Inverted Time (continued)

Session 226

I would like to give you some more material this evening concerning our inverted time system, for when you understand how it operates then you can begin to take advantage of it more readily.

When the inverted time system is understood for what it is, then the individual is in contact simultaneously with the experience gained in the so-called past, and is also able to take advantage of events which have not yet occurred within your present. This does not mean that he will be consciously aware of future events, for if you remember these events can be changed by him at any lime. He is constantly making his own experience. He is constantly forming the events of the past, even as he forms the events of the present and future.

In many respects the individual is not at the mercy of past events, for he changes them constantly. He is not therefore at the mercy of future events, for he changes these also, not only before but also after their occurrence. I regret that our friend Philip does not have the preliminary background to follow this discussion with clarity.

Now. So-called hunches indeed are often caused by an inner recognition that a given event might occur. As you know, there is no cause and effect as you understand it. Nevertheless there are probabilities. Now basically it is not true to say that an individual’s decisions must be based upon concrete events within his own past, nor that he is largely imprisoned by his past, nor that his future actions are predetermined by his past experience. For as you now understand the past is as real as the future, no more and no less. The past exists as far as the individual is concerned as a pattern of electromagnetic currents within the brain, and these connections constantly change.

The individual can change past action within however the limitations earlier mentioned in our last session. Therefore his future actions are not dependent upon a concrete and unchanging past, for such a past never existed.

I would like these points made most clearly. Now. An event foreseen through precognition or clairvoyance, a future event, may or may not actually occur within time as you know it. For you are seeing into probabilities, and the probable event may or may not occur, within your time system.

Such an event will however occur within another time system, for all probabilities become actual, although you may not perceive them. Our friend Dunne was quite correct here.

… Now. These probabilities, these events that may or may not occur, are extremely interesting. Let us consider our self one and time one. As a rule our self two can indeed view what may happen in self one's future. However, our self two views probabilities, and some of these probabilities will indeed occur to self one. Some will not, and this is where, again, our friends Priestley and Dunne fall short.

Priestley was right also to some extent here. These probabilities do occur somewhere, but they will occur to a self that Priestley nor Dunne ever imagined—a self who exists simultaneously with any given individual, and who is a part of him; but a self that he will never know while he is within your particular system.

Someday we shall explain this in mathematical terms. However for now we shall try plain English. Every thought is composed of its own energy, and it has an effect within energy. We are not speaking here now of your tired old cause and effect theory however. Every action changes every other action. Any probability is a reality whether or not it occurs within your own system, and I shall add to that early mention.

Reality within some systems other than you own, is experienced not as a series of moments, but as experience into all the probabilities of action that exist within any given instant. A continuity therefore is in terms of the self rather than in terms of a series of moments. Instead there is a series of selves with the inner ego operating consciously to give continuity.

In such a system therefore your ideas of present, past and future would not exist. Nor would your idea of one and only one event at a time be understood. Now this dimension exists in a reality which Priesdey nor Dunne even began to examine.

The whole psychological formation of the perceiver is entirely different, and there is no one event out of all probable events, but there is experience of all the mathematically probable events that could happen to any given individual, within any given amount of time as you know it.

The psychological composition of the perceiving participator is therefore entirely alien to your own. In such a system however, as in your own, the perceiver is also a participator and a creator, but he does not work with your conception of time, but with probabilities. In your terms then, he would seem to delve into each moment in all of its probabilities, so that in your time on the one hand many centuries would have passed, and on the other hand only an instant.

The time system is entirely different here. The value fulfillment is quite as valid however within both systems, and in a very loose fashion this probability system could be compared to Dunne's time three.

(Seth said a little on the above ideas when he began to give us the material on the electrical field and on moment points, several months ago. This was some time before Jane began reading Dunne and Priestley.)

There would be many respects however where they would not agree, and I mention this similarity only to make my idea somewhat more clear to you.

... I am anxious however to tie in this material on the system of probabilities with dreams, for at times there can be a connection; and something indeed that our friends Priestley and Dunne did not consider—for their self three can indeed wander outside of the dimensions which they assigned to him.

Time and the Continually Changing Past

Seth's Early Sessions, Vol 5, Session 225

The idea is current in academic psychological circles that the child exists psychologically intact in the man, that the man contains within him the psychological replica of the child that was.

Such is not exactly the case. The child exists within the man, yes, but he is not the same child. The memories that he thinks are the child's memories are not memories of a particular event that happened to the child. That is, they do not contain a precise picture of any particular incident that occurred. Each incident is recreated when the memory of it arises, but the memory is changed with each recreation, and subtly changed.

The past is, then, continually changed. The electromagnetic connections themselves, that make up any particular event—these connections, even while seemingly intact, have changed. The energy that composes them is not the same, and the past is constantly altered. Nothing can stand still, including the past, and any such appearance of stability is an illusion.

It is as much an illusion to believe that the past has vanished, as it is to believe that the future does not exist. The past does not vanish, for there was no past to vanish, in those terms.

… The child does not stay in a neat psychological package, enclosed in the past and insulated from the present or the future. It is not as simple as all that.

There is no point where the child ceases and the man begins, and no point where the young man ceases and the old man begins. These are states happening simultaneously, but perceived in slow motion within your system. Not only are they perceived in slow motion, but they are perceived along one line of focus only. The focus is indeed intense, but so limited in scope that it is relatively impossible for you to keep your attention upon the self except in the most inconsistent and fleeting of ways.

You no longer perceive the past, therefore you think that it has vanished, and the self that you were has gone. But that particular moment, any particular moment, that you think of as the past, existed before your egotistical perception of it, and is constantly being changed by you, even when you no longer consciously perceive it.

For the inner self can perceive it, and does change it. The idea of inverted time states that time flows in all directions, and that as each action affects every other action, so time constantly affects itself and continually reacts within itself. The past moment is never completed. Consciously you have simply lost sight of it, and have not followed it through in its endless depths.

Some systems experience time exclusively in terms of probabilities, in which the self experiences a particular moment most thoroughly, where continuity is achieved not through a continuity of moments but a continuity of self, as it experiences all the various events that exist as probabilities for it in any given instant.

You merely skip along the surface, and this is all right. But do not regard this hopping from moment to moment, as from stone to stone, as the approximation of time as it actually exists. The nature of perceptions determines the experience of time.

Time and Probabilities

Seth's Early Sessions, Vol 5, Session 224

I should like to continue our discussion concerning time.

I made the statement that action in the present could alter the past, and now we shall set about explaining the statement.

The past exists as a series of electromagnetic connections, held in the physical brain on the one hand, but it also consists of the same sort of realities retained in the nonphysical mind. These electromagnetic connections can be changed. The present exists as a series of electromagnetic connections in both the brain and the mind, and this is the only reality which you are justified in giving to your present.

In other words the past and the present are real to the same extent. At limes in fact the past can become more real than the present, and in such cases past actions are reacted to in the present. You take it for granted that present action can alter the future, but present actions can also alter the past.

The past is no more objective, no more independent from the perceiver, than is the present. These electromagnetic