture of the world is also affected by the world views of others, and you play a part in their experiences. There is a constant waking give-and-take. The same give-and-take occurs in the dream state, however. You affect your world through your dreams, then, as much as you do through your waking activities. In terms of time, lapses had to occur as various species physically matured and developed. They did so in response to inner impetus. The many languages that are now known originated in what you can call, from your point of view, nonwaking reality. Words, again, are related to the neurological structure, and languages follow that pattern. In the dream state many kinds of communication occur, and there are inner translations. Two people with different languages can speak together quite dearly in certain dreams, and understand each other perfectly. They may each translate the communication into their familiar language.

Undernearth this, however, there are basic inner sounds upon which all language is based, in which certain images give forth their own sound, and the two together portray clear, precise meaning.2 A long time ago I said that language would be impossible were it not for its basis in telepathic communication3-and that communication is built up of microscopic images and sounds. These are translated into different languages.

Consciously, then, your world view is affected by the language of your culture or country. Certain sounds, inflections, and expressions, taken together, have a more or less precise meaning. The meaning is usually quite specific, and often directional. Words in a language function not only by defining what a specific object is, for example, but also by defining what itis not.4

(10:05.) To some extent in the dream state, you are freed of such cultural leanings. In the most effective of dreams experience is actually more direct, in that it is less limited by language concepts. Waking, you generally become familiar with your thoughts through words that are mental, automatically translating your thoughts into language. Your thoughts therefore fall, or flow, into prefabricated forms. In the dream state, however, thoughts are often experienced directly, colon: "You live" them out. You become what they are. They are projected instantly and in such a fashion. They escape the

limitations that you often place upon them. That is why it is frequently difficult to remember your dreams in a verbal fashion, or squeeze them back into the expression of usual language. Period. Your language often purposely inhibits meaning.

Give us a moment... To some extent language does make the unknown known and recognizable. It sets up signposts that each person in a culture recognizes. To do this, however, it latches upon certain significances and ignores others. You might know the word for "rock, " for instance. Knowing the word might actually prevent you from seeing any specific rock dearly as it is, or recognizing how it is different from all other rocks.

The play of sunlight or shadow upon any given rock may utterly escape you.5 You will simply pass it by under the category of "rock." In the dream state you might find yourself sleeping on a sun-warmed rock, or dimbing on icy ones. You might feel yourself encased in a rock, with your consciousness dispersed. You might have any number of different experiences involving rocks, all quite liberating. After such an experience you might look at rocks in an entirely different fashion, and see them in ways that escape your language. Rocks give forth sounds that you do not hear, for example, yet your language automatically limits your perception of what any rock is. To some extent words come between you and your direct expression. They should and can express that experience instead.

Take your break.

(10:22. Jane said her trance hadn't been good. "I was inhibited by all kinds of things-noises, mostly. I hope they didn't make me interfere with the material. Was there more noise than usual?"

(She has excellent hearing, so f her trance hadn't been as deep as usual, for whatever reasons, then even ordinaiy sounds might disrupt her. I told Jane that Seth's information was as penetrating as ever. I also reminded her that the house was actually quieter than it usually is. A wet snow had started after supper and ~t'e'd shut our windows, thus cutting down on the rumble and clatter of automobile traffic.

(Seth's remarks about inner sounds were quite interesting in view of an episode that had taken place i 0 minutes or so before the session started. As we made ready for it in our living room, Jane became aware of a faint buzzing-a sound I couldn't hear. She repeatedly exclaimed over this noise until, investigating, we located its source high up in a far corner: a small insect moving among the leaves of our philodendron vines. We've encouraged the plants to grow up a set ofpoles that reach from the top of a bookcase to the ceiling. [The whole structure serves as a modest room divider, shielding the living room from the hail entrance to the apartment.]

('Well, I think it's going to be a short session, " she finally laughed. "I feel restless-like going for a walk in the snow or something...." But the session hardly proved to be a short one. In connection with the practice element that Seth gives below, plus the following two paragraphs of related information, I'd like the reader to refer to chapters 7 and 8 in Jane's Adventures in Consciousness. In them she discussed the development of her Sumari "language."

(Resume at 10:43.)

PRACTICE ELEMENT 17

Part of the unknown reality, then, is hidden beneath language and the enforced pattern of accustomed words-so, for an exercise, look about your environment. Make up new, different "words" for the objects that you see about you. Pick up any object, for example. Hold it for a few seconds, feel its texture, look at its color, and spontaneously give it a new name by uttering the sounds that come into your mind. See how the sounds bring out certain aspects of the object that you may not have noticed before.

The new word will fit as much as the old one did. It may, in fact, fit better. Do this with many objects, following the same procedure. You can instead say the name of any object backwards.6 In such ways you break up to some extent the automatic patterning of familiar phrases, so that you can perceive the individuality that is within each object.

To get in direct contact with your own feelings as they are, comma, again make up your own spontaneous sounds sometimes. Your emotions often cannot be expressed clearly in terms of language, and such unpatterning can allow them to flow freely.

The freshness of dream experience lies in its direct nature. Your cultural world view does not have any clear understanding of the nature of dreams, so that their direct, clear expression is not recalled often in the morning. (Pause.) At night you tune in to dreaming reality simply by closing out so-called waking reality, but the same kind of dream experience continues beneath your focus in waking life. Dreaming, you are still aware of your daily experience, but it is seemingly peripheral. Waking, your dream experience is peripheral also, but you are less aware of that condition. Both together represent the dimensions of your consciousness, and they exist simultaneously. You can and often do work out in dreams the challenges of daily life. In waking life you are also working out challenges set for yourselves in the dream state. Obviously, then, your consciousness is equipped to function in the known and unknown realities, and the divisions that you have set up are quite arbitrary.

(Pause at 11:01.) You may understand that many of your dreams have a symbolic meaning. It may escape you, however, that the objects with which you surround yourself in physical life also have symbolic meanings-only these are three-dimensional. You may spend time trying to understand the nature of dreams and their implications, without ever realizing that your physical life is to some extent a three-dimensional dream. It will faithfully mirror your dream images at any given time.

Your physical life and your dreaming life are so intimately connected that it can be misleading to say what I am about to say, colon: that waking experience springs from the unknown dream reality. On the one hand the statement is indeed true. On the other hand, the intricate inner workings make it impossible to separate one from the other. "Reality" operates basically, however, in a way that is perceived more clearly in the dream state. Freedom from time and place, the wider kind of communication, the great mobility of consciousness-all of these experiences under dreaming conditions are characteristic of the basic nature of reality-whereas your waking experience provides limitations that are indicators of certain conditions only. Period.

To some extent the greater expression of consciousness can be experienced under usual waking conditions, but only when a personality is flexible enough and secure enough to alter the focus of consciousness. This way, other unperceived data become available. The unknown reality is not beyond your experience, therefore. Any of your scientific or religious disciplines could benefit from a study of the dreaming consciousness, for there the basic nature of reality exists as dearly as you can perceive it. The inner condition of dreaming is valid. You find yourselves in other times and places because basically neither time nor space exists as you suppose.7

There are no basic dangers involved in alterations of consciousness without drugs, but artificial dangers can occur because of your cultural beliefs. These result because such individuals find themselves with no acceptable framework in which to correlate or understand their experiences. They try to fall back upon religious or scientific or pseudoscientific explanations.8

In away, the one-line kind of consciousness that you have developed can be correlated with your use of any one language. Experience is programmed, highly specialized, and attains a seemingly tight organization only because (intently) it limits so much of reality. In those terms, if you are bilingual you are somewhat better off, for your thoughts have a choice of two paths. Biologically, you are physically capable of speaking any language now in use on the face of the earth. You would consider it an achievement if you learned to speak many languages. You would not find it frightening or unnatural, though you would take it for granted that some training was involved. In the same way, your one-line kind of consciousness is but one of many "languages." The others are as native, as natural, as biologically feasible.

(11:18.) Ruburt has been involved with what he calls the Sumari language (as referred to in the notes at break) . This is an expression of the consciousness at a different focus. It is the native expression of a kind of experience that happens just outside of your official one-line focus of consciousness. First of all, it breaks up verbal patterning.' It is composed, however, of sounds and syllables Ruburt has heard before, made up of jumbled Romance languages.10 These are "foreign" as far as he is concerned. At the same time those sounds are, in your terms, filled with the implications of antiquity, and bring up connotations of the species' and of the psyche's past.

(Pause.) They alter the usual physical response to meaningful sound. You may not realize it, but your language actually structures your visual perception of objects. Sumari breaks down the usual patterning, therefore, but it also releases the nervous system from its structured response to any particular stimulus. The sounds, however, while spontaneous, are not unstructured. They will present a sound equivalent of the emotion or object perceived, an equivalent that is very direct and immediate, and that bears legitimate correspondence with the object or emotion.

The fresh expression sets up a new kind of relationship between the so-called perceiver and the perceived. The Sumari then becomes a bridge between two different kinds of consciousness; and returning to his usual state, Ruburt can translate from the Sumari to English.

The English itself, however, then becomes charged, freshened with new concepts, carrying within a strangeness that itself alters the relationship of the words. This is a dream or trance language. It is as native to its level of consciousness as English is to your own-or Indian, or Chinese, or whatever. The various focuses of consciousness will have their own "languages." Ruburt has discovered that beneath the Sumari there are deeper meanings." He has become aware of what he calls long and short sounds. Some come so quickly that he cannot keep track, or speak them quickly enough. Others are so slow that he feels a sentence would take a week to utter.12 These are the signatures of different focuses of consciousness as they are transposed in your space-time system.

(Pause at 11:43.) Languages express certain kinds of reality, usually by organizing experience verbally and mentally. In your case, again, a certain neurological prejudice occurs. If you experienced greater instances of out-of-body consciousness, for example, then your verbal expressions of s ace and time would automatically change. If you became aware of more o your dreaming experience, your g~ge would automatically expand. Again automatically, you would also become aware of other neurological patterns than those you use. These (intently) , activated, would then be picked up by your scientific instruments, and therefore change your ideas in such fields.

(Long pause.) Many people find themselves singing "gibberish" when they are alone, and trying to free themselves from language structuring. Children often play by constructing their own languages; and speaking with tongues (glossolalia) is a beautiful example of the attempt to express a reality that escapes the tyranny of overly structured words.

Music is a language. Painting is a language. The senses have a language of their own-one that seeps into structured words but dimly.

Give us a moment... Other focuses of consciousness besides your own have different concepts of time, and are actually more biologically correct, in that they have greater knowledge of both cellular and spiritual realities. There is nothing "wrong" with your present habitual kind of consciousness, any more than there is anything wrong with speaking only one language. There is within you, however, the impetus to explore, to expand, to create, and that will automatically lead you to explore inner lands of consciousness; as, in your terms, it has led you to explore the other countries of the physical world.

(Louder at 11:56:) End ofavery good session.

("Okay.")

A small word to Ruburt. He is altering his world view....

(Seth postponed ending the session to make some comments on Jane's changing attitudes toward her physical environment, added a few remarks about the drawings I'm doing for Dialogues, then, in excellent humor, closed out the session at 12:01 A.M. Jane said her trance had been considerably deeper after break, certainly her delivery had been infused with more energy. And that energy lingered, for she felt much better now.)

Session 724, December 4, 1974, 9:45 P.M., Wednesday

(Yesterday afternoon; to my surprise, 1 had still another internal vision experience with a Roman counterpart self of mine in thefirst century A.D.; it was reminiscent of my three Romans of last October, yet perplexing, too-for this time I saw a different Roman counterpart. See Appendix 22 for my own material on the event, plus Seth's comments about it in ESP class last night, plus a quite unusual "confirmation" offered by class member Sue Watkins. My Jamaica experience of November l6is also referred to by another student.

("I'm getting all this stuff "Jane said at 9:43, as we waited for Seth to come through, "but I can't verbalize it yet. It's like concepts that I have to unscramble. It's sort of~strating... Strange... I'm getting images, too, but not clearly. One of them is about a world theater, made up of a particular century. I think we're going to get some great new material.

("That's funny, " she continued, rather surprised. "It seems I can get the stuff either on my own, orgo the Seth route. Well, it's easier to let Seth do it, so I guess I'll light a cigarette and go into thesession....

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

This is not book dictation, in that it does not fit in with our section of exercises. You may, however, include portions of the session in "Unknown"Reality if you so choose. There are connections, of course.

Again, we come up against limited ideas of personhood. If I tell you that you are a part of a far greater personhood, then unfortunately you take this to mean that you are less than you are by contrast. I am not referring here to you specifically, Joseph, any more than I am to any reader or class member.

(Pause.) Each individual recognizes the existence of abilities or talents, leanings or propensities, that are largely unexpressed. In your system of reality you must operate in time. To develop as an athlete, for example, great training is required that automatically focuses energy and activity, and hence usually precludes deep concentration to the same degree in a different area. Similarly, to be a musician or an artist or a writer takes effort in time, and automatically focuses attention in specified directions that bar the same kind of work in other fields.

Aperson in time, then, can only do so much, and in your terms the great sources of the psyche are barely tapped in a given lifetime. That much is obvious. Earlier in this work I hinted at the hypothetical existence of a truly fulfilled earth-person-with a hyphen.' All of the spiritual, mental, and biological abilities would be actualized to whatever extent possible. Each physical body-in its own way, now, following its own individual peculiarities-would develop whatever skills it chose and found comfortable. Bodily abilities, however, would be freely expressed so that one woman might be a great runner, or a man excel at swimming. Physical endurance of the kind now considered extraordinary would be the norm. At the same time, all of the latent spiritual and mental qualities would be fulfilled in a like manner, so that all of the potentials of the species would find actualization in the most developed way in the experience of each individual. All aspects of the sciences and the arts would be explored.

(Pause at 10:02.) Again, in the terms of one lifetime such achievements are practically impossible. This does not mean that a different kind of education would not bring those ideals closer. It does mean that individuals choose to develop certain portions of their abilities, and that such a choice often necessitates ignoring other talents.

In its own way, the world at any given time is a unit of individuals with deep psychic and biological connections. Each of you take a hand at painting a combined world picture. Though each version is slightly different, and some appear strange within the whole context, still a world picture emerges at any given "time."

The people alive during any century are embarked upon certain overall challenges. These are the result of private challenges that can best be worked out within a certain kind of framework. Time as you understand it is utilized as a method of focus, a divider like a room divider, separating purposes instead of furniture. If you want a "Victorian room, " you do not plank it down in the middle of a Spanish arrangement. Instead, you set it aside and frame it with its own decor, as you might in a museum that has separate rooms designating life in past centuries. The rooms in the museum exist at once. You may have to walk down a long corridor, go in a particular room and out the same door, before you can get to the next, adjoining room. The 18th-century drawing room may be next to a 12th-century chapel in this hypothetical museum, but you cannot move through one to the other. You have to go into the corridor first.

(Pause.) It is difficult to try to explain the creativity of the psyche when, as a species, you have such set ideas about it, but I shall fly.

Physically you multiply. If you have a child, you are not diminished. You are not less yourself. You accept parents and grandparents, and see them as individuals, while you yourself are also you as an individual, and yet sprung from the same biological seeds.

Those seeds form the physical races, which are all variations on a theme, or as Ruburt would say, eccentricities2 of an ever-changing model. You accept the fact that there are biological connections in terms of family, country, and race, between yourselves and the other individuals on your planet. The species divides itself up, so to speak, and the members of the different races at any given time distribute themselves in the various lands and continents. You are used to making organizations. You say: "This race is thus and so, and we can trace its history through the ages.~~* Or: "That race initiated language." Generally speaking, you see certain races as having their own characteristics. When you do this you often ignore other contradictory tendencies that are not as apparent. No one, however, feels less a person because of not being in a race by himself or herself.

(10.~22.) Give us a moment... The children that spring from your loins are real. They have their own lives. They share a certain portion of your experience, but they use that experience as they choose. In your terms, you exist in physical life before your children do. Now: In other terms, your own greater personhood exists before you do in the same way. That greater personhood gives birth to many "psychic children, " who then become physical by being born into the races of men and women.

Each of those children wants to develop its abilities in a particular manner, translating them into earth experience in such a way that all other portions of the earth are also benefited.

Give us a moment... The world then is indeed like a theater at any given time, but the play is not preordained or laid out. It is instead a spontaneous happening in which overall themes are accepted beforehand. Each "greater personage" takes several parts, or brings forth several psychic children, who spring to life as individual human beings. These psychic children have as much say in their birth as you have in yours, physically speaking, and that is considerable.

You choose ahead of time your environment and purposes. This greater personage then has earthly counterparts, each individual alive taking part in the vital human drama of any given century. Each learns from the others, and the counterparts fit together like mosaics-except that these mosaics are fully endowed with independence and free will. So the individuals alive upon the body of the earth at any given time fit together as beautifully as the cells do within your individual body at a particular time (most emphatically) .

Take your break.

(10:36 to 11:00.)

Now: I am not saying that the human personality is "as significant as a cell-no more and no less."

I am saying that in a way the people alive on the body of the earth have the same kind of relationship, one to another, as the cells have one to the other.

Psychically, you are made up of counterparts, as physically you come from various races. There are far more counterpart groupings than there are races, but then your definition of races is arbitrary. Period. Counterparts can be better related to physical families, for you might well have four or five counterparts alive in one century, as you might have four or five family members spanning the same amount of time. Basically, however, counterparts deal with fulfillments and developments that transcend races or countries.

Now remember: You are one earth version of your own greater personage. You are utterly yourself. That greater identity, however, is intrinsically your own, but is the part that cannot be physically expressed. Your experiences are your own. Through you they become a part of the experience of the greater identity, but its reality also "originally" gave you your physical existence, as you gave your children physical life. Your children are not you, yet once they were contained within the mother's womb. Yet they did not originate from the womb either, but from the seed and the egg.

Give us a moment... Your individual experience then becomes a part of your own greater personage, but at the same time you unconsciously draw upon the knowledge of that personage and use it for your purposes: You become an offshoot, so to speak You are unconsciously aware of the experiences of "your" counterparts, as they are of yours, and you use that information to round out your own. Period.

Give us a moment... Certain abilities can be developed with much greater ease in particular time periods-in a highly industrialized technology, for example-and those interested in that kind of an environment did not generally appear in the eras of the cavemen, simply because those alive at that time were working with different challenges. So this hypothetical greater identity also chooses to be born in different time periods, historically speaking; and the same pattern appears in which counterparts are born as individuals, each biologically and spiritually connected, but with great intertwinings and variations, as with a physical family tree.

In its way, then, each century has its own integrity at all levels. The identity of each living person is always "brand new." Yet its rich psychic heritage connects it through memory and experience to those who will "come after, " or those who have "gone before." You are closer to some family members than others, and you are closer to some counterparts than others.

Your parents have physical representations of their memories in terms of photos and letters-but take your break.

(11:27 to 11:38.)

Now: Those memories are not yours, and yet they are a very definite part of your heritage. In some cases your parents might tell you about events that happened in your own early childhood that you have forgotten. In a strange way, however, these are not your memories, but those of your parents about you. You take it on faith that particular events occurred even though you do not recall them.

New paragraph. Those incidents are recorded unconsciously, however, if they applied to your direct experience; and under hypnosis, for example, you could make them your own. So there are different kinds of memories. You share certain biological similarities with your parents, but there are other biological groupings not understood, uniting counterparts in any given century.

Organ transplants, for example, could be accepted more easily from counterparts, so that you have a kind of inner subspecies, or subfamily if you prefer, that operates within the regular physical divisions that you recognize.

Telepathic messages flash more quickly from one counterpart to another.

Give us a moment... Some of your counterpart's memories may appear in your dream states, where they show up as fantasies, perhaps, to you.

(A one-minute pause at I 1:48.) These are like psychic snapshots rather than physical ones, involving instances that are a part of your heritage-yours but not yours. They add to what you are. They can give you correct information about the "past, " even as your parents' photographs can tell you about a time in which you did not directly participate (in your terms) . The old photographs will strike a chord within you, however, and so will the psychic memories.

(Pause.) You are always at the center of your life. Again, your being as you understand it is never annihilated, but continues to develop its own existence in other ways. A portion of you has lived many lives upon this planet, but the "you" that you know is freshly here, and will never again encounter space and time in precisely the same way. The same applies to each life lived either before or after. Biologically you rest upon a heritage, however, and psychically the same applies. The soul, or this greater personage, does not simply send out an old self in new clothes time and time again (humorously) , but each time a new, freshly-minted self that then develops and goes its own way. (With much emphasis:) That self rides Firmly, however, in the great flight of experience, and feels within itself all of those other fully unique versions that also fling their way into existence.

So you, Joseph, were Nebene, and the black woman, and the Roman soldier, 3 and yet you were none of those. But their realities are also a part of your own greater alliance.

Now: Your friend Peter [Smith] shared the same earthly period.4 You were not counterparts-or you are not counterparts, but closely enough allied so that in certain terms you "share" some of the same psychic memories, like cousins who speak about old dimly remembered brothers.

However, there are no coincidences in ~y groupings-biological or psychic or social. It is obvious that certain interests bring people together in any club meeting or gathering. Period. There are reasons, then, why people are born in any given century, and why they meet in space and time. So there are reasons why you and Peter met, and why certain people come to Ruburt's classes.

End of that material for now.

(12:05. After adding afew sentences ofpersonal information for Jane, Seth ended the session at 12:07 A.M. Jane had experienced internal images while delivering some of the book material, yet hadn't been able to get them clearly. One image had to do with an analogy involving plants and counterparts, she said; in it, the leaves of the plants "gave out" messages as counterparts did. But she couldn't elaborate upon this verbally.

(The next morning Jane told me that she'd been '~getting stuff all night again" on "Unknown" Reality. As they have rather often recently, the phenomena had persisted in varying forms through her sleeping and waking states. They had been very creative phenomena, though. After brea*fast Jane enthusiastically set to work writing about her new ideas; she plans to use them in Psychic Politics. Here I can barely touch upon a couple of examples of what she experienced throughout the nigM and wrote about today. She may revise her copy somewhat before it appears in Politics, but I prefer to quote from her original notes:

(1.While asleep she'd been aware of many insights about receiving Seth material in that mode-some of it "at a preliminary stage, before it's ready." But all of it came through in a peculiar way, Jane continued, "as ~f I were equipped with mental earphones... This material is somehow being transmitted directly on to my brain waves; automatically; yet in a wild way without disturbing my own thinking. So is a dfferent part of the brain being impressed than the part with which I do my usual thinking? Interesting..." She went on to develop an analogy involving two lines of music that eventually come together into one melody.5

(2.Once when Jane woke up she had the idea of "counterparts and four-fronted selves" in mind. As she wrote today: "There might be four counterparts alive in one general time period-a century-for example. These form a psychic 'block, 'and any of the four can pick up information from this joint pool [of identity]. Each person is distinct, yet each is an added dimension of the others, so that on dfferent levels the four [in this case] create an alliance and become a four-fronted counterpart self covering a given century... This is a 'working alliance' that exists in potential form always. But the four-fronted counterpart self's own sense of continuity is not broken up; it persists outside of space and time, while its parts-the individual selves, or counterparts-live in space and time...."6

(Now for two concluding paragraphs of commentary and reference:

Jane's statement that the four-fronted counterpart self persists outside of space and time implies a contradiction, of course-but this situation is one that we, as physical creatures, will in some manner always have to contend with when we encounter certain of Jane's and Seth's concepts [including that of the fourfronted counterpart self]. Seth's own idea of "~simultczneous time, " that "all exists at once, yet is not completed, " has run throughout his material since its inception over a decade ago. As he quite humorously commented in the 14th session for January 8, 1964:..... for you have no idea of the dfficulties involved in explaining time to someone who must take time to understand the explanation." Yet Seth's simultaneous time isn't an absolute, for, as he also told us in that session: "While lam not affected by time onyourplane, Jam affected by something resembling time on my plane... To me time can be manipulated, used at leisure and examined. To me your time is a vehicle, one of several by which I can enter your awareness. It is therefore still a reality of some kind to me [my emphasis]. Otheiwise I could not utilize it in any way whatsoever."7

(Then, in the 44th session for April 15, 1964, Seth explained that in the inner universe, "Energy transformation and value fulfillment, both existing within the spacious present [or at once], add up to a durability that is at the same time spon~neous... and simultaneous." The durability being achieved through constant expansion in terms of value fulfillment. 3)

Session 725, December 11, 1974, 9:17 P.M., Wednesday

(The regularly scheduled session for last P.M., Monday night was not held so that we could rest.

(Tonight Jane was so relaxed' that I didn't expect her to hold a session. But at 8:45 she wanted to t?y-especially since we hadn't done anything on P.M., Monday. "It might be a short one, though, "she said. "Maybe Seth will talk about our own things instead of giving dictation-your material on yourfat her [which I received this past Sunday evening], or what you got on your mother this afternoon. Or maybe he'll talk about what Igot on your mother the other day, or my strands-of-consciousness stufffor Psychic Politics."

(Jane's material on strands of consciousness2 had actually developed because of my experience involving my father while I was in an altered state of consciousness. That episode had upset me to some degree, but Jane's discussion of the subject in Politics, plus afew comments Seth made in ESP class last night, helped me put the affair in a more objective light.

(There's been a definite acceleration in Jane's and my own psychic adventures lately. In fact, we've had trouble keeping up with our experiences, and little time to study them. I am sure of one thing: I'm in contact with my deceased parents in ways that I certainly didn't employ while they were physical creatures. Nor did they in relation to me, of course. Yet certainly the use of such inner abilities-or at least an awareness of them-could greatly enhance communication between the members of a 'iiving"family.)

Now: A quiet dictation (but Jane's pace was almost fast.

("Okay.")

This book is concerned with the nature of the unknown reality, and the ways in which it can become known.

In this section, therefore, I have outlined various experiments or exercises for the reader. These will certainly lead you to form your own versions of the exercises given, or will open your mind so that spontaneously, in your own way, you become aware of events that were literally invisible to you before.

You may find some of your most cherished conceptions to be misconceptions in the light of your new experiences. Since explorations are highly personal, you will most likely begin them from the framework of your current beliefs. Symbols may be utilized, and these may change their meaning for you as you progress. The symbols may evolve, therefore. In the beginning of this work I "warned" the reader that here in these sessions we would go beyond ideas of one god and one self.3 I stated that your ideas of personhood would be expanded. As "Unknown" Reality is being produced Ruburt and Joseph are having their own experiences, and uncovering the nature of the unknown reality as it applies to them.

Joseph recently had an experience that disturbed him, simply because it was difficult to interpret even in the light of his understanding about the nature of the self. You cannot explore the nature of reality, hoping to discover its unknown aspects, if you insist that those aspects correspond with the known ones. So Joseph allowed himself some freedom-and then was almost scandalized with the results.

His experience appeared to imply that his father's identity had so much mobility, and so many possibilities for development, that the veiy idea of identity seemed to lose its boundaries.4

First of all, in your terms "pure" identity has no form. You speak of one self within one body because you are only familiar with one portion of yourself. You suppose that all personhood in one way or another must have an equivalent of a human form, spiritual or otherwise, to "inhabit."

(9:34.) Identity itself is composed of pure energy. It takes up no space. It takes up no time. I said that there are invisible particles that can appear in more than one place simultaneously.5 So

can identity. Atoms and molecules build blocks of matter, in your terms, even while the atoms and molecules remain separate. The table between Joseph and myself (Jane, in trance, sat with her feet upon our long narrow coffee table) does not feel invaded by the invisible particles that compose it. For that matter (amused) , if you will forgive me for that old pun, the atoms and molecules that form the table today did not have anything to do with the table five years ago-though the table appeared the same then as now.

(Pause.) In the same way, quite separate identities can merge with others in a give-and-take gestalt, in which the overall intent is as clear as the shape of the table. To some extentJoseph was perceiving that kind of inner psychic organization.

In your terms the earth at any given time represents the most exquisite physical, spiritual, and psychic cooperation, in which all consciousnesses are related and contribute to the overall reality. Physically, this is somewhat understood.

Give us a moment... (Then slowly:) It is difficult to explain on spiritual and psychic levels without speaking in terms of gp~dations of identity, for example, but in your terms even the smallest "particle" of identity is inviolate. It may ~ develop or expand, change alliances or organizations, and it does combine with others even as cells do. (Long pause.) Your body does not feel as if you invade it. Your consciousness and its consciousness are merged; yet it is composed of the multitudinous individual consciousnesses that form the tiniest physical particles within it. Those particles come and go, yet your body remains itself. What was physically a part of you last year is not today. Physically, you are a different person. Put simply, the stuff of the body is constantly returned to the earth, * where it forms again into physical actualization-but always differently.

(Long pause, eyes closed. Jane's deliveiy had slowed considerably.) In somewhat the same way your identity changes constantly, even while you retain your sense of permanence. That sense of permanence rides upon endless changes-it is actually dependent upon those physical, spiritual, and psychic changes. In your terms, for example, if they did not occur constantly your body would die. The cells, again, are not simply minute, handy, unseen particles that happen to compose your organs. They also possess consciousnesses of their own. That [kind oil consciousness unites all physical matter.

There is indeed a communication existing that joins all of nature, an inner webwork, so that each part of the earth knows what its other parts are doing. Cells are organizations, ever-changing, forming and unforming.

(10:00.) Give us a moment... Cells compose natural forms. An identity is not a thing of a certain size or shape that must always appear in one given way. It is a unit of consciousness ever itself and inviolate while still free to form other organizations, enter other combinations in which all other units also decide to play a part. As there are different shapes to physical objects, then, so identity can take different shapes-and basically those forms are far more rich and diverse than the variety of physical objects.

(Long pause.) You speak about the chromosomes. Your scientists write about heredity, buried and coded in the genes, 6 blueprints for an identity not yet formed. But there are psychic blueprints, 7 so to speak, wherein each identity knows of its "history"; and taldng any given line of development, projects that history. The potential of such an identity is far greater, however, than can ever be expressed through any physical one-line kind of development (/brcefully) .

Identities, then, do send out "strands of consciousness" into as many realities as possible, so that all versions of any given identity have the potential to develop in as many ways as possible.

You, as you think of yourself, may have trouble following such concepts, just as you would have trouble trying to follow the "future" reality of the cells within your body at this moment. (Long pause.) You must understand that in greater terms there is no big or small. There is not a giant identity and a pygmy one. Each identity is inviolate. Each also unites with others while maintaining its individuality and developing its own potential.

Amountain exists. It is composed of rocks and trees, grass and hills, and in your terms of time you can look at it, see it as such, give it a name, and ignore its equally independent parts. Without those parts the mountain would not exist. It is not invaded by the trees or rocks that compose it, and while trees grow and die the mountain itself, at least in your terms of time, exists despite the changes. It is also dependent upon the changes. In a manner of speaking, your own identities as you think of them are dependent upon the same kinds of living organizations of consciousness.

(10:21.) Let us look at it differently. People who read so-called "occult" literature may consider me "an old soul, " like a mountain. Period. In grand ancient fashion above other more homey villagelike souls, I have my own identity. Yet that identity is

composed of other identities, each independent, as the mountain is composed of its rocks and could not exist without them, even while it rises up so grandly above the plain. My understanding rests upon what I am, as the mountain's height rests upon what it is. I do not feel invaded by the selves or identities that compose me, nor do they feel invaded by me-any more than the trees, rocks, and grass would resent the mountain shape (intently) into which they have grown.

The top of the mountain can "see further, " colon: Its view takes in the entire countryside. So I can look into your reality, as the top of the mountain can look down to the plain and the village. The mountain peak and the village are equally legitimate.

Let us look at this again in another way.

Your thinking mind, as you consider it, is the top of your mountain. In certain terms you can see "more" than your cells can, though they are also conscious of their realities. Were it not for their lives you would not be at the top of your psychological mountain. Even the trees at the highest tip of the hillside send sturdy roots into the ground, and receive from it nourishment and vitality-and there is a great give-and-take between the smallest sapling in the foothills and the most ancient pine. No single blade of grass dies but that it affects the entire mountain. The energy within the grass sinks into the earth, and in your terms is again reborn. Trees, rocks, and grass constantly exchange places as energy changes form (veiy forcefully, leaning forward, eyes wide and dark) .

Water rushes down the hillside into the valley, and there is a constant give-and-take between the village below, say, or the meadows, and the mountain. So there is the same kind of transformation, change, and cooperation between all identities. You can draw the lines where you will for convenience's sake, but each identity retains its individuality and inviolate nature even while it constantly changes.

Take your break.

(10:3 7. Jane's trance had been excellent, her delive~y fast for much of the time. "And here I didn't even know flcould have a session, "she said. "I got most of the mountain thing in images while I was giving it. I think it's a great concept and analogy. The whole thing comes from your father experience-the Miriam thing.

("Right now I think I'm getting that eveiything on the face of the earth is related-that your consciousness is in an ant, or a rock8 or a tree, but that we're not used to thinking that way. Not that one is superior to another-just that we're all connected-that there's some kind of weird familiarity, biologically and psychically, that we've never gotten consciously... What I'm getting is that yourfat her could do any of the things that you wrote abo ut [in Note 4], without invading anything or anyone. It's just that our ideas ofpersonhood and soul make it sound terrible, until you get used to those ideas....

("Gee, "Jane said enthusiastically, later, "I'm glad I decided to have a session. "Resume in the same manner at 11:05.)

Now: Trees bear seeds. Some fall nearby. Others are carried by the wind some distances into areas that the tree itself, for all of its height, could not perceive.

The tree does not feel less, itself, because it brings forth such seeds. So identities throw off seeds of themselves in somewhat the same fashion. These may grow up in quite different environments. Their realities in no way threaten the identity of the "parent." Identities have free choice, so they will pick their environments or birthplaces.

(Long pause.) Because a tree is physical, physical properties will be involved, and the seeds will mature following certain general principles or characteristics. Atoms and molecules will sometimes form trees; sometimes they will become parts of couches. They will form people or ants or blades of grass, yet in each of these ventures they will also retain their own sense of identity. They combine to form cells and organs, and through all of these events they obtain different kinds of experience.

Physically speaking, and generally, your body is composed of grasses and ants and rocks and beasts and birds, for in one way or another all biological matter is related.9 In certain terms, through your experience, birds and rocks speak alphabets-and certain portions of your own being fly or creep as birds or insects, '0 forming the great gestalt of physical experience. It is fashionable to say: "You are what you eat" semicolon; that, for example, "You must not eat meat because you are killing the animals, and this is wrong." But in deeper terms, physically and biologically, the animals are born from the body of the earth, which is composed of the corpses of men and women as much as it is of other matter. The animals consume you, then, as often as you consume them, and they are as much a part of your humanity as you are a part of their so-called animal nature.

(Long pause at 11:21. Then Jane, speaking for Seth, delivered the following material in a most emphatic manner. It was obvious that she was in a deep trance.)

The constant interchange that exists biologically means that the same physical stuff that composes aman orawoman maybe dispersed, and later form a toad, a starfish, a dog or a flower. It may be distributed into numberless different forms. That arithmetic" of consciousness is not annihilated. It is multiplied and not divided.

Reminiscent within each form is the consciousness of all the other combinations, all of the other alliances, as identity continually forms new creative endeavors and gestalts of relatedness. There is no discrimination, no prejudice.

When you eat, you must eliminate through your bowels. That resulting matter eventually returns to the earth, where it helps form all other living things. The "dead" matter-the residue of a bird, the sloughed-off cells-these things are not then used by other birds (though they may be occasionally) , but by men and women. There is no rule that says your discarded cellular material can be used only by your own species. Yet in your terms any identity, no matter how "minute, " retains itself and its identity through many forms and alliances of organizations.

Through such strands of consciousness all of your world is related. Your own identity sends out strands of itself constantly, then. These mix psychically with other strands, as physically atoms and molecules are interchanged. So there are different organizations of identity in which you play a part.

Ruburt is connected with me in that manner. He is also connected with any ant in the backyard in the same way. Yet I retain my identity, the ant retains its identity, and Ruburt retains his.'2 But one could not exist without the other two-for in greater terms the reality of any one of the three presupposes the existence of the others.

(11:35.) Give us a moment... Not dictation: All of this should help you understand your own experience involving your father-and the later one with your mother; and, separately, Ruburt's with your mother, for [Stella Butts] was sending out strands of consciousness in the directions that interest her.

(After giving half a page of material for Jane, Seth closed out the session with this remark:)

His ~Ruburt's] students are important, for as he is translating from the library, they are also translating.

End of session. A hearty good evening.

("Thank you, Seth. Good night."

(End at 11:45 P.M. "He said that, " Jane told me, laughing, "because I have to get something to eat. I'm starved...."

(Seth's reference to the members of ESP class concerned the part many of them have begun playing in helping us answer the mail. With three Seth books on the market now, the number of letters Jane receives weekly has increased considerably, and evidently will continue to grow. A couple of months ago she thought ofasking interested students to answer certain letters. The idea is working veiy welL It's one of those things that seem obvious once conceived.

There's also a rather unexpected bonus: Not only is the mail being answered much more quickly, but the students involved are gaining experience in dealing with a variety of intellectual and emotional questions posed by people they've never meL A series of very beneficial challenges has arisen for all concerned. 13)

Session 726, December 16, 1974, 9:43 P.M., Monday

("I'm beginning to get a cluster of images. They're of islandsj, "Jane said at 9:4a "I don't know why, but I've been doing things that way lately. Then Seth uses what I get in the material... Okay: I guess I'm about ready." She lit a cigarette.)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth. '9

Now: Dictation (slowly and softly) . The unknown reality: It cannot be expressed in the cozy terms of known knowledge, and so you must stretch your own imagination, rouse yourself from mental lethargy, and be bold enough to discard old dogmatic comfort blankets.

Imagine that you are a small sandy island with softly graded shores (pause) , some palm trees (pause) , and a haven for traveling birds. Pretend frirther that you are quite content, though sometimes lonely. A fine fog encircles you, though it does not prevent the sun from shining directly down. You feel quite independent, and you think of the fog as a kind of cocoon that gently shields you from the great expanse of an endless sea.

Then, however, you begin to wonder about the other islands that you know exist beyond your vision. Are they like you? Your wondering forms a tiny window in the fog, and you look through. Astonished, you discover that a small coral path unites you with the next island that is glimpsed, shimmering now through the ever-growing window in the mist. Who is to say where you end and the other island begins?

