Primary and Secondary Realities

Seth Early Sessions Book 5, Session 208 

… The other point that I wanted to make was that while your physical time, or clock time, has no overall basic reality, and is not a primary reality, that runs through various fields or systems, it is nevertheless an electromagnetic reality within your own system, for you have created it on mental terms.

It is therefore some force to be reckoned with. If it were a primary reality, you would not escape from it even in the sleeping state. Those realities which are primary and basic you can never escape from. This should give you an idea, for those realities which run through all systems, and which are primaries, are those which exist for you in all conditions of consciousness and under any circumstances.

Those realities however which appear only in certain stages of consciousness, are secondaries. This is perhaps one of the most important bits of information I have given you; for if you are bright enough, and I think that you are, then you have a yardstick by which to measure the nature of primary reality, from which all other manifestations air spun.

I have been leading up lo this point in my own way, for the dream

experiments that we plan will enable you to accumulate in time a list of primaries. I want you however to come across this knowledge on your own, through these experiments, for you will learn more that way.

If ever in a dream experience you defy gravity, then gravity is not a primary reality, but only a manifestation within your own physical system. If clock time is escaped within the dream state, then clock time is not a primary. What you cannot escape within any range of consciousness, can be called a Primary Condition, and you may capitalize the term.

Incidentally, if it is not now known by your scientists, it will be shortly discovered that the physical organism does not age in sleep at the same rate at which it ages in the waking state. Aging, therefore, is not a primary. Again, this does nor mean that secondary conditions such as aging and gravity and clock time, do not have effects within your system, obviously. It is only that these must be recognized as secondary conditions that do not therefore basically (underlined) affect the inner self, which is to a large degree independent of your system.

A recognition of the differences between primary and secondary conditions can however allow you to minimize the effect of the secondary conditions to some considerable degree.

Here now once more, let me repeat that thoughts are definite electromagnetic realities. Therefore, being actions, they affect all other actions, and if I repeat this in session after session, I do so, so that it will never be forgotten. Therefore these secondary conditions are strengthened through the very act, or misact, of thinking that they are primary rather than secondary elements in action.

Two men for example, of precisely the same physical age, of precisely the same physical condition, will be in completely different states of mind, of competence, of effectiveness and of strength, as a direct result of their inner beliefs as to their relative freedom within the framework of the physical system in which they exist.

The man who does not realize his basic independence from the physical system will not have the same freedom within it.

He will be at all times a prisoner of clock time and of aging, for he will consider these the primary conditions under which he must operate. And the action, or actions involved in this belief will therefore act upon the physical cells of his body with vengeful force, because he has himself directed them to do so.

You will find it a most rewarding experience, once these experiments have been begun, for you will yourselves discover the difference between primary and secondary conditions. Obviously the secondary conditions are to some extent necessary for your survival as a physical organism, but you are more than a physical organism now, and you shall be other than a physical organism in your future.

And the conditions that are necessary, the primary conditions that are

necessary for your existence as other than a physical organism, already exist, therefore, and can be perceived and studied with the equipment which is a part of every individual.

… If an experience is a part of the waking state, but not a part of the sleeping state, if it is part of the sleeping stare but not a part of the waking state, then it is not a primary experience.

This, again, is not to say that it is not real, but that it is not a primary reality that is more or less constant for the inner self. If an experience is a part of all levels of consciousness—this includes the trance state—then it is a primary experience.

Identity of the inner self operates very well within primary conditions. It is dependent upon primary conditions. Its manipulation of primary conditions gives it the knowledge of itself. Identity is retained within the dream state, is it not?

("Yes.”)

Yet within the dream state the familiar physical props sometimes disappear. The inner I operates very well without them. In order to manipulate a physical reality however, the inner I needs a self that is acclimated to physical conditions; hence the ego.

As you know therefore we have differentiated between an outer ego, who manipulates within physical reality, and an inner ego who directs the activities of the inner self. Now then, the next step should indeed be clear. In the main, the ego deals with secondary realities, and in the main, the inner ego deals with primaries.

Nevertheless primaries also exist within the physical universe, and secondaries appear often as props within the dream world.

Again, none of these issues are clear-cut, and the distinctions, many of them, are for simplicity's sake. Many primaries will show secondary characteristics. For example, within your clock time there are definite primary characteristics of time as it exists in a primary condition.

Once more, even the word time is misleading, but within the boundaries of your clock reality every individual feels at times but you see that the use of the word itself binds us—but every individual feels now and then the primary sense of existence that is not arbitrarily divided into moments and hours; and he therefore escapes from a secondary condition into the realization of a primary reality behind it.

A consistent, carefully recorded and extended examination of the dream state will, once more, permit you to compare those conditions and realities which show themselves in both the waking and dream states.