As you wonder, more astonished still, you discover other coral paths extending from you in all directions. These lead to further islands. "They are all me, " you think, though each is very different One may have no trees at all, and another be the home of a volcano. Some may be filled with soft grasses, innocent of sand.

Now this first island is very clever indeed, and so it sends its spirit wandering to the closest counterpart, and says: "You are myself, but without sand or palm trees."

Its neighbor responds: "I know. You are me without my towering volcano, ignorant of the thundering magic of flowing lava, calm and rather stupid (emphatically) , if the truth be known."

The spirits of the two islands join for a journey to a third one, and there they discover a top-heavy land filled to the brim with strange birds and insects and animals that neither knew at home. The first island says to the third: "You are myself. only unbearably social. How can you stand to nurture so many different kinds of life?"

The second island-spirit says, also to the third: "You are myself, only my excitement, my joy and beauty, are concentrated in the magic of my volcano, and you instead stand for the twittering excitement of diverse species-birds and animals and insects-that flow in far less grandiose fashion across the slopes of your uneasy land."

(Pause.) The third island, startled, replies: "I am myseW and you must be imperfect versions of ~y reality. I would no more be a dull island of only sand and palms, or a neurotic landscape of burning lava, any more than I would be a snail. My life is far the better, and you two are only poor shadowy counterparts of me."

(Pause at 10:09.) The first island responds, in our hypothetical dialogue: "I suspect (suddenly louder) that each of us is quite correct And more, I wonder if we are really islands at all."

The second island says: "Suppose my spirit visits your island for a while, to discover what it is like to possess palm trees, a few birds, and a tranquil shore. I will give up my volcano for a while, and try to make an honest evaluation, if you will in turn come to my land and promise to view it without prejudice. Perhaps then you will understand the great majesty and explosive power of ~y exotic world."

The third island says: "I am myself too busy for such nonsense. The many species that roam my domain demand my attention, and if you two want to exchange your realities that is fine-but leave rue Out of it, please."

The spirit of the first island visits the second one, and finds itself amazed. It feels an ever-thrusting power, rushing up frorr~ beneath, that erupts in always-changing form. Yet it is always itself, comparing its experience to what it has known. When the volcano itself, ceaselessly erupting, wishes for peace, the spirit of the first island thinks of its own quiet home shores. The volcano learns a new lesson: It can direct its power in whatever way it chooses, shooting upward or lying quietly. It can indeed be dormant and dream for centuries. (Slowly now:) It can, if it chooses, allow soft sands to lie gracefully upon its cooling expanse.

In the meantime, the spirit of that volcanic island is visiting the first island, and finds itself enchanted by the still waters that lap against the shore, the gentle birds, and the few palm trees. However, it seems that the palm trees, and the birds and the sand, have dreamed for centuries.1

One day a bird flies out further from that first island than ever before, to another one, and comes back with a strange seed that falls from its beak. The seed grows. From it springs a completely new and unknown species of plant, as far as the island is concerned; and the plant in turn brings forth flowers with pollen, fruits, and scents (spelled) that have a different kind of creativity that is still its own. The spirit of the second island, then, brings forth elements in the first island that were not active earlier, but it becomes homesick, and so it finally returns to its own land.

(Heartily:) What a transformation! Its volcano, it finds, now gives birth to soil and pollen, its excitement roused in a million different ways. It meets the spirit of the first island that has been living there, and says: "What a change! I would like a still more spectacular display. The flowers are not nearly colorful or wild enough. It is, if you will forgive me, too well-tamed-yet all in all you've done wonders. Now, however, I'd like a cultural interchange with others still unknown; and if you don't mind I wish you'd go home. (Whispering:) This is, after all, me, and my land."

The spirit of Island One says: "I quite enjoyed my venture,

and I've learned that the great explosive thrusts of creativity are good-but, oh, I yearn for my own quiet, undisturbed shores; and soif you don't care I think I'll return there." And so it does-to find a land in some ways transformed. The sands still lie glittering, but the fog and mists are gone. The beloved birds have multiplied, and there is in the old familiar sameness a new, muted, but delightful refrain, colon: new species in keeping with the old, but more vigorous. The spirit of Island One realizes that it would find the old conditions quite boring now, and the new alterations fill it with pleasing excitement and challenge. What a delightful interchange. For the spirit is convinced that it definitely improved the condition of Island Two, and there is no doubt that the spirit of the second island improved Island One beyond degree.

(10:39.) In the meantime, Island Three's spirit has been thinking. The spirits of island One and Two did not appeal to it (or to him or her in any of these cases, if you prefer) at all. It was determined to retain its own identity. Yet it too has become lonely, and it has seen endless coral paths reaching out from itself.

Its spirit followed one such path and came upon a desert island upon which nothing grew. Figuratively, its image was appalled. "How can you stand such barrenness?" it calls to the spirit of this fourth island.

That island spirit responds: "Even the vigor of your questions sickens me. I sense that you come from a land so overcrowded and tumultuous that it makes my sands blanch even further, and the knuckles of my rocks turn white."

Island Three's spirit says: "You are myself, utterly devoid of feeling-dead and barren."

The spirit of the desert island replies: "I am myself. You must be some counterpart, drunken with sensation, not realizing the purity of my own stripped-down nothingness."

The two confront each other sideways, for neither can look in the other's eyes. What opposites, what contrasts, what fascinations! So they strike a bargain. The spirit of the desert island says: "You are all wrong. I will go to your land and prove it, and you can stay here and partake of the joys of my peaceful existence-and, I hope, learn the value of austerity."

So the spirit of Island Four journeys to that other reality, where all kinds of life swarm over shore and mountain, and the spirit of the third island visits a world of such peace that all motion seems stilled.

What peace! Yet in the peace, what power! And so little by little cacti grow where there were none, delicate buds opening, filled

with water. The spirit of the third island immediately begins to transform the desert island. Great changes appear, and showers of power-quick bursts of rain, explosive inundations of energy.

In the meantime, the spirit of the desert island is almost overwhelmed by the teeming life forms on Island Three, so next it visits the volcanic one; and when the volcano becomes frightened of its own energy the spirit of the desert island says: "Peace. It is all right to sleep, all right to dream. You do not need to be so worried for your energy. It can flow swiftly, or slowly, in surges of dreams that take ages. Do as you will."

So the volcano throws its energy into the formation of still more new species, while the desert spirit sings its calmness through their tissues. But this new life confounds it also, and it yearns to return home to its old quietude. There, the spirit of the third island has quickened the desert~s abilities so that it blooms with muted flowers not present before. The two spirits meet Each island is changed. "We are counterparts, each of the other, yet inviolate."

And the spirit of the volcanic island says to the spirit of the first island: "My volcano knows, now, how best to use its energy. It can shoot into the heavens in great displays, or creep into the tiny crevices of earth, equally powerful."

And the spirit of the first island responds: "You have taught my island that life is not something to be afraid of, though still it is translated in my own familiar gentle terms."

This is the end of our analogy. The spirit of each of the four islands was itself intact, and the interchanges were chosen. You are not islands unto yourselves, except when you choose to be. Each counterpart views reality from its own viewpoint, and there is never any invasion.

Take your break.

(11:04. "I knew we weren't going to get a break until we finished that goddamn anczlogv, "Jane laughed after she'd come out of a good trance. "I do think we're going to lose readers along the way, though-this book's getting too hard to follow. I also think it's going to be in two volumes. I haven't had the guts to see how much material we've gotten so far."

(Nor have I checked up on "Unknown" Reality's bulk. This was the second time in three weeks that Jane had mentioned a two-volume work, ~ see the opening notes for the 72 1st session. I wondered aloud whether she might be getting herself used to such an idea. I added that I didn't think she need wony about readers following Seth's material-that certainly many others are just as curious as we are about where "Unknown" Reality is going.

(An aside: Jane said that toward the end of her deliveiy she'd been bothered by traffic noise. It was a warm ~f snowy night, and we had a kitchen window open for fresh air; all through her delivery I'd been aware of the traffic ceaselessly negotiating the intersection just west of "our" apartment house, of course, and had asked her to repeat a number of words. We do intend to move out of our two apartments early next year, as soon as Ifinish the illustrations for Jane's Dialogues-that is, we're going to start looking for a house we can buy.

(The Seth material to come is presented for these reasons:

(1.It not only incorporates Seth's "island" analogy, butJane's and his information in the last[725th] session on strands of consciousness.

(2.We think that many readers can more easily relate to 'personalized" data.

(3. The material on my parents reaches back to the first two sessions, 679-8 0, in [added later] Volume 1 of "Unknown" Reality.

(4. The counterpart references are a good example of how Seth weaves such concepts into a discussion.

(5. I think the application of tonight's material to Jane and me is neatly summarized in the last paragraph of the session.

(6. At the same time, that paragraph contains vely challenging ideas; they strongly remind me of the "Miriam" material I obtained about my father last week. See the last session, with its Note 4.

(Resume in a fast manner at 11:40.)

This is not dictation. But in the terms of our analogy, some island spirits are gamblers. So you and Ruburt are gamblers. You gambled above all that your instincts would lead you in the proper direction, and that you would "win oue' despite the "odds" as you understood them.2

You are willing counterparts (see the 721st session) of each other, and have been in your terms before-each playing out "opposite" aspects of each other, yet merging for common purposes and goals.

So in one century you were Nebene, and Ruburt was indeed the "prostitute" priestess, 3 and so did you challenge each other, as in different ways you do now, with tendencies that ~pp~ to be opposites, but are instead different ways of approaching the same kind of challenge. If you could understand, it would help in many areas you do not as yet suspect.

(To me:) You viewed aspects-counterparts-of your father's reality. That reality invades no other. As in the analogy given this evening, the spirit of no island invaded any other, but looked momentarily and with permission through another's picture of reality.

Your mother and father are alive, as are Ruburt's parents, 4 but their realities are not pinpointed to any given island, and they are forming alliances, but always from the standpoints of their own

unique identities. Your own private identities do not need fences. They are themselves. They can combine and unite with others, yet retain their uniqueness and experience. Only your concepts limit your understanding of that prime freedom.

One strand of your mother's consciousness-that one involved with you-is intertwined with your reality because of her interest in homes.5 Another strand of hers is involved because of her interest in families-and hence with the children of your two brothers, Linden and Richard.

Now in a ~y your mother and Ruburt were counterparts; for Ruburt lives in a trust of individual abilities toward which your mother yearned; and Ruburt gives a love to you which your mother yearned to give-yet while retaining her identity-to a man. Your mother understood love's purpose and felt its presence in Ruburt. And at the same time she was actually annoyed when she felt that you were not following your [commercial] artistic ability through, despite her surface rr'isunderstandings of it.'

She identified with you to some extent, and to some unrecognized degree was "only masculine, now, " in her understanding of power. I hope you will recognize what I mean: but in the light of her understanding at the time, children were to be used as power, as a man might use weapons.7

Stella Butts changed and grew. But in certain terms she was the masculine center of the family, emotions or not, the aggressive one; and speaking conventionally now, your father (Robert Sr.) accepted the more passive creative role. This has meaning in terms of your [unpublished] information8 involving the masculine and feminine aspects that united and separated your parents. Your father would have been more "comfortable" as a woman, and she as a male. Yet for their own purposes they each chose to experience the other side of the coin, so to speak.

This will make more sense to you later.

("I think it's veiy good information.")

Consciousness is not limited. Identities can mix and merge while retaining their inviolate nature and memories. This is all for now, but again, later, you will see where it relates, and how you can disperse your own characteristics into another and they can disperse theirs into you, with your consent and theirs, to form new aspects of reality and to cast new light on combined purposes and challenges.

End of session-

("Okay.")

-and a fond good evening.

("Thank you, Seth, " 12:01 A.M)

Session 727, January 6, 1975, 9:11 P.M., Monday

(Jane held her last session for "Unknown" Reality three weeks ago. She came through with a private session two days later, on December 18, and we've been resting from psychic work-including ESP class-since then.

All the time, we were unaware that Seth had finished Section 5.

(At the start of this same period my own inner adventures stopped completely, as though hidden by a curtain closing on a stage. They have yet to resumç, and I miss them.

(Today I finished the 23rd drawing [out of 40] for Jane's Dialogues.)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Dictation. The next section (6) will be titled: "Reincarnadon and Counterparts, " colon: "The 'Past' Seen Through the Mosaics of Consciousness."

Give us a moment... In your terms, the land changes through the ages. Mountains and islands arise, then disappear, to reemerge in new form. The oceans rise and fall also, and in some cases the floor of the ocean becomes the surface of the planet, only to be covered again by water. Yet through all of these changes the earth retains a landscape, and at any given time the features of the land are quite dependable and permanent enough for your purposes.

(Pause.) So the islands that I spoke about in our last session rose up from beneath the sea. Even as the dialogue of those islands took place, the islands themselves were changing. in somewhat the same way the psyche sends up counterparts of itself, each with different features or characteristics. As the physical properties of the earth distribute themselves in a certain given fashion about the surface of the planet, so do the properties of the earth-tuned psyches distribute themselves. Period.

As all physical matter is connected in any particular time, or era, so the individual consciousness of each being is also connected with every other. This applies to all consciousnesses as you understand that term.

Amountain is composed of many layers of rock that serve, as you think of it, as its foundation. The top of the mountain represents the present to you, and the tiers of rock beneath stand for the past. The mountain itself is not any one of those rock layers that seemingly compose it, however. There is a relationship between the mountain and those strata, but the term "mountain" is one that you have applied. In greater terms the mountain and all of its components exist at once, of course. You can examine the various levels of rock structure. Geologists can tell when, in terms of time, certain sedimentary deposits formed. The rocks themselves still exist in the geologists' present time, or they could not make such an examination. The mountain would not be a mountain without that "foundation." Again, however, it is not any one of those rock layers.

Now: In somewhat the same manner, the self that you know is the mountain, and the rock layers forming it are past lives.

You are not any of those past selves, even though they are a part of the history of your being. They are themselves in their own space and time. They exist simultaneously with your own life, even as the strata of rock exist simultaneously with the mountain.

Your present existence, however, is highly related to those other levels of selfhood. Now what happens at the top of the mountain affects all that goes on below, and so everything that you do affects those other realms of selfhood, and there is an interchange that occurs constantly. Physical conditions may be quite different in the valley, in the foothills of the mountain, and at its top.

The very climate and vegetation may vary considerably, and yet all life and vegetation within the area are interrelated. Each layer of life that composes the mountain-("Is 'lfe' the word you want used there?" This is one ofthefew times

I've interrupted Seth during his presentation of "Unknown" Reality)

Yes.., life that composes the mountain is equally valid and important, and each concentrates upon its own reality at its own level.

Like the mountain, therefore, you have a history in terms of the present that is yours, and yet not yours. It does not control you, for you alter it with each thought and action, even as each motion at the mountain's top affects its base. The layers at the bottom, however, are also constantly changing, so that the whole area is a gestalt of relatedness.

(Pause at 9:43.) In the physical world, islands, valleys, plateaus, continents and oceans all have their place, and serve to form the physical basis of your reality. Each blade of grass helps form the life of the earth. So each consciousness, however minute, is indispensable in its place and time.

Each flower on a hillside looks out with its own unique vision of the world, and each consciousness does the same thing, fulfilling a position impossible for any other consciousness to fulfill.

(Most emphatically:) In terms of time only, there is an archaeological meaning that is hidden within your own nature. To discover it you look "down" through the levels of your own being, there to find the layers of selfhood that in your world represent the past history of yourself, from which you emerged. You are not those selves psychically, however, any more than you are your mother's or your father's in physical terms. You are as different from those reincarnational selves, therefore, as you are from your parents, though you share certain backgrounds and characteristics.

It is easy for you to see how you affect your parents in your lifetime, though they are older than you. In the same way, however, you affect your reincarnational family.

(Pause.) When it rains, water rushes in great exuberant gushes down the sides of the mountain, bringing life and vitality to all of its parts. In somewhat the same way, your own experiences flow down and into the cracks and crevices of all the other times and centuries that compose your present lifetime.

(With a smile:) I have a surprise for you, however, for I have been speaking of you as the ~p of our mountain-for it certainly seems to you that you are at the top, so to speak. Instead, your vantage point and your focus is such that you cannot turn your head to look higher. Perhaps you are like a fine sunny cliff on the side of the mountain, jutting out, looking down to the valley beneath, not realizing that the mountain itself continues [up] beyond you. You are, then, in the position of any of the other levels "beneath, " many also thinking themselves the top of the mountain, looking only downward.

You are convinced that you cannot see the future, and this means-in terms of our analogy, at least-that you cannot look upward beyond your own time. While that is the case, you will always think of reincarnation as occurring in the past.

(Vesy definitely at 10:02:) Think instead of strata of being, each simultaneously occurring. Physically the human fetus bears a memory of its "past."' In your terms, it travels through the stages of evolution before attaining its human form. It attains that form, however, because it responds to a future time, 2 a future self not as yet physically created.

The fetus itself, before its conception, responds to a self not yet physically apparent, and the future, in those terms, draws new life from the past A reality of selfhood, an idea not yet materialized in the unformed future, reaches down into the past and brings that future into realization. The cells are imprinted with physical information in terms of space and time, 3 but those data caine from a reality in which space and time are formed.

(And in answer to my second question of the evening Seth told me that he wanted the word 'formed" used in the last sentence, just as he'd given IL)

The knowledge of probabilities4 brings forth present time and reality. Voices speak through the genes and chromosomes that connect the future and the past in a balance that you call the present form. The history of the private psyche and the mass experience of the species, again, resides in each individual. The archaeology of the past and the future alike is alive within the layers of consciousness that compose your being.

Take your break.

(10:13 to 10:31.)

Now... Give us a moment... In many ways your language5 itself has a history that you do not understand.

The past is obviously built into words in terms of time. When you speak a given word you may not know the history of its changes through the years, yet you speak it perfectly. You seldom realize that the present state of your language, whatever it is, will for others someday seem to be an archaic version. In whatever terms, again, you think of yourselves as being at the top of the mountain. In your terms, language presupposes a particular kind of development of mind, and when you think of language you tie the two together.

There are languages that have nothing to do with words-or with thoughts as you understand them. Yet some of these communicate in a far more precise fashion.

Cellular transmission, for example, is indeed much more precise than any verbal language, communicating data so intricate that all of your languages together6 would fall far short of matching such complexity. This kind of communication carries information that a thousand alphabets could not translate. In such a 'way, one part of the body knows what is happening in every other part, and the body as a whole knows its precise position on the surface of the planet. It is biologically aware of all the other life-forms around itto the most minute denominator.

This applies to the future as well as to the past. The body itself knows the source of water, for example, and food. Natives divorced from your technology do very well, as wild animals also do, in probing the life of the planet and their positions within it.

Asimple tree deals with the nature of probabilities as it thrusts forward into new seeds. Computations go on constantly within it, and that communication involves an inner kind of language innocent of symbols and vowels. The tree knows its present and future history, 7 in your terms, but it understands a future that is not preordained. It feels its own power in the present & it constructs that future. In deeper terms the tree's seeds also realize that there is a future there-a variety of futures toward which they grope.

The fetus also understands that it can respond to a stimulus-to any stimulus it chooses-from a variety of probable futures. So do you unconsciously grope toward probable futures that to one extent or another beckon you onward.

(Long pause at 10:5 0.) Give us a moment...

(10:52.) You choose your futures, but you also choose your pasts. There is only so much that I can say, since I am using a verbal language that in itself makes a tyrant of time. This book is paced in such away, however, that if you follow it an inner language will be initiated. This in itself annihilates your stereotyped concepts and releases you from time's dictatorship. Some of the exercises to be given in this section will be geared to that purpose.

An archaeologist or a geologist examining "old" rock strata will find dead fossils, just as from your viewpoint you will discover "dead" past lives as you look "downward" through your psyche. You will seem to view finished reincarnational existences, even as from his present the geologist will discover only inanimate fossils embedded in rock. Those fossils are still alive, however. The geologist is simply not tuned in to their life area. So reincarnational lives are still occurring, but they are a part of your being. They are not you, and you are not your reincarnational past.

To a future self no more illuminated than you are, you appear dead and lifeless-a dim memory. When you look out into the universe from your viewpoint, it seems as if you look into the past.' Scientists tell you that when the light from a very distant galaxy reaches you, the galaxy is already dead. In the same way, when you look "backward" into the psyche the life you may indistinctly view-the past life-is already vanished. Why is it that your scientists' instruments do not allow them to look into the future instead, into worlds not yet born, since they operate so well in discerning the past? And why is it, with all of your ideas about reincarnation, there is precious little said about future lives?9

The answer is that your language is limited. Your verbal language-for your biological communication is quite aware of probable future events, and the body constantly maintains itself amid amaze of probabilities.

(11:05.) Give us a moment, and rest your hand.

(Actually, this was the end of book dict ation for the evening. After giving half a page of information about another matter, Seth closed out the session at 11:12P.M.)

Session 728, January 8, 1975, 9:16 P.M., Wednesday

(Last night in ESP class Jane delivered a session that was long forceful, dramatic, and humorous. Her energy was "up"for the whole evening She also sang in Sumari, her trance language, after finishing with the session. Seth covered many interesting points, and/I can add later] Jane presents the entire session in slightly abbreviated form in Chapter 15 of Politics I suggest the reader review that material at this time.

(In any event, here are short Seth quotations on five ofthe subjects he referred to that are of special interest to us. All are related of course.

(1."The individual is stronger than any system, and the individual always comes first."

(2."The one thing about an ancient existence [like mine], fyou will forgive the term, is that old hatreds do not last because you learn to have a sense ofhumor... Love, on the other hand, even with a sense of humor, becomes highly precious and large enough so that it can contain old hates vely nicely."

(3.On his 2~/è as a minor pope in the fourth centu7y A. D.: "1 was a petty, religious politician." And: '~ . . our dear, politically minded, crooked old Pope... . "In Seth Speaks, see sessions 588 and 590 for Chapter 22.

(4.Seth also said that it would be "not practical" and "boring"for him to relive his 4fe as a pope, then added: "In those terms, many people do choose to reexperience what you would think of as a past existence in order to change it as the'y go along~' Yet this reexperiencing of a lfe is a d~rent thing from the original one. Again in Seth Speaks, see Seth's material at 10:07 in the 539th session for Chapter 10: "You may perfect [that past life], in other words, but you cannot again enter into that frame of reference as a completely partiapating consciousness-following say, the historic trends of the time, joining into the mass-hallucinated existence that resulted from the applied consciousness ofyour self and your 'contemporaries.''~

(5.To class members: "You are yourself I am myself I am not Ruburt. Ruburt is not me. Ruburt is me. lam myse~... You are death and you are life... Ruburt can do many things that surprise me-that I did not do in my past, for remember that fresh creativity emerges from the past also, as in [Ruburt's novel] Oversoul Seven My memory does not include a predetermined past in which Ruburt exists. He can do things that did not happen in my memory of that existence, and did not, in fact, occur." [And added later: I quoted the last three lines in Appendix 18 for Volume 2 of "Unknown" Reality]

(We discussed points 4 and 5 while waiting for the session to begin this evening Just before Seth came through Jane said she had information on them-but that she didn't have time to relay it to me. So I hoped her material would crop up in some form in the session itself)

Now: Dictation.

("Yes.")

While mountains generally maintain a more or less permanent position, in your terms, the vegetation that grows on the different levels changes. New flowers come each spring. You may always find a patch of violets in the same general position in the foothills each year, for example; yet they are not the same violets that grew last season, or that will appear next season.

The pattern for those flowers serves to seed each new batch. All kinds of alterations also take place in the soil beneath the mountain's layers. So, while different ledges may appear more or less the sai-ne, this sameness is the result of minute changes, new growths and seasonal variations.

For our analogy, now, think of the various Ledges or levels of the mountain as different time periods. It seems to you as if one reincarnational existence would be layered above the other. You may be able to see that those existences, like the mountain, would exist at once, but you might forget that there is endless creativity and change at all levels of the mountain. New vegetation grows at the bottom layers, for example, as well as at the top ones.

(Pause, one of many.) Time periods are natural and creative. They are like the levels of the mountain, bringing forth fresh life. They do not vanish when you are finished with your growth there, but serve as a growing media for other personalities.

Give us a moment... Time periods themselves, then, are somewhat like platforms-natural platforms-that serve "time and time again" to bring forth fresh life. Because of your viewpoint this is highly difficult [for you] to understand. Say you were born in 1940. It seems to you that 1940 is gone, though it was the time of your birth. Returning to our analogy, however: You are like one violet, born in one spring on one ledge, and we will call the ledge, here, 1940. Other people are being born in 1940 now, in a different "season.~~

You are only aware of your own position within time, or your own place on the "platform, " or the ledge as you understand it.' Not only do these ledges or platforms of time exist simultaneously, but each one brings forth its own batches of personalities in its own different seasons. To that degree you are aware of your own season only, and we will call it the physical one-the particular probable reality that you accept as real.

(Intently:) The ledge of 1940, however, is still as immediate and now and present as it was when you were born.

Other personalities, again, are being born "there, " but their season or reality is different than yours.

Psychically you are somewhat related, in the same way for instance that the violets that grow this year in one spot are related to all violets that have grown-or will ever grow-from (or on) the same spot. Each moment, each year, has other dimensions, therefore, that you do not comprehend as yet. To you, other people born now in 1940 wouLd be born in a probable reality. Yet you share the same bed, so to speak. When you look at an object you see its exterior, and when you experience time you perceive its exterior.

(9:43.) Give us a moment... The year 1940, then, continues to exist as the mountain ledge continues to exist, and it brings forth new creativity "each season." The violets on our hypothetical mountainside contribute to the life of the mountain even while they have their own independent reality, and the overall cycle of the seasons regulates the growth and development of the mountain and all of its manifestations.

(Pause.) Time multiplies from within itself. When you think in terms of reincarnation, you are still dealing with very simple time concepts. You accept, if you were born in 1940, a particular historical sequence: but others born in 1940 (in a different season than your own) , are born into a different historical context, a different 1940, with its own probable events. You always think of being reincarnated in terms of being born backward into a history of which you have read. But any given year has its own variations.2

(Most emphatically:) In a way you seed yourself into time. But you could choose to be born five "times" in 1940, and each existence would be entirely separate, as you probed into the probable realities existing for you in the variations of that period.

As a physical being, your beliefs and concepts form your reality. The psyche from which your identity springs is free of the picture of reality that you have chosen. Period. You choose, in other words, to accept a given picture of the world, and you use that picture as a frame within which you form a life.

If you think in conventional terms about reincarnation, then you might examine a book in which each page is a life. You read the book from the beginning, so you think of one life or page following another. You should be able to see that the entire book exists at once. But in larger terms it is just one volume that you, the greater psyche, are reading, told in terms of serial time.

Instead, you are not only reading but writing many such books of living experience, that represent existences. Creativity is endless, and the psyche is the greatest source of creativity. Pretend that you are a writer of fiction, and you create a character. This character is so independent, alive and real, that it in turn forms other characters-and each writes its own book, or forms its own reality. That is a truer picture of your position.

Physically, the seeds of a plant fall onto the earth. They may be blown to some place distant from their birth, but the psyche's "seeds" fly into other realities also. Within all of this, however, there is the finest balance between spontaneity and order. Violets do not grow in wintertime. Their characteristics appear only when certain conditions are met. So if you were born in 1940 you have no trouble keeping track of your own time, and you fulfill your life under the same general conditions as those in which you were born.

Cells retain their shape and integrity, and their position more or less within your organs, although the atoms and molecules within them change. The overall pattern continues, however, so that your body retains its familiarity even as, in other terms, the mountam maintains its form. The cells serve as patterns of development on the one hand, through which atoms and molecules express their being. Each category is dependent upon the others. So your own consciousness follows a certain line of development that is its own, and that recognizes its own "seasons." Other offshoots of yourself, in your terms, operate following their own orders in times quite apart from your own.

Take your break.

(10:10. Jane's france had been an excellent one, her delivery often forceful and rapid, her manner very animated. "I could feel him trying to get those ideas throughjust right, "she said, "using as home~'y and everyday concepts as he could to make them clear. Mind-blowing... I don't know whether they've been expressed just like that before, or not. I had no idea of that material before the session."

(Finally, as we waited for Seth to return, Jane said: "Now I am confused-I can get material on three dy7èrent subjects...." One was "Unknown" Reality. The other two were points 4 and 5, as listed in the notes preceding this session; since Jane became consciously aware of material on them just before the session began, she'd had no time in which to give it. "Now I'll have to wait for things to sort themselves out, " she mused. It didn't take long:

Out of those very interesting ideas he'd mentioned in class last night, Seth ended up discussing the one I've noted as point 5.

(Resume at 10:35.)

Dictation: The roots of the tiniest plant know the best conditions for their growth, and they reach spontaneously toward the most fulfilling probabilities for development.

At each moment they sense their position. They are familiar with the most insignificant motion of the earth about them.3 They grow downward even while the stem grows upward-and the flower has not yet seen the space into which it will grow. What knowledge then resides within those roots, and what precognitive ability, that the plant itself yearns toward fulfillment that is as yet not achieved?4

Is the psyche then any less miraculous? And does not each of my readers possess the same innate capacity? You have within yourselves the same yearning for your own greatest flowering. You are multidimensional, however, so you grow in different kinds of realities, sending petals of yourself into other times and places, and you have the ability to mature in environments that are quite different one from the others.

(Pause.) In terms of your reality only, however, you seem to come to bloom through the seasons of the earth, and in your terms only, through consecutive periods. You are like a flower bulb that each time gives birth to a different blossom, while still conforming to certain overall patterns-but each blossom is entirely new. Because you think in terms of time sequences, it is natural for you to think of your psychic lineage in the same way. Each flowering of the bulb, however, brings about a different expression. You were not your past "self, " therefore, though you shared a certain relationship. Period.

You see the flower bulb as it exists from your own perspective. Yet, being multidimensional, you bloom in many other dimensions also. You have to walk around a plant on a table in order to see it from all sides. So, figuratively, walk around "time" to see yourself from all angles, and to perceive all of your manifestations.

(10:52.) Give us a moment... In certain terms, for instance, I am a future of Ruburt, but the "past" is always freshly creative. Ruburt's life as he knows it is not in my memory-because I did different things when I was Ruburt. And he is not bound by that reality that was mine.

(Leaning forward, speaking intently but half-humorously:) I have memories of being Ruburt-but the Ruburt I was is not the Ruburt that Ruburt is in his reality, lie surprises me, and his reactions alter my past. In his terms I am a future self, with far greater knowledge, yet he uses that knowledge to alter his present reality; and when I was Ruburt I did not have that knowledge. You can say then that I am altering my own past, but Ruburt's present experience also changes ~y present experience-and so there is an unending interchange.5

The same kind of interrelationship occurs with each individual now alive, in your terms, whether or not conscious awareness is involved. Ruburt is exploring time as he probes the reality of his own psyche, then.

You must begin any study from your own viewpoint, from your own ledge, but your personal living experience is always the main source of information. Within you as you know yourself are all of the hints you need, if you are but willing to follow them; and these will not destroy the fabric of physical reality, but instead show you more clearly the structure of its miraculous patterns.

Give us a moment... End of dictation.

(11:01. But hardly of the session. Once again, following his recent custom, Seth delivered several additional pages of material on topics not connected to "Unknown" Reality. End at 11:30P.M.)

Session 729, January13, 1975, 9:16 P.M., Monday

(I can add later that this is the only session in the two volumes of "Unknown" Reality to be witnessed by someone other than myself Our visitor was a young man I'll call William Petrosky. He's a member ofJane's ESP class, lives in New York City, and was in Elmira a day early to conduct some personal business.

(For pretty obvious reasons as far as we're concerned, Jane and I prefer that Seth hold his book sessions in private, although Seth himself is more flexible here than we are. But as Jane has saii4 things are "calmer"psychically when we're by ourselves: In trance or out, she can concentrate upon the work at hand, free of the presence of a third individual-one who is bound to radiate his or her own psychic characteristics. Nor does it particularly matter ~f the witness remains silent; Jane still picks up elements of that "extra" personality, and reacts to them.

(Earlier this evening Will had commented that Seth seldom addressed him by name in class sessions.)

Good evening-

("Good evening, Seth, "I said.)

-and good evening.

(Will: "Good evening, Seth."

(Leaning fortvard, amused:) I will call you William, and you cannot say that I have not used your name.

(Will, smiling: "Okay."

(Pause.) Dictation. Now As soon as you label yourself you are setting limitations, putting up boundaries and defining the reality of your psyche-usually according to quite limited beliefs.

You think that the self must begin or end someplace. There must be a fence around it, a yard of identity in which you can feel safe. I have said many times that there are no limitations to the self. You seem to be afraid that the self will bleed out and lose "itselP' in a mare in which all identity is lost. Yet you recognize that your self is a far greater dimension than you usually suppose, so you speak in terms of reincarnation. This allows you to imagine greater realms of identity while still holding your concepts of selfhood intact. You think of being one self after another, each identity being neatly separated from the others by a passage of years, an obvious death and an obvious birth.

The idea of counterparts1 somewhat shatters that old concept, yet you still want definitions for the self so that you know where you "stand." You are so taken with the idea of labels that many follow astrology blindly. You are born at a certain time, at a certain place, under certain conditions-but consciousness always forms the conditions. If it is to some extent affected by those conditions, then, it is because the effects follow in the same way that a painter is affected by the landscape that he has himself created. So you decide to be born, say, in a certain month when the planets are thus-and-so. Ahead of time, you choose the seasons of your birth.

In the most simple of terms, you are deciding upon the environment. A violet springs to life in the backyard, but the violet must stay there. Its whole growth is dependent upon the weather conditions in that particular area, even though those conditions themselves result from overall planetary activity. You walk out of the place and time of your birth, however, as the flower cannot.

(9:29.) Now: In greater terms, probabilities operate to an extent you may not suspect. For one thing, any focus point of physical life is .caused by a merging of probabilities. Our session is being witnessed by a student, a most intelligent young man (humorously) . He also helps Ruburt with correspondence. Earlier tonight he wrote to a woman who has the same birthdate as Ruburt. In our last session I compared a year to a ledge on a mountain. I said that the seasons came and went, and that many crops of spring flowers grew there over a period of time. So each year, in those terms, is like a ledge.

Say, again, that the year is 1940. All of those born on a particular date in 1940 will not necessarily be born "at the same time" at all. What you think of as 1940 is but one season on that ledge, the season that you recognize. Flowers from the spring of one year "do not see" or mix with the flowers of the following spring, or with those of the spring before. In the same way, those born in 1940 "at one season" do not, in a greater context, mix with those born in the same year either.

The word "season" here may be misleading. Give us a moment... Each year is like one ledge, however, bringing forth countless variations of the characteristic "flora" growing there. Each of those separate years, say, each of those 1940's, or 1920's, or 1950's, carries on its own line of development. Time expands inwardly and outwardly in those terms-it does not just go forward.

Again: Your reality is like a shining platform, a surface resting upon probabilities. You follow these so unconsciously and beautifully, you swim through them so easily, that it does not occur to you to question your origin, or the medium in which your experience has its existence. All of those sharing any given birthdate, however, sharing even place as well as time, do not have the same "destiny"; but more, they do not share the same conditions necessarily. They are each affected by their own probability system at birth, and those conditions drastically alter the nature of their development.

The very practice of pinpointing the time of physical birth at conception itself errs. There is no point at which you can say in basic terms (underlined twice) that an individual is alive, 2 though you do find it more practical to accept certain points of life and death. It is true that you emerge into space and time at a certain point in your perception. Your consciousness has been itself long before, however.

In an even larger context, difficult I know for you to follow, the son is the father of his father in quite as valid away as he is the son, and vice versa.

Once you free your consciousness from limited concepts of time and self, then you can begin to explore the unknown reality that is the unrecognized self.

(Louder:) Now you may take a break-and (again humorously) I will return, William.

(9:47 to 10:09.)

Now: Dictation: When you think in conventional terms about astrology, it is as if you are looking at the cover of a book, not realizing that there are many pages within it.

Consciousness, being active within all cellular structures, triggers itself ahead of time [in each case], so to speak, to react to certain conditions and not to others. Many are born the same day of any given year, and generally within the same time period-but individually the inner triggering may be far different, so that while the overall conditions at birth may ~ more or less the same, the inner reactions to them will vary widely. Period.

Some persons will be much more affected by, and sensitive to, other probabilities-which, for instance, do not show at all in conventional astrological "charts."

Those charts emphasize one line of probabilities at the expense of all others. Interpretations based upon the charts then will make more sense to those who have chosen the same probable birth circumstances-but they will be of no value to those who were born at the same time, in your terms, but who follow a different order of probabilities.3

(10:17.) Now give us a moment... As the cells operate with the knowledge of probable actions and still maintain the physical body in your chosen system, so the psyche, operating in the same way, "seeds" itself in many different probabilities. In this case specifically, I am speaking of other physical probabilities-alternates, in other words, of the world as you know it. Those alive with you, your contemporaries, do not all belong to the same probable system. You are at a meeting ground in that respect, where individuals from many probable realities mix and merge, agreeing momentarily to accept certain portions of the same space-time environment.

Because you focus ujon the similarities in experience, and play down the variances, then the oftentimes greater dissimilarities4 in so-called experience escape you completely. You take it for granted that memory is faulty if you do not agree with another person on the events that happened at a certain place and time-say those in a recently experienced historical past. You take it for granted that interpretations of events change, but that certain definite events occurred that are beyond alteration. Instead, the events themselves are not nearly that concrete. You accept one probable event. Someone else may experience instead a version of that event, which then becomes that individual's felt reality.

These events may be quite different indeed, and the separate interpretations make quite valid explanations of separate variations. In your terms, one event can happen in many different ways.

All of this is fine theory, esoteric but hardly practical-unless you begin to question the nature of your own thoughts, and begin to explore the reality of those events that you seem to encounter.5

(10:25.) Give us a moment... (Pause.) Back to our flowers. Any wildflower on our mountain ledge (see the 728th session) will view the valley below from its own perspective, and see stretched about it the environment with which it is familiar. Generally speaking, the others flowers born in the same spring will die at about the same time. The next year the new flowers will see a slightly different landscape, yet the overall patterns will be the same. Violets will grow where there were violets before. The houses in the valley will be in the same "place." If you looked at that same Landscape one summer and then the next, you might say: "Ah, the violets always grow there, and it is good to see the lilies of the valley in the shadow of the same rock." You might realize that the flowers you pick are not the same flowers that you picked last year at the same spot, but the very nature of your focus would cause you to concentrate upon those differences only when you were forced to. Otherwise you would think:

"Violets are violets, and they are always here each spring."

The vast unexplainable difference that exists as far as the flowers are concerned is something else again-for on that scale the flowers that you pick are utterly themselves in their own world, from which to a certain extent you have taken them.

Unimaginable differences would be present if those posies could see the same environment of the year before, and all of the minute variations that you ignore would be gigantic; different enough indeed so that at their level the flowers might think that a different kind of reality was involved. So there are variations, and highly significant probabilities, operating even between those born generally in the same month of the same year-not only in terms of exterior conditions, but of inward ones.

Consciousness does not simply choose to be born at a certain place in space and time, but it also endows its physical organism ahead of time with certain inner triggers so that it will respond to those conditions in highly individualistic ways.

Iam not even hinting at predestination or predetermination. Let us try another simple analogy. A seed "knows" that it will come to life in the middle of a pot in someone's living room. Say it is a tomato seed, and our house owner decides to start a plant from scratch. All cellular life is precognitive, in your terms. The seed then knows that the sun comes, say, from the west in this particular room. It begins to respond in that manner before the shoot emerges.

The shoot does not simply react to the direction from which the sun shines, but senses this far before, and the seed sensitizes itself "ahead of time" to those conditions. It could grow to the east just as well. The trigger is not the sun's direction on its own, but the plant's innate knowledge of that direction. The plant is not predestined to grow toward the west, for example.

(Veiy intently:) In the same manner, the self knows ahead of time the best conditions for its own development, in light of the time and the place of its chosen birth. it has, however, literally endless probabilities to choose from, to fulfill its abilities while maintaining a workable selfhood.6 Consciousness chooses the best overall conditions available for its own purposes of growth. It then preconditions its own organism to respond or not to respond to the time and place of birth, to exaggerate or minimize, to negate or accept.

The emergence of consciousness into those physical conditions automatically alters them-a fact not recognized by astrologers. Each child born alters the entire universe, 7 and changes the world of its time and birth by bringing into it action not there earlier, in your terms, and by impressing the universe with the stamp-the indelible stamp-of its reality. Each child chooses its own probable version of any given birthdate. Such dates are obviously not just points in time, pinpointed in space. In the first place, since all time is simultaneous, you are always dying and being born, and your later experience affects the time of your birth.

Iadmit that a birthday operates as a handy reference. But if you realized that your consciousness did exist before that time, your memory will open up, and your accepted birthdate will appear far less important. "Coming out of the womb" is an event, and much better to use than "birth." In greater terms-far greater terms than you imagine-you are aware of probable "births, " and your other parentages [that arel quite as legitimate as the personal history you now accept.

The self is not limited. The true meaning of that statement may sometime dawn. The idea of one personhood still closes your eyes to the greater multipersonhood that is your true reality. Often your dreams give you a hint of this kind of existence.

You may take a break.

(10:59 to 11:18.)

Dictation: You view the heavens and the universe, the planets and the stairs, from your own focus-a highly Limited one in certain terms.

In the first place you are looking at one version of the universe, as it seems to exist at the moment of your perception. The entire nature of a personality cannot be considered in its totality in that small context.

The personality itself is not only independent of space and time, but uses the illusions that result for its own purposes. All things are related, but they do not act in a certain way because the planets were such-and-such at your birth. There is a relationship, but it is not causal.

It is quite as true to say that the planets behave in a certain way because you are what you are, as it is to turn the statement around, as is generally done. The very positions of the planets and the stars are effects of the senses-perceptions that would have no meaning were it not for your own kind of consciousness. Those perceptions, then, cannot cause you to behave in any given way because of conditions that have no meaning outside of your own consciousness.

(Pause.) Now: The universe exists, but it takes the shape and form that you recognize only in your own perceptions. The motion of the planets, indeed their very perceived reality, exists in far different terms.

Give us a moment... The universe is seeded with various kinds of consciousnesses. Some of these appear to you as planets or stars, 8 as they "intrude" into your field of actuality. As such they appear to behave in a certain fashion, to take a certain form, to have certain effects. You and the stars are simultaneous events, each conscious and aware but in different "scales" of actuality-as your scale of consciousness is different from that of the violets.

With physical perception the picture all fits, of course. You realize that someone-some interested observer-viewing the earth from another planet in another galaxy, would be seeing what you think of as earth's past. But as I pointed out, "he" might also be seeing earth's future, 9 according to "his" viewpoint. This would in no way alter your reality. The positions of the stars and planets, however, and your time scheme, cannot be depended upon to give an indication of "causal" effects. The personality simply exists in greater terms.

Give us a moment... Using conventional astrology, you will find certain correlations, because of particular events occurring, that are indeed interrelated. Yet many individuals will not discover semblances of themselves in the charts of astrology simply because their chosen probabilities are, qualitatively speaking, so different from the ''norm.~~

When astrology works, it works because the astrologer is using his or her creative and psychic abilities, and then projecting that knowledge into a pattern that is of itself too small to contain it. The chart then simply becomes an aid.

I understand that some of this will be difficult to follow. The only other recourse, however, is to repeat myths and tales that you have outgrown. The stars and planets simply are in more than one place at one time. I admit that your perception of them makes them appear to be relatively stable, and you are biologically tuned in to that perception. Your experience of time and motion, as you know, is relative, and in comparison with your own relatively brief lives the planets seem to endure for almost endless periods. This is your viewpoint as you look out from your ledge.

(11:40.) Give us a moment... Other minute creatures might well mark portions of their lives with your coming and going, and imagine that your position at their birth regulated their activity. Imagine them making up charts correlating their lives with your own. Are you in the habit of pacing the floor? In another scale of time, how many ages might it seem to take for your shadow to cross from one side of the room to another? The analogy is not as farfetched as it may seem, for certainly your shadow will affect the temperature of the room minutely, and alter other conditions there in ways you would never comprehend, often causing gigantic variations to a consciousness on another scale.

An imaginary ant, a philosophical one, might sit and in its own way contemplate how often you walked the floor in a period that might seem like a year to it. It might try to calculate your next passage ahead of time, so that-prudent ant!-it could run "out of the way" in time to avoid your footsteps.

Your rumbling tread might shake its tiny home beneath certain floorboards, or in the crevices between. I admit that I am stretching our ant tale here, but imagine further that our little fellow becomes familiar with everyone in, say, an apartment house, learning to recognize all of the footsteps that go up and down the stairs. Our philosopher keeps in touch with the other ants, until with time and work and patience, a chart is made and calculations drawn. An ant born at three o'clock in the afternoon, when Miss X comes home with her boyfriend, is apt to have a hard time of it-for the couple runs about exuberantly, shaking all of the establishment, and tumbling the dust in the inner crevices.

Iam not comparing astrologers with ants. I am, however, trying to show you that you are not ruled by the stars-and that when you behave as if you are, then you are showing as litde comprehension of your true position as our ant did. You are small in relationship to the stars, also, but when you seek to place your fate in their hands, figuratively speaking, then it does seem as if you have little control over your own destiny.

(Forcefully:) You are consciousnesses at particular points of experience, and in other kinds of reality you twinkle like stars.

Give us a moment...

Now: We will shortly end our session. I am glad that you came.

(Will: "So am I.")

Now, I am not going to tell you anything, and that always infuriates you and makes you happy at the same time. Instead, I give you methods that you can use to make your own reality by following your will (with humorous emphasis) as far as you want to; and because of this evening's session and the energy involved, you have the opportunity for some splendid dream activity. You will have it whether or not you remember it, but I hope you can remember it. Do not hassle

(Will, laughing: "Okay.")

Now that is the end of the session.

("Good night, Seth, " I said at 11:57 P.M. And added a couple of days later, when I typed the session from my notes: After the session Will Petrosky spent the night with friends here in Elmira. When we saw him in class the next evening, he had no special dream activity to report.)

Session 730, January 15, 1975, 9:17 P.M., Wednesday

(As we lay in bed after last P.M., Monday's session, Jane told me: "I've got it-from Seth, I think: A really complete astrological chart would have to include not only the time ofyour birth, but that ofyour death." Which would pose afew obstacles, I thought as Ifell asleep....

(This evening, Jane had many thoughts and images before the session got under way. "It's about astrology. Actually, I mean it's about the birth of consciousness.")

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: Usually you think in terms of a hypothetical whole self or consciousness, emerging at birth and disappearing at death. There are, however, learned arguments in which professors debate such questions. Some astrologers use the time of conception in their calculations, while others prefer the date of birth. Various religions have decided that the "soul" enters the fetus at its conception, while others argue that consciousness cannot be considered a human soul until some time later, just prior to birth.

The same kind of questions occur at the other end of the scale: When does death actually come? In most of these debates, this hypothetical self or consciousness is taken as the measure.

Give us a moment... In the first place, again, the self or soul in this case is not a thing of measurement-nor is it necessarily some thing that suddenly arrives and then disappears.

The physical self as you know it is a focus of consciousness that forms a personality in response to that focus. It is very difficult to make analogies here, but I am foolhardy enough to try it. (Pause.) It seems to you that any naturally aborted fetus has no physical life at all, that such life has been denied to it for some reason. Instead, the fetus experiences another level: physical life at a different scale, that in your terms would apply to the distant past.

In, I repeat, conventional ideas of evolution, 1 this would be a period in which your kind of consciousness experimented with a water environment, with fins instead of lungs. In certain terms this gives the consciousness a look at particular portions of the species' "past." It also provides that consciousness with firsthand knowledge psychically and directly. Again-most difficult to explain (exclamation point) ! Particularly without offending your ideas of self-hood-yet each of you "alive" died in just such a manner.

While in conventional terms you think of long centuries' duration, in which finned creatures rose from the seas, some "becoming" reptiles and finally mammals, many did not make that journey but "fell" along the way. So in those terms, and following that analogy, the psyche makes the same kind of adjustments and life-changes. You have each existed many times, then, as fetuses "who did not make it." Not necessarily because you did not want to be born, but because those experiences were in themselves legitimate, 2 and in your present state are written in the "memory" of your physical being.

(Intently at 9:36:) Now this does not mean that your personality as you know it was often trapped within a womb, destined to die there, or that a hypothetical whole self would not be born. It means that the archaeology of your psyche as it is physically focused carries those experiences. The self is not... (pause, eyes closed) .. . give us a moment; I am searching for a good analogy... the self is not like a clay figure coming from a potter's oven, so that you can say: "Ah, here is a self, and nothing can be added to it." You have always existed as a probable self, though you were not focused in the knowledge of your own experience.

(In parentheses: You may have been focused quite well in other realities, but I am speaking of your earthly existence as you understand it.)

At any point now you can literally become more yourself. In that regard, you are born by degrees. In certain terms you have discarded portions of yourself, so you died by degrees-but the two, the living and the dying, occur at once.

To a certain extent what you are was latent in the fetus, but there is no one point when "the full awareness of the soul enters into the flesh." The process is gradual. In physical terms it begins before your own parents are born.

Give us a moment. (Long pause.) The chart of events at the time of your "birth" is like one small snapshot of someone's backyard in the afternoon. Here in this analogy, the entire earthly personality could be compared to the world. Now as long as you make your deductions according to that one picture, there will be correlations that apply-but only to that small specific area.

In your terms, the person at birth is affected by multidimensional conditions, and the collective position of the planets is but one very minute indication of the other realities involved. Ruburt is correct: Even in conventional terms a true horoscope would have to involve the time of death in your temporal reality, as well [as that of birth]. Your focus of attention forms boundaries that predispose you to believe in a point at which your consciousness emerges, as you understand it, and a point when it is no longer effective, or dies. Your beliefs in such concepts limit your perception, for by altering the focus of your attention you can to some extent become aware of perception before and after the recognized points of birth and death.

You grant soulhood only to your own species, as if souls had sizes that fit your own natures only. You preserve these ideas by thinking of animals as beneath you. Then, however, you must wonder when the soul enters the flesh, or when the alien fetus becomes one of your own, and therefore blessed by the gods and granted the right to life.

But all things have consciousness, and in those terms possess a soul-nature. There are no gradations as to soul. Soul is the life within everything that is. Of course the fetus "has a soul"-but in the same way, if you think in those terms, then each cell within the fetus must be granted a soul (leaning forward with humorous emphasis, voice deeper) . The course of a cell is not predetermined. Cells are usually very cooperative, particularly as they form the structures of the body.3

(10:02.) Give us a moment... But the body is a context that they have chosen to experience. In fulfilling themselves the cells aid your own existence, but in a framework they have chosen. They can reject certain elements within their existences, however, change their courses or even form new alliances. They have great freedom within what you think of as the framework of your reality. If their paths cannot be charted, and can indeed constantly surprise you, then why do you think that your course can be mapped out ahead of time by reading the positions of the stars at your birth?

The cells are not inferior as far as you are concerned, even though they form part of the structure of your physical being. They are not even less conscious. (Emphatically:) They are conscious in a different fashion. There is no need to "romanticize" them, or to think of them as little people, but each of them possesses a highly focused consciousness, and a consciousness of self. You like to think-again-that only your own species possesses an awareness of its own selffiood. There are different kinds of selfhood, and an infinite variety of ways to experience self-awareness.

(With much animation:) As an example, it appears to you that animals do not reflect upon their own reality. Certainly it seems that a cell has no "objective" knowledge of its own being, colon: as if it is without knowing what it is, or without appreciation of its own isness. You are quite wrong in such deductions. Nor are there necessarily gradations in which one kind of consciousness progresses in rigid terms from a lower to a higher state. Any cell has practical use of precognitive abilities, 4 for example, that quite escape you, yet many of you assign such abilities to "higher" souls. Each kind of life has its own qualities that cannot be compared with those of others, and that often cannot be communicated.

Now: All of this may seem to have little to do with the nature of reincarnation, as you think of it, or with counterparts as I have explained them. Yet it is vital that you throw aside old concepts of the self and of the soul before you can begin to understand the freedom of your own selfhood.

Are you tired?

(10:18. "No. "Actually I was, but Jane was doing so well as Seth that I hated to interrupt her delivery of the materiaL)

Stop me when you want to.

This evening Ruburt read some [just-published] material about dolphins and whales. It contained strong hints that those creatures are geniuses, possessing the ability of abstract thought to a high degree.5 Such is indeed the case

Now dolphins deal with an entirely different dimension of reality. There is as yet no method of communication that can allow you to perceive their concepts of selfhood, or their [collective] vision of existence. They are sensitive, self-aware individuals. They are

Session 731, January 20, 1975, 9:38 P.M., Monday

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation. (Slowly and quietly:) Your present idea of identity is maintained only because you grant as valid such small aspects of your own reality.

In other words, your accepted concepts of selfhood would disappear if you ever allowed any significant subjective experience to intrude. "The Absent Self"-the absent or unknown self-is the portion of your own existence that you do not ordinarily perceive or accept, though there is within you a longing for it.

Much of "Unknown" Reality is involved with the breaking up of theories that have been long accepted, but that prevent you from perceiving the powerful nature of those absent portions of the self. As you focus upon certain details from a larger field of physical reality, so then you focus upon only the small portion of yourself that you consider "real."

You cariy within you, however, the deep knowledge of experience that in your terms would be prior, yet in your cells and your own deeper mind such information is current.

Give us amoment... Selfhood overspills with great luxurious outcroppings, yet you jealously guard against such creativity. To a certain extent you do cany the knowledge of your forefathers within your [cells'] chromosomes, ' which present a pattern that is not rigid but flexible-one that in codified fashion endows you with the subjective living experience of those who, in your terms, have gone before. As Ruburt recently suspected, some very old cultures have been aware of this.2 Period. While being independent individuals their members also identified with their ancestors to some extent, accepting them as portions of their selfhoods. This does not mean that the individual seff was less, but was more aware of its own reality. A completely different kind of focus was presented, in which the ancestors were understood to contribute to the "new" experience of the living; one in which the physically focused consciousness dearly saw itself as perceiving the world for itself, but also for all of those who had gone before-(gradually louder for emphasis:) while realizing that in those terms he or she would contribute as well as the generations past.

The animals were also accepted in this natural philosophy of selfhood as the individual plainly saw the living quality of consciousness. The characteristics of the animals were understood to continue "life, " adding their qualities to the experience of the self in a new way.3 You had better put "life" in quotes in that last sentence.

(Pause.) The human body would be used in earth's great husbandry as, from it, dying and decaying new forms would arise. This was a give-and-take in which, for instance, ajungle neighborhood was truly home, and all was a portion of the self psychically, spiritually, and physically.4

(Pause at 9:5 7.) Let those who will, laugh at tales of spirits turning into the trees5-a simplistic theory, certainly, yet a symbolic statement in such societies: The dead were buried at home in the same close territory, to form in later times the very composition of the ground upon which religions grew. Again, your limited concepts ofselfhood make what I am saying difficult for you to perceIve.

(With emphasis:) I am not saying, for example, that the living conciousness of each individual returned to the earth literally, but that the physical material permeated and stamped with that consciousness did, and does. Again, even the cells retain knowledge of all of their affiliations. In physical terms the consciousness that you understand is based upon this.

Give us a moment... Selfhood is poorer when it does not at least intuitively understand this heritage.

Give us a moment... Those intimate realizations, however, had to be counterbalanced in line with certain purposes set by your species, and even for that matter momentarily set aside so that other abilities and characteristics could emerge. The species' sense of curiosity would not allow itto stay in any home territory for long, ' and so the sense of intimacy was purposely broken. Itwould become highly important again, however, when the planet was populated extensively, as it is now - only the original feeling of home area has to be extended over the face of the earth. The "absent~' portions of the self are ready to emerge. The other, to you probable, lines of consciousness can now come into play.

These different lines of focus will each show you other aspects of your own reality, as individuals and as a species.

Take your break.

(10:13 to 10:29.)

Isaid once that no knowledge exists outside of consciousness.7

In those terms, neutral data are not transferred through the chromosomes. Consciousness passes on information through "living" vehicles. Whether physically materialized or not, knowledge is possessed by consciousness. It is always "individualized" (pause) , though not necessarily in your terms.8

Give us a moment... The information carried by the chromosomes is not general, but highly specific. It is codified data (itself alive) that contains within it the essence of ancestral knowledge-change that to ancestral experience-of specific ancestral experience. Biologically you do indeed carry within you, then, the memories of your particular ancestors. These form ap~~ basis for your subjective and physical existence, and provide the needed support for it.

Since one portion of your heritage is physical, in those terms, those memories can be translated again, back into emotional and psychological events, though usually they are not in your societies.

To that extent the so-called past experience of your ancestors and of your species is concurrent with your own, biologically speaking. That is but one line, however, covered by the chromosomes. You have "another line" of existence that also serves as a support for the one that you presently recognize. It includes other interweaving physical relationships that bind you with all others upon your planet at the same adjacent level of time. That is, to some extent or another you are related to all of those alive upon the planet. You are time contemporaries. You will have a far doser relationship with some than with others. Some will be your counterparts.

(10:45.) Give us a moment.. . These may or may not be doser to you than family relationships, but psychically speaking they 17 will share a certain kind of history with you. You will also be connected through the physical framework of the earth in the large ; give-and-take of its space-time scheme.

Athird line supporting your selfhood as you think of it is the reincarnational one.9 This is somewhat like the ancestral line (long pause) , and there are also reflections in the genes and chromosomes undetected by your scientists. The ancestral and reincarnational lines merge to some extent to form what you think of as your 17 genetic patterns ahead of time, so to speak. Before this life you chose what you wished from those two main areas.

Reincarnational experience is also transmitted, then, and can be retranslated from a biological code-imprint into emotional awareness. Again, however, as you are not your parents or your ancestors, you are not your "reincarnational selves."

Here also ideas of time hamper you, for I must explain all of this in temporal terms. Since time is simultaneous, at other levels your ancestors knew of your birth though they died centuries ago in recognized continuity. The same applies to reincarnational existences that you think of as occurring in the past.

You cannot say that your ancestors, like some strange plants, were growing toward what you are, or that you are the sum of their experiences. They were, they are, themselves. You cannot say that you are the sum of your past reincarnational lives either, and for the same reasons. You cut off the knowledge of yourself, and so divisions seem to occur. You are somewhat like a plant that recognizes only one of its leaves at a time. A leaf feels its deeper reality as a part of the plant, and adds to its own sense of continuity, and even to its own sense of individuality. But you often pretend that you are some odd dangling leal with no roots, growing without a plant to support you.

(Jane, as Seth, pointed to the angelwing begonia that sat on the narrow coffee table separating us.)

All of the leaves now growing on this plant could be thought of as counterparts of each other, each alive and individual in one time, each contributing yet facing in different directions. As one leaf falls another takes its place, until next year the whole plant still living, will have a completely new set of leaves-future reincarnational selves of this batch.

You are not plants, but the analogy is a simple one. And if you will forgive me-overall it holds water (amused) .

Take your break.

(11:06 to 11:25.)

There is a constant interaction in the plant, between its parts, that you do not perceive. The leaves now present are biologically valid, interrelating in your terms. Yet in time terms each leaf is also aware of the past history of the plant, and biologically they spring up from that "past."

Each leaf seeks to express its leafhood as fully as possible. Leaves take in sun, which helps the plant itself grow (through photosynthesis) . The development of the leaves, then, is very important to the planes own existence. The cells of the plant are kept in contact with the environment through the leaves' experiences, and future probabilities are always taken into consideration. The smallest calculations involving light and dark are known. The life of the plant and its leaves cannot be separated.

(Long pause.) The plant has its own "idea" of itself, in which each of its leaves has its part. Yet each leaf has the latent capacities of the whole plant Root one, for instance, and a new plant will grow.

Selves (spelled) have far greater freedom than leaves, but they can also root themselves if they choose-and they do. Reincarnational selves are like leaves that have left the plant, choosing a new medium of existence. In this analogy, the dropped leaves of the physical plant have fulfilled their own purposes to themselves as leaves, and to the plant. These selves, however, dropping from one branch of time, root themselves in another time and become new plants from which others will sprout

("Do you mean 'new selves' instead of 'new plants'?")

Correct.

The larger self, then, seeds itself in time. In this process no identity is lost and no identity is the same, yet all are interrelated. So you can theoretically expand your consciousness to include the knowledge of your past lives, though those lives were yours and not yours. They have a common root, as next year's leaves have a common root with the leaves now of this plant (pointing again to the begonia) .

Such knowledge, however, would automatically affect those past lives. Ideas of cause and effect can hold you back here, because it seems to you that the leaves of next year come as an effect caused by this year's leaves.10 To the plant and its innate creative pattern, however, all of its manifestations are one-an expression of itself, each portion different. The knowledge of its "future" leaves, as potential pattern, exists now. The same applies to the psyche. In that greater realm of reality there is creative interplay, and interrelationships between all aspects of selfhood.

End of dictation and of session. My heartiest regards and a fond good evening.

("Thank you, Seth, and good night" 11:49 P.M.)

Session 732, January 22, 1975, 9:10 P.M., Wednesday

(Neither Jane or I could remember what P.M., Monday evening's session is all about-even though I'd read part of it from my "shorthand" notes to the members oJESP class last night. I still have to type the session.)

Dictation.

("Good evening Seth.")

Good evening. Now: I have spoken about counterparts in Ruburt's dass.' Many of the students became deadly serious as they tried to understand the concept.

Some wanted me to identity their counterparts for them. One student (Fred) , a contractor, said little. Instead, during the last week he let his own creative imagination go wherever it might while he held the general idea in his mind. He played with the concept, then. In a way his experiences were like those of a child-open, curious, filled with enthusiasm. As a result he himself discovered a few of his counterparts.2

Most people, however, are so utterly serious that they suspect their own creativity. They expect that its products will be unreal or not valid in the physical world. Yet there is a great correlation between what you think of as creativity, altered states of consciousness, play, and "spiritual" development.

When you create a poem or a song or a painting you are in a state of play, of enjoyment, of freedom. You intend to make something different, to produce a new version of reality. You create out of love, for the sake of the experience. At one time or another almost everyone has that kind of experience, but children have it often. They compose songs and music and paintings in their heads. They alter the focus of their consciousnesses frequently. They do not stop to ask whether or not the play is real or pertinent. Physically, play develops their body mechanisms. It also flexes the great capabilities of their minds.

(Pause.) When you think, colon: "Life is earnest, " and decide to put away childish things, then often you lose sight of your own creativity and become so deadly serious that you cannot play, even mentally. Spiritual development becomes a goal that must be attained. The goal is to be achieved through hard work, and as long as you believe this you do not understand what the spirit is.

Ikeep returning to natural analogies-but plants do not work at developing their potential. They are not beautiful because they believe it is their responsibility to please your eye. They are beautiful because they love themselves and beauty. When you are so serious, you almost always distort the nature of your own spirit as far as your understanding of it is concerned. You cannot let your guard down long enough to discover what it is. You keep looking for new rules or regulations, or methods of discipline.

Give us a moment... You keep searching for a new "ascended master, " or guru, to keep you in line and point out THE WAY-in capitals.

In their own ways children are quite aware of their counterparts, and of other portions of their individual realities. They relate to their counterparts in dreams. They sometimes see them as "invisible" companions. You dream of your own counterparts frequently, but you are so afraid of maintaining what you think of as the rational adult self that you ignore such communications.

People have written here asking about soul mates.3 In certain circles this is the latest vogue. The idea is an old one; it is based upon the reality of counterparts, and presents another version of the theory. But, again, it is treated with an almost pompous seriousness. (Pause.) Many of those who use the term do it to hide rather than to release their own joyful abilities. They spend time searching for their soul mates-but the search involves them in a pilgrimage for a kind ofiinpossible communication with another, in which all division is lost, with the two then trying to join in a cementing oneness, suffocating all sense of play or creativity. You are not one part, or one half, of another soul, 4 searching through the annals of time for your partner, undone until you are completed by your soul mate.

(A one-minute pause, eyes closed I, at 9:42.) When you become too intent to maintain your reality you lose it, for you deny the creativity upon which it rests.

(Long pause.) I am not denying the importance of true reason. Certainly I am not telling you to ignore the intellect. But you do often ignore the playfulness of the intellect, and force it to become something less than it is.

Take your break.

(9:4 5 to 9:5 5.)

Many of you have daydreams in which you actually see yourselves as your counterparts, and portions of their lives sometimes come through to you as you go about your chores.

You pay little heed, however. You think that this is just your "imagination." The unknown reality is alive in your own psyche. There are hints of it in all of your experience. You would not be alive, in your terms, if first you did not imagine yourself as you are. Play is, in fact, one of the most practical methods of survival, both individually and for the species. Within its framework lie the secrets of creativity, and within the secrets of creativity lie the secrets of being.

The life that you consider real represents one narrow stratum of even your physical experience. I am not speaking hereof other realities that could add to that dimension. (Pause.) Play brings you a needed rest from your distorted concepts of selfhood, and many of the world's finest inventions have come when the inventor was not concentrating upon work, but indulging in pastimes or play.

(Pause.) You are involved with some of your counterparts more or less directly, while others live in different lands, and are sometimes separated also in terms of age differences or culture-qualities with which you would find it difficult to relate.5 Intuitively, you know who the counterparts are in your daily experience. This does not mean that if you become consciously aware of such affiliations you must then feel it your responsibility to form a kind of culture of counterparts, or to try and affect other people's lives by reminding them of your relationship. You are each individual. Some of the people you dislike most heartily may be counterparts.6 Each of you may be exploring different aspects of the same overall challenge.

There is nothing esoteric about families. They represent the kind of relationships that you take for granted. The same applies to counterparts, except that you are not ordinarily familiar with the term or concept.

Certain members of a family often act out particular roles, however, for the family as a whole. One might be the upstart, another the perfect achiever. Psychologists now often try to deal with the family as a whole, by allowing the different members to see how they may be exaggerating certain tendencies at the expense of others.

The upstart, for instance, may be displaying all of the bold aspects inhibited by other family members. Through this person the others may vicariously share the excitement or suspense of those experiences that are otherwise blocked. On the other hand the achiever may be completely hiding such impulses, while expressing faithfully the desires of other family members for "excellence" and discipline. Now the same can apply to counterparts, and those in your experience can show to you, in exaggerated form, comma, abilities of your own upon which you have not chosen to concentrate. You can learn much from your counterparts, therefore, and they from you. Those counterparts that you meet will be working, playing, and being more or less within your own culture. This does not mean that you are bits and pieces of some hypothetical whole self.

(Pause at 10:20.) Pretend that the psyche is a plant sending out seeds of itself in many directions, each seed growing into a new plant in different conditions. Growing to planthood, those seeds send out further new variations. A handful of seeds from any tree might fall in the same backyard. Others might be blown for miles before they land.

You usually live with your physical family, though this does not always apply; sometimes your ancestors come from various countries, so there is a physical lineage that you understand. There are often homecomings, where distant relatives return to the homestead. Now psychically the same applies in terms of counterparts. If you belong to any particular groups, often your closest counterparts will also be there. You will be a counterpart from their viewpoint, by the way. Many political, civic, educational or religious groups are composed of counterparts.

("And conventional families?" I asked Seth. I thought many readers would come up with that question at the same time I dicL)

We will get to that. I purposely did not add that.

These counterparts form psychic families. They are family representations on another level. First of all, such groups have a built-in focus-political, civic, religious, sexual, or whatever. (Pause.) Certain members of the group express the repressed tendencies of others. Yet each is supported through a common sense of belonging, so that the group sometimes seems to have its own overall identity, in which each member plays a part. Any reader can easily discover this by examining the groups to which he or she belongs.

(10:30.) Now there are races, physically speaking. There are also psychic counterparts of races-families of consciousness, so to speak-all related, yet having different overall characteristics or specialties.

Most of the people who come to Ruburt~s classes are Sumari, 7 for example. There are eight other such psychic families-nine in all. Some of Ruburt~s students are counterparts of each other. Many of the people who come here come home in the ways that [members of a physical] family attend a reunion.

You may change the names if you prefer.

Peter Smith is a counterpart of Joseph's.8 Sue (Watkins) and Zelda are counterparts of Ruburt~s-or Ruburt is a counterpart of Sue and Zelda.

Alan Koch and Ruburt are counterparts. CarlJon& and Bill Herriman and Bill Granger are counterparts. Norma Pryor is a counterpart of Joseph's, and vice versa. The young man from

Pennsylvania who comes every other week is a counterpart of

Ruburt's. But [all of) this applies to any group.

Give us a moment... The Sumari are naturally playful-inventors, and relatively unfettered. They are impatient, however.'0 They will be found in the arts and in the less conventional sciences.

The unknown reality. You have inner affiliations. What are they? I will outline the inner psychic species, and it is up to you to discover to which one you belong.

(Loudly and humorously:) Take your break, or end the session as you prefer.

("The break's okay."

(10:45. With one exception-that of Sue Watkins-all the names given by Seth, involving counterpart relationshzps, have been changecL Most of the people are members of Jane's class; some have met certain of their counterparts, but not others; Janet, Sue, and I are the only ones who know eveiyone Seth named. During break Jane came through with additional psychic affiliations among her students, but it isn't necessa?y to discuss them here. She couldn't say whether Seth would indicate any more counterparts after break.

(I told her I'd been rather surprised when Seth had so baldly stated that there were only ninefamilies of/human] consciousness upon our planeL The number seemed too small, too arbitrary. I also remarked upon my understanding that usually neither she nor Seth liked to categorize new information so definitely. Jane, while agreeing couldn't elaborate upon this very much, beyond saying that she felt each family could have subdivisions, and/or combine with others, so that mathematically at least there existed the possibility of "a lot" of them. I liked that idea much better. Strangely, neither of us had ever asked Seth to name any of the other families of consciousness, following Jane's Sumari breakthrough some three years ago-but at the end of this session see the material about the family of consciousness Sue Watkins had tuned in to back then.

(Resume at 11:02.)

Now: I am using this group of Ruburt's class as an example, but the same applies, again, to any group.

The Sumari are rambunctious, in certain terms anti-authority, full of energy. They are usually individualists, against systems of any kind. They are not "born reformers, " however. They do not insist that everyone believe in their ideas, but they are stubborn in that they insist upon the right to believe in their own ideas, and will avoid all coercion.

In dass, Emma (Hariston) and Jack (Pierce) are counterparts. (To me:) You andJack are counterparts, but you and Emma are not.

(Pause.) Earl (Williams) and Sam (Garret) are counterparts. To my readers these names mean nothing. Yet in each case the relationships noted indicate inner realizations and connections. The same realities appear in each of your lives. Will Petrosky and Ben (Fein) are counterparts. Will (who, incidentally, witnessed the 729th session) is a very intellectual young man-proud of it, though he goes to great effort to show he is one of the boys. On the other hand, Ben Fein trusts his intuitions fully, and relies upon them, yet to some extent fears his own great energy. In many respects he is a child, and utterly spontaneous.

Will dreams of being spontaneous. Yet even in this open [class] group, Ben's spontaneity becomes embarrassing to adults free enough to play with the idea of spontaneity while not trusting it completely. Ben is afraid of the intellect. He is frightened that it will "pull him down."

Now any group will show the same kind of interrelationships.* You can see them for yourselves. There is great diversity within the family of consciousness called Sumari, as there is within any physical race, and there is also great variety within other psychic families.

(11:14.) You choose to be born in a particular physical family, however, with your brothers and sisters, or as an only child. So, generally speaking, your counterparts are born in the same psychic am y as your contemporaries. These families can be called Gramada-("Wait, " I asked, "do you want to spell those?" Jane, as Seth, nodded. Then rapidly, almost with a lilt, as though singing she spelled out eight names. I added Sumari to the list. Where necessary I've also indicated syllabification and accentuation, following Seth's own delivery.)

1.Gra-ma'-da

2.Su-ma'-fi

3.Tu'-mold

4.Vold

5.Mil'-(pause) u-met

6.Zu'-li

7.Bor-le'-dim, closest to Suman.

(As Jane spelled out "Borledim, "I thought she might go into song)

8.Il'-da

9.And Su-mar'-i

Now these categories do not come first. Your individuality comes first. You have certain characteristics of your own. These place you in a certain position. As you are not a rock or a mineral, but a person, so your individuality places you in a particular family or species of consciousness. This represents your overall viewpoint of reality.
You like to be an initiator or a follower or a nourisher. You like to create variations on old systems, or you like to create new ones. You like to deal primarily with healing, or with information, or with physical data. You like to deal with sight, or sound, with dreams, or with translating inner data into the working psychic material of your society. So you choose a certain focus, as you choose ahead of time your physical family."

(Pause.) End of session. My heartiest regards, and a fond good evening.

("Thank you, Seth, and the same to you."

(11:27 P.M. "I get so screwed up at times, "Jane said, as soon as she was out of an excellent trance following the rather abrupt end of the session. "Here I think the stuff is great, but then I worry about how the reader's going to relate to it.. .Iknew I was spelling out those names."

(I wondered ~f the attributes or vocations Seth had recited could be directly related to the families of consciousness he'd given just previously, and Jane said this was the case. Neither of us could tell what went with what, though; perhaps we'll get information that will help us make some connections; perhaps I can present a list of such correlations in a note.

(Then Jane remembered that our friend Sue Watkins had had something to do with Seth naming a second family of consciousness shortly after Jane had brought the Sumari concept through several years ago [see Note 10]. But the thing was, Jane mused now, that she didn't think "Sue's family" was on the list Seth had just given: "It was something like Gramada, but that wasn't it... ." I made a note to check with Sue, whom we don't see in every class anymore, since at this time she's living outside ofElmira; I also want to see what I can find in the sessions, so that we can ask Seth to clear up any diserepaney.

(While we were having a snack Jane "picked up, "presumably from Seth, that the psychicfamilies were "like your overall mood, the predominant one you carry through your lifetime...." Then she had an interesting comment as we made ready for bed; it pertained to the question I'd asked Seth about counterparts in families: "I think that maybe the family unit is designed more to take care of the reincarnational framework, instead of dealing so much with counterparts." I wondered how all of this fit in with probabilities, but by then we were getting too sleepy to figure anything out

(Finally, and perhaps prematurely: Left untapped so far in all of this is any material from Seth on whether the counterpart and family-of-consciousness mechanisms apply to other species. If they do, I remarked to Jane as I typed this session the next day, then Seth must have a great amount of extremely interesting information on those concepts in relation to animals, say, or birds, insects, and marine life-not to mention bacteria and viruses; perhaps, also, submicroscopic entities down to the molecular and atomic levels, or even "bel ow, " are involved. I added that I hoped we'd soon begin to get the material we wanted on all of those categories, and others, and that Seth's flow of information on such topics would continue as the years passed. I planned to remind him often of our desires here.)

Session 733, January 27, 1975, 9:25 P.M., Monday

Good evening (quietly.

("Good evening Seth. ~)

Dictation: When you are in an airplane looking down upon the planet, then you see the mountain ranges and the valleys, the rivers, plateaus, cities, fields and villages. To some extent you realize that the world has physical contents, existing at one time yet varying in their characteristics. In those terms, the world is composed of its physical ingredients. That "package" is the only part of the picture that you see, however.

Psychically, your world is composed of the contents of its consciousness. You have maps of continents and oceans, and in the entire view each portion is like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, all fitting together perfectly, smoothly flowing into the natural structure of the world. So at any given time there is a world consciousness, a perfect jigsaw of awareness in which each identity, however large or small, has its part.

There are earthquakes that erupt physically, and tracings are made of them. There are also inner earthquakes of consciousness from which the physical ones emerge-storms of mind or being, eruptions in which one segment of the world consciousness, repressed in one area, explodes in another.

If you could orbit your planet in a different kind of craft, you could view the chic contents of the world, seeing the world consciousness shining ar more brilliantly than any lighted city. You could spot the point of intense activity, see the birth of new myths and the death of old ones as certainly as you might be able to see a mountain slide or a tidal wave. The physical portions of earth are all related. So does consciousness form its own kind of inner structures from which, again, the physical ones emerge. You are indeed counterparts, then, each of the other. Yet as there is great variety to physical form, so counterparts follow a still more expansive inner freedom that finds an even greater diversity of characteristics.

As I have certainly hinted, the body is a miraculous organism, and you have barely learned the most simple of its structures.1 You do not understand the properties of soul or body, yet the body was given to you so that you could learn from it. The properties of the earth are meant to lead you into the nature of the soul. You create physical reality, yet without knowing how you do so, so that the wondrous structure of the earth itself is meant to lead you to question your own source. Nature as you understand it is meant to be your teacher. You are not its master.

(Louder:) The creator is not the master of his creations. He is simply their creator, and he creates because he does not attempt to control. Period.

(9:4 5.) When you try to control power or people, you always copy. To some extent the world copies itself, in that there are patterns.2 But those patterns are always changed to one extent or another, so that no object is ever a copy of another-though it may to be the same.

(All emphatically and joyously:) In your terms, the world is intensely different from one moment to another, with each smallest portion of consciousness choosing its reality from a field of infinite probabilities.3 Immense calculations, far beyond your conscious decisions as you think of them, are possible only because of the unutterable freedom that resides within minute worlds inside your skull-patterns of interrelationships, counterparts so cunningly woven that each is unique, freewheeling, and involved in an infinite cooperative venture so powerful that the atoms stay in certain forms, and the same stars shine in the sky.

The familiar and strange are intimately connected in your-most obvious, your simplest utterance. You are surrounded by miracles. Why, then, does the world so often seem dour and cruel? Why do your fellow beings sometimes seem like unfeeling monsters-(loudly:) Frankensteins not of body but of mind, spiritual idiots, ignorant of any heritage of love or truth or even graceful beasthood? Why does it seem to many of you that the race, the species, is doomed? (Whispering:) Why do some of you feel, in your quiet moments, such a sentence just?4

You make your own reality.

That goes by itself in a separate paragraph.

(Loudly:) Generally speaking (underlined) , most of you live in your own world, with others of your kind. Those of you who do not believe in war have not experienced it. It may have surrounded you, but you did not experience it. Those of you who do not believe in greed have not suffered its "consequences." If you still see it, it is because it is a part of your reality. If you are honestly not greedy, yet you see greed, then perhaps you are serving as an example to others-but you form your own reality.

(10:01.) There are more worlds than you suppose, and in your own private experience each of you contributes to the world that you know. You and your counterparts together form it. Your physical body alone is equipped to perceive far more than you presently allow it to. Physically you are a part of every other person upon the earth, and you have a connection with each leaf and frog and nail.

You choose the city or state or country in which you live. 7 No one forces you to stay there unless you are looking for an excuse to remain. So you choose your psychic land as well. You can travel from one psychic land to another as you canjourney into other parts of the physical world. Some great travelers never left the country of-their birth.

(Again loudly:) Michelangelo5 roamed the centuries, picking up visions and ideas as others might buy postcards, journeying from one country to a foreign land. His genius shows you what you are, and yet it is but a hint of the potential with which your species is endowed.

In the light of such ideals, surely you seem wanting-yet your reality is one in which the greatest freedoms have been allowed.

This means that you have given yourselves full range so that all probabilities could be explored, and none left out that were physically feasible.

(Again louder:) This species gave itself no "preordained" taboos.

The infinite ranges possible to human capabilities would be explored-and those who chose that route said, quote: "We will trust that our creativity will find its own way, and if there are nightmares we will waken from them. We will even learn from them. We will dare to push aside the dimensions of being into those realms in which only the gods have gone before-and through our utter vulnerability to experience, discover the divinity that gives our humanity its meaning. And (whispering) through the compassion that we have learned, will we be able to understand the divine errors6 that gave us the gift of our birth. Souls and molecules each are learning, each are forming realities, each are a part of a divinity in which each counterpart has a part to play."

Break.

(10:18. Jane's trance had been deep, her delivery often fast and impassioned. She'd felt a great energy sweeping through hen, she told me. In volume, her voice had ranged up and down the scale-a most unusual demonstration as far as these sessions for "Unknown" Reality are concerned; usually she has Seth come through in a rather businesslike, routine manner, with any milder voice or speed effects taking place within that framework.

(Jane was quite relaxed. "Now I don't know what to do-I could go to bed or continue the session for....... . "She'd spent most of her day writing lyrics for rock music-for reasons not necessary to go into here-and now that activity reminded her of a poem she'd written in May 1963, well over six months before she began speaking for Seth. She recited the first verse:

Magic is my middle name,
I was so brave and tall.
No one knew who I was then,
Myself least of all.

(Jane hasn't written for music before, and found that creative activity very refreshing.

(Instead of ending the session she took time out for a peanut-butter sandwich and a glass of milk. Then at 11:15: "I'm just waiting..." Then:

"Now I'm getting dfferent things but they aren't clear, so I'll just wait. .

Then at 11:20: "I'm getting one of those frustrating things that's too big-too massive, really,-to be verbalized. There's a sense of strain. I'm trying to go beyond myself... Now I'm almost getting ~... "Jane, half smilin& bemused, shook her head. "Well, I'll see, Rob. I'll just see.. . ." She lit a cigarette and took off her glasses. Qyietly at 11:50:)

Idwell, in away, in a realm that is more direct than yours. That is one image. I allow myself greater acknowledgment of my being. I speak with the wisdom, for example, that your cells would utter if they had speech.

Iam more aware of my reality than you are of yours, but the terms of being are the same in every place and every time. They bring forth the greater comprehension of each self, of itself. (Long pause.) Ruburt experiences now what he calls a massive quality, a physical and psychic expansion of consciousness in which the dear familiar world seems small-yet twice precious. So does it appear to my consciousness.7

The petty wars, even those still to be fought, are but dim memories, once vital but lost as nightmares in greater awakenings. So even in this moment Ruburt faintly feels a nostalgic memory for lives come and gone, as you might for fond dreams barely recalled.

They represent a present unique beyond telling, alive in each consciousness, more important than you recognize. There are no real rules to be followed that will bring you into such an encounter with the present moment of reality-only a trust in the nature of your being. And that trust is within you whether or not you recognize it, for it gives you your present experience; and no matter how your mind questions, it rides securely in the great creativity of the soul.

That soul constantly creates the body, and each individual on the face of the earth at any given time places his or her trust in that reality. That feeling of certainty is the same that any plant knows. Any idea, creative insight, or dream, rides upon the same sure thrust.

End of dictation. End of session, and a fond good evening.

("Thank you, Seth, and the same to you."

(12:05 A.M. Jane said her "massive"feeling was gone now. She added that she didn't think she'd held anything back; but at the same time, she had sensed information we weren't ready for yet-or that, to put it another way, lay in ourfuture.)

Session 734, January 29, 1975, 9:10 P.M., Wednesday

(See Appendix 26 for some of the family-of-consciousness material that Jane delivered for Seth in ESP class yesterday evening.

("I'm at the point now where I know what Seth's going to talk about, "Jane said afew minutes before the session began. "Ifeelfunny waitii~ though-edgy, or restless. Maybe it's the wind. Seth's there, but he doesn't quite make it through...."

(The weather had been fluctuating dramatically all day. It turned extremely windy tonight-so much so that I thought about tornadoes, although we'd heard no radio warnings about them. This afternoon the temperature had registered better than 500; it still read considerably above freezing, even ~f the chillfactor generated by the wind made the night seem much colder. Finally:)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation: There is a connection between counterparts and the families of consciousness.

As you and your brothers or sisters might belong to the same physical family, so generally are you and your counterparts part of the same psychic group of consciousness.1 Remember, however, that these psychic groups are like natural formations into which consciousness seems to flow. Your own interests, desires, and abilities are not predetermined by your membership in a given psychic family. Underline that entire sentence.

For example, you are not creatively playful because you are Sutnari. Instead, you join the Sumari grouping because you are creatively playful. The groups of consciousness, then, are not to be equated with, say, astrological houses.

Taking the Sumari as an example, there can be overly intent, ponderous, or simply dour Sumari who have not learned to use their creativity graciously, or with joy. Yet that joyful use of ability will be their intent. At particular periods of history, in your terms, different families may predominate.

(Long pause. The wind burst against our apartment house in great forceful thrusts that were most unusual for this section of the country. The house actually shook at times. I found myself thinking that occasionally the trite phrase, "the howling wind, " was a very apt one.)

The psychic groups, however, overlap physical and national ones. The Sumari are extremely independent, for instance, and as a rule you will not find them born into countries with dictatorships. When they do so appear, their work may set a spark that brings about changes, but they seldom take joint political action. Their creativity is very threatening to such a society.

However, the Sumari are practical in that they bring creative visions into physical reality, and try to live their lives accordingly. They are initiators, yet they make little attempt to preserve organizations, even ones they feel to be fairly beneficial. They are not lawbreakers by design or intent. They are not reformers in the strictest sense, yet their playful work does often end up reforming a society or culture. They are given to art, but in its broadest sense also, trying to make an "art~~ of living, or example. They have been a part of most civilizations, though they appeared in the Middle Ages (A.D. 476-c. A.D. 1450) least of all. They often come to full strength before great social changes. Others might build social structures from their work, for example, but the Sumari themselves, while pleased, will usually not be able to feel any intuitive sense of belonging with any structured group.2

(9:38. The wind continued to beat strongly at the house. Jane paused in trance for some moments, her eyes closed as Fto repel the noise.)

There is no correlation between the families of consciousness and bodily characteristics, however. Many of the Sumari choose to be born in the springtime, 3 but all those born in the spring are not Sumari, and no general rule applies there. They also have a liking for certain races, but again no specific rules apply. Many of the Irish, the Jews, the Spanish, and some lesser numbers of the French, for instance, are Sumari-though they appear in all races.

Generally speaking, America has not been a Sumari nation, nor have the Scandinavian countries or England. Psychically speaking, the Sumari often very nicely arrange existences in which they are a minority-in a democracy, say, so that they can work at their art within a fairly stable political situation. They are not interested in government, yet they do rely upon it to that extent They are apt to be self-reliant within that framework. Their recognized artistic abilities may predominate or be fairly minimal.

Sumari is a state of mind, a slant of being. They are not fighters, nor will they generally advocate a violent overthrow of government or mores. They believe in the creativity of change, naturally occurring.

Nevertheless, they are often part of the cultural underground simply because they are seldom conformers. A Sumari is very uncomfortable as a member of any large commercial venture, particularly if the work involves habitual or boring routine. They are not happy on assembly lines. They like to play with details-or to use them for creative purposes. They often go from one job or profession to another for that reason.

(9:5 5.) If you begin to look into the nature of yourself, and feel intuitively that you are a Sumari, then you should look for a position in which you can use your inventiveness. Sumari enjoy theoretical mathematics, for example, yet make miserable bookkeepers.

In the arts, Picasso was a Sumari.

(9:5 7.) Give us a moment... Many entertainers are Sumarl. You will seldom find them in politics. They are not usually historians.

(Long pause.) There are few with any position within organized religions. Because of their feelings of self-reliance, however, you can find them as farmers, working intuitively with the land. They are equally divided between the sexes. In your society, however, Sumari qualities in the male have until lately been frowned upon to some degree.

Take your break.

(10:01 P.M. Her trance hadn't been particularly deep, Jane sa4 yet now she proceeded to underestimate by almost half the 51 minutes she'd been "under." She still felt unsettled she still wasn't sure that her odd state resulted from the tumultuous weather.

(I wrote down two questions for Seth, and read them to l~.

(1. Granting Seth's concept of time: Does the reincarnating personality usually choose to experience its simultaneous lives through various families of consciousness, or is it more likely to remain "loyal" to one such family in all of them? At the start of tonight's session Seth had remarked that generally speaking counterparts are part of the same psychic family, but I wanted to know freincarnating personalities are also.

(2. And based upon my comments at the end of Session 732: How do animals, and other lfe or "non/fe" formi. fit into the counterpart and family-of-consciousness ideas?

(After listening to me discuss the second question for a couple of minutes, Jane said she had an answer to it, or at least a partial one. Her material was presumably from Seth, although she would give it. Just as she began speaking she was interrupted by a heatry knocking-first at the door to the public hall that separates the two apartments we occupy on the second floor, then at each of the apartment doors themselves. A feminine voice cried outforJane. We waited. The persistent racket, penetrating the wind noise, meant just what we thought it would: an end to the evening's session. When I opened the door I faced a comely but very agitated woman whom I'll call Barbara. She was probably in her early 40's. An expensive suitcase sat beside her~

("A ren't you expecting me? Seth told me you would be. . .

(NeitherJane nor Ihad expected our unexp ected out-of-state visitor, ofcourse. I can note later that Jane dealt more extensively with the whole episode in Chapter i 8 of Politics-[and also that it's interesting to compare our individual accounts of the same event, even though mine is much shorter]. Just let me state here that we found ourselves confronting a well-educated individual who was deeply afraid of her own energy. Because ofthat fear she had developed certain problems that were severe enough to keep her from working at her profession in the law.

(Barbara insisted that she wanted help, but as in other cases that Jane and I have encountered, her focus upon her distress was so intense that we couldn't breach it; certainly not in the little time available. Neither could Seth, who eventually came through-a course of action Jane hardly ever allows to happen in that kind of circumstance. Barbara just couldn't grasp that she was creating her own reality.

(After two frustrating hours I took her to a motel. The wind had abated considerably, but the night was much colder. When I returned I was able to tell Jane that Barbara had made a decision: Tomorrow she was going to journey by airplane ha/fray across the country-to see another psychic who would surely be able to help her.

(AndJane had something to tell me: She had been able to accountfor her strange restlessness this evening as soon as Barbara appeared, for she realized she'd been "picking up" that the session would be interrupted. "Of course, " we said now, using that very valuable attribute called hindsight. But each time Jane gets this kind of confirmation of her abilities, it seems that both of us are surprised anew.

(Now see Note 4for material concerning the two questions I'd noted at 10:01.)

Session 735, February 3, 1975, 9:12 P.M., Monday

(Last Thursday Iflnished the final pen-and-ink drawing of the 40 I'd planned for Jane's book of poet i~ Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time.1 I spent Friday checking the batch, then on Saturday morning I mailed them to Tam Mossman, Jane's editor at Prentice-Hall. That afternoon we talked with a real-estate agentj, Debbie [not her real name], whom we've known for some time. Sunday we rested. And today we began house hunting.2

(From the outside only. Jane and I inspected several homes in Elmira. The first one we looked at-a bungalow on a Foster Avenue-intrigued us considerably. Our interest was hardly coincidental, though. Debbie had pointed out a photograph of it in a local real estate catalog~ and we were quite aware that it bore a good resemblance to the house we'd considered buying in Sayre, Pennsylvania, in the spring of J974•3 Besides being bungalows, both houses were of about the same age, and even of similar colors.

(Jane and I were also interested in the fact that we'd seldom been on Foster Avenue, even though it lay within comfortable walking distance of the apartment house we lived in on Water Street; nor could either ofus recall having noticed the "Foster Avenue place" before. Wespeculatedthat we'd "homed in on it" now, as ~ffor the first time, because our combined focus was opening up in the direction of homes.

(That concentration upon places to live reminded us offamilies, of course-"reg'alar"families as well as Seth's families of consciousness. While I drove us back to our apartment house for supper we discussed the incredibly complicated roles and events surrounding those dfferent kinds of organizations-whereupon Jane came up with a most apt phrase: "The genealogy of events... ." She laughed, then added: "As families of people have their genealogies, so do families of events."4

(As we waited for the session to begin Jane abruptly received a block of impressions from Seth. They concerned the opposing uses ofpersonalpower by two individuals whom we'd encountered within the last week: the woman lau~yer who had interrupted the session last Wednesday evening, and who is so afraid of her power; and the young classical guitarist who had visited us last night, and who revels in the positive use of his power. The impressions are for use in either "Unknown" Reality Jane said, or in Psychic Politics.5 She grinned: "Thanks, Seth." Then she launched into the session before I couldfinish these notes. I came back to them at first break.)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Dictation. Give us a moment...

The Sumari characteristics do not exist in isolation, of course. To one extent or another, each family of consciousness carries within it the characteristics inherent in all of the families. There is, therefore, great diversity.

The Sumari abilities are highly creative ones, however. To a large extent they have been inhibited in your society. I have been speaking of them here so that each individual can learn to recognize his or her own degree of Sumariness. The playful, creative elements of personality can then be released. These qualities are particularly important as they add to, temper, or enhance the primary characteristics of the other families of consciousness.

(Pause.) If you are a "reformer, " a "reformer by nature, " then the Sumari characteristics, brought to the surface, could help you temper your seriousness with play and humor, and actually assist you in achieving your reforms far easier than otherwise. Each personality carries traces of other characteristics besides those of the family of consciousness to which he or she might belong. The creative aspects of the Sumari can be particularly useful if those aspects are encouraged in any personality, simply because their inventive nature throws light on all elements of experience.

The psyche as you know it, then, is composed of a mixture of these families of consciousness. One is not superior to the others. They are just different, and they represent various ways of looking at physical life. (Pause.) A book would be needed to explain the dimensions of the psyche in relation to the different families of consciousness. Here, in this manuscript, I merely want to make the reader aware of the existence of these psychic groupings. I am alert to the fact that I am using many terms, and that it may seem difficult to understand the differences between probable and reincarnational selves, counterparts and families of consciousness. At times contradictions may seem to exist You may wonder how you are you in the midst of such multitudinous psychic "variations."

An apple can be red, round, weigh so much, be good to eat, sit in a basket, but be natural on a tree. It can be tart or sweet You can find one on the ground, or on a table or in a pie. None of these things are contradictory to the nature of an apple. You do not ask "How can an apple have color and be round at the same time?"

(Long pause.) You can look at an apple and hold it in your hands, so it is obvious that its shape does not contradict its color. You see that an apple can be red or green or both. If I said: "Apples sit quietly on a table, " you would have to agree that such is sometimes the case. If I said: "Apples roll down grassy inclines, " you would also have to agree. If I said: "Apples fall down through space, " you would again be forced to concede the point It would be clear to you that none of these statements contradicted each other, for in different circumstances apples behave differently.

(9:40.) So far, you do not hold your consciousness in your hand, however. When I speak of the behavior of your psyche, then, you may wonder: "How can my psyche exist in more than one time at once?" It can do this just as an apple can be found on a table or on the ground or on the tree.

(Thew) Change that last sentence to read: "justas apples.. (My emphasis.

(Occasionally Seth will make this kind of correction in his material)

The inside dimensions of consciousness cannot be so easily described, however. If you ask "How can I have reincarnational and probable selves at once?", you are asking a question comparable to the one mentioned earlier, colon: "How can an apple have color and be round at the same time?"

(9:45.) Give us a moment... A young man was here last evening. He possesses great mastery of the guitar. As he played, it was obvious that any given composition "grew" from the first note, and had always been latent within it. An infinite number of other "alternate" compositions were also latent within the same note, however, but were not played last night They were quite as legitimate as the compositions that were played. They were, in fact, inaudibly a part of each heard melody, and those unheard variations added silent structure and pacing to the physically actualized music.

Following this analogy, in the same way each psyche contains within it infinite notes, and each note is capable of its own endless creative variations. You follow one melody of yourself, and for some reason you seem to think that the true, full orchestra of yourself will somehow drown you out (intently) .

When I speak in terms of counterparts, then, or of reincarnational selves and probable selves, I am saying that in the true symphony of your being you are violins, oboes, cymbals, harps-in other words, you are a living instrument through which you play yourself. You are not an instrument upon which you are played. You are the composer and the symphony. You play ballads, classical pieces, lyrics, operas. One creative performance does not contradict the others.

Take your break.

(9:58 to 10:16.)

Life as you think of it is far from being inflexible.

Returning to our comments about the alternate compositions, you can at any time bring into your own life-composition elements from any "alternate" ones. Period.

Some people structure their lives around their children, others around a career, or pleasure, or even pain. Again, these are simply certain focuses that you choose, that direct your experience. You can add other focuses while still retaining your own identity-indeed, enriching it.

Sometimes you act as though one ability contradicts another. You think "I cannot be a good parent and a sexual partner to my mate at the same time." To those who feel this way a definite contradiction seems implied. A woman might feel that the qualities of a mother almost stand in opposition to those of an exuberant sex mate. A man might imagine that fatherhood meant providing an excellent home and income. He might think that "aggressiveness, "6 competition, and emotional aloofness were required to perform that role. These would be considered in opposition to the qualities of love, understanding, and emotional support "required" of a husband. In actuality, of course, no such contradictions apply. In the same way, however, you often seem to feel that your identity is dependent upon a certain highly specific role, until other qualities quite your own seem threatening. They almost seem to be unselflike."

To some degree you feel the same way when you encounter the concept of probable selves, or of counterparts. It is as though you had an unlimited bank of abilities and characteristics from which to draw, and yet were afraid of doing so-fearing that any addition could make you less instead of more. If all of this goes on personally, as you choose one melody and call it yourself, then perhaps you can begin to see the mass creative aspects in terms of civilizations that seem to rise and fall.

So you look back through the historical past All of the counterparts alive as contemporaries then form, together, a musical composition in what you think of as a present; and once that multidimensional song is struck then its past ripples out behind it, so to speak, and its future sings "ahead." But the song is being created from its beginning and its end simultaneously. In this case, however, it is as if each note has its own consciousness and is free to change its portion of the melody. Yet all are in the same overall composition, in so that time itself serves as the scale (gesturing) in which the [musical] number is written-chosen as a matter of organization, focus, and framework

Now in music the pauses are as important as the sounds. In fact, they serve to highlight the sounds, to frame them. The sounds are significant because of their placement within the pauses or silences. So the portions of your psyche that you recognize as yourself are significant and intimate and real, because of the inner pauses or silences that are not actualized, but are a part of your greater being.

Now imagine a composition in which the pauses and the silences that you do not hear are sounded-and the notes that you hear are instead the unheard inner structure.

In the last few sentences there is an intuitive "definition" of probable and reincarnational selves, and counterparts, in relationship to the self that you know. In your case, however, you can change your own pacing, add variations, or even begin an entirely new composition if you choose to. Now many people have done this in very simple, mundane ways by suddenly deciding to use abilities they had earlier ignored. A man of letters, for instance, at the age of 40 suddenly remembers his old love of carpentry, reads do-ityourself manuals, and begins his own home repairs. After disdaining such activities as beneath him for years, he suddenly discovers an intimate relationship with earth and its goods, and this appreciation adds to words that before may have been as dry as ash.

(10:48.) In that case, you see, there would be in another reality a carpenter or his equivalent with a latent love of words, unexpressed-and that individual would then begin to develop; reading books on how to write, perhaps, and taking up a hobby that would allow him to express in words his love of the land and its goods. (With emphasis:) The creativity of the psyche means that no one world or experience could ever contain it Therefore does it create the dimensions in which it then has its experiences.

Each portion, by whatever name, contains within it the latent potentials of the whole. If the unknown reality exists, it is because you play one melody over and over and so identify yourself, while closing out, consciously at least, all of the other possible variations that you could add to that tune.

Give us a moment... Do you want to rest your hand?

("No.")

There are many kinds of music. I could say: "Music is triumphant, ~~ or "Music is tragic." You would understand that I am not contradicting myself You would not say, or (humorously) at least I hope you would not say: "Why would anyone write a composition like Tchaikovsky's Pathêtique?"8 Why would a composer choose a somber mood? The music itself would have its own sweep and power, and would indeed be beautiful beyond all concepts of good and evil.

(All very intent, leaning fonvart'4 eyes wide and dark.) In some manner, even a tragic composition of merit transcends tragedy itself The composer was exultant in the midst of the deepest emotions of tragedy, or even of defeat. In such cases the tragedy itself is chosen as an emotional framework upon which the psyche plays. The framework is not thrust upon it, but indeed chosen precisely because of its own characteristics-even those of despondency, perhaps.

Tasting those qualities to the utmost, from that framework the psyche probes the fires of vitality and being as experienced from that specific viewpoint, and the despondency can be more alive than an unprobed, barely experienced joy. In the same manner, certain individuals can and do choose life experiences that involve great tragedies. Yet those tragic lives are used as a focus point ihat actually brings into experience, through comparison, the great vitality and thrust of being.

(Still in the same intense manner:) This does not mean that a tragic life is more vital than a happy, simple one. It just means that each individual is involved in an art of living. There are different themes, instruments, melodies-but existence, like great art, cannot be confined to simple definitions.

From the outside, for instance, it might seem as if a young person dies because in one way or another he or she is dissatisfied with life itself. Certainly it is usually taken for granted that suicides are afraid of life. However, suicides and would-be suicides often have such a great literal lust for life that they constantly put it into jeopardy, so that they can experience what it is in heightened form. The same applies to many who follow dangerous professions. It is fashionable to suppose that these people have a death wish. Instead, many of them have an intensified life wish, so to speak. Certainly it seems destructive to others. To those people, however, the additional excitement is worth the risk The risk, in fact, gives them an intensified version of life.9

This is obviously not the case with all suicides'0 or would-be suicides, or all risk-takers. But those elements are there. A person who dies at 17 ~y have experienced much greater dimensions of living, in your terms, than someone who lives to be 82. Such people are not as unaware of those choices as it seems.

You may take a break or get Ruburt his cigarettes, as you prefer.

("We'll take the break, then."

(11:15 to 11:31.)

This does not mean that you cannot alter your experience at any given point.

Take a hypothetical young woman named Mary, who is partial to the kinds of experiences just mentioned. Temperamentally, she seeks out crisis situations. She may initiate suicide attempts. On the other hand she may entertain no such ideas, but be murdered at the age of 17.

(Forcefully:) We are certainly not condoning the murderer-but no slayer kills someone who does not want to die, either.

He picks, or she picks, victims as intuitively as the victim seeks out the slayer. On the other hand, Mary's experiences in life may make her change her mind, so to speak, so that at 17 she encounters a severe illness instead, from which she victoriously recovers. Or she might narrowly miss being murdered when a bullet from the killer's gun hits the person next to her. On an entirely different level and in a different way, she might have no such experiences but be a writer of murder mysteries, or a nurse in surgery. The particular variations that one person might play are endless. You cannot consciously begin to alter the framework of your life, however, unless you realize first of all that you form it. The melody is your own. It is not inevitable, nor is it the only tune that you can play.

To some extent you can actualize portions of your own unknown reality, and draw them into the experienced area of your life. There is an obvious relationship between one note and another in a musical composition. Now in terms of physical families and in larger terms of countries, there is a relationship between realities, which constantly change as the notes do. To some extent your reality is picked up by your contemporaries. They accept it or not according to the particular theme or focus of their lives.

(11:45.) Give usamoment...

(From its position on a bookcase some 1 0 feet away, the telephone began to ring-to faintly buzz, actually, since we'd turned down its bell before the session. Still, I was afraid the repetitious noise might bother Jane as she sat quietly in trance. Her eyes were closed.)

In those terms, you are not a part of any reality that is not your own. If you share it with others, it is because others are concerned with variations of the same theme. This applies in terms of world goals "at any given time."

(Still buzzing...) Give us a moment... For example: In certain terms, you are working with the challenge of how best to use the world's resources. Some countries will overproduce. Others will underproduce. Contradictions seem to occur. Some people will be overfed while others starve; some sated with material conveniences, others relatively ignorant of them. These are variations of the same theme, you see. In overall terms contemporaries are working on the same group of challenges, though either oversupply or great lack might show itself at any particular place. Perhaps, however, the challenges could not be clearly delineated without those extravagances of degree.

(The phone stopped ringing-at last.) As contemporaries, counterparts choose a particular time framework. The time format alone makes certain focuses clear, that in your terms could not be made in another context. What you learn in your present about industry-"progress"-and the equitable sharing of the earth's products, could only be learned in a context in which industrialism was experienced as going too far, where technology was seen and known as a growing jeopardy.

(Again forcefully:) In terms that I admit are difficult to describe, the creative solutions will change the course of history in the past, so that variations are taken, and technology does not progress in the same wa~1 that it "has" in your experience.

Ihave said before that personally you can change your past from the present." The same applies to civilizations.

Iwill end the session. My heartiest good wishes and a fond good evening.

(12:01 A.M. The ending was quick. Jane's trances and deliveries had been excellent-strong and vital. "Seth's going into historicalprobabilities in the next session, "she said. "I could go into that stuff right now, Ifeel so good. I could do it for another hour without any hassle. There's a lot there on national counterparts, too. "12 Then while I wrote this note she proceeded to tell me more about what Seth had in mind.

(I knew that ~f I encouraged her she'd go back into the session. I was tempted, but it was after midnight; we had ESP class coming up in 19 hours, with much to do in the meantime. And my writing ha nd was getting tired.

("Tonight I did have the feeling-for the first time-that 'Unknown' Reality was heading toward an end, "Jane said, "that Seth will soon be getting ready to tie it up, and incorporate the ending with the beginning. Not right away; but it's the first time I've felt that."

(Actually, she now had many channels open from Seth. It seemed that eveiy topic we mentioned engendered another one. Seth even had "a bunch of stuff' available on Jane, myself and music. This included data on my starting to take violin lessons when I was eight years old-an event I hadn't thought offor what seemed to be decades/it took place in 1927], but which Iwas able to instantly recall as soon as Jane mentioned it.)

Session 736, February 5, 1975, 9:24 P.M., Wednesday

(One of the first houses Jane and I looked at yesterday occupied a hillside corner lot in West Elmira, on a street we'd never been on before. Our friend in real estate, Debbie, had directed us to it from a photograph in the same catalog she'd used to point out the Foster Avenue place, which we had inspected P.M., Monday. In fact, both houses are pictured, one above the other, on the same page of the catalog. See the opening notes for the last session.

(The house that was for sale-and which we came to call the "hill house"-was empty and locked. There were other homes about, but each one had a feeling of privacy amid its thick insulation of trees. We rather casually surveyed the place in question from our car. At the time it didn't "turn us on. , 'It bore no similarity to those in Sayre, or on Foster Avenue in Elmira. It was a ranch-style, cedar-sided dwelling that had just been painted a dark green-a conventional one-stoiy affair with white shutters, afireplace, a picture window, an attached double garage in back, and many trees and shrubs. Part ofthefront lawn was rather steeply banked, part of the curving flagstone walk was stepped as it rose up to the porch. The house faced the south; before it in the valley lay Elmira itself almost hidden by trees; beyond the city the hills rose in tiers. Streets-without sidewalks-passed the hill house on but two sides, at the southwest corner, and each one dead-ended less than a block away. In back of the house to the north and east, woods rolled up the gentle curve of the hill and over its top.

(The above notes and my speculations to follow, all added later, look ahead to sessions 738-39 for February 19 and 24 respectively. I'm inserting the material here to continue the record of our house hunting in an orderly way, and to show how even an important perception [in this case of a house] can at first make hardly any conscious impression upon the perceiver-although here two perceivers, Jane and I, were involved.

(But, I think, in those terms there can be an appreciable lag before an original perception-event takes on any special sign ficance for the concerned person or persons. During that lapse, that first impression is being modified and enhanced within the psyche by subsequent events and understandings; it starts to build up in importance; then, when all of the intuitive-creative "work" has been done, the original perception emerges-or bursts-into consciousness. It's mature now, it makes sense: "Why didn't I see that before?" Something new is known. Those synthesized data are available forfresh conscious decisions.

(Now Jane's and my psyches were involved in this other-than-conscious activity concerning the hill house for 16 days from the time we first saw it. During that period we held the 737th session [on February 17], but since we weren't consciously concerned with that particular place then, we neither talked about it nor asked Seth to comment; instead, on his own during the session, Seth discussed the house on Foster Avenue as representing a probability, and apretty likely one, that we could choose to explore. Seth didn't suggest that we buy that particular place, and had he done so I'm fairly sure we'd have rejected the idea. Jane and I were free to make our own joint decision-and all the while, both of us were unconsciously pro cessing the hill-house situation.

(Because we'd been looking at houses today, Jane was excited:

"How am I going to get my mind on the session Y"Just before Seth came through, she reread his list of the families of consciousness that he'd given for the 732nd session. She iso, I quickly learned, for both practical and intuitive reasons.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation. House information later if you want it. There is a tie-in here with Sumari characteristics.

("Okay.")

Dictation: Generally, the Sumari have the capacity to reach out emotionally to others and empathize. To some extent this feeling for humanity often serves as an impetus for creative work. Many of them also have a mystical sense of connection with nature. At the same time they can be relative isolationists, wanting to work in solitude.1

Various kinds of seemingly contradictory characteristics may appear, then. One Sumari may have many deeply rewarding personal relationships. Another might find friends a distraction. One Sumari might enjoy performing in front of an audience, while another might not even be able to bear the thought. Since each person is unique, the various Sumari characteristics will then appear quite differently. Some live in cities, basking in the emotional nearness of others, content with a few flowerpots for a reminder of nature's beauty. Another might have a farm. In most cases, however, the slant of consciousness is primarily creative. Period.

Iam not, again, going into detail about the other families, but I will briefly discuss them because counterparts will generally belong to the same family.

The first family that I mentioned (Gramada2) , for example, specializes in organization. Sometimes its members follow immediately after a revolutionary social change. Their organizational tendencies are expressed in any area of life, however. They are behind art schools, for instance, though they may not be artists themselves. They may set up colleges, although they may or may not be scholars.

The founders of giant businesses often belong to this family, as do some politicians and statesmen. They are active, vital, and creatively aggressive. They know how to put other people's ideas together. They often unite conflicting schools of thought into a more or less unifying structure. They are, then, often the founders of social systems. In most cases, for instance, your hospitals, schools, and religions, as organizations, are initiated by and frequently maintained by this group.

(9:38.) These people (the Gramada) have excellent abilities in putting together solitary concepts that might otherwise go by the wayside. They are organizers of energy, directed toward effective social structures. They usually set up fairly stable, fairly reasonable governments, schools, fraternities, although they do not initiate the ideas behind those structures.

The next group (Sumafi) deals primarily with teaching. Again, the relationship with others is good, generally speaking. They may be gifted in any field, but their primary interest will be in passing on their knowledge or that of others. They are usually traditionalists, therefore, although they may be brilliant. In away they are equally related to the family just mentioned (Gramada) , and to the Sumari, for they stand between the organized system and the creative artist. They transmit "originality" without altering it, however, through the social structures.

Isay that they (the Sumafi) do not alter the originality. Of course ~y interpretation of an event alters it, but generally they teach the disciplines while not creatively changing the content. As historians, for example, they pass down the dates of battles, and those dates are considered almost as immaculate facts, so that in the context of their training they see no point in questioning the validity of such information.

In the Middle Ages they faithfully copied manuscripts. They are custodians in a way. Again, there are infinite variations. Many music or art teachers belong in that category, where the arts are taught with a Love of excellence, a stress upon technique-into which the artist, who is often a Sumari (although not always, by any means) can put his or her creativity. Period.

Do you have that?

("Yes. "But the pace had been fa st.)

Give us a moment... The next family (Tumold) , in the order given, is primarily devoted to healing. This does not mean that these people may not be creative, or organizers, or teachers, but the primary slant of their consciousness will be directed to healing. You might find them as doctors and nurses, while not usually as hospital administrators. However, they may be psychics, social workers, psychologists, artists, or in the religions. They may work in flower shops. They may work on assembly Lines, for that matter, but if so they will be healers by intent or temperament.

Imention various professions or occupations to give clear examples, but a garageman may belong to this (Tumold) group, or to ~y group. In this case the garageman would have a healing effect on the customers, and he would be fixing more than cars.

(A one-minute pause at 9:5 9.) Give us a moment... The healers might also appear as politicians, however, psychically healing the wounds of the nation. An artist of any kind, whose work is primarily meant to help, also belongs in this category. You will find some heads of state, and-particularly in the past-some members of royal families who also belong to this group.

(10:02.) Give us a moment... Those in the next group (1/old) , are primarily reformers. They have excellent precognitive abilities, which of course means that at least unconsciously they understand the motion of probabilities. They can work in any field. In your terms it is as if (louder) they perceive the future motion or direction of an idea, a concept, or a structure. They then work with all of their minds to bring that probability into physical reality.

In conventional terms they may appear to be great activists and revolutionaries, or they may seem to be impractical dreamers. They will be possessed by an idea of change and alteration, and will feel, at least, driven or compelled to make that idea a reality. They perform a very creative service as a rule, for social and political organizations can often become stagnant, and no longer serve the purposes of the Large masses of people involved. Members of this (1/old) family may also initiate religious revolutions, of course. As a rule, however, they have one purpose in mind: to change the status quo in whatever the area of primary interest.

It is already easy to see how the purposes of these various families can intermesh, complement each other, and also conflict. Yet all in all, almost, they operate as systems of creative checks and balances.

(With a smile, eyes wide:) Take your break and check your balance.

(10:12. Jane's delivery had been somewhat faster than usual. While we talked now she interrupted herself to say that she"got in a flash" the main activities, the predominant slants of consciousness, of the next three families on Seth's list: the Milumet, the Zuli, and the Borledim. Yet when she tried to describe their attributes for me she had dfficulty in doing so; the information was peculiarly evanescent, she said.

(She did remember that Milumet represented many mystics, then added rather hunwrously that she didn't think the name fit the activity-she thought Zuli a much better mystical appellation. All of this, of course, while Jane herself is a Sumari mystic.3 But some mystical dfferences began to emerge when Seth resumed dictation at 10:40.)

Now: Dictation: The next family (Milumet) is composed of mystics.

Almost all of their energy is directed in an inward fashion, with no regard as to whether or not inner experience is translated in usual terms. These persons, for instance, may be utterly unknown, and usually are, for as a rule they care not a bit about explaining their interior activities to others-nor, for that matter, even to themselves. They are true innocents, and spiritual. They may be underdeveloped intellectually, by recognized standards, but this is simply because they do not direct their intellect to physical focus.

Those belonging to this (Milumet) family will not be in positions of any authority, generally speaking, for they will not concentrate that long on specific physical data. However, they may be found in your country precisely where you might not expect them to be: on some assembly lines that require simple repetitive action-in factories that do not require speed, however. They usually choose less industrialized countries, then, with a slower pace of life. They have simple, direct, childish mannerisms, and may appear to be stupid. They do not bother with the conventions.

(Long pause.) Strangely enough, though, they may be excellent parents, particularly in less complicated societies than your own. Period. In your terms, they are primitives wherever they appear. Yet they are deeply involved in nature, and in that respect they are more highly attuned psychically than most other people are.

Give us a moment... Their private experiences are often of a most venturesome kind, and at that level they help nourish the psyche of mankind.

The next group (Zuli) is involved mainly with the fulfillment of bodily activity. These are the athletes. In whatever field, they devote themselves to perfecting the capacities of the body, which in others usually lie latent.

To some extent they serve as physical models. The vitality of creaturehood is demonstrated through the beauty, speed, elegance, and performance of the body itself. To some extent these people are perfectionists, and in their activities there are always hints of "super" achievement, as if even physically the species tries to go beyond itself. The members of this family actually serve to point out the unrealized capacity of the flesh-even as, for example, great Sumari artists might give clues as to the artistic abilities inherent, but not used, in the species as a whole. The members of this group deal, then, in performance. They are physical doers. They are also lovers of beauty as it is corporally expressed.

(Long pause at 11:01.) Members of this (Zuli) family can often serve as models for the artist or the writer, but generally speaking they themselves transmit their energy through physical "arts" and performance. In your terms only, and historically speaking, they often appeared at the beginnings of civilizations, where direct physical bodily manipulation within the environment was of supreme importance. Then (underlined) , normal physical reactions were simply faster than they are now (intently) , even while normal body relaxation was deeper and more complete.

End of dictation. Take a break or end the session as (underlined) prefer (amused.

("We'll take the break

(11:05. Jane said the sounds of traffic rising up from the cornerjust southwest of our second-floor apartment had bothered her after last break, and that in part this accounted for the shorter delivery. I'd been able to tell when her discomfiture started, I thought, for her once-rapid delivery slowed, then began to fluctuate.

(Seth returned at 11:19. For a couple ofpages of notes he discussed the house we'd looked at on Foster Avenue two days ago. This material came through even though we had our first viewing of the "hill house" yesterd ay; see the notes [added later] at the beginning of tonight's session. Seth's information on the Foster Avenue place, and our present and potential relationships with it, was very illuminating. He helped explain the psychic attractions Jane and Ifeel for the house, without implying a commitment toward it [through purchase, for instance] in any way. Some of those present and potential relationships, incidentally, actually stem from our childhood days.

(Here's one point brought out in that deleted material: Since Seth had told Jane and me long ago that the three of us belong to the Sumari family of consciousness, 4 we were more than curious now when he declared that the woman who presently owns the house on Foster Street is also a Sumari: "[She] added Sumari characteristics of expansiveness." But to go a step further:

According to Seth the house's previous owner for many years, a male now deceased, had also been Sumari. It's quite intriguing to watch such psy chic and physical connections unfold.

Session 737, February 17, 1975, 9:26 P.M., Monday

(We skipped last week's two regularly scheduled sessions so that Jane could rest, and so we'd have more time to spend house hunting. House notes and material are presented after first break. Jane did hold ESP class on Tuesday night, February 11, though.

(Now these notes hark back to the end of the 732nd session, when I wrote a paragraph concerning Sue Watkins, our longtime friend who attends class as often as she can these days from the small town where she now lives, some 35 miles north of Elmira. Jane listed Seth's families of consciousness last month in Session 732, but wound up the evening's work thinking that several years ago, soon after she'd initiated the Sumari breakthrough, Sue had psychically tuned in on the name of a second family of consciousness-one that Seth didn't give in the 732nd session. Jane thought the family name was similar to the "Gramada" that Seth had described; at session's end I wrote that I intended to check our records for the missing name, and to ask Seth about it-but I neglected to do either of those things. One of the reasons for my failure to settle the matter right away was the lack of any immediate pressure to do so, for we hadn't seen Sue since before the 729th session was held; that's over five weeks ago now; newspaper work has often kept her too busy to make the trzp to Elmira.

(Sue did attend class last Tuesday evening however, arriving just in time before it began to read the transcri pt for the 732nd session. Then during class she handed me a note that I'll paraphrase a bit here: "In a session on Sumari I witnessed in 1971 or early 1972-I picked up a family-of-consciousness name, and Seth said it was 'Grunaargh.' It wasn't on the list given last month."

(Class was a very busy one, with over 40 people present. When Seth came through Sue had time for but one question: Was Grunaargh connected to any of the families of consciousness Seth had named in the 732nd session? "It is indeed, "Seth answered. "It is related to one already given."

(Sue's note intrigued me anew: After class I promised her that not only would I search our files about Grunaargh, but that with Seth's help Jane and I would eventually get more information on that family, and present it somewhere in the notes for "Unknown" Reality. The point I want to make here is that others beside Jane can intuitively divine material on the families of consciousness. Actually, for whatever reasons, Sue had glimpsed a family other than Sumari before Jane had. Going through back sessions late this evening I found what I wanted: Sue had picked up on the Grunaargh' during the 5 98th session, which she'd recorded for me the evening after Jane had made the whole Sumari breakthrough in class, on November23, 1971.

(Before tonight's session Jane told me that she felt the Grunaargh represented a variation of Seth's Gramada family of consciousness. "But the important things are the family characteristics, " she said, "by whatever name. The similarities in the two names are legitimate, I think. There are also family combinations, and these will have their own names." Then she reminded me that several times during the past week she'd felt that Borledim, the next family of consciousness on Seth's list, is strongly concerned with parenthood and related roles.)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Now: Dictation (quietly) .

The next family (Borledim) deals primarily with parenthood. These people are natural "earth parents." That is, they have the capacity to produce children who from a certain standpoint possess certain excellent characteristics. The children have brilliant minds, healthy bodies, and strong clear emotions.

While many people are working in specific areas, developing the intellect, for example, or the emotions or the body, these parents and their children produce offspring in which a fine balance is maintained. No one aspect of mind or body is developed at the ex ense of another aspect.

The personalities possess a keen resiliency of both body and mind, and serve as a strong earth stock. It goes without saying that members of one family often marry into other families. Of course the same thing happens here. When this occurs new stability is inserted, for this particular family acts as a source-stock, providing physical and mental strength. Period. Physically speaking, these people often have many children, and usually the offspring do well in whatever area of life is chosen. (Pause.) Biologically speaking, they possess certain qualities that nullify "negative" codes in the genes.2 They are usually very healthy people, and marriage into this group can automatically end generations of so-called inheritedweaknesses.3

These people (the Borledim) believe, then, in the natural goodness of sex, the body, and the family unit-however those attributes are understood in the physical society to which they belong. As a rule they possess an enchanting spontaneity, however, and all of their creative abilities go into the family group and the production of children. These are not rigid parents, though, blindly following conventions, but people who see family life as a fine living creative art, and children as masterpieces in flesh and blood. Far from devouring their offspring by an excess of overprotective care, they joyfully send their children out into the world, knowing that in their terms the masterpieces must complete themselves, and that they have helped with the underpainting.

[The Borledim] are the stock that so far has always seen to it that your species continues despite catastrophes, and they are more or less equally distributed about the planet and in all nationalities. They are most like the Sumari. They have the same love of the arts, the same general attitudes. They will usually seek fairly stable political situations in which to bear their children, as the Sumari will to produce their art. They demand a certain amount of freedom for their children, however, and while they are not political activists, like the Sumari their ideas often spring to prominence before large social changes, and help initiate them. The one big difference is that the Sumari deal primarily with creativity and the arts, and often subordinate family life (as Jane and I have done) , while this family thinks of offspring in the terms of living art; everything else is subordinated to that "ideal."

The Sumari often provide a cultural, spiritual, or artistic heritage for the species. This (Borledim) family provides a well-balanced earth stock-a heritage in terms of individuals. These people are kind, humorous, playful, filled with a lively compassion, but too wise for the "perverted" kind of compassion that breeds on other individuals' weaknesses.

An artist expects his paintings to be good-or, if you will forgive a jingle: at least he should. These people expect their children to be well-balanced, healthy, spiritually keen, and so they are. You will find members of the Borledim family in almost any occupation, but the main consideration will be on the physical family unit.

These parents do not sacrifice themselves for the sake of their children. They understand too well the burden that is placed upon such offspring. Instead, the parents retain their own clear sense of identity and their individual characteristics, serving as dear examples to the children of loving, independent adults.

The next family (Ilda) is composed of the "exchangers." They deal primarily in the great play of exchange and interchange of ideas, products, social and political concepts. They are travelers, carrying with them the ideas of one country to another, mixing cultures, religions, attitudes, political structures. They are explorers, merchants, soldiers, missionaries, sailors. They are often members of crusades.

(10:01.) Throughout the ages they have served as the spreaders of ideas, the assimilators. They (the Jlda) turn up everywhere. They were pirates and slaves as well, historically speaking. They are often primarily involved in social changes. In your time they may be diplomats, as they were also in the past. Their characteristics are usually those of the adventuresome. Very seldom do they live in one place for long, although they may if their occupation deals with products from another land. Individually they may seem highly diverse in nature, one from the other, but you will not find them as a rule in universities as teachers. You might find them as archaeologists in the field, however.

Agood many salesmen belong in this (Ilda) category. In your terms they may be cosmopolitan, and often wealthy~ so that frequent travel is possible. On the other hand, however, in certain frameworks, a humble merchant in a small country who travels through nearby provinces might also belong to this family. These are a lively, talkative, imaginative, usually likeable group of people. They are interested in the outsides of things, social mores, the marketplace, current popular religious or political ideas. They spread these from place to place. They are the seed-carriers, both literally and figuratively.

They can be "con men, " selling products supposed to have miraculous values, blinding the local populace with their city airs. Yet even then they will be bringing with them the aura of other ideas, often inserting into closed areas concepts with which others are already familiar.

The members of that family of consciousness provide frequent new options. They may be scientists, or the strictest kind of conventional missionaries abroad in alien lands. In your present time they are sometimes Indians (from India, that is) , or Africans or Arabs, journeying to your civilizations. They add to the great flow of communication. They may be emotional rather than intellectual, as you understand those terms (pause) , but they are restless, usually on the move. They can be actors, also.

In the past some (Ilda) have been great courtesans, and even though they were not able to travel physically, they were at the heart of communicaiton-that is, a part of court life, or involved with diplomats who did travel.

(Pause at 10:24.) Many of the courtesans who ruled the salons of Europe belonged in the (Ilda) category, then. The Crusades4 involved great movement of this family, in which trade and commerce, and the exchange of political ideas, were far more important than the religious aspects. Some members of this family served as initiators of new orders in the (Catholic) church in the past-the worldly Jesuits, for example, and some of the more sophisticated popes5 (amused) , who had a fine eye out for commerce and wealth. These people ~y be appreciators of fine art, but usually for its commercial value.

Now you can often find them in the departments of government, in those areas where travel is involved, or in finance. They frequently enjoy intrigue. All in all, they mix mores.

Take your break.

(10:30. "I've got the freling he likes that last family, "Jane said as soon as she was out of trance, then added, laughing: "I've got the feeling he likes them as well as Sumari. I was picking up all kinds of things about them." Yet her delivery had been even in pace and emphasis. Now see Note 6for more family-of-consciousness material.

(So far, Jane and I haven't been able to find a home that we intuitively feel is the right one, although the place on Foster Avenue has intrigued us considerably since we first saw it on February 3. [Since then we've looked at many other houses.] Last Thursday afternoon [February 13], Jane was busy with her creative writing class so I went house hunting alone. Without feeling any great curiosity I checked out one place we'd seen before: the hill house. Once again I thought it wouldn't &for us. Jane agreed when I asked her about it at the supper table.7

(The next day, Friday, Jane had an auditory 'psychic" experience of sorts about the Foster Avenue situation; Saturday morning we made a formal offer to buy the house in question. For our own reasons we offered a low price, and it was promptly refused. The rejection didn't completely close out our interest here-or Seth's either-but it did help us put the whole matter in better perspective. Note 8 covers Jane's inner experience and the details surrounding our house offer. [At 12:06 this evening Seth also refers to Jane's auditory intuition.]

(Then in Sayre, Pennsylvania, this afternoon [P.M., Monday the 17th], ~ wefound ourselves partic~p ating in house-related developments that took us back in time more than nine months. 9Jane and I don't believe in coincidences. We'd considered the Sayre episodes finished last year; yet today the echoes of those earlier events were so prominent that I came to think of them as actual projections from the past into the present, and so into the future, in a most practical manner. Today Jane and I very clearly felt those connections-or probabilities, ~f one chooses-developing. Seth remarks upon some of them after J break, but the best we can offer are afew hints; otherwise all of these house notes would be much longer.

(Jane had declared before the session began tonight that she thought ~ Seth would go into our house affairs in connection with probable realities, but that such material wouldn't go with his book dictation on the families of ~ consciousness. I facetiously replied that ~7f the information didn't fit into "Unknown" Reality we'd 'force it to." I was only half putting her on. Anything on our house hunting I thought, would be welcome here because it would help unite these late sessions for "Unknown" Reality with some of its much earlier ones [in Volume 1, as it turned out]. It almost seemed as though we'd planned things this way.

(Resume at 11:01.)

Now: Give us a moment.

You may or may not use this in the book as y~ prefer-that is, dictation can continue smoothly without this passage, or it ~ can be inserted at this place.

There are all kinds of Sumari, as there is great diversity within each family of consciousness.

Your house hunting serves, however, as an excellent example of the ways in which Sumari are attracted to other Sumari, even in connection with probabilities in your system. The same relationships could be seen with other family interconnections. You have already noticed a similarity in the two houses thus far that have attracted your attention.

The first (in Sayre) , mentioned far earlier in "Unknown" Reality, you thought was definitely sold, and today you discovered that the sale was not that final.'0 As you discussed these issues a rather important main point escaped your minds: The man who owned the first house (Mr. Markle) was a dealer in antiques and precious stones, utterly devoted to his work and engrossed in it, considering it his art. The house has a garden on one side, with high trees, and a yard on the other, and was relatively shielded. The man's family took second place to some extent. The kitchen and dining areas were small. He had his office downstairs and he often worked at home. His art came first."

The second house (on Foster Avenue in Elmira) was owned for years by the people who gave it its character. The large living room was so spacious just so that it could hold a grand piano. The man who owned the house thought of pianos as his art (he was in the business of selling them) , and the living room was simply meant to set a piano off.

Again, you have a small kitchen, a garden and some sheltered privacy. Both homes appealed to you, however, because the people who lived in them organized their houses about their work. This is what you picked up and reacted to. You did not react to the attitudes of others in those families who "had to put up with those conditions, " because to you they are natural.

Neither house expresses your own particular individualistic ways of life, of course, but each one comes close enough to intrigue you, and either one could be made to suit your purposes quite easily. You were attracted also because the people who put their greatest imprint upon those houses so shared some of your tendencies. In the second house your ideas of privacy were shown to you, carried to an extreme, where the windows would not even open. In the first house the stairs to the second floor were purposely steep, and never altered, because no one was invited to view the private family bedrooms. The stairs were meant to be formidable.

Now let us look at your real-estate agents.

As mentioned much earlier, the real-estate couple who showed you the first house, in Sayre (see Note 11) , have definite artistic leanings. The woman particularly likes the house, and thought you would. She identified with your ideas of art and work, and saw a probable variation of herself happily ensconced in such surroundings.

Your second real-estate lady (Debbie) , leading you unerringly to the Foster Avenue house, did so for the same reasons. She paints as a hobby.'2 You did not consciously pick out real-estate people who had artistic connections, but you were led to them and they to you. You recognized each other's characteristics.

(11:25.) Now When you make any important decision you automatically rouse all portions of your psyche. You set probabilities into motion. The kind of decision to some extent organizes the patterns. This should be obvious. But when you decide to move you are putting yourself in league with others who also make the same decision. Someone who moves will leave a house or an apartment vacant for someone else to move into. Unconsciously, then, the movers are in league with each other. There are sympathetic probabilities set up.

The [other] couple also interested in the Foster Avenue house are musicians-attracted to it for the same reasons that you were. You would find their house in Sayre interesting. They are primarily teachers of music, however. Their purposes do not necessarily involve the same kind of privacy that you want, although they think it attractive.'3

You find typical ranch-style homes, generally now, uncomfortable because-and this should be obvious-they are given over mainly to family living of a particular kind, colon: a kind that obviously separates work from living areas. Work is definitely done outside of the house.

Since you both work at home, those houses do not fit you, generally speaking.'4 Work is not incorporated into daily family life, but certainly exists apart from it-something you find, each of you, relatively inconceivable. You can see farms better, though you are not farmers, simply because there also work and borne life are one.

Both houses, therefore, still exist in your practical present as probable acquisitions, because y~ have not dismissed them.

Years ago (in 1964) , you were interested in another house (also in Elmira) ; again, it had been owned by an artist A coincidence?

Hardly.

Isuggested that you take it (but see my note in the material at next break) . It would have been good for you both, but you were afraid of it, and your feelings had much to do with the contract being turned down (by the Veteran's Administration) . That house represented what each of you thought of as unbridled, undisciplined creativity. It was dirty and cluttered. The artist had children who ran about without any control. There was much playfulness there, however, that could have tempered some of your great mutual seriousness at the time. You did not choose to accept such a probability then, any more than you could have accepted my advice all the wa~. The authorities turned the contract down-but the authorities stood for the inner disciplinarians, and you did not want to share your road with the world; nor did you want, later, to share your driveway (Jbr the Sayre house) with your neighbor.

End of session, or take a break as you prefer.

("We'll take the break."

(11:43. I told Jane that, once heard, much of Seth's material had the quality of being so obvious that we in turn seemed to be quite opaque not to have reached the same conclusions ourselves. After considering the alternatives

Seth suggested immediately following last break, I decided to leave his delivery in place in the session as a guide for the reader; parallels can be drawn with many other situations, I think, having nothing to do with art or houses.

(Considering parallels, here's another of the many "connections" that Jane and I have become aware of since we began our housing odyssey last year [already we've compiled a list of3O similar relationships]: Three out of the four dwellings that in one way or another we've been seriously involved with possess driveways shared by next-door neighbors-Mr. Markle's in Sayre; the apartment house we live in now; and the house in Elmira that we considered buying in 1964. Only the Foster Avenue place is exempt here. I see such connections as symbols running through our personal experiences.

(A clarflcation: Seth didn't actually suggest that Jane and I buy the "1964 house." His statements just before break that he did so are distortions on Jane's part I would say, while speaking for him tonight; even in trance, her memory could have been in error-or she could have been touching upon another probable reality. What Seth did talk about, and quite legitimately, were the benefits we'd enjoy ~f we did acquire that place. He discussed the whole affair in the 65th session for Sunday, June 28, 1964, using passages like: "I am certainly not going to make any decisions for you. The house you looked at today should prove an excellent buy.. ." and, '~ffyou purchase the house..." and, "You will have to make your own decisions."'5

(Resume at 11:55, with afew deletions as indicated.)

Now: You chose your present neighborhood particularly because when you moved here (from Sayre in 1960) it was highly professional. Work and home were united. The dentist next door lives and works in the same house. So did the other dentist around the corner, and the chiropractor beside him. There was a uniting factor that you recognized, where office and home were in the same location.

For that reason, certain so-called city locations could serve you well. That is, Elmira is no metropolis, but there are areas where old homes with grounds exist amid other old homes now given over to offices of one kind or another.

The suburbs obviously will not suit you unless you find a house apart from others while in the same general area. You like both the [Sayre and Foster Avenue] houses thus far because their grounds set them apart from the neighbors and give clearly defined boundaries-very important to both of you.

Give us a moment... Because there are such inner connections as mentioned (at 11:25) , your intents are going outward, to be picked up by others. (With emphasis:) It would take a book to probe into the probabilities alone being roused at this time, for example, by all of those interested in either of those two houses.

The present owner, even, of the Foster house thinks of it as "work." since she herself is a... working [real-estate] person. Ruburt finds the rugs there out of place, however, because they do not fit in with his ideas of work areas. The owner, however, is quite proud of them. Her work in that respect is to decorate, and the rugs represent her idea of what belongs in the house.

The hints I have given you should be of help...

(12:06.) The [inner] voice said: "Wait a few days, " because Ruburt unconsciously knew that the.. . owner... already had a higher offer that might very well fall through-in which case she would later be more amiable to negotiation.16

End of session, unless you had something else you wanted to ask.

('Do you want to say something more about that auditory experience ofJane's?")

Icannot answer that quickly, of course. Briefly, however, Ruburt's own information is correct, and ~t did come from "the library." I can elaborate when you want.

Another point, however: Both houses also have built-in bookcases-physical versions, in other words, of Rubures library. If you want the entire explanation now you can have it. Otherwise-("On second thought I'm afraid we'll have to wait... ." I'd just realized how tired I was.)

All right. (Louder:) My heartiest regards, you house hunters, you.

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

(12:13A.M.)

Session 738, February 19, 1975, 9:27 P.M., Wednesday

(Today Jane and I spent several discouraging hours driving through and around Elmira, inspecting homes that were for sale. Nothing seemed suitable. Then, as we were passing through the outskirts of West Elmira late in the afternoon, I spontaneously turned onto an avenue that we'd first traveled on February 4.

(Jane was momentarily surprised. "Hey-where are we going?"

("Let's take another look at that house up here on the hil4" I said I. and our car began the long 3teady climb toward a certain dead-end road... So we looked at the hill house again-ffrom the outside only-but this time we really looked at it. Our inner cogitations about it were beginning to flower. Mine came into consciousness before Jane's didi, but she soon caught up with me. [See the notes prefacing the 73 6th session.]

(Seth had used more than half of P.M., Monday's session to discuss our house hunting in connection with Sayre and Foster Avenue. Some of his related material there had been fairly person4 but we'd left it in place because of its general application. When Seth added the hill house to his list tonight, however, his connecting information about Jane and me was so intimate that we decided to delete parts of it. But I've reassembled the remainder in the proper ordei, and it's more than enough to show how closely such "objective" things as houses can be bound up with beliefs and emotions.

(After supper tonight I asked Jane ~f Seth would comment on the Grunaargh family of consciousness. This is the one Sue Watkins had "picked up on" several years ago; see the notes preceding the last session. I've come to think of those data involving Sue and "her"family as cropping up every so often like counterpoint to other themes in this 6th section.)

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth. '9

Now first the house.

("Okay. '9

Because that house is on a hill it has certain advantages. Looking down at the town gives the kind of perspective that each of you enjoys-as here (in the apartment house) you look down from the second story.

The aspects of nature there are important, however, and will be most refreshing. The air itself is clearer and cleaner.

Give us a moment... You both seem informal, yet your informality exists within its own rather formal structure. The places so far have had a certain formality, within which, in contrast, you are informal. The formality of the position of the house upon its hill provides a structure of its own. The same house on low land would not suffice, you see. It is the entire picture that is important. You do not understand your own mixtures of order and spontaneity, formality and informality.

Houses themselves have a quality, a life, that is picked up by potential buyers. Certain houses repel you and Ruburt. They will positively attract others, however, so the qualities in the houses that appeal to you two are precisely the ones that have turned off others, and prevented their sale.

It is highly important that you move. You both do need privacy for your work and because of your natures, but this does not mean that you should try to find a place with no [distractions] within miles. It does mean that you settle for a reasonable amount of privacy, in that you do not carry the idea to extremes.

There are alliances and understandings in neighborhoods-signs for others to read. The front entrance of the Foster Avenue house was not even used. The hill house is set up high. Anyone who walks up the steps from the street knows [he or she is] making a trip. Your daily environment is very important to your work, and to Ruburt. You require certain things of your art, and therefore you want the same things in your surroundings. Once you had it where you live now, for all of your criticism. Now it is gone, and you are different.

(And inevitably so, I thought.)

At this time of your lives it is important that you act. I am telling you that of the [Elmira] houses in your mind it really makes little difference which one you choose. Neither is perfect. You would find yourselves quite hampered in [any] idealistically perfect environment. You need some give-and-take. Either place could well be made to suit your specific needs, and each reflects strong elements of your personalities.

(10:15.) Give us a moment... I am trying to give you the best information I can. The hill house has its own kind of inner light This is not possessed by the Sayre house, and I recommend against that house regardless of price. It has a built-in darkness that no amount of applied light would disperse. Nor will either of you ever-particularly you, Joseph-be satisfied with sharing a driveway.1 The hill house, because of its location, adds a spaciousness that is inside the Foster Avenue house; but either way, you have an open feeling in terms of expansion.

(10:28 to 10:32.)

Now: Once I gave you a recommendation, and you did not really take it.2 I can foresee probabilities, but you make your own reality, and I will not take the responsibility. Taking that for granted, and knowing your characteristics, I have more to say. You may not like it

The Foster house represents many things, and though it is not on a hill it stands for your feelings of secrecy and privacy. The windows do not open. It is dark, yet it is large, and in its way elegant. The hill house has some privacy. It does not have secrecy, and while you have a view you cannot hide in it. It is too contemporary.

The Foster Avenue house has a certain decadence. Do you follow me.?

("Yes. '9

The hill house does not. It represents a kind of challenge you have thus far not accepted. As given, however, it still possesses qualities that do go in with your natures.

Give us ~me... The hill house represents the future, and the contemporary qualities of it. I suggest-and only suggest-that that be your choice, because it is the most daring of the ventures for you, and because the hill will give you a view in many more ways than one.

Give us time... When you live in a house that belongs conspicuously to another age, you are to some extent avoiding the contemporary nature of life. Ruburt may find himself furnishing the place more formally than another one, yet the open quality of the air is the kind that you do not hide in.

("You're talking about the hill house.")

Iam indeed. If some rooms are small you can enlarge them. Take a break.

(10:4 5. "Ifeel sad, "Jane said as soon as she was out ofa very good trance. "Ifeelfunny-like some part of me wants to burrow into that house on Foster Avenue. Walk around that yard all alone at....... ."

("I think Seth gave good advice, " I said.

("I'm shocked, "she countered. "For a while I loved the idea of that place. But he's sofucking smart-Seth-"

("You got what you wantecL answers."

("I know. I said before the session that f we got house material I really wanted good answers, that I'd stay out of it as much aspossible... ." Jane went into the kitchen, looking for matches. All in all, I thought she was "recovering" quite easily from Seth's data, and that she was helped here because we'd revisited the hill house today. Every so often someone wants to know about the extent to which we follow Seth's advice or information, and I suppose a good answer is that we may decide to go along with it ~f it suits our conscious purposes to do so. Sometimes we don't agree with what Seth tells us even when we know it's good counsel. [However, Jane and I freely admit that on occasion we~ve made the wrong choice in deciding to ignore what Seth had to say; in retrospect we've seen that he gave out very valid material.]

("Oh, he14 I'm getting more, "Jane laughed, coming back into the living room. She sat down. "I'll have to say that when I ask for straight stuff I get it." She still looked at bit teaiy, but at the same time I was sure now that we'd steered away from any probable reality involving Foster Avenue-and perhaps Sayre too, I thought, considering Seth's material at 10:15 tonight.3

(Once again, some very personal portions of Seth's delivery are excerpted. Resume at 11:02.)

Now: The hill environment is as important to your painting as the ready-made workroom in the Foster Avenue house. The very air is inspiring, so that you will paint more there even if your work area is not immediately as good. The sunny nature [of that house], regardless of what Ruburt thinks now, will help him creatively and physically-but the hill house represents a decision to face the world while maintaining certain necessary and quite reasonable conditions. It provides privacy yet openness. The hillside is not yours, yç~ it is our view, and it has strong evocative connections with your creative lives. A definite change in living patterns and of psychic attitude will result, that would not happen in the house on Foster Avenue.

This also means that greater adaptability is required, but it will be to the good. The whole difference here is the quality of nature as it surrounds both places. The one invites you to roam, the other to stay inside. Both houses have Sumari characteristics, but in different combinations. You both need the sun.

(Then at 11:21, here presented verbatim.) Now a note: I do not want to get into family variations, but Sue Watkins picked up a variation of the Gramada family of consciousness (the Grunaargh)-quite legitimate, and at the time very good on her part.4 People love to make divisions. There are then what you can call subfamiies, combinations, highly creative. All divisions are simply for the purpose of organizations of consciousness. The families mix and interrelate, so that you could indeed subdivide them, but for my purpose there is little point to this.

As the physical races mix, so do the psychic ones. Every once in a while, in your terms, a new family forms out of such subgroups. So the families are meant to be understood as general categories into which earth-tuned consciousnesses fall more or less naturally.

Reading this section of "Unknown" Reality, each person should be able to feel an identification with a family. Yet he or she might also find within strong characteristics of another one, in which case the individual is in the same position as someone who is, say, part Irish and part French in physical terms.

Now it is fairly unusual to be half Italian and half Chinese, though it is possible; so some of the psychic famiiesjoin more easily with certain others, and some who are very sympathetic to each other find it quite difficult to blend. The "natural earth parents" [the Borledim] and the Sumari, for instance, are very close, and yet have great difficulty in merging, because one considers the family itself as art, and the other subordinates the family for a different kind of art. Often they do not even recognize each other as having many of the same characteristics.

(11:41. That was that on the families of consciousness for the evening. Jane proceeded to deliver for Seth a few more paragraphs of house material, here deleted, followed by this exchange:)

That is the end of the session, unless you have questions.

("No, I think you've already answered them allfor now.")

Ithink I have.

("And very well, too."

(With a smile.) I think I did a pretty good job.

Session 739, February 24, 1975, 9:25 P.M., Monday

(On Friday, Februaty 21, Jane and I not only saw the hill house from the inside/or the first time-but decided to buy it. We made up our minds quite effortlessly while being taken through it by a real-estate agenL Ofcourse we knew what Seth had suggested during last Wednesday's session, and his advice was valuable; at the same time we'd been strongly inclined to make the purchase after looking at the house anew that Wednesday afternoon. At the Realtor's office two days later, then, we signed the initial papers leading to the final purchase, which will be consummated in a couple of weeks or so.

(As I wrote at the start of the 736th session, we first encountered the hill house on Februaty 4, on just our second day of searching A period of gestation lasting well over two weeks had to follow, though, before we understood what we'd seen during that time we investigated perhaps 35 other places.'

(These notes give me a chance to hint at another in the series of "house connections" that Jane and I have become so much aware of this month-for there is a close professional relations/up between the owner of the Foster Avenue house and the real-estate agency through which we're buying the house on the hilL Jane and I had heard of this association in a remote way, but it had no meaning/or us until we committed ourselves to the hill house; the agency concerned is but one of many we'd contacted; yet also involved is our friend Debbie, who works for another real-estate firm, and who had first called our attention to the hill house. There are more intertwinings here [including some art elements] than it's necessaiy to describe; but studyingjust this one complex house-connection, then seeing how it combines with some 0/the others we've become conscious of leaves Jane and me more than a little bemused by this interlocking reality we're creating2

(In tonight's relatively brief session Seth discussed our house adventures in quite a personal way, yet also passed along some related concepts of a more general nature. I've deleted certain portions of his material about us-while leaving other parts/or presentation here, since they do extend his recent work for "Unknown" Reality.)

Now: Good evening. ("Good evening Seth.")

This is not dictation. Once you made up your minds to, you found your house-with characteristic swiftness, let me add,-and you avoided several pitfalls.

Ruburt was correct The picture of you, taken on the hill in the front yard (fry afriend) , portrays you as far as your stance toward the hill house and land is concerned. Ruburt was never athletically inclined, but always loved nature. The house and the grounds will allow you to pick up on old feelings that he had discarded, renewing to some extent a "fresh air" image that he once found natural.

The hill house neighborhood is composed of a rather beneficial balance: No particular family of consciousness predominates. Instead, a love of woods and trees transcends such classiflcadons. The area has brought together diverse kinds of people, united by love of nature, some airy spaces, and some privacy... The people are also achievers of one kind or another, and while [your goals may be different] you appreciate the fact that they are trying to do something with their lives. Many are aware of their limitations. Many dabble in the arts.

Some are patrons of the arts. They possess a great curiosity about artists, writers, or others who have chosen a different route, and achieved in that fashion. They needed you there. This does not mean that some of your characteristics may not seem as strange to them as some of theirs may seem to you.

(Pause at (9:45.) quite simply, few of them have known people who have devoted themselves to their art. They have only met them at receptions (with amusement) . They have an almost childlike wonder and curiosity about such matters, and will actually give you as much privacy as you want.

Your psychic work will also help them question the values of their lives. In any case, barriers will drop on both sides. Many of the children are grown, and the adults have more time to think and ponder. They also need to see other life-styles. The mixture of families of consciousness allows you also to take a close look at the ways in which these tendencies merge to form communities. You are not moving into a closed psychic area, then, where everyone sees the world as you do, even generally speaking. Nor should you.

For you, Joseph (as Seth calls me) , the place is reminiscent. You are also presented, whether you know it or not, with certain artistic challenges that the landscape itself will provide, and that you have chosen.

Imentioned that the air was deaner on the hill. You will also have another kind of freedom: Your psychic and other creative work will be easier simply because you will not have others so dose to contend with in terms of thought patterns.3

(And now verbatim:) The fireplace in the hill house is advantageous, as the one in the house on Foster Avenue would have been, simply in that the open hearth represents an inner source of strength and stability. The open flame, the source of cave heat, is evocative, and represents a closeness with the origins of light and life.

Now: An open fire elicits certain responses from the cells4 that, for instance, a furnace does not. The effect of the light plus the warmth on the skin is extremely healing. People sit by a fireplace in wintertime because it is unconsciously recognized that recuperative and therapeutic results occur. Simply put, the cells respond to firelight in somewhat the same manner that flowers do to sunlight. The stimulation is much more than skin deep, however, and an open fire is cleansing. It even helps clear the blood.

Cavemen recognized this. I am not suggesting that you use your fireplace instead of the furnace. I am saying that in wintertime there are definite health-value effects to be felt when you sit in front of an open fire. Two evenings a week would be quite effective.

The proximity of so many trees also has considerable health value, and to those doing psychic or other creative work the effects are particularly conducive to a peaceful state of mind. Trees are great users and yet conservators of energy, and they automatically provide much vitality to areas in which they are plentiful. This is physically obvious in scientific terms. Besides that, however, the consciousnesses of trees are remarkably kind and enduring.5

Now you think of dogs as friends of man, and you personify gods in human terms. You think of them sometimes as guardians. In those terms, now, trees are also guardians. They are attached to the people they know. You cannot put a leash on them and walk them around the block, yet trees form a protective barrier about, say, a home or a neighborhood. They are actively concerned. They have personalities-certainly to the same extent that dogs do, yet of an entirely different nature. They respond to you. The trees in that (hill house) neighborhood then are particularly friendly, strong, and protective, and they will help renew your energies.

The air there is dryer in a certain way. Now ocean air is wet but it is healthy. River air is wet, but it may be healthy or unhealthy, according to the nature of the river, the land, and the attitude of the people. After the flood [in your area], the river air is felt to be a threat, and to many it is therefore unhealthy. At some time I will give you information discussing the reasons why some people, after being flooded in one location, then move to another equally threatening environment.

The hill property represents a certain kind of security, then-financial, spiritual, and artistic-but an open security, in which there is relative privacy without an overemphasis upon secrecy, which is something different.

Take your break.

(10:17P.M. Jane's delivery had been very steady. She told me now, however, that she was entering a relaxed state. Her very pleasant situation continued to deepen, so we decided to let the rest of the session go.

(The flood referred to by Seth took place on June 23, 1972. It was caused by the massive tropical storm, Agnes, and devastated many areas in New York., among other eastern states. Low-lying portions of Elmira were much damaged. Jane and I were involved in it, and Seth discussed our experiences in Personal Reality see Chapter i, for instance.

(Now this is the right time to refer the reader to Appendix 27, which contains Sue Watkins's account ofherpast-lfe involvement with the Grunaargh family 0/consciousness.)

Session 740, February 26, 1975, 9:35 P.M., Wednesday

(In ESP class last night Jane told all of her loyal students, some of whom have been with her almost from the time she began holding such meetings in the summer of196 2', that class was suspended until we'd moved into the hill house and settled down a bit-however long that might take.

(Jane and I were inside "our" hill house for only the second time this afternoon. Again we were accompanied by a real-estate agent; because of insurance regulations we're not allowed to have a key to the place yet, although we've been told that this dilemma will be resolved ve~y soon. In the meantime I've begun what seems to be an awesome task. packing many ofour possessions into an endless series of cartons that had once held things like wine, mayonnaise, cereal, pipe fittings, and so forth.

(Just before the session Jane began to edge into an altered state of consciousness other than the one she uses/or her "Seth trance, "as she put it. For afew moments she sat quietly with her eyes closed. She felt "the idea, mentally, of something shaped like a television screen" off to her right. By now I was writing down what I could. "And now it's coming closer. I don't know what it is, or what it has to do with the session, ~fanything. " She paused, then resumed in the past tense: "It came up fairly close to me. I walked through it and down a long chute. There were coils in there. They did things with me-healing things-then dropped me back in my chair.

("I had the feeling that Seth was in this chute or tunnel, in miniature, and that he looked like he does in your portrait of him, only infldl length."'

(Back to the present: "Oh-he comes forward, then retreats, oscillating realfast. But in some way the Seth thing in this is in the background. Now he's turning around, this miniature Seth. He's walking away, out of the chute and into this great big Seth who's like a statue.

("Then in the eyes of this Seth there are two little Seths looking out. Both of these images are like your portrait. Now they climb out of the eyes; with their bodies they make a garland around the big Seth's head; they sit on it back-to-back like a pair ofbookends." Pause, eyes closed. "Wow-a whole bunch of these little Seths climb up on top of the giant head-but inperfectposes. They're very stylized, but all reaL And Seth will explain it, "Jane abruptly sai4, evidently quite surprised. "The little images face in all directions around the head of the big Seth. I know it's not right, not a good analogy, but they're like gargoyles on a steeple...

("It's all very distant now. I never saw the entire gia nt-sizedfigure of Seth. The head and the arms were clearest. The whole thing was an immeasurable distance from me."

(After another pause: "Okay, I think we can have a session now. But until Seth said so, I didn't know he'd explain any of this.")

Now: Give us a moment.

("Good evening Seth.")

Dictation (quietly) : Ruburt saw the images in a particular fashion so that he could understand certain information about the nature of the psyche.

The giant image of myself, never clearly glimpsed by Ruburt, represents my own greater reality. In a particular fashion, that identity cannot be fully expressed within the confines of any one form, any more than yours can. Period. Ruburt saw many miniature versions of me. In his inner vision these appeared as identical, simply so that he would identify them as portions of myself. They are actually quite different, one from the others.

Each one is involved in its own context of reality, each one pursuing its own directions for its own purposes. One of those "Seths" was born in your space and time. That Seth then seeded himself, so to speak, in the space-time environment you recognize-appearing through the centuries, sending out offshoots of "himself, " exploring earthly experience and developing as well as he could those potentials of his own greater identity that could best be brought to fruition within a creature context.2

That one Seth was endowed with his own inner blueprint. The blueprint gave him an idea of his potentials, and how they could be best fulfilled in earthly terms.3

Give us a moment.. . The self, as I have said [many times] before, is not limited. It can therefore split off from itself without being less. This Seth might be "born" two or three times in one century-or more-and then in your terms not appear for five or ten centuries. Each Seth would be completely independent, however, and each appearance would signify the creation of a new personality-not simply a new version of an old one.

Each would be inherently aware of its own potentials and "background, " but each would tune in to a particular point of that so-called background.

What I am saying here applies to the greater identity of each reader. Give us a moment... Because you are usually so worried about preserving what you think of as your identity, we use terms like reincarnational selves or counterparts. If you truly understood the nature of your individuality, however, you would clearly see that there is no contradiction if I say that you are uniquely yourself, that your individuality has an indestructible validity that is never assailed, and when I also say that you are at the same time connected with other identities, each as sacredly inviolate as your own.

(9:53.) You are used to thinking of exterior organizational patterns. You might live in a city and a state and a country at one time, yet you do not think that your presence in one of these categories contradicts either of the other two. So you live amid psychic organizations, each having its own characteristics. You may consider yourself Indian though you live in America, or American though you live in Africa, or Chinese though you live in France, and you are quite able to retain your sense of individuality.

So the psychic families, or the families of consciousness, can be thought of as natives of inner countries of the mind, sharing heritages, purposes, and intents that may have little to do with the physical countries in which you live your surface lives. People are born in any month of the year in every country. All those in Norway are not born inJanuary or August. In the same way, all the members of any given psychic family are spread across the earth, following inner patterns that may or may not relate to other issues as they are currently understood.

Certain families have a liking for certain months of birth, but no specific rules apply. There is indeed an inner kind of order that unites all of these issues; yet that inner order is not the result of laws, but of spontaneous creation, which flows into l~own kinds of patterns. You see the patterns at any given time and try to make laws of them.

Iam trying to stretch your imaginations, and to help you throw aside rigid concepts that literally blind you to the dimensions of your own reality. Again-you are biologically equipped to perceive far more of that reality than you do.5

Give us a moment.. . (A one-minute pause.) You are not a miniature self, an adjunct to some superbeing, never to share fully in its reality. (Long pause.) In those terms you are that superself-looking out of only one eye, or using just one finger.

Much of this is very difficult to verbalize. (Long pause.) You are not subordinate to some giant consciousness. While you think in such terms, however, I must speak of reincarnational selves and counterparts, because you are afraid that if you climb out of what you think your identity is, then you will lose it.

Take your break.

(10:11. I think that in his delivery since 9:53 especially, Seth did a good job of making some important points in a very brie/way.

(Jane's rather intent delivery had slowed noticeably during the last 10 minutes. "Boy, "she said, 'I was getting st uff toward the end that neither of us-Seth or me-could verbalize. There wasn't anything in my thought patterns that he could make words out of to express what he wanted to say. I vaguely felt it, but it was pretty alien to my psychological experience. "At the moment, at least, I couldn't recall hearing her voice such ideas just that way before in the sessions.6

(Then: "Wait-I'm starting to get something on it, "Jane suddenly said. "He's found something in my thought patterns he can use..."She sat with her head down. 'I'm getting a whole lot of stuff now. I'm embarrassed to say it, "she laughed, "but I've got the ft eling that fI rubbed right here between my eyes-you know, the third eye thing-I could get a lot more information... .

(Jane didn't rub between her eyes-and without leaving her chair she went back into the session within a very few minutes. Her eyes were closed. Her delivery was so subdued at first that I wondered ~f she was using her Seth voice. Resume at 10:15.)

Now: We will see if we can express some concepts about the self in a new way. In his own Psychic Politics Ruburt has presented from his (psychic) library some information concerning official and unofficial numbers.3

(Pause, hand to closed eyes.) Between each official number in a given series he envisions literally infinite space. The infinitesimal becomes infinite.

Now (eyes open) : In the same way the most infinitesimal self is infinite, and the most finite self, carried to the extremes of itself, is infinite. Each of you is part of an infinite self. That infinite self appears as a series of finite selves in your reality.

Beneath that perceived reality, however, each finite self, carried to its degree, is itself infinite. Now here is one for the books (with amusement) : but there are different kinds of infinities. There are

different varieties of psychological infinities that do not meet-that-is, that go off in their own infinite directions.

(Now/or aftw moments Jane rubbed in a circular motion between her closed eyes.)

As long as you believe that as individuals you belong in any given series, you appear to yourselves as finite.

You think in terms of linear time, and the best you can do-to imagine your deeper reality is to consider reincarnation in time. It

is a matter of focus. You usually identify with the outside of yourself, and with the outside of the world. You do not, for example, usually identify with the inside of your body, with its organs, much less its cells or atoms-yet in that direction lies a certain kind of infinity (intently) .

If you would identify with your own psychological reality, following the inward structure of thoughts and feelings, you would discover an inward psychological infinity. These "infinities" would reach of course into both an infinite past and future. Yet true infinity reaches far beyond past or future, and into all probabilities-not simply straightforward into time, or backward.

(10:29.) There is literally an infinity in each moment9 you-recognize, as numerically there is an "infinity" behind or within any prime number10 (3, 97, 863, et cetera) that you recognize.

There are infinite versions of yourself, but no one negates the others, and each is connected with the others, and aids and supports them. There are other quite legitimate numerical systems that you do not follow. There are other kinds of psychological organizations also. In those terms Ruburt has learned, or rather Ruburt is learning, to alternate a series-to bring information from-one [neurological series] to another, so to speak.

However, none of this is apart from normal living. Whether or not they want to mention it here in "Unknown" Reality, both Ruburt andJoseph have learned to correlate data so that some of the implications involved in a simple move from one house to another become apparent. They are not mathematicians. They will not statistically analyse the results. Yet I tell you that the moves that you make in daily life have indeed infinite effects-and I am not using the word loosely.

Now take your break.

(10:36. "Wow, "Jane exclaimed as she emerged from her short but excellent delivery. "Before the session I didn't feel a thing. I was just sort of happily dopey-no ideas at alL But I really clicked in before this break. Seth finally found something he could use to make analogies. I wasn't aware of traffic noise or anything else... The whole thing surprises me: Look what I'd have missed fI'd decided not to have a session. And I didn't know Seth was going to explain those visions until Igot thatflashfrom him just before he came through. I have the fteling that inside that experience i traveled a great distance... ."

(Concerning Seth's remark about "a simple move from one house to-another"for Jane and me: This includes all of the other people involved, too. In the previous five sessions I've inserted just enough "house connections" to-indicate what's been materializing/or us in this area, without digressing to write a much longer history. Our list of such interrelationships contains over 40 items so far, and continues to grow. However, many of these are made up of several related events, figures, et cetera, and so could be legitimately divided further f we chose to do so."

(Jane and I do not ascribe the elements making up our house adventures to that old catchall, "coincidence, " 0/course; at the same time we have no plans to statistically attempt anything with them either. So many variables are present that a separate analysis would be required for each individual involved-with "boundaries. "say, set as to the number of items to be considered in each case. Then what about temporal boundaries? Truly, for myself the whole house thing had its origins in my early childhood, over hal/a century ago. But Jane, being younger, would desiguate quite dfferent limi-I tations in time.

(A query: With the individual analyses done, would it be possible to incorp orate them all into one master-work? Such a project would be aformidable one, I think, and would take at least a book in itself

('I'm just waiting, "Jane said finally, after we'd each had a little something to eat. "I/eel unsettled. I think there's another bunch of material there. Seth's going to get it fI can do it-if he can find some more thought patterns he can use. "A long pause. "Now, I'll try...."

(Very quietly at 11:06:)

Imagine a string of different-colored Christmas tree lights, all glowing on a given tree. In this series of lights, any one light can go out while the others continue to shine. You are familiar with that arrangement.

However, in our imaginary assortment there are many such strings, and when a light goes out on one string "it" almost automatically appears on another string. Now generally speaking the lights are all lit at once on any given string, except for those that now and then go out.

Pretend that you are very tiny, and moving slowly about the tree so that you see only one Light at a time. It appears that one light exists before the other, then, and each one is so brilliant to your focus that it blots out the lights before and after it. You may have a dim memory of the light you "saw~~ before, however, and so you think: "Aba, the bulb I see is my life, but I'm sure that long ago I had a different life-and perhaps another one lies ahead of me." But unless you step far back from the tree you will not realize that the entire string of lights exists at once. Nor will you understand that when one light goes out in a strand it appears somewhere else on the tree in another strand.

If you were still tinier, then any given bulb itself might seem to emit not a steady light at all, but a series of waves, and you might identify your life with any given wave, so that great distance might be perceived between one wave and the next.'2

(Pause at 11:20.) Experiencing that kind of series could lead to entirely different kinds of perception, in which infinities (pause) existed (pause) within a scale of its own. (In parentheses: The series would have its own kind of infinities.)

("A singular 'its' but a plural 'infinities'?" I asked. Jane, as Seth, nodded in agreement.)

Atree could be wired with lights, with each one having its own particular series [of waves]. The people who put up the tree might experience one Christmas Eve, while other consciousnesses, tuned in to the different series, could experience endless generations'3 their perceptions would be quite as legitimate as those of the light-watchers who had erected the tree.

This is not necessarily the best analogy, but I wanted to make the point that various scales of awareness contain their own infinities, no matter how finite they may appear to be.

The soul, so-called, is not related to size or duration in space and time, except insofar as it is wedded to experience within those contexts.

Give us a moment... That will be the end of dictation. Take a break or end the session as you prefer.

("We'll take the break and see what happens."

(11:29 P.M. "That's as/ar as we can carry it tonight, "Jane said, meaning book material. She wasn't so sure about ending the session itself We sat waiting. Five minutes later she said: "Well, I guess that's it, " and the session was over.)

Session 741, April 14, 1975, 9:21 P.M., Monday

("AllIknow, "Jane said tonight at 8:50, "is that I want to get back to the sessions again. I don't care whether we get stuff on "Unknown" Reality, or personal material, or what. Just so we get going-I'm always nervous about starting things up again after a layoff. "1

(She made her remarks after I'd read her Seth's last session fthe 740th for February 2] from my notes earlier this evening.; I still don't have it typed. Incredibly, that session is already six weeks old. We've been involved in so many activities since then that it's dfficult to decide which of them to refer to in these notes, and to what extent. Except for the few listed below, then, it may be sufficient to just state that we've been in our hill house for a month, arid that after much hard physical labor2 we've settled down enough to resume our natural rhythms ofpainting, sessions, books, and play. Ihave a room I'm converting into a studio, and one in which to work on this manuscript. And for the first time since we married 20 years ago [in 1954], Jane has a room to herselffor her own writing-f she chooses to use it. So far she's preferred to work before the picture window in the living room.

(Our house connections continue to accumulate, often in unexpected ways. From her own viewpoint Jane has already produced for Psychic Politics some very perceptive material on our move to the hill house: "So we made our own special place in more ordinary terms, by symbolizing that particular house and corner, marking it ours, stamping it with the imprint of living symbols which we transposed upon it. Henceforth it had a magic quality."3

(Jane hasn't restarted ESP class yet. We'e not sure when we'll be able to manage that. Class may have to wait until Seth finishes his work on "Unknown" Reality.

(T4'e've largely finished correcting proofs on both the text and the drawing captions for Jane's Adventures in Consciousness, which will be published in June. We've also seen afirst color proof of the jacket design for her Dialogues, scheduled for publication next fall.4

(As fto celebrate our way of lfe and work in the house on the hill, we were visited last Saturday by Tam Mossman, Jane's editor at Prentice-Hall, and a publishing colleague of his. One result of our meeting [as I wrote at the beginning of the Introductory Notes for Volume 1], was the decision to publish this long manuscrz~t for "Unknown" Reality in two volumes.5

(In ordinary terms, I think that during our first month in the hill house we've been busy forming afresh psychic atmosphere within which we can feel comfortable-and that anyone in a similar situation intuitively does the same thing. Perhaps not until a start is made in this way can any of us initiate certain functions in the "new" place. Actually, then, we seek to wed the old environment with the new, using the psyche as a bridge between the two worlds. Now when Jane and I drive past the old house we lived in on Water Street, close by downtown Elmira, we engender within ourselves mixed feelings of strangeness and familiarity. We see the intimately known windows of the two apartments we shared still vacant, the blinds hanging at careless angles. Friends have told us both places are being redecorated to a modest degree. "I'm glad they're being changed, "Jane said the other day, in a strangely possessive response. "That means the world we had there can't ever be entered by anyone else."

(In that big, intriguing house her whole psy chic world-and mine-had begun to open up late in 1963; various aspects of that becoming are detailed in her dfferent books. Yet when Jane left the Water Street apartments that day in March, she never looked back: When she's through with something, she's through with it. She's remarkably free in that way. I'm the one who's apt to become attached to old things, old places, to look back with a bit of nostalgia. Now as we waited for tonight's session to begin, our 14-year-old cat, Willy, dozed on the couch beside me. At the same time our black cat, Rooney, who'd died in his fifth year, lay in his grave in the backyard of the house on Water Street.6

(Jane lit a cigarette and sipped at a beer. Then she took off her glasses. By the time she laid them on the coffee table between us she was in trance. Speaking as Seth, she began to very comfortably and easily deliver the next session for "Unknown" Reality.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation (quietly and humorously) : The unknown reality appears [to be] invisible only because you do not accept it in your prime series of events. (See the last session.)

It is as if you had trained yourselves to respond to red lights and to ignore green ones, for example-or as if you read only every third or fourth line on a page of a book.

You attend to matters that seem to have practical value. Whether or not you understand what space is, you move through it easily. You do not calculate how many steps it takes you to cross a room, for instance. You do not need to understand the properties of space in scientific terms, in order to use it very well. You can see yourselves operate in space, however; to that extent it is a known quality, apparent to the senses. Your practical locomotion is involved with it so you recognize it. Its mysterious or less-known properties scarcely concern you.

Now, you move through probabilities in much the same way that you navigate in space. As you do not consciously bother with all of the calculations necessary in the process of walking down the street, so you also ignore the mechanisms that involve motion through probable realities. You manipulate through probabilities so smoothly, in fact, and with such finesse, that you seldom catch yourself in the act of changing your course from one probability to another.

(9:34.) Take a very simple action: You stand at a corner, wondering which direction to take. There are four streets involved. You briefly consider streets One and Two, but rather quickly decide against them. You stand for a moment longer, gazing down Street Three, taking in the visual area. You are somewhat attracted, and imagine yourself taking that course. Your imagination places you there momentarily. Inner data is immediately aroused through conscious and unconscious association. Perhaps you are aware of a few memories that dimly come to mind. One house might remind you of one a relative lived in years ago. A tree might be reminiscent of one that grew by your family home. But in that instant, inner computations occur as you consider making a fairly simple decision, and the immediate area is checked against all portions of your knowledge.7

You then look at Street Four. The same process happens again. This area also takes your attention. At the same time you almost equally hold in your mind the image of Street Three, for you can see them both at once from this intersection.

Let us say that you are almost equally attracted to both courses. You teeter between probabilities, having the full power to choose one street or the other as physical experience. If you had to stand there and write down all the thoughts and associations connected with each course of action before you made your decision, you might never cross the intersection to begin with. You might be hit by an automobile as you stood there, lost in your musings.

In the same way, it would take you some time to even walk from a table to a chair if you had to be consciously aware of all of the nerves and muscles that must first be activated. But while you stand almost equally attracted by streets Three and Four, then you send out mental and psychic energy in those directions.

Past associations merge with present reality and form a pattern. Mentally, a part of you actually starts Out upon each street-a projected mental image. Period. As you stand there, then, in this case two such projected images go out onto streets Three and Four. To some extent these images experience "what will happen" if you yourself take one direction or the other. That information is returned to you instantaneously, and you make your decision accordingly. Say you choose Street Four. Physically you begin to walk in that direction. Street Four becomes your physical reality. You accept that experience in your prime sequence of events. You have, however, already sent out an energized mental image of yourself into Street Three, and you cannot withdraw that energy.

(9:53.) The portion of you that was attracted to that route continues to travel it. At the point of decision this alternate self made a different conclusion: that it experience Street Three as physical reality. The self as you think of it is literally reborn in each instant, following an infinite number of events from the one official series of events that you recognize at any given "time."

There is something highly important here concerning your technological civilization: As your world becomes more complicated, in those terms, you increase the number of probable actions practically available. The number of decisions multiplies. You can physically move from one place on the planet to another with relative ease. Centuries ago, ordinary people did not have the opportunity to travel from one country to another with such rapidity. As space becomes "smaller, " your probabilities grow in complexity. Your consciousness handles far more space data now. (In parentheses: I am speaking in your terms of time.) Watching television, you are aware of events that occur on the other side of the earth, so your consciousness necessarily becomes less parochial.3 As this has happened the whole matter (smiling) of probabilities has begun to assume a more practical cast. Civilizations are locked one into the other. Politicians try to predict what other governments will do. Ordinary people try to predict what their government might do.

More and more, you are beginning to deal with probabilities as you try to ascertain which of a number of probable events might physically occur. When the question of probabilities is a practical one, then scientists will give it more consideration.

The entire subject is very important, however. As far as a true psychology is concerned, individuals who are made aware of the existence of probable realities will no longer feel trapped by events. Your consciousness is at a point where it is beginning to understand the significance of "predictive action"-and predictive action always involves probabilities.

In certain terms (underlined) , you are the recognized "result" of all of the decisions you have made up to this point in your life. That is the official9 you. You are in no way diminished because other quite-as-official selves are "offshoots" of your own experience, making the choices you did not make, and choosing, then, alternate versions of reality.

You follow the prime series of events that you recognize as your own, yet all of you are connected. (Long pause, eyes closed.) These are not just esoteric statements, but valid clues about the nature of your own behavior, meant to give you a sense of your own freedom, and to emphasize the importance of your choice.

Take your break.

(10:23. Jane was very quickly out of a fine trance that had lastedfor just over an hour. Willy had slept beside me all of the time, twisting himself into a variety ofpositions. '7 feel relaxed, relieved, and exhausted, now that we've started things up again, "Jane said j, yawning. '7 almost think I could go to bed right now, but I know I won't. There: I just picked up the next two or three sentences for after break, " she said as she got up and moved about, "but they can wait."

(Resume at 10:53.)

Now: Dictation again (loudly) .

Whenever you try to predict behavior or events, then, you are dealing with probabilities.

However, it seems to you that all action in the past is fixed and done, while behavior in the future alone is open to change-so the word "prediction" assumes future action. Basically, the past is as open to change as the future is. When you are dealing with historic events you believe that no prediction is involved. Personally and as a species, you are convinced that there is a one-line series of finished events behind you.

In The Nature of Personal Reality I stated that the point of action occurs in the present.'0 In Adventures in Consciousness Ruburt said, quite properly, that time experience actually splashed out from the present to form an apparent past and future."

When you seemingly look backward into time, and construct a history, you do so by projecting your own prime series of events into the past as it is understood. Obviously you read the past from the present, but you also create it from the present as well. You accept certain data-your present recognized series of events-then use that series as a measuring stick, so to speak: It automatically rejects what does not fit. At certain levels of experience this makes little difference. All data agree. No rough spots show.

(11:05.) Give us a moment... (Pause.) You build smooth structures of beliefs, then look at reality using the beliefs like glasses-tinted ones. Period. Opposing information will literally be invisible to you.'2 It will be ignored or cast aside.

It has been fashionable to think in terms of straight-line evolution, for example. As mentioned earlier in this book, '3 the accepted theory of evolution is highly simplistic. Your species did not come from one particular source. You have many cousins, so to speak. Some traces of that lineage remain in your time. However, when you look "backward" at the planet you actually try to predict past behavior from the standpoint of the present.

You do this personally in your intimate lives to some degree also, as you view your earlier days. You blot out events that do not fit your present concept of yourself. They literally become nonexistent as far as you are concerned. In such fashion you block out aspects of your own reality-and consciously, at least, cut down on your choices.

Give us a moment... The species as you know it has within it, intrinsically, many abilities and characteristics that go unrecognized because you do not accept them as a part of your biological or spiritual heritage. Therefore they become latent and invisible, practically speaking. The same applies individually, when you deny yourselves the rich mixture of consciousness and experience that is available through a recognition of the manipulation of probable realities.

You alter your experience in each instant, quite drastically. Each individual possesses far vaster opportunities for choice than are realized. You are denied tomorrow's wisdom only because you believe time is a closed system.'4 It is true that you are subject to birth and death, yet within that framework far greater dimensions of experience are possible than are usually experienced.

You are all counterparts of each other who are alive at any given earth time. By really understanding this you could come to terms with the ideas of brotherhood that religions have taught for so long.

End of session.

("Thank you, Seth, " I said, after the sudden ending.

(Still in full trance, her eyes very dark, Jane stared at me. Then I watched the Seth personality begin to recede, to fade. Jane blinked afew times, and Seth was gone. 11:26P.M.)

Session 742, April 16, 1975, 9:29 P.M., Wednesday

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Dictation. The whole idea of probable realities seems strange or esoteric only because you are not used to following your own thought processes.

You shut them off any time they do not conform to current beliefs about the nature of the self, or about reality in general. The deepest meanings of probabilities lie, however, precisely in their psychological import.

(Pause.) You have become so hypnotized by a one-level kind of thought that anything else seems impractical. You concentrate upon those decisions that you make, and disregard the processes involved. This has been carried to an extreme, you see: Often you are so disconnected from those inner workings that your own decisions then appear to come from someplace else. You may be convinced that events happen to you, and are beyond your control, simply because you are so out of touch with yourself that you never catch the moments of your own decisions.

Then you feel as if you are the pawns of fate, and the idea of probable actions seems like the sheerest nonsense. Each event seems inevitable. If this attitude is carried to excessive lengths, then it even appears that you have no hand at all in the making of your own reality. You will always feel yourself a victim.

The unknown reality is your psychic, spiritual, and psychological one, and from it your physical experience springs.'

That inner, all-pervasive existence becomes known to the extent that you grow more responsive to your own inner environment. This does not mean that you become entirely self-centered, blind to the rest of the world. It does not mean that you must meditate for hours, or study your own thought processes with such vigor that you ignore other activities. It simply means that you are aware of your own life as clearly as possible-in touch with your thought processes, aware of them but without overdue concern or overanalysis. They are as much a part of your inner environment as trees are of your exterior world. There are different species of selves in the same fashion. There are different species of worlds.

New paragraph (as Seth often declares) . When you identify with only one particular level of your thought processes, however, the others-when you sense them-appear alien. You begin to feel threatened, determined to uphold your old ideas of selfhood. Plants grow many leaves. One leaf does not threaten the existence of others, and the plant is not jealous of its own foliage. So there is no need to protect your own individuality because it may send out other shoots into probable realities. This is simply the self growing in different directions, spreading its seeds.

(Pause at 9:52, eyes closed.) Joseph and Ruburt have moved into a "new"2 house. In so doing they have traveled through probabilities, as each of my readers has under similar circumstances. (Long pause.) They identify with the selves who moved into the new "hill house." In a sense they are different people now than they were when "Unknown" Reality was begun (some 14 months ago) . However, many of my readers are also different people now than they were when they began to read this work.

Let us go back approximately two months in your time. Ruburt andJoseph were looking for a house. They had already seen one on the inside, as mentioned earlier in "Unknown" Reality.3 This manuscript, for that matter, was begun precisely at the point in time that Ruburt's andJoseph's latest adventure with probabilities began. Two months ago, however, they were attracted to "the Foster Avenue house, " as they called it (change the name if you want to) . They drove past it often, and went inside. Ruburt imagined his classes being held there. Imaginatively both Ruburt andJoseph saw themselves living there, and a certain amount of psychic energy was projected into that house.

In a probable reality, a Ruburt and a Joseph now live there. In the world that you recognize as official, however, they moved into the hill house. To some extent both of them are aware of the inner processes involved in the final decision. I do not mean that they are simply familiar with the exterior thought processes involved, such as: "The hill house is better constructed, " or "It has a fine view." I am speaking of deeper mechanisms of consideration (pause) , in which correlations are made between interior and exterior realities. (Pause.) It is obvious that when you move from one place to another you make an alteration in space-but you alter time as well, and you set into motion a certain psychological impetus that reaches out to affect everyone you know. (Long pause.) When a house is vacant all of the people in the neighborhood send out their own messages. To a certain extent any given inhabited area forms its own "entity." This applies to the smallest neighborhood4 and to the greatest nation. Such messages are often encountered in the dream state. Empty houses are psychic vacancies that yearn to be filled. When you move, you move into other portions of your own selfhood.5

Take your break.

(10:11. "I've been doing this book for so long by now, " Jane commented, "that I don't know ~f it's a great big sprawling thing without any order, or what. I've lost all track of whatever sense of continuity it's got, " she amended. (rWhen I come out of trance I don't know what the thing's all about... ." Out of habit, Jane-and consequently Seth-still talked about "Unknown" Reality as being one entity, even though just five days ago we'd learned from her editor that it would be published in two volumes.

(The tenor of Seth's material tonight led me to think that he was close to finishing "Unknown" Reality, but since Jane evidently didn't feel that way I said nothing about it. Resume at 10:29.)

In fact, you move into new areas of the self all of the time. The species is now entering such a phase, a period in which it will come more into its own. Mankind will be entering its own new house, then-but the physical changes will be the results of interior ones, and alterations in main lines of probabilities.

Christian theology sees the end of the world in certain terms, with a grand God coming to reward the good and to punish the wicked.6 That system of belief allows for no other probability. Some see the end of the world coming as a greater disaster, or envision man finally ruining his planet. Others see periods of peace and advance-and each probability will happen "somewhere." However, many of my readers, or their offspring, will be involved in a new dimension of selfhood in which consciousness is fully explored and the potentials of the soul uncovered, at least to some extent.

Human capabilities will be seen as what they are, and a great new period of development will occur, in which all concepts of selfhood and reality will be literally seen as "primitive superstition.

The species will actually move into a new kind of selfhood.

Theories of probabilities will be seen as practical, workable, psychological facts, giving leeway and freedom to the individual, who will no longer feel at the mercy of external events-but will realize instead that he (or she) is their initiator.

Now, you squeeze the great fruit of your selfhood into a tiny uneasy pulp, unaware of the sweetness of its juices or the variety of its seasons. You look at the outsides of yourselves as if a peach were aware only of its skin. In the reality I foresee, however, people will become familiar with far greater aspects of themselves, and bring these into actualization. They will be in touch with their own decisions as they make them.

If they become ill, they will do so knowing they choose the condition in order to emphasize certain areas of development, or to minimize others. They will be aware of their options, comma, consciously. The great strength and resiliency of the body will be much better understood; not because medical science makes spectacular discoveries-though it will-but because the mind's alliance with the body will be seen more clearly.

In this probability of which I speak, the species will begin to encounter the great challenge inherent in fulfilling the vast untouched (forcefully)-underlined-potential of the human body and mind. (Long pause.) In that probable reality, to which each of you can belong to some extent, each person will recognize his or her inherent power of action and decision, and feel an individual sense of belonging with the physical world that springs up in response to individual desire and belief.7

(10:59.) Give us a moment... (Jane, in trance, lit a cigarette.) Your ideas of Atlantis are partially composed of future memories. They are psychic yearnings toward the ideal civilization-patterns within the psyche, even as each fetus has within it the picture of its own most ideal fulfillment toward which it grows.

Atlantis is a land that you want to inhabit, appearing in your literature, your dreams, and your fantasies, 8 serving as an impetus for development. It is real and valid. In your terms it is not "yet" physical fact, but in some ways it is more real than any physical fact, for it is a psychic blueprint.9

It carries also, however, the imprint of your fears, for the tales say that Atlantis was destroyed. You place it in your past while it exists in your future. Not the destruction alone, but the entire pattern seen through the framework of your beliefs. Beside this, however, many civilizations have come and gone in somewhat the same manner, and the "myth" [of Atlantis] is based somewhat then on physical fact in your terms.10

The species then moves into its own new houses. Atlantis is the story of a future probability projected backward into an apparent past.

Give us a moment... Your planet as you know it is a certain kind of focus point for consciousness. At your level you think it is divided into areas of land and water-continents and oceans, islands and peninsulas, cities and woods-because that is all you perceive. Your consciousness is tuned in to frequencies of perception that give you that impression. A cat's world, or an insect's or a plant's, are each far different, yet equally valid.

As simply as I can explain it, your planet is also "divided" into time and probability areas. Period. So many civilizations exist at once, then, and there are certain bleed-throughs. In your terms some civilizations are real and perceivable, and some are not.

(Loudly:) End of session. It is a good place to end, and to start the next one.

("All right.")

Ibid you a fond good evening.

("Thank you, Seth-"

(Loudly and with amusement:) I have plenty of comments about your personal situations, but I wanted to get back into the book first.

("Oh. Very good. Thank you, and good night."

(End at 11:10 p.M. Jane's trance had been excellent. "You don't have to put this in, ', she said, "but Ifeel like I do every once in a while-I really let it out-Ifeel relieved and ready to collapse.

("I don't know why, but I sometimes think that it's a tremendous strain to do this-have these sessions, and so forth-but I'm determined to explore this reality as much as I can, to get all I can out of it. Then sometimes I think there's nothing to it. Everyone has their hassles, so why should I have any more-or less? I really think I have less trouble than a lot ofpeople."

(I read to Jane the few paragraphs of material Seth had given on Atlantis. Both ofus thought it quite sensible, although it brought up questions I'll get to shortly. I'll have to admit that we cringe a bit when Seth talks about cultish concepts like Atlantis. We always think that such beliefs, while serving a variety of quite legitimate creative andpsychicpurposes, are very likely to be more mythic than physically factual. The word 'physically" is important here. From these remarks it's easy to see that we feel much more comfortable with the ideas about Atlantis that Seth advanced in this session. "He's got more on it, too, "Jane said now, but she didn't go back into trance.

(The questions I referred to concern the fact that once in The Seth Material and nine times in Seth Speaks, by my count, Seth spoke ofAtlantis as being in our historical past. He did so this evening also, of course, when he remarked at 10:59 that our "ideas of Atlantis are partially composed of future memories"-thus leaving room for past manifestations. Seth's theory of simultaneous time, which can encompass the notion offuture probabilities projected backward into an apparent past, for instance, leaves great leeway for the interpretation of events or questions, however, and makes the idea of contradiction posed by an Atlantis in the past and one in the future too nmple as an-explanation. At any given "time, " depending on whatever information he's given previously, Jane could just as easily quote Seth as placing Atlantis in our historic past, or in a probable past, present, or future-or all four 'places" at once, for that matter. Any or all of these views would simply be repatterning other dimensions of time from our "present point ofpower."

(Qyestions of reincarnation enter in also. Seth has connected himself with Atlantis only once, but he did so very definitely;from the 5 88th session for Chapter 22 of Seth Speaks: "I was.. . born in Atlantis. "Jane and Ifelt those sameuneasy twinges then, too, but chose not to explore them at that time.-(After this evening's session, however, we decided we'd like to know why in Seth's view Atlantis had moved from its long, ~f uneasy residence in our 17 "historical past"forward into a future probable reality. We resolved to ask him to explain-but strangely enough, I note later, a month passed before we got around to a session on the subject. By then, Seth had been through with "Unknown" Realityfor three weeks. Now I refer the reader to Note 11 for quotations from the session, the 74 7th, in question.)

Session 743, April 21, 1975, 9:46 P.M., Monday

(I read the last part of Wednesday's session toJanefrom my notes. "I've got the nostalgic, uneasy feeling that he's going to wind up the book soon, " she said, "especially after listening to that material just before the Atlantis stuff I didn't feel that way when I had the session, but I do now. I've said it before, I know, but this book started when we were thinking of moving. and now we're settled in a new place, so that makes a good time to end it."

(Jane paused. She still habitually referred to "Unknown" Reality as a one-volume work-even as Seth himself did in the session this evening-despite the decision made 10 days ago to publish it in two volumes. "Ifeel sort of sony, "she continued, "because here the sessions will stop again just after we got back into them. You'll need time to finish the notes and do all that typing.. . .

Good evening.

("Good evening Seth.")

Dictation: No book entitled The "Unknown" Reality can hope to make that reality entirely known.

It remains nebulous because it is consciously unrealized.

The best I can do is to point out areas that have been relatively invisible, to help you explore, actually, different facets of your own consciousness.2 To some extent this book has been written to help you exercise your own intuitive and mental capacities from a different viewpoint.

In a way, it is meant to familiarize you with elements of your own reality of which you may have been unaware, and to introduce you to certain subjective states of mind that are automatically aroused because of the manner in which the book was produced. Period.

Besides this, however, it contains what you may call cues that automatically open up greater levels of your own awareness, and hence bring into your conscious life some recognition of the unknown reality in which you also have your being. The subject matter itself entices your imagination. That intuitive faculty will then illuminate the intellect so that it learns to question in a broader, more exciting and productive manner than perhaps it did before.

Iam well aware that the book raises many more questions than it presents answers for, and this has been my intent. The unknown reality will become known to the extent that you form new questions, and forget the old frameworks in which answers and myths were automatically given in response. If this book "works, " then many old questions will be seen as relatively meaningless, formed not after any intimate encounter with basic issues, but in response to old dogmas.

The "proper" questions about the unknown reality will automatically bring more of it into your experience.

Give us a moment... Many of the questions you think were not answered in this book, however, have been answered-but from a different angle, colon: the answers presented in such a way that they will entice you to further creative thought.

You are the unknown reality, to the extent that you do not recognize, realize, or experience the many facets of your own being. As always, I say that the answers lie within yourself, not in the exterior world.

(10:09.) Clues may indeed be found there, however, because the exterior conditions mirror so perfectly your inner, individual and mass experience.

Give us a moment... This book itself, because of the method of its production, is an excellent example of the unknown reality becoming, if not "known, " then recognized. Do not look for neat answers or tidy solutions, for when you do your explanations and theories will always be too small. There is always an unknown reality to some extent, for the miracle of your being works outside of the kind of explanations that you so often seem to require.

Your ready answers end up limiting your own experience, because you try to fit your subjective behavior into the cramped boot of preconceived ideas. Your experience creates new questions in the same way that a painter creates new paintings.

(Long pause.) The unknown reality, dash-Many of you, I know, would like to find in this book answers pertaining to Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, UFO's3, and many other such questions. Those matters certainly seem pertinent in the framework of your experience and beliefs. You already have a great variety of explanations offered: Writers in many fields have produced books about such topics. By far the greater questions, however, are those pertaining to the unknown reality of the psyche, and those that relate to the kind of being who perceives in one way or another an Atlantis, a Bermuda Triangle, a UFO-for in greater terms, until you ask deeper questions about yourselves, these other experiences will remain mysterious. You cannot understand perceived events unless you understand who perceives them. You must learn more about the slant of your own consciousness before you are in a position to ask truly pertinent questions about the reality that you perceive.

(10:23. As Seth, Jane paused during an intent deliveiy.)

Are your fingers tired?

("No, " I said. At the same time, I was thinking as I wrote that Seth's sentence, above: "You cannot understand perceived events unless you understand who perceives them, " embodied one of his best ideas in "Unknown" Reality.)

Give us a moment, then.

(Still in trance, Jane took a sip of wine and lit a cigarette.)

There are many who will give you answers to such questions. The answers will be couched in a framework of beliefs that you have held individually and collectively for some time. In this book I am purposely trying to lead you into a larger, more expansive way of looking at yourself and the world in which you live.

When I consider those (Atlantis, UFO's, and so forth) and other such matters, it will be from a much different perspective. By then you-my readers-will be familiar enough with the unknown reality to understand answers given in a different context. Period.

This book had no chapters [in order] to further disrupt your accepted notions of what a book should be. There are different kinds of organizations present, however, and in any given section of the book, several levels of consciousness are appealed to at once. (Intently:) The threads of the work are interwoven so that various portions of your consciousness are sent out, so to speak, on separate journeys of thought and imagination. Yet these side trips are also related. They intertwine, not only through the psychic organization that I have given to "Unknown" Reality, but because of the great uniting nature within the consciousness of each reader.

Again, Ruburt and Joseph have moved to a new place. Each reader has also journeyed to a new position within the psyche, however. This book is a bridge between realities. Reading it, each person sets out upon a psychic pilgrimage through the unknown realities of his or her own consciousness and experience. No one can predict the destination.

(Pause.) I am a part of your unknown reality, and you are a part of mine. To some extent in these pages our realities meet. To the extent that you do not know yourself, you do not know your world. To the extent that you do not know yourself, you do not know your husband, or wife, or mother and father. To the extent that you do not know yourself, you do not know what God is. To the extent that you do not know yourself, you do not know what nature is. The unknown reality exists to the extent that you do not travel joyfully through the intimate lands of the psyche, to the extent that you do not directly experience your life as original (forcefully) , but accept labels put on it by others. The unknown reality exists as a challenge, an exciting endeavor, as each individual becomes consciously aware of intimate subjective feeling. Do not overlay the personal daily aspects of your life with preconceived ideas about who you are, what you are, where you are, why you are. Become aware of the original nature of any given moment as it exists for you.

(Pause.) Forget what you have been told about time and space. Refuse to accept ideas that limit the dimensions of your own natural being. Again, the unknown reality is what you are.

(And louder.) End of dictation. End of book. Take a break.

(10:5 0. Jane was soon out of trance-but she had a very, very long face.

("That was an excellent dissertation, "I said.

("I'd rather be starting a book than ending one, I guess." She sat quietly. I thought she wanted to cry, but wouldn't let herself do so.

("I do have a couple of questions, "I continued. "We can talk about them before break ends. I'd like to add them to the book material tonight-along with Seth's answers, that is.',

(For the moment, though, we ate cookies and indulged in small talk. I could see that Jane was not only sad that the long project was finished for her, but uneasy, too; she was suddenly set loose, released from aframework that had come to be very familiar over the last 141/2 months. Not that her new freedom hadn't been expected. But she's so creative that as soon as she is through with one undertaking she's ready to launch into another; and this applies even though she's been working on Psychic Politics outside of the Seth framework. That's her focus in 4fe [and mine, too]: the full commitment to artistic production. I'd often heard her comment about being in a kind of limbo between works. Her abilities demand use and release.

(As Jane moved about, I wrote out my two questions for Seth-while thinking of a third:

("1. What do you think about this work being published in two volumes?

("2. In our terms of time: TVhat were some ofyour other activities, in other realities, while you were giving 'Unknown' Reality through Jane for well over a year?

("3. I suppose it's quite evident why you finished 'Unknown' Reality right after we moved into our 'new' house, but will you reassure Jane by commenting on this, and on future wo, *s?"

(14'hen Jane sat down again I read the questions to her. Our cat, Willy, jumped up into her lap. "I'm still appalled, " she said dejectedly. "Here my part in the thing is done, but you've got to live with it for a long time yet while you do the notes and typing. I wish there was some way each book could be turned into print instantly, so that we could go onto the next one... I can't help it-every time Seth finishes a book Ifeel like crying."

("And why not? It's a peijectly natural reaction, " I said. But an interesting point came out as we talked: Jane doesn't experience that strong nostalgia when she finishes one of her "own" books.

("Well, I'm just waiting now, " she said finally. "I can feel session material there, but I don't know what it'll be about. I'm just waiting until Iget over the shock. . .

(Resume at 11:27.)

Now: I will answer your questions on Wednesday. But I have a few remarks.

(Which was Seth's way of leading us into other than book material. For a little while he discussed Jane's Politics, our relationship with others through the mail and by telephone, and a dfferent kind of "inner listening" that we'd become involved in. Then he wound up the evening's work with a remark that I took to be a reftrence to my third question:)

Ibid you then a fond good evening for now, from my unknown reality to yours. You can have all the books that you want, when you want them, and at your own pacing.

("Thank you, Seth. Good night."

(11:44 P.M. And so, even though Seth had declared the end of "Unknown" Reality this evening it will still include at least part of the next session.)

Session 744, April 23, 1975, 9:33 P.M., Wednesday

(Yesterday Jane received from her publisher the galley proofs for her book ofpoetiy, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time.1 The story of that work's creation is interwound throughout Personal Reality.

(I read to Jane again the three questions I'd noted down for Seth during break in P.M., Monday's session. As I suspected he might do, Seth began this evening's session by dealing with the second one. Not all of his material tonight is given over to questions, however; much of the rest of it, covering matters other than those relating to "Unknown" Reality, is deleted.)

Good evening.

("Good evening, Seth.")

Now: In a way, it is quite difficult to tell you what I have been doing with my time (humorously emphatic) while I have been involved in the production of "Unknown" Reality-and therefore, to some extent at least, inclined toward your time.2

In a manner of speaking your experienced, practical reality is made up of events that seem entire to you, or relatively complete, while from my dimension it is apparent that your recognized events are simply portions of larger ones. I move naturally, then, in a realm of greater dimensionalized events.

In your terms I see not only greater chunks of time than you do, but I can to some considerable extent view the probable actualizations of events and times.

Now: An artist does the same thing in different terms, when he or she imagines the probable versions that a painting, or a book or a sculpture, for example, might take. (Pause.) The artist does not usually understand, however, that those probable art productions do literally exist; he perceives only the final, physically chosen work. Speaking simply, some of us are able to hold intact the nature of our own identities while following patterns of probable realities in which we also play a part.

In your reality, the "Unknown"Reality we have just finished is the only version of that manuscript. Instead it is, of course, the only version you recognize. When we are working on such a project here (in your reality) , we are working on probable books also, and those are as real as your official one. In ways too difficult to explain now, your probabilities are connected by certain themes, intents, purposes. Some of these appear as subsidiary interests in your own lives, for example. Others may well be recognized by you as prime concerns, and still others may be so latent that you are unaware of them. So we have been working on a probable "Unknown"Reality-in fact, on many probable "Unknown" Realitys. Not mere versions, but variations.

In one reality, of course, the work was finished at the Foster Avenue house (in Elmira, New York) . In another it was finished in Sayre (Pennsylvania) .

Now that is what I have been doing as far as your reality is concerned-that is, in my relationship with you. It is a multidimensional version of what Ruburt does in simple terms when he writes a book of his own.

I've also helped in the construction, so to speak, of Ruburt's [psychic] library, 4 and I hope that he will be able to meet me there, in surroundings in which he feels confident and at home, and yet on neutral ground. (Smiling:) He does not want my apparition, you might say, to intrude upon a physical living room, particularly, yet he wants to meet me (much louder, leaning forward) in an out-of-the-way place.5

Now that is a sensible arrangement. He is the one who has to deal primarily with the practical aspects of our relationship, and in the business of translating my reality into your world.

(Long pause at 9:5 6.) I quite approve, for in greater terms I do not belong in your living room in that particular fashion. My reality is far more apparent than any apparition's. Ruburt does well because he explores so cleverly, and keeps his strands of reality in good order.6

(Long pause at 10:01.) Others have indeed sensed me-Sue [Watkins]7 for example-but the relationship there is far different, and it is important for Ruburt that he have clear-cut areas, which I respect.

Any such appearances, by the way, would also add to much superstitious nonsense. On the other hand, there is much for Ruburt to learn about my reality. Until he understood the inward order of events8 he would not be able to meet me there-so the library can serve us both in that regard.

(Pause at 10:05. Now Seth took off into some areas involving Jane that were more personal; at the same time he gave material on the third and then the first of the questions I'd listed during break for the last session. I thought I'd include afew quotations from him on both issues, while eliminating portions of the session that deal with other matters entirely. I think the information on Jane is quite relevant to both her work and her life in general.)

Give us a moment... I am not here going into Ruburt to any great degree, but I do have some information. Obviously he is in the middle of a learning adventure, trying to do far more with his ordinary consciousness than most people, and trying to solve his problems and encounter his challenges without relying upon old structures of belief... He has done this even though he has been working in relatively untried areas, where there seem to be few certainties.9

The Nature of Personal Reality [our last book] is there for others to follow. Others, however, did not have a hand in producing it. They will try out the ideas, many of them, to the best of their ability, and learn and gain much-all the time (much more forcefully:) hanging on safely to the banners of conventional beliefs. Ruburt has allowed himself no such comforts. He should remember that many people have far greater hassles... with health, personal relationships, finances and vocations, and without any satisfring accomplishments to offset their misfortunes.

(Long pause at 10:23, eyes closed.) I make recommendations now and then, and now and then you see fit to follow them..

Considering Ruburt's challenges, he has done extremely well as he cleared away the debris that literally surrounds the lives of most people... In a way his progress has been dependent upon the state of his learning, so that he has been flying to stretch the abilities of normal consciousness by drawing in other "strands."" Yet because he was the one so involved, he had to test each strand; and in the meantime he still had his "old" consciousness, with its habits, to contend with.

The [Seth] material is endless. I organize it for your benefit. If you want to divide it into two volumes, that is fine. You will find several points where this can be done, 12 and I will answer any questions that you have.

In a way, Ruburt's book (Psychic Politics) will continue our material from another viewpoint while you are preparing ~ "Unknown" Reality.

God bless your fingers-

("They're okay.")

-and a hearty good evening.

("Thank you, Seth. The same to you. Good night."

(11:01 P.M. And so Volume 2 of "Unknown" Reality is finished. Now I want to briefly summarize for the reader two subjects-"house connections" and ESP class-that have been mentioned often in the sessions for Section 6. See notes 13 and 14.)

APPENDIX 1

(For Session 679)

(April, 1976. In this appendix I've put together some material on mysticism from Jane, Seth, and myself I wrote the first tentative notes for it shortly after the 6 79th session was held, in February, 1974, with the idea of adding to them later 'necessary. As events worked out, Seth was halfway through Volume I of "Unknown" Reality before I realized that these supplementary notes would work well as the first appendix in the first volume. The notes may have their own kind of order~ but unlike most appendix material aren't presented in a chronological sequence. As in the Introductory Notes, I want to stress Jane's role as the creative artist, disseminating her personal view of a larger inner reality, and her intuitive and conscious comprehension of at least some aspects of that reality; for such understanding can easily elude our Western-oriented, materialistic, technological outlook.

(i'm not interested in knocking our technology, however, but in pointing out coexisting inner factors that I'm sure are just as important. After all, our technology is responsible for the very existence of this physical book, thereby making it possible for Seth, Jane, and me to communicate with many others.

(Since Jane began delivering the Seth material, I've become more and more interested in questions about the origins of creative [meaning artistic] endeavors. When we start looking for such beginnings in ordinary terms, we usually end up reaching back into the subject's childhood. But, paradoxically, the origins aren't to be found there, either, or grasped in regular terms, for according to Seth they'd lie outside the reach of physical life. Without going into Seth's ideas that time is simultaneous, or that ~y endeavor is creative, the kinds of origins I'm discussing here wouldn't have any beginning or end. More likely than not, they'd be chosen by the personality before birth, or outside the physical state.

(As soon as Seth mentioned Jane ~c "deeply mystical nature" in the 6 79th session, I thought of some personal material he'd given us six months earlier. i've slightly rearranged excerpts from that session for presentation here:)

Even in his poetry, before our work, Ruburt's energy led him way beyond "himself" at certain times. He tried to hold himself down because, he felt, the energy was so strong that allowed freedom in almost any direction, it would bring him into conflict with the mores and ways of other people.

Ruburt is literally a great receiver of energy. He attracts it, and it must therefore go through him, translated into outward experience. He is himself. He cannot turn himself or his abilities off. . His activities would be strong in whatever level of activity he focused his energy, exaggerated in terms of others by compariso.n. He is a great mystic. Naturally, that is, a great mystic. That is reflected through his poetry as well as our specific work. So that expression would come through poetry also with its "psychedelic" experience, regardless of specific sessions.

(At about the time that personal session was held, we'd been reading a book on the lives of some of the well-known mystics of the past. Most of them had functioned within religious frameworks, and Jane and I saw how their various environments had given color and shape to their transcendent experiences. [I would add that in turn those experiences obviously enriched those environments.] But in spite of Seth's material, Jane told me: "I'm not a mystic. I don't think of myself as one at all-not like those church people." She smiled. "I don't have a vision every time I want to do something important.

("In fact, " she continued, "I'm embarrased that Seth called me a mystic-a great one, I mean-like that. No matter whether it's natural or not... "Rather reluctantly, she agreed to let me present that personal material here; but only, I think, because she understood my desire to give what I consider to be pertinent background material for the Seth books. Yet, at the same time, she could say to me: "I hope to go further into consciousness than anyone else ever has. "'

(I reminded Jane that since she belonged to no religion now [having left the Roman Catholic Church when she was 19 years old], her mystical nature would choose other avenues of expression than religious ones; as in these sessions, for instance. Perhaps, I suggested, it would turn out that one of her main endeavors would be to enlarge the boundaries of "ordinary" mystical experience itself to show it operating outside of accepted religious frameworks. I added that within those religious boundaries, mystics across the centuries and throughout the world have given voice to the same ideas in almost the same words, and that as an "independent" mystic Jane was in a position to approach the situation from a freer, more individual standpoint: She would be able to add fresh insights to what is certainly one of the species 'all-pervasive, uni~~ing states. For the mystical way surely speaks about our ongtns.

(Yet, somewhat ironically, Jane's inherent abilities first began to show themselves, even if on unrealized or "unconscious" levels, within the very disciplined structure of Catholicism. And she had reinforced that framework by demanding her transfer from a public to a Catholic grade school.

(I asked her about her childhood feelings, in line with Seth's description of her mystical nature in the 6 79th session. Jane told me that during those years she'd had no idea that she might be anything so esoteric as a mystic. She was simply herself and her sense of self with her individual abilities and appreciation of the world she created and reacted to, grew in a very natural manner as she matured. Through her involvement with the Catholic church, she became aware of the quality called "mysticism" in connection with the saints of that church-but still she bad no idea of attributing such a quality to herself Her desire, her drive, was to write.

(My own point in all of this is that Jane was different from her contemporaries in more ways than she realized. It was obvious to her in her youth that none of her friends wrote poetry, or talked about the subject matter of much of her own poetry.3 Jane intuitively felt her own nature, without trying to define it. Concurrently as a child, she would take long walks at night and pray, especially when she'd "been bad."

(Throughout her formative years, however, Jane's grandfather-her "Little Daddy, " as she called him-played an important part. To some extent he replaced the father she'd lost at the age of two when her parents were divorced. Joseph Adolphe Burdo was of Canadian and Indian stock, and grew up speaking French. His ancestors had originally spelled the family name "Bordeaux." In certain ways Jane identified strongly with him, as Seth explains in the excerpts to follow from the 14th session for January 8, 1964.

(When Seth gave us this information, the sessions had barely started. Yet we could relate to it at once; in this instance especially Seth's insights 'fit" Jane's conscious knowledge and extended it in most interesting ways.

(To initiate the material [in the 14th session] I asked Seth: "Jane has been veiy curious to learn something about her grandfather. Can you help her with this?"

Seth replied:) Part of a very strong entity. However, extremely inarticulate in last life, due to an inability to synthesize gains in past lives.

("Why was Jane so attached to him when she was a child?")

Besides normal reasons, he was psychically inclined, at a time when Jane was young and herself close to a past life. She sensed his deep and personal inner awareness. It confused and haunted him, since his inarticulateness applied also to thoughts within himself. He felt strongly but could not explain. In his solitary nature he came close to being a mystic, but he was unable to relate his personality as Joseph Burdo with the social world at large, or even to other members of the family. There was a block, regrettably. He felt strongly his connection with the universe as a whole and with nature as he understood it. But to him, nature did not include his fellow human beings. The solitariness that besieged him-because it did besiege him-is dangerous to any personality unless it comes after identification with the human race.

That is, in his feeling of unity with All That Is, he excluded other human beings, and on your plane it is necessary for the personality to relate to its fellows. Only after such relationships are established is isolation of that nature beneficial. Jane sensed her grandfather's feeling of identification with the rest of nature, however, and since as a young child she had not yet developed a strong ego personality, she felt no sense of rejection as did, for example, the other members of the family. When he spoke of the wind, she felt like the wind, as any child will unself-consciously identify with the elements.

Her grandfather responded to his own attraction for her, and was able to expand in her direction because she was not an adult. He was essentially childlike in one manner, and yet he had little use for most people. Had he lived to see Jane mature, the feeling between them might well have dissipated. He could not relate to another adult, and when in his eyes Jane joined the league of adulthood he would not have been able to retain his strong leaning toward her.

He never forgave his own children for growing up... Yet he related his own body, at least until the very end, very well with nature. He considered that he aged as a tree will age, but perversely he felt that others aged to spite him... From an early age, however, Jane drank in his feeling of completeness with nature, and it had much to do with her later development...

(Joseph Burdo died in 1948 at the age of 68. Jane was 19 years old. Just two years later, she wrote the folIo wing poem.

I shall die in the Springtime
I shall die in the Spring
Time, grandfather.
Earth, feeding her desire,
Will welcome the still warm flesh.
There will be cool winds
That will be my thoughts, grandfather.
They will rush through my skull
Like shadows or gray birds.
Wait and listen for me, grandfather.
As once we walked through forests,
Lend your hand.
The wind of eternity blows through my hair,
And I feel it touch my palms with ice.
I shall be part of earth and spring again, grandfather.
I shall be wind again. I shall be tree and flower.
I shall be free of the wheel again.
Grandfather, why does this cause me pain?

Published in Patterns, A Verse Quarterly, October 1954.

(Even so, through her school years Jane didn't particularly talk about her thoughts, or the abilities she sensed within herself-not with her mother, the priests she came to know well [and who didn't approve in any case if she carried her religious devotion, her mysticism, "too far"], or even with her grandfather. Jane wrote about her inner world instead. She had boyfriends, but no dreams of marriage, children, or keeping house. Essentially, then, she 'felt alone" in her constant desire to write.

(After she left the church, she distrusted organized religion in general, and had no idea that her writing would lead to any kind of "mystic experience." In fact, when Seth began to speak about immortality, Jane was disturbed and said that she wanted the sessions to stay away from any religious connotations.

(She hasn't undergone a classical religious conversion of the kind William James describes in his The Varieties of Religious Experience, 4 yet more than once she's known her own forms of ecstasy, or deep alteration of consciousness, or illumination-whatever one chooses to call such states. From two perspectives she rather briefly describes one such episode, which actually lasted several hours, in her Dialogues, and in Adventures in Consciousness.5

Jane often enjoys being up and alone in the early hours of the day. She rises before dawn and makes herself "a simple quick breakfast "-just so she can read, make some notes, and watch the sky lightening outside the kitchen window. She listens to the first songs of the birds. The telephone is quiet. And, as she just wrote for me, on April 3, 1976, "1 always feel an odd, right, somehow sturdy satisfaction, as if someone should be up to watch the day come; and it's me.

(The night before I'd been working on these notes, and we talked about mysticism, among other things. Because of our discussion, Jane rose early that morning and produced several pages of material. When I got up I found within her output the paragraphs presented below. They make an excellent ending for this appendix. Although she begins by once again expressing doubts, or at least qualifications, about her mystical status, I think her comprehension that she's part of the day, of the earth, and of time, is surely a description of her independent pursuit of the mystical way. Jane wrote:) "Rob asked me about mysticism, though, and it's very hard to think of the word in connection with me because I confuse the various definitions or implications placed upon the word. To me it's a sort of... yes, sturdy connection of one person to the universe... a one-to-one relationship; a yearning to participate in the meaning of existence; a drive to appreciate nature and salute it while adding to it; but the knowledge that nature is also a touchstone to a deeper unknowable essence from which we and the world spring.

"But as I think the word is interpreted, I'm not a mystic. In usual terms the state implies a far greater compassion and goodness than I possess; an inner graciousness that I sense but rarely achieve; and a patience with people that I lack. A piousness that I dislike, too. These are the Christian versions; but a certain fanaticism often goes with them that I would find most distasteful. Some forms of Zen extoll the virtues of good rambunctious humor, which I favor, but then ideas of renunciation clutter up both Eastern and Western mystic philosophies, as far as I know...

"The idea of the priestess used to fascinate me, before my own involvement in our sessions. But I thought of a priestesspoetess, mixing this with the idea of the mistress when I met Rob. Wherever we live is significant to me; a privileged place; our domestic platform in the universe.

..... I have more sympathy and love for myself now. By making myself better I can really do something to... change a small part of the world. Maybe that's all I'm responsible for-odd thought-what else did I, do I, feel responsibile for? But if people loved the part of the earth that makes up their bodies, then they'd treat themselves more gently. And the earth would know. Like I feel the day knows, when I watch the dawn come.

"I was going back to bed when my last lines suddenly reminded me that I still feel the way I did when I was a young girl; that some part of the dawn does come for me; personally; and that to some extent time didn't exist before I was born. My birth brought a certain element into the world that wasn't there before. And with me, I brought time. This happens when anyone is born, but most people don't feel it-or don't seem to... Together all of us on earth form time and contribute to its design and to history. This happens whenever one of us is born or dies. I guess I've always felt that way.

"I thought that life was a gracious gift, and that we were 'given' the natural world along with it. I've always been grateful for that. I felt that each person had a purpose, but I didn't think you had to search for it, because I naturally wanted to write; and that was my purpose. I never questioned it."

APPENDIX 2

(For Session 680)

(In mentioning my "sportsman self, " Seth referred to information he'd given about three of my probable selves in a private session on January 30, 1974-just a few days before starting "Unknown" Reality. The session contains many personal insights that I now recognize as being quite true. But even without Seth's help, interesting results can flow from an awareness of the probable-self concept: The reader can begin to intuitively consider his or her own probable selves, or those of others who may be closely related psychically or physically. I'm not writing here about rationalizing the existence of one or more probable selves to account for personal shortcomings in this reality, however, but of simply using the idea to enlarge our basic notions of the human potential. See Note 1 for Session 679.

(Here's Seth to me in that January session:) You, for example, could have excelled at certain sports, where Ruburt had no such inclinations. You chose to concentrate on artistic endeavors as you grew and learned through various areas and periods-that is, you tried and enjoyed sports, and writing; and after a while you decided upon the painting self as the particular focus upon which you would build a life.

The sportsman that you might have been would have gathered, from that same available background, other attitudes and ideas that would have fit in with his concept of himself, and with his core focus. The childhood camping background served as a rich source material, to be used in any way you chose. The sportsman, the writer or the artist-any of them would utilize that background differently, but well, and in such a way that it peculiarly suited each of them.

Give us a moment... Your father's inventiveness would also be used in the same manner, as source material, by whichever self you chose to become. There are many choices. I am using here three only to show you how those primary aspects of your personality operate now in your present condition...

The painting also, innately now, involves going outdoors, though you seldom paint from nature out in the landscape. Nevertheless, you would be determined to be free enough to do so. The sportsman that you might have been still lives within you enough so that, for example, you automatically stay trim and limber.

Your father's creativity, as mentioned [in earlier, unpublished sessions] had its side of secrecy, privacy and aloneness... you identified creatively with his private nature. The writing self became latent as the sportsman did, yet the writing self and the artist were closely bound. You felt conflicts at times. It never occurred to you that the two aspects could release one another-one illuminating the other-and both be fulfilled. Instead you saw them as basically conflicting. Time spent writing meant time not spent painting. You believed the painting self had to be protected... as you felt that your father had to protect his creative self in the household....

The time is right for you to enlarge your focus. You must realize it is futile to say, "Why does understanding take so much time?" or, "Why have we been so opaque?" or, in your case, "Why has it taken me so long to be a good painter?"

There are comprehensions, illuminations, that cannot be verbalized, that arise as a result of... solving problems or challenges that seem to have nothing to do with the original challenges. These, however, are quite unpredictable fulfillments that come about as you solve what appears to be one main problem. They are achievements that arise out of a given situation, while often in your terms the given challenge may not seem to be solved.

There are unpredictable levels of understanding that are the creative results of certain courses of action that you take. These can exist whether or not the course itself seems advantageous, and can even overshadow the benefits [that] a successful course might have given, in those terms... Though it would seem, then, that you have made errors, the errors in themselves are creative, and have brought about unforseen probabilities that now enrich-and also change-your original course.

Ruburt's writing abilities have blossomed because of his psychic experiences. Your painting abilities have also... The psychic breakthrough did not just occur. Your deepest natures called it out of the probable sequence into your joint reality-for a reason, because each of you knew that it could best help you to develop all of your respective abilities to their fullest, and also help others.

APPENDIX 3

(For Session 681)

(Jane finds her "massive feelings, " as she calls them, not only instructive psychically, but exhilarating indeed when they encompass revelatory or transcendent states of consciousness. One day in April, 1973, she had a fine series of encounters with massiveness, many of them embodying those extra qualities; see her own account of the whole adventure in the notes for the 653rd session in Chapter 13 of Personal Reality.

(In my notes preceding the 39th session for March 30, 1964, I described the first massive state Jane experienced after beginning the Seth sessions. That material contains passages that are of special interest here, and I've combined them in these excerpts:)

"At 8:45 I walked into the living room to waken Jane for the evening's session. She continued to lie quietly on the couch, eyes closed, but in a few minutes told me she'd just been visited by a most strange sensation. From her description of it I thought she might have been exploring an ability related to the inner senses. So far, Seth has explained six of these. (Several years later, Jane was to list nine such inner senses in Chapter 19 of The Seth Material.) Jane said that upon coming slowly awake from her nap she'd had the very peculiar feeling of 'growing larger.' The laughing phrase she used was that she'd felt as 'big as an elephant.' Her boundaries of awareness seemed to have expanded. Holding her hands up on either side of her head, she indicated a width of almost three feet; her head had literally felt that wide to her.

"Jane added that when we close our eyes we're aware of a certain 'area of blackness, ' one we're used to. While she'd been in this unusual state, that area was much enlarged-she used the words 'infinitely large' to describe it. Jane said it was as though her eyes had actually moved further apart to create this expanded field of awareness, of infinite black. She hadn't sensed anything happening within this area, but thought that she might have, given more knowledge and experience. She hadn't been frightened by the sensation, and went along with it. She didn't have it now that her eyes were open, yet the physical feeling of enlargement had been so strong there could be no doubt of it...

"As we talked, Jane suddenly announced that her experience had triggered her memory: She'd had similar sensations of enlargement twice before. Both took place before she started the sessions late in 1963; one about six months ago, in October, 1963, say, and the other one over a year before that-perhaps in March, 1962. She couldn't be sure of either date. She felt each one upon awakening from a nap, but with her eyes still closed. Neither event had made as much of an impression on her as tonight's experience, for she hadn't sensed the odd, infinite black within the expanded area of the skull. Since she'd been alone on each occasion, she simply forgot to tell me about either one of them."

(In that 39th session, Seth confirmed that Jane had been experimenting with one of the inner senses. Surprisingly, she'd tuned into one be hadn't told us much about yet: Expansion or Contraction of the Tissue Capsule.)

Iam rather surprised that Ruburt hit upon this one at this time, as it is usually a rather difficult ability to attain.

Ruburt experienced this on a physical level, trying to translate inner data into sensation that could be recognized by the outer senses. This seventh inner sense represents an extension of the self, a widening of its conscious comprehension.., or a pulling together into... a minute capsule that enables the self to enter other fields.

(And from the 40th session:) The tissue capsule is actually an energy field boundary... At the same time it protects the whole self from certain radiations which do not here concern you. No living consciousness exists on any plane without this tissue capsule enclosing it... To some inhabitants of other planes [realities] that have access to your plane, all that can be seen of you is this capsule, since such inhabitants have had no experience in your particular type of camouflage [physical] construction. Therefore your camoufla~e patterns are invisible to them, but the tissue capsules are not.

These capsules can be seen by you under certain circumstances and have been called astral bodies.., a term which does not meet with my pleasure...

(So Jane experienced a modest series of unusual psychic events before the sessions themselves began; some details on these have been given in earlier notes. Her first massive sensations in March [estimated], 1962, were followed by these phenomena in 1963: our York Beach experiences in August; her reception of Idea Construction in September; her massive feelings ~7? October [estimated]; the outline she produced for ESP Power [or The Coming of Seth] as a result of the Idea Construction adventure; and the beginning of these sessions in November, through our trying certain experiments listed in that outline [as Jane explains in Chapter 1 of The Seth Material]. It didn't occur to us to label any of those events as "psychic" until the event of Idea Construction. Listing them as I've done here is also apt to artificially set them aside from the flow of insights within the poetry Jane has written since childhood; actually, of course, a/l are related.

(And finally, I can note that in recent years I've had some experiences of my own with the seventh inner sense. These have been very pleasant, but not nearly as deep as Jane's. While immersed in them I've always been exceptionally sensitive to sound.)

APPENDIX 8

(For Session 690)

(Seth began talking about the dilemma posed between the conventional theory of evolution and his ideas about the simultaneous nature of time and existence, soon after these sessions started late in 1963. He dealt with this duality very evocatively in the 45th session for April 20, 1964:)

The value climate of psychological reality can be likened to an ocean in which all consciousness has its being. There are multitudinous levels that can be plunged into, with various life forms, diverse and alien, but nevertheless interconnected and dependent one upon the other. I like the ocean analogy because you get the idea of continuous flow and motion without apparent division.

As temperatures in various depths of ocean change, and as even the color of the water and of the flora and fauna change, so too in our value climate there are quality changes, and senses equipped to project and perceive the changes. There are distortions because of the limitations of the outer senses, but the inner senses' do not distort. The inner senses inhabit directly the atmosphere of our value climate; they see through the evervarying camouflage (physical) patterns, and the flux and flow of apparent change. To some small degree in our sessions you plunge into this ocean of value climate, and to the extent that you are able to divest yourselves of the clothes of camouflage, you can be truly aware of this climate.

What is required is more than a shedding of clothes, however. To plunge into this ocean you also leave the physical body at the shore. It will be there when you get back. Your camouflage patterns can be likened to those cast by sun and shadow upon the the ever-moving waves. As long as you keep the pattern in mind, you create it, and it is there. If you turn your head away for a moment and then look quickly back you can see only the wave. Your camouflage and your world are created by conscious focusing and unconscious concentration. Only by turning your head aside momentarily can you see what is beneath the seemingly solid pattern. By plunging into our ocean of value climate you can dive beneath your camouflage system and look up to see it, relatively foundationless, floating above you, moved, formed, and directed by the shifting illusions caused by the wind of will, and the force of subconscious concentration and demand. Yet even these camouflage patterns must follo~v the

basic rules of the inner universe, and reflect them, even if in a distortive manner. So does value expansion become reincarnation and evolution and growth. So are all the other basic laws of the inner universe followed on every plane, and reflected from the most minute to the most gigantic spectrum.

Concentrating upon your own camouflage universe, you are able to distinguish only the distortive pattern, and from this pattern you deduce your ideas of cause and effect, past, present and future, and ideas of an expanding universe that bloats...

APPENDIX 9

(For Session 690)

(The contents for this appendix, including a short description of Jane's use of Sumari, came through within a month after the 690th session was held.

(In ESP class for April 16, a student asked Seth to comment on "the differences between the male and female [human beings] as we understand them." Seth's answer was a long one. It clearly illuminated his material in this session, as can be seen in the excerpt I've put together for this presentation. [This sometimes happens in class: Seth will elaborate upon book information, or discuss it from a different viewpoint; this in turn makes Jane and me want to see such material used in the book.])

All time is simultaneous (Seth told the members of class) , and so you are male and female at once.

In all religions, those that you did not officially adopt in your society, what you would think of as the female religions predominated. Those people did not progress in industrial terms because they were too well aware of their part in nature. They could not dissect it.

Your ideas of sexuality follow both your religions and your sciences, then, for you have created each. But you always know what you are doing, and there are cycles in the earth, and in your being and your soul. And so you are in the process of reuniting yourself, and discovering what the word "humanity" means. You are finding out the meaning of individuality, which is a far more important word than you realize, and when you understand that meaning, then your own individuality will express itself in its natural form. Regardless of what words are put upon your experience in terms of sexual roles, you will be a full human being. When the conscious and the unconscious minds are understood, you will have no more problems with sexuality.

Now I am simply giving you a brief idea of what is involved, and I expect each of you to follow through in your own way, to see the connections and think about them. And now, before you, what do you see? A woman or a man? You see a range of human being and personality that defies conventional ideas of sexuality or of consciousness-that defies all of the ideas that have been handed down to you, and that challenges you each to look for the reality of your own being.

Your sexuality is a point of focus, and that is all. For those of you who need it said, I say it: A woman is as intellectual as a man. A man is as intuitive as a woman. You chose your sexual focus for a reason. The reason has more to do with the flexibility of consciousness than you presently understand. It has to do with the real nature of aggression and passivity, ' which you have allowed yourselves to forget.. . Birth is an aggressive experience. Passivity is based upon the joyful recognition of natural aggression. To be carried along, each of you must be very sure of yourself. To allow yourself what is now, in your terms, a luxury of passivity, you must have confidence in the nature of your own reality and strength. Otherwise passivity frightens you to the core.

Think of your ideas about your own sexuality in connection with those about your being and consciousness. Regroup your ideas so that you automatically think of sexuality in relationship to your religions and sciences. You have associated the word "female" with the unconscious, while you have been working toward what you now think of as an egotistically based consciousness. There is more in what I am saying than you presently realize. You cannot, each of you, consider the real meaning of your own sexuality unless you understand your own religious history. Follow through, in your own minds, with your memories. Try to be honest with yourselves as to those early experiences in which you forced yourselves to behave differently than you were, because adults told you that you must... You had better understand the beautiful, unique quality of your own individuality lest you project upon the other sex-whichever sex you are-those abilities and qualities that you are afraid are your own, or project upon them those abilities and qualities that you wish you possessed and fear you do not.

Each of you must discover what sexuality is, in all of its aspects, and connect it with the nature of your consciousness and your being. The answers must come from within. You have before you now certain hints and signs. Use them. And all of you who look upon me as a sign of great logical thinking (hum orously) , and therefore male-oriented, in your terms, then listen:

(Without a break Jane went from her Seth trance into another very creative mode of consciousness. For perhaps five minutes she sang to the class in Sumari, 2 the trance language she initiated a few years ago. I've always found the quality of her Sumari expression to be of a high order. Each song is unique and thrilling, whether it's muted or powerful, melodic or animated; often the particular delivery is made up of a combination of such attributes, as it was this evening. Class members discussed the song briefly. Then Jane came through as Sumari once more, but this time she spoke in conversational tones.3 Immediately she was finished, Seth returned:)

You hear, and you do not hear, and yet your inner selves listen and they hear. What you were told was not given you in precise English, in intellectual terms, in paragraphs or in sentences. What you were given brought you into an encounter with your own emotions-those of which you were aware, and those that you hide, each from the other. And (with humorous emphasis) I am not giving you any more intellectual clues!

Teachers use many methods, and so we use many methods. We are male and female, ancient and forever new. And so are you!

APPENDIX 10

(For Session 692)

(During the two weeks immediately following the 69 1st session, Jane kept working with the project involving the missing person; see the notes for that session. Among other things, she took part in a series of lengthy telephone exchanges, usually late at night. She scored some remarkable "hits"psycbically and made some errors-yet she ended up thinking that her demonstrated abilities often collided with what our society teaches us is possible in human activity. Jane told me that at times she felt a distinct yearning for understanding by the others involved in the affair; yet, because of her participation in it, her confidence in knowing what she can do was strengthened szgnif icantly. And Seth, very briefly commenting upon the search while it was still in progress, remarked to an out-of-town group of visitors that Jane was endeavoring to use her psychic abilities on her own; and that the assurance she was gaining through her efforts would be much more valuable to her than any she might derive from Seth himself "doing all the work."

(To conclude the whole episode I'd like to illuminate, from two additional angles, Jane's feelings and concerns about needing the understanding of others:

(1."Sometimes, " she said to me recently, and with no hint of smugness, "when I talk to a group of people-say on a Friday night, when psychic stuff may or may not be involved-I get the weird feeling that I'm operating on nine or ten different levels at once: The meanings and understandings that are being exchanged, at least between me and the other individuals in the room, are all so different. Those people can't possibly know bow I interpret some of the things they say. I do think I'm a lot more aware of this than they are, because of the very nature of what I can do-but I can't explain that to every person I speak to. There isn't time. And it would be too exhausting."

(2.This note was added eight days later. Within some personal material we received following the 694th session for May 1, 1974, Seth said in part:)

He (Ruburt) was bound and determined to explore the nature of reali~.'... He wanted to protect himself until he had enough knowledge to know what he was doing. He fears for the gullibility of people, and is rightly appalled at their superstitions-as you are, Joseph (as Seth calls me) . Indeed, as Ruburt became aware of the little that is known, he wondered at his o~vn daring. There was no one he could turn to for instruction. I could have helped him further, but I was (part of what he was investigating]

(Seth continued:) He also began to see two poles in society: one highly conventional and closed, in which he would appear as a charlatan; and another, yearning but gullible, willing to believe anything if only it offered hope, in which his activities would be misinterpreted, and to him [would be] fraudulent... There was a middle ground that he would have to make for himself.., to make a bridge to those intellectuals who doubted, and yet maintain some freedom and spontaneity in order to reach those at the other end. This required manipulations most difficult for any personality, and a constant system of checks and balances.

(I think that because of the very nature of the abilities she's chosen to develop in this life, Jane will always find such manipulations necessary. And they are difficult.)

APPENDIX 12

(For Session 705)

(Originally I planned this appendix on evolution to contain just three widely separated excerpts from Seth's material: an early unpublished session, afew passages in Seth Speaks, and one in Volume 1 of"Unknown" Reality The appendix, however kept growing as I worked on it; Ifound myself adding quotations from other sessions, along with comments derived from my own reading and from conversations Jane and I had on the subject

(I learned that "evolution" can mean many things. Like variations on a theme, it can be progressive or relatively sudden, convergent or divergent. I also learned that once I began to study it, a great amount of material presented itself seemingly without effort on my part; the information ranged all the way from paleontological studies to current biological research on recombinant DNA, and I found it in newspapers, sdent~fic journals and popular magazines, in books and even on television. [I'm sure others have had similar experiences:

Once a subject is focused upon, data relative to it seem to leap out from the background welter of daily events and 'fads" surrounding one's 41e.] Almost automatically, many of the notes for this appendix came to deal with the scient~flc thinking about evolution, and I realized that I wanted them to show the differences [as well as any similarities that might emerge] between Seth's concepts and those "official" views prevailing in our physical reality.

(Our belieft and intents cause us to pick 'from an unpredictable group of actions, " or probabilities, those that we want to happen, as Seth tells us in the 68 1st session in Volume 1; therefore, from my physically oriented probability the considerable work I've put into this paper is an examination of evolution in connection with a number of Seth's concepts. Religious questions connected with evolution aren't stressed as much as some might like, although they aren't ignored either-but to go very far into religious history would lead away from the focus I've chosen.

(I found some of the excerpts, notes, and comments very dfficult to assemble and interpret, and others easy to do. The Seth material is incomplete, of course; new information "intrudes" constantly, and in so doing often takes off from a given subject in fresh directions. Some of this process has to do with Jane's own character She likes new things, new ideas. Yet in her own way she-and Seth as well-eventually returns to earlier materiaL Interpretation of old and new together calls for a system of constant correlations, then, and I use that approach as often as I can.

(Even so, as I worked on this appendix I wondered again and again why I was investing so much time in it. The answers proved to be simple once I understood them. fended up shocked to discover how little real evidence there is to back up the idea of evolution, andfascinated by the limits of scientqic thinking. I was quite surprised at my reactions. Somehow Jane and I always understood, to make an analogy, that Seth's kind of "simultaneous" reincarnation [or anyone else's kind, for that matter] wasn't acceptable in our Western societies at this time in history; we could trace out many reasons why this is so. But some time passed before I realized that our ruling intellectual establishments were advancing notions about evolution that were not proven in scientific terms-then teaching these 'facts" to succeeding generations. Finally, the humor of the whole situation got through to me: As some have very dearly noted, in the biological and earth sciences especially, circular reasoning often predominates:

The theory of evolution is used to prove the theory of evolution.

(The first quotes I've put together, then, are from the 44th session for April 15, 1964. In that session Seth gave us his interpretations of some of the basic laws or attributes of the inner universe, but it will be quickly seen that he was really discussing space and time, 2 as those qualities are perceived in his reality and in ours. In our world, of course, space and timeform the environment in which conventional ideas of evolution exist. For that matter, all of the material in this appendix shows the interrelationship between our ideas of serial time and Seth's simultaneous time. Connected here also is the philosophical concept known as "naive realism, " which will be discussed briefly later.

(This presentation from the 44th session shows clearly just how much of his philosophy Seth had given Jane and me by then. He spoke very forc~fully:)

Ihave said that the mind cannot be detected by your instruments at present. The mind does not take up space, and yet the mind is the value that gives power to the brain. The mind expands continuously, both in individual terms and in terms of the species as awhole, and yet (with amusement) the mind takes up neither more nor less space, whether it be the mind of a flea or a man.

Ihave also said that basically the universe has no more to do with space in your terms than does the dream world.

Your idea of space is some completely erroneous conception of an emptiness to be filled. Things-planets, stars, nebulae-come into being in this physical [camouflage] universe of yours, according to your latest theories, and this universe expands-pushed so that its sides bulge, so to speak, the outer galaxies literally bursting into nowhere. True inner space is to the contrary vital energy, itself alive, possessing abilities of transformation, forming all existences, even the camouflage reality with which you are familiar, and which you attempt to probe so ineffectively.

This basic universe of which I speak expands constantly in terms of intensity and quality and value, in a way that has nothing to do with your idea of space. The basic universe beneath all camouflage does not have an existence in space at all, as you envision it.

Space is a ~ouflage... This tinge of time is an attribute of the-physical camouflage form only, and even then the relationship

between time and ideas, and time and dreams, is a nebulous one... although in some instances parts of the inner universe may be glimpsed from the camouflage perspective of time; only, how-ever, a small portion.

If the dream world, the mind, and the inner universe do exist, but not in space, and if they do not exist basically in time, though they may be glimpsed through time, then your question will be: In what medium or in what manner do they exist, and without time, how can they be said to exist in duration? I am telling you that the basic universe exists behind all camouflage universes in the same manner, and taking up no space, that the mind exists behind the brain. The brain is a camouflage pattern. It takes up space. It exists in time, but the mind takes up no space and does not have its basic existence in time. Your camouflage universe, on the other hand, takes up space and exists in time.

Nevertheless the dream world, the mind, and the basic inner universe do exist.. . in what we will call the value climate of psychological reality. This is the medium. This takes the place of what you call space. It is a quality which makes all existences and consciousness possible. It is one of the most powerful principles behind or within the vitality that itself composes from itself all other phenomena.3

One of the main attributes of this value climate is spontaneity, which shows itself in the existence of the only sort of time that has any real meaning-that of the spacious present.

The spacious present does not contradict the existence of a future as you conceive it. Now this may appear contradictory, but later I hope that you will understand this more clearly. The spacious present, while existing spontaneously, while happening simultaneously, still contains within it qualities of duration.

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

I am giving it [this material] to you in as simple terms as possible. If growth is one of the most necessary laws of your camouflage universe, value fulfillment corresponds to it in the inner-reality universe.4

Now, the so-called laws of your camouflage physical universe do not apply to the inner universe, do not even a I to other camouflage planes. However, the laws o inner universe apply to all camouflage realities. Some of these basic laws have counterparts known and accepted in various camouflage realities. There are diverse manifestations of them, and names given to them.

These fundamental laws are followed on many levels in your own universe. So far I have given you but one, which is value fulfillment. In your physical universe this rule is followed as physical growth. The entity follows it through the cycle of [simultaneous] reincarnations. The species of mankind, and all other species in your universe on your particular horizontal plane, follow this law [value fulfillment] under the auspices of evolution (my emphasis) .5 in other camouflage realities, this law is carried through in different manners, but it is never ignored.

The second law of the inner universe is energy transformation.6 This occurs constantly. Energy transformation and value fulfillment, both existing within the spacious present [or at once], add up to a durability that is at the same time spontaneous... and simultaneous.

You may see what we are getting at here. Our third law is spontaneity, and despite all appearances of beginning and end, of death and decay, all consciousnesses exist in the spacious present, in a spontaneous manner, in simultaneous harmony; and yet within the spacious present there is also durability.

Durability is our fourth law. Durability within the framework of the spacious present would not exist were it not for the laws of value fulfillment and energy transformation. These make duration within the spacious present not only possible but necessary....

(The "value climate ofpsychological reality, "first mentioned in the [44th] session just quoted, is also dealt with through analogy in the 45th session. Portions of that material are given as Appendix 8 in Volume 1; in that session also Seth stated that "value expansion becomes reincarnation, and evolution and growth." [Seth's own kind of simultaneous time, of course, easily accommodates all three concepts, although this appendix isn't concerned with reincarnation.]

(Seth material on evolution is presented twice in the 582nd session for Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks-not only in the session proper, but from an ESP class delivery given afew days later, on April27, 1971. In class, Seth discussed Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, ' and that materia4 some of which wasn't published in the 582nd session, is the sourcefor my second group of excerpts:)

He [Darwin] spent his last years proving it, and yet it has no real validity. It has a validity within very limited perspectives only; for consciousness does, indeed, evolve form. Form does not evolve consciousness. It is according to when you come into the picture, and what you choose to obse~e... Consciousness did not come from atoms and molecules scattered by chance through the universe...

Now, if you had all been really paying attention to what I have been saying for some time about the simultaneous nature of time and existence, then you would have known that the theory of evolution is as beautiful a tale as the theory of Biblical creation. Both are quite handy, and both are methods of telling stories, and both might seem to agree within their own systems, and yet, in larger respects they cannot be realities...

Within you, concepts and actions are one. You recognize this, but your mental lives are often built around concepts that, until recently, have been considered very modern and very ~ such as the idea of evolution... In actuality, life bursts apart in all directions as consciousness does. There is no one steady stream of progress.

(To a student:) Now last week, when Ruburt Uane] was speaking about the natives who are such expert dreamers, you asked:

"But why are they not more progressive?" Yet I know you realize that your own progress as a civilization will, in your terms, come to a halt unless you advance in other directions. This is what your civilization is learning that you cannot rape your planet, that life did not begin as some isolated [substance] that in the great probabilities of existence met another [similar substance], and another, and then another, until a chain of molecules could be made and selves formed. Using an analogy, neither does consciousness exist as simple organisms separated by vast distances, but as a complicated gestalt.

(From the beginning then, Seth has referred to evolution in his materiaL He attaches his own meanings to it, however, and as I show in this appendix, does not imply that all l~/è as we know it on this planet evolvedfrom a single primeval source. [See notes 5 and 7.]

(I think it more than a coincidence that in these excerpts from Seth Speaks, Seth mentions Darwin's theory of evolution and the Biblical story of creation in the same sentence, for those systems of belief represent the two poles of the controversy over origins in our modern Western societies: the strictly Darwinistic, mechanistic view of evolution, in which the weakest of any species are ruthlessly eliminated through natural, predatory selection, and the views of the creationists, who hold that God made the earth and all of its creatures just as described in the Bible.

(Many creationists believe that the Bible is literally true. [An undetermined number of scientists hold creationist views, by the way, but I have no statistics to offer on how many do.] The Bible certainly advocates at least a relative immutability of species, rather than a common ancestry in which a single cell evolved into a variety of ever more complex and divergent forms. In between these opposites there range all shades of meaning and interpretation on evolution. Theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists, for example, try to bring the two extremes closer together through postulating various methods by which God created the world and then, while remaining hidden, either helped it to evolve to its present state in the Darwinistic tradition, or, through a series of creative acts, brought forth each succeeding "higher"form of life.

(Ironically, Charles Darwin's natural selection, "the survival of the fittest, "[a phrase that Darwin himself did not originate, by the way], allows for all sorts ofpain and suffering in the process-the same unhappy facts of lfe, in Darwin's view, that finally turned him into an agnostic, away from a God who could allow such things to exist! As I interpret what I've read, Darwin didn't deny the existence of a god of some kind, but he wanted one that would abolish what he saw as the "upward" struggle for existence. According to the geological/fossil record, this conflict had resulted in the deaths of entire species. Darwin came to believe that he asked the impossible of God. Instead, he ass2gned the pain and suffering in the world to the impersonal workings of natural selection and chance variation [or genetic mutation]. For Darwin and his followers-even those of today, then-nature's effects gave the appearance of design or plan in the universe without necessitating a belief in a designer or a god; although, as I wrote in Note 7, from the scientific standpoint this belief leaves untouched the question ofdestgn in nonliving matter, which is vastly more abundant in the "objective" universe than is living matter, and had to precede that living matter.

(As counterpoint to Darwin's ideas, here briefly are some of Seth's comments on the human condition, and that of the animals. The material is from two sessions. The first one is the 5 80th [for April 12, 1971]from, once again, Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks. Seth talked about the innate creative ability of human beings-even in creating war. Then he continued:)

Illness and suffering are not thrust upon you by God, or by All That Is, or by an outside agency. They are a by-product of the learning process, created by you, in themselves quite neutral... Illness and suffering are the results of the misdirection of creative energy. They are a part of the creative force, however. They do not come from a different source than, say, health and vitality. Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you how to stop suffering. That is its purpose... Ihave mentioned before that everyone within your system is learning to handle this creative energy and since you are still in the process of doing so, you will often misdirect it. The resulting snarl in activities automatically brings you back to inner questions.

(The second session quoted in the 63 4th [for January 22, 1973] in Chapter 8 of Personal Reality. Seth discussed the repression of natural aggression, and mentioned the sense of guilt that arose in early man with the birth of compassion. Then:)

Animals have a sense of justice that you do not understand, and built into that innocent sense of integrity there is a biological compassion, understood at the deepest cellular levels...

Acat 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.

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... Man, pursuing his own way, chose to step outside of that framework-on a conscious level...

(This kind of material from Seth is deceptively simple, but upon reflection it can be seen to offer much. Jane and I think its implications are often missed by many who write us with questions about the pain and suffering in the world. Undoubtedly Seth has much more to say on the subject, and we hope to eventually obtain that information. Certainly individual and mass beliefs will be involved [along with the natural and unnatural guilt Seth discussed in the sessions making up Chapter 8 of Personal Reality]. I'd say that just understanding the complicated relationships between mass beliefs and illness alone, for example, will require much material from Seth and much time invested upon our parts.

(For the most part Seth's ideas are far away from thoughts of replicating genes or the second law of thermodynamics. Through Jane, he grapples with the mysteries of existence in emotional terms~. rather than through the impersonal, "scient ~fi c, " and really unproven concepts that 4fe originated by accident [more than 3.4 billion years ago, 8 to give a late estimate], and perpetuates itself through chance mutations. Darwin's objective thinking then, cut him offfrom such comprehensions as Seth advocates. The same was true for many scientists and theistic thinkers in succeeding generations, and in my opinion this holds today. I suggest that the entire 634th session in Personal Reality be read with this appendix, for in it Seth explored some connections between animal and man-including the evolution[my emphasis] by man of "certain animal capacities to their utmost." At practically the same time, in the 637th session for the following chapter [9], he could tell us: "Note: I did not say that man emerged from the animals."

(Over a year later Jane supplemented such remarks by Seth with some trance material ofher "own"; see Appendix 6 in Volume 1 of"Unknown" Reality According to her, ~f man didn't emerge from the animals, there were certainly close relationships involved-a dance ofprobabilities between the two, as it were. As I noted at the beginning of this appendix, the Seth material is still incomplete, and new information requires constant correlation with what has come before. Jane's own material-including whatever she comes up with in the future-ought to be integrated with Seth's, also, and eventually we hope to find time to do this. Although she left Appendix 6 unfinished, it contains many ideas worth more study: "Some of the experiments with man-animals didn't work out along our historic lines, but the ghost memories of those probabilities still linger in our biological structure... The growth of ego consciousness by itself set up both challenges and limitations... For many centuries there was no clear-cut differentiation between various aspects of man and animal.., there were parallel developments in the emergence of physical man... there were innumerable species of man-in-the-making inyourterms... . "[I can add that just as Jane supplemented Seth's material on early man, he in turn has added to hers in a kind offreewheeling exchange; his information is presented later in this appendix.]

(The third excerpt I'd originally planned to use is from the 690th session in Volume 1, and shows that even when Seth talks of evolution in our terms of ordinary time, he means something quite d~7'erent from that conventional definition of linear change: Precognition is one of the attributes of the growth through value fulfillment that he described in the [already quoted] 44th session. I also want to use this material to lead into short discussions of "naive realism, "and evolution at the level of molecular biology. Setk)

Ihave said that evolution does not exist as you think of it, in any kind of one-line ape-to-man sequence. No other species developed in that manner, either. Instead there are parallel developments. Your time perception shows you but one slice of the whole cake, for instance.

In thinking in terms of consecutive time, however, evolution does not march from the past into the future. Instead, precognitively the species is aware of those changes it wants to make, and from the "future" it alters the "present" state of the chromosomes and genes (see Note 14) to bring about in the probable future the specific changes it desires. Both above and below your usual conscious focus, then, time is experienced in an entirely different fashion, and is constantly manipulated, as physically you manipulate matter.9 (Seth's ideas aside for the moment, biologists faithful to Darwin's theories don't want to hear anything about the precognitive abilities of a species. nor do they see any evidence of it in their work. In evolutionary theory, such attributes violate not only the operation of chance mutation and the struggle for existence, but our ideas of consecutive time [which is associated with "naive realism"-the belief that things are really as we perceive them to be]. Not that sdent~fically the concept ofafar more flexible time-even a backward flow of time-is all that new. In atomic physics, for example, no special meaning or place is given to any particular moment, andfundamentally the past and future all but merge in the interactions of elementary particles-thus at least approaching Seth's simultaneous time.10 At that level there's change, or value fulfillment;, but no evolution. To Jane's and my way of thinking ~7f there's value fulfillment there's consciousness, expressed through C U's, or units of consciousness.

(But to some degree many scientists outside physics regard such esoteric particle relationships as being of theoretical interest mainly within that discipline; the concepts aren't seen as posing any threat to biology, zoology, or geology, for instance, nor do they tinker with naive realism. The biological sciences can cling to mechanistic theories of evolution by employing the conservative physics of cause and effect to support their conclusions while being aware, perhaps, of the tenets of particle physics. Such "causal analysis" then proves itself over and over again-a situation, I wiyly note, that's akin to the criticism I've read wherein the theory of evolution is used to prove the theory of evolution. [I mentioned such circular reasoning near the beginning of this appendix.]

(I find it very interesting then, to consider that the theory of evolution is a creature of our coarser world of 'physical" construction. Our ordinary, chosen sensualperceptions move us forward, within "the time £ystem that the species adopted, " as Seth commented in Chapter 8 of Personal Reality. And Seth's explanation of the moment point" encompasses the seeming paradox through which consecutive time can be allowed expression within simultaneous time.

(Naive realism, the philosophical concept that's been mentioned a few times in this appendix, enters in here. It could, howevei be considered at just about any time, since its proponents believe that it's unconsciously involved in practically all of our daily activities. Simply put, naive realism teaches that our visual and bodily senses reveal to us an external world as it really is-that we see~~actual physical objects, for instance. Disbelievers say that neurological evidence contradicts this theory; that from the neurological standpoint the events in our lives and within our bodies depend upon interpretation by the brain, ~ that we can know nothing directly, but only experience transmitted through-and so "colored" by-the central nervous system. The perceptual time lag caused by the limited speed of light, is also involved in objections to naive realism. I merely want to remind the reader that in ordinary tenns naive realism, or some mind-brain idea very much like it, is habitually used whether we're considering evolution within a time-oriented camouflage universe, painting a picture, or running a household. And after many centuries, the debate over the relations/up between mind and brain continues, ~ffirst the existence of the mind is even agreed upon!

(Is there really '~omething out there?" That was one cf tire questions I asked Jane not long after she began giving these sessions late in 1963. I'd say that we still have but a partial answer [the same situation that applies to a lot of our other questions, too], although Seth came through with what 1 think ofas a key passage in the 23rd session for February 5, 1964:)

Because I say that you actually create the typical camouflage patterns of your own physical universe yourselves, by use of the inner vitality of the universe in the same manner that you form a pattern with your breath on a glass pane, I do not necessarily mean that you are the creators of the universe. I am merely saying that you are the creators of the physical world as you know it-and herein, my beloved friends, lies a vast tale.

(And a decade later we're still unraveling that tale, with Seth's help. I'll digress here for a moment to note that we expect to be so occupied for the rest of our lives: The intellectual and emotional challenges posed by the Seth material are practically unlimited.

(Yet, as far as he went in Chapter 5 ofPersonal Reality, Seth was pretty definite in his ideas about physical reality. It seems to me that he combines certain aspects of naive realism with some of the objections to it; see the 625th session for November 1, 1972:)

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 webwor~... 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.

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.

Again, we run into difficulties in explanation simply because there are few verbal equivalents for what I am trying to say.'3

(Within that temporal framework, , investigators have recently discovered great biochemical dfferences among human beings at the molecular level: The genetic structures of numerous proteins [see Note 5] have been shown to be much more varied than was suspected. Even more pronounced are the differences among proteins between species. Each of us is seen to be truly unique-but at the same time those studying biological evolution express concern about whether their discoveries will challenge Darwinistic beliefs. ~' Instead, I think that what has been learned so far offers only possible variations within the idea of evolution, for the talk is still about the origin of 4/e out of nonlfej, followed by the climb up the scale of living complexity; most evolutionists think that natural selection, or the survival ofthefittest. still applies.

(Any role that consciousness might play in such biochemicalprocesses isn't considered, of course, nor is there any sort of mystical comprehension of what we're up to as creatures. No matter how beautifully man works out a hypothesis or theory, he still does so without any thought of consciousness coming first Through the habitual (and perhaps unwitting) use of naive realism, he projects his own basic creativity outside of himself or any of his parts. He also projects upon cellular components like genes and DNA'4 learned concepts of "protection" and "selfishness": DNA is said to care only about its own survival and "knowledge, " and not whether its host is man, plant, or animaL Only man would think to burden such pervasive parts of his own being and those of other entities, with such negative concepts! Jane and I don't believe the allegations-in its own terms, how could the very st uff controlling inheritance not care about the nature of what it created? I'm only halfjoking (is there a gene for humor.') when I protest that DNA, for example, doesn't deserve to be regarded in such a fashion, no matter how much we push it around through recombinant techniques. 15

(I'm projecting my own ideas here, but I think that in all of its complexity DNA has motives for its physical existence [as mediated through Seth's CU'S, or units of consciousness] that considerably enlarge upon its assigned function as the "master molecule" of lfe as we know it. Deoxyribonucleic acid may exist within its host, whether man, plant, or animal-or bacteria or virus-in cooperative altruistic ventures with its carrier that are quite beside purely survival ones. Some of those goals, such as the exploration of concepts like the moment point [see Note 11], or probabilities [and reincarnation'6], really defy our ordinary conscious perception. In terms we can more easily grasp, social relations/ups within and between species may be explored, starting at that biochemical level and working "upward." Basically, then, an overall genetics of cooperation becomes a truer long-run concept than the postulated deadly struggle for survival of the fittest, whether between man and molecules, say, or among members of the same species. Once again we have consciousness seeking to know itself in as many ways as possible, while being aware all of the time, in those terms, of the forthcoming "death" of its medium of expression, DNA, and of DNA's host, or "physical machine."

(I continue my projections by writing that to a molecule of DNA the conventional notion of evolution-could such an entity grasp that idea, or even want to-might be hilarious indeed, given its own enhanced time scheme.'7 Actually it would be more to the point ~f perhaps with the aid of hypnosis and/or visualization, we triedfrom our giant-sized viewpoints to touch such minute consciousnesses with our own, 18 and so extend our knowledge in unexpected ways. Some probable realities might be reached-potential conscious achievements that I think are already within the reach of certain g~fled individuals, Jane among them. '9Jane and I would rather say that the variability among humans [or the members of any other species] at the molecular level is a reflection of Seth's statement that we each create our own reality, with all that that implies.

(I want to add here that our real challenge in knowing our own species, and others, may lie in our cultivating the ability to understand the interacting consciousnesses involved, rather than to search only for physical relationshzps supposedly created through evolutionary processes. The challenge is profound. The consciousnesses of numerous other species may be so dfferent from ours that we only approximately grasp the meanings inherent in some of them, and miss the essences of others entirely. To give just two examples, at this time we are surely opaque to the seemingly endless search for value fulfillment that consciousness displays through the "lowly" lungfish and the "unattractive" cockroach. Yet those entities are quite immune to our notions of evolution, and they explore time contexts in ways far beyond our current human comprehension.~ As far as science knows, both have existed with very little change for over 300 million years.

(It should be clear, then, that in our camouflage reality the ordinary concept of evolution becomes very complex fone chooses to make it so. The process can be discussed from many viewpoints; Jane and I think that such inquiries could easily "evolve"/to make apun] into a book, either to bolster Seth's ideas on the subject, for instance, or to refute them. I now have on file materials that support or reject any stance on evolution that one cares to take. But it neverfails, as "they" say: The members of each 'pressure group, " whatever its orientation, want to see things their way-very human performances, I'm afraid Once it's created, each school of thought takes upon itself and often with great intellectual and emotional arrogance, the right to advance its own belief systems in the world at the expense of its rivals.

(But, I asked Jane recently, why do our sciences and religions take it all so seriously? I wasn't really too earnest. Ifwe truly owe our physical existence to the chance conglomeration of certain atoms and molecules in the thickening scum of a primordial pond or ocean [to discuss only mankind here], then certainly we'll never come this way again in the universe; and moreover, our emotional and intellectual attributes must rest upon the same dubious be ginning. Aside from the lack of evidence to back up such "scientific" speculations, what thinking or feeling values, I wonder, can make such a belief system so attractive? Surely very limited ones in linear terms, fated to never get beyond those incessant questions about what came before the beginning To paraphrase some other material Jane wrote not long ago: "But the earth and all upon it are given. To imagine that such an entire environment is an accident is intellectually outrageous and emotionally sterile."
(And this is the ideal place to insert the poem she wrote not long afterward:

Science Convinces Me of Magic
Science convinces me of magic
More each day.
To think that you and I,
The tiniest blade of grass
And highest mountain,
The smallest ant
And the Empire State Building
(and all the shops, streets,
and people in modern-day Manhattan)
All exist because
Some elemental dice
Just happened to
Fall together right!
Dice thrown by no hand
Or intent,
Because neither were
Invented yet.

(Jane and I certainly do not hold creationist views [see Note 1]. As 1 wrote near the beginning of this appendix, to go very far into religious history would lead away from the subject matter I planned to cover; but to us science is as far away from Seth's philosophy in one direction as religion is in the opposite direction. The species' religious drives have been around a lot longer than its scientific ones, however, so I found myself looking for broad correlations between the two, in that under each value system the individual carries a very conscious sense ofpersonal vulnerability. Before Darwinism, to use that concept as an example, man at least felt that God had put him on earth for certain purposes, no matter how much man distorted those purposes through ignorance and war. According to Judaism and Christianity, among many religions, man could seek forgiveness and salvation; he had a soul. After Darwin, he learned that even his physical presence on earth was an accident of nature. He was taught-he taught himself-that ideas of souls and gods were ridiculous. Either way, this very fallible creature found himself vulnerable to forces that consciously he couldn't understand-even though, in Seth's view, down through the millenia man had chosen all of his religious and antireligious experiences.

(As far as I can discover, science pays very little attention to any philosophical questions about why we're here, even while most definitely telling us what's true or not true. And while postulating that life is basically meaningless or goal-less [DNA doesn't care what its host looks likc, for instance], science fights awfully hard to convince everyone that it's right-thus attaching the most rigid kind of meaning or direction to its professional views! [If I were very cynical, I'd add here that to Jane and me it often seems that science wants only what science believes.] At the same time, in mathematical and biological detail much too complicated to go into here, the author of many a scientific work in favor of evolution has ended up by undermining, unwittingly, I'm sure, the very themes he so devoutly believes in. I've hinted at some of those paradoxes in certain notes [mainly 5 through 8]for this appendix.

(In the current literature I read that a typicalfamous scientist-one of many leaders expressing such views these days-is veiy pessimistic about the state of the human species, given its many dilemmas. I also note that he seems to be most unhapjry while stressing his agnosticism, 20 which is the kind of belief system that perpetuates standard evolutionary doctrines. Building upon those limited assumptions, the individual in question tells us how ironic it is that the "new" portions of the human brain, those that have evolved within the last two million years, are responsible for the moral and technological problems our species now faces. The brain's great creative neocortex is held especially accountable for problems that may lead to humanity's self-destruction. None of these challenges, as Jane and I habitually call them, are seen as distorted expressions ofthe kind of creativity Seth has described many times.21

(Within such a gloomy framework, then, I think it legitimate to ask how the species can consciously stress its accidental presence in the cosmos, yet demand that its members be the most "moral" of creatures. If science insists that there was, and is, no design or planner behind man's emergence, then how can man be expected to act as f there was, or is? Seth hasn't said so yet, but I think such contradictions play an important negative role in present world conditions. The attitude that 4fe is a godless thing is so pervasive-and not only in Western cultures-that in Seth's terms it can be called an invisible mass core belief

(I'm happy to note that Seth's ideas oppose much of the "modern" thinking that we're fated to bring about our own end as a species, whether by nuclear warfare or in some other equally devastating way. From his own viewpoint, Seth recently discussed such fears in a session given for Jane's ESP class.~)

... in certain terms the theory of evolution, as it is conventionally held, has caused unfortunate beliefs. For how can-you look at yourselves with self-respect, with dignity or with joy, if-~ you believe that you are the end product of forces in which the fittest 2 survive? Being the fittest implies those given most to what would ii appear to be murderous intent-for you must survive at the expense of your fellows, be you leaf, frog, plant, or animal.

You do not survive through cooperation, according to that theory, and nature is not given a kind or creative intent, but a 2 murderous one. And if you see yourselves as the end result of such a species, then how can you expect goodness or merit or creativity from yourselves, or from others? How can you believe that you live in a safe universe when each species exists because it survives through claw, if it must hunt and kill out of murderous intent, as implied in the theories of evolution and of reality itself?

So when you think of your beliefs and who you are, you must also think of your species, and how you are told your species came to be. For your private beliefs are also based upon those theories, and the beliefs, culturally, of your times.

It is seldom that you really question your biological origins, what they mean, and how you interpret them. Are you physically composed of murderous cells, then, each spontaneously out to get the others? If so, your physical being is more miraculous a product than even I have ever told you! If your cells did not cooperate so well, you would not be listening to this voice, and it I would make no sound. As you listen to me, the cooperative, creative adventure within your bodies continues, and in terms of continuity reaches back prehistorically and into the future. Because consciousness creates form with joy, there is no murder that you have not projected out of misunderstanding and ignorance of the nature of that consciousness.

Roots do not struggle to exist. One species does not fight against the others to live. Instead creativity emerges, and cooperatively the environment of the world is known and planned by all the species. What appears to be struggle and death to you at those levels is not, now, for the experience of consciousness itself is different there, as is the experience of your own cellular composition.

(Then soon afterward, Seth had this to say in a private session:) Your body knows how to walk. The knowledge is built in and acted upon. The body knows how to heal itself, how to use its nourishment, how to replace its tissues-yet in your terms the body its elf has no access to the kind of information the mind possesses. Being so ignorant, how does it perform so well?

If it were scientifically inclined, the body would know that I such spontaneous performance was impossible, for science cannot explain the reality of life itself in its present form, much Less its origins. Consciousness within the body knows that its existence is within the body's context, and ~p from it at the same time.

(I repeat that when Seth discusses evolution his meaning differs considerably from the scientific one-which, with various mod fications, is even accepted by a number of religious thinkers. As I show at the end of this appendix, Seth allows/or a much greater range 0/simultaneous origins; in our reality these imply growth and development out of that "basic" group of species/or the most part, with multidimensional purp oses operating inside an enhanced time scheme that includes probabilities, reincarnation, counterparts, 22 precognition, and other concepts, meanings, and beliefs. All of these qualities are man festations of All That Is, or consciousness, or energy, or whatever. Probabilities aside, when Seth talks about cells [or their components] recombining as parts of plant or animal forms, as he does in the 705th session, Jane and I don't take that to mean the evolution, or alteration, of one species into another-but that a unity of consciousness pervades all elements in our environment, whether "alive" or "dead." With the concept ofprobabilities in mind, however, much of the "thrust for development and change" that Seth also mentions as existing inside all organisms, could just as well take place in those other realities. Early in this appendix, I described how Seth continually built upon material that he'd given before, and that processes of correlation between old and new resulted. At this time, my ideas here represent a correlation between Seth's material on evolution in the 705th session [which led to this appendix], and his later statements on origins, referred to above. We hope to learn much more about the whole business of evolution. And behind all, Seth insists upon the condition that each of us chose to experience this camouflage reality within this historical context.

(My thought is that because of that choosing, common denominators must lie beneath the clashing beliefs about evolution, and that a good place to start looking/or such un~i5ing factors is within the theoryj, or the framework or idea, of simultaneous time-however one wants to try to express such a quality within serial terms. The search would be a complicated one. At the same time, I admit that ideas like this always remind me of Seth's comments in the class session for June 23, 1970, as excerpted in the Appendix for Seth Speaks:)

In this reality, [each of) you very nicely emphasize all the similarities which bind you together; you make a pattern of them, and you very nicely ignore all the dissimilarities... If you were able to focus your attention on the dissimilarities, merely those that you can perceive but do not, then you would be amazed that mankind can form any idea of an organized reality.

(However, collectively we do share an agreed-upon reality, even one subject to many stresses. The next two excerpts to be presented from Seth came through in a couple of sessions delivered some time after he'd finished "Unknown" Reality. I've put them together/or easy reading. Their inspiration was my work here and the discussions on evolution that Jane and I led in ESP class. As noted with the quotations given in Note 13, eventually this material will be published in its entirety as part of a Seth book; perhaps then it can be used as a guide for the sort of investigation just mentioned. In the meantime, the thoughts below can at least help orient some fresh thinking about the beginning of our planet, of all the species upon it, and indeed of the universe itself Seth began:)

There are verbal difficulties having to do with the definition of life. Because of the psychological strength of preconceived notions, I have to work around many of your concepts. Your own kind of conscious mind is splendid and unique. It causes you, however, to interpret all other kinds of life according to your own specifications and experiences.

There is no such thing, in your terms, as nonliving matter. There is simply a point that you recognize as having the characteristics that you have arbitrarily ascribed to life, or living conditions. For there is no particular point at which life was inserted into nonliving matter.

If we must speak in terms of continuity, which I regret, then in those terms you could say that life in the physical universe, on your planet, "began" spontaneously in a given number of species at the same time. Words do nearly forsake me, the semantic differences are so vast. In those terms there was a point where consciousness, through intent, impressed itself into matter. That "breakthrough" cannot be logically explained, but only compared to, say, an illumination-that is, a light occurring everywhere at once, that became a medium for life as you define it. It had nothing to do with the propensity of certain kinds of cells to reproduce-[all cells are] imbued with the "drive" for value fulfillment-but with an overall illumination that set the conditions in which life was possible as you think of it; and at that imaginary, hypothetical point, all species became latent. The inner pulsations of the invisible universe reached certain intensities that "impregnated" the entire physical system simultaneously. That illumination was everywhere then at every point aware of itself, and of the conditions formed by its presence.

At the same time, EE units (see Note 3) became manifest. I have said, for example, that the universe expands as an idea does, and so the visible universe sprang into being in the same manner. The same energy that gave birth to the universe is, in those terms, still being created. The EE units contain within themselves the latent knowledge of all of the various species that can emerge under those conditions. It is according to your relative position. You can say that it took untold centuries for the EE units to "initially" combine, forming classifications of matter and various species, or you can say that this process happened at once. In your terms, each species is aware of the condition of each other species, and of the entire environment. In those terms the environment forms the species and the species form the environment. There were fully developed men-that is, of full intellect, emotion, and will-living at the same time, in your terms, as those creatures supposed to be man's evolutionary ancestors.

[However, as] you begin to question the nature of time itself, then the "when" of the universe is beside the point. The motion and energy of the universe still comes from within. I certainly realize that this is hardly a scientific statement-yet the moment that All That Is conceived of a physical system it was invisibly created, endowed with creativity, and bound to emerge [into physical reality].

There is a design and a designer, but they are so combined, the one within the other, the one within and the one without, that it is impossible to separate them. The creator is within its creations, and the creations themselves are gifted with creativity. The world comes to know itself, to discover itself, for the planner left room for divine surprise, and the plan was nowhere foreordained. Nor is there anywhere within it anything that corresponds to your "survival of the fittest" theories.

(Seth's statement just given, that fully developed men coexisted with their supposed ancestors, led to our request that he follow through with more information on the subject. He's done so to some extent, and here we're presenting material from one of those later sessions to show his thinking. He continues to confound accepted evolutionary theory. As usual, however, Seth's new data obviously imply new questions that we haven't gone into yet. But at least, I told Jane, he's said certain things that we can ask questions about, whether from the viewpoint of evolution, time, language, civilization, or whatever. The excerpts to follow, incidentally, are those I referred to earlier in this appendix, when I wrote that just as Jane had supplemented Seth's material on early man with some of her own [as given in Appendix 6 in Volume 1], he in turn added to hers:)

In your terms of history, man appeared in several different ages-not from an animal ancestor in the way generally supposed. There were men-animals, but they were not your stock. They did not "lead" to anything. They were species in their own right."

There were animal-men. The terms are for your convenience. In some species the animal-like tendencies predominated, in others the manlike tendencies did so: Some were more like men, some more like animals. The Russian steppes had a particular giant-sized species. Some also I believe in Spain-that area.

There is considerable confusion, for that matter, as to the geological ages as they are understood.24 Such species existed in many of these ages. Man, as you think of him, shared the earth with the other creatures just mentioned. In those terms so-called modern man, with your skull structure and so forth, existed alongside of the creatures now supposed to be his ancestors.

There was some rivalry among these groups, as well as some cooperation. Several species, say, of modern man died out. There was some mating among these groups-that is, among the groups in existence at any given time.

The brain capacities of your particular species have always been the same... Many of the man-animal groups had their own communities. To you they may seem to have been limited, yet they combined animal and human characteristics beautifully, and they used tools quite well. In a manner of speaking they had the earth to themselves for many centuries, in that modern man did not compete with them.

Both the man-animals and the animal-men were born with stronger instincts. They did not need long periods of protection as infants, but in an animal fashion were physically more agile at younger ages than, say, the human infant.

The earth has gone through entire cycles unsuspected by your scientists. Modern man, then, existed with other manlike species, and appeared in many different places on the earth, and at different ages.

There were then also animal-man and man-animal civilizations of their kinds, and there were complete civilizations of modern man, existing [long] before the ages now given for, say, the birth of writing (in 3100 B. C.

(My position after writing this appendix is that in scient~/ic and religious terms we know little about our world [and universe], its origins, and its amazing variety offorms, both 'living" and "nonliving." Our own limitations may have something to do with our attitudes here, yet Jane and I have become very careful about believing science or religion when either one tells us it can explain our world, for each of those disciplines ignores too much. No matter what the source of this camouflage reality may be, our conscious lack of knowledge and understanding as we manipulate within it, through naive realism or any other system of belief or perception, ought to make us humble indeed; all arrogance should be transcended as we become more and more aware of the limitless beauty, complexity, and mystery that surrounds us, and of which we are part. Jane and I just don't think it all came about through chance! The mind can ask too many questions to be satis]ied with mechanistic explanations, and nurturing that characteristic of dissatisfaction alone may be one of the most valuable contributions the Seth material can make.

(To us, even "ordinary" linear knowledge as it accumulates through the next century or two, not to mention over longer spans of time, is certain to severely mod~j5 or make obsolete many concepts about origins and evolution that today are dispensed by those in authority-and which most people accept unthinkingly.

(For some years now, organized religion as a whole has been suffering from a loss offaith and members, stripped of its mysteries by science, which, with the best of intentions, offers in religion's place a secular humanism-the belief that one doesn't need blind faith in a god in order to be morally concerned for the common welfare; paradoxically, however, this concern is most of the time expressed in religious terms, or with relzgi~us feeling. Yet science too has experienced many failures in theory and technology, and knows a new humility; at least partly because of these failures, anti-intellectualism has grown noticeably in recent years.

(Now we read late surveys that show an increase in religious faith, and statements to the effect that science does not claim to reveal absolute truth, that any scient~/ic theory is valid only until a variance is shown. Jane and I certainly aren't turned on to realize that a major religion, for instance, teaches the 'facts" of man's basically corrupt and sinful nature; surely a religion in the best sense can offer beliefs superior to those! At the same time, we take note of the latest efforts of biological researchers to explain how, millions of years ago, a primitive DNA molecule could begin to manufacture the protein upon which lfe "rides, "and thus get around the contradiction posed in Note 8: What made the protein that sustains the processes of lfe, before that life was present to make the protein? The scientists involved hope the new hypothesis will survive further tests and become 'fact, " thus giving clues to the riddles of origins and evolution. But to bri e]ly paraphrase material Jane came through with not long ago/and which, again, will eventually be published]: "How does one deal with new facts that undermine old facts, in whatever field of endeavor? Do you say that reality has changed? Upon examination, facts give."

(And as I work on this appendix, Seth has already remarked in the 709th session, just before break at 10:35:)

You are well acquainted with the exterior method, that involves studying the objective universe and collecting facts upon which certain deductions are made. In this book [Volume 2], therefore, we will be stressing interior ways of attaining, not necessarily facts, but knowledge and wisdom. Now facts may or may not give you wisdom. They can, if they are slavishly followed, lead you away from true knowledge. Wisdom shows you the insides of facts, so to speak, and the realities from which facts emerge.

(The search, then, is on for new unities and meanings; a convergence, one might say, of the realities of science, nature, religion-and, of course, mysticism. By mysticism I mean simply the intuitionalpenet ration of our camouflage reality to achieve deeper understandings relative to our physical and mental environments-and such comprehensions are what Jane seeks to accomplish through her expression of the Seth material.25 In that sense, it isn't necessary here to discuss attaining "ultimate" knowledge-it will be enough to note that as one person Jane can use her abilities to help un~i5 a number of viewpoints. She can also bring to consciousness the idea that no matter what our individual orientations may be, collectively we do have overall purposes in the world we've created. This realization alone can be a transforming one; as I show in the Introductory Notes for Volume I of "Unknown" Reality, it can be a most useful one in practical, everyday life as well. Within that sort off ramework, the evolution referred to by Seth-in whatever way it may concern the development of ideas, planets, creatures, or anything else-makes sense.)

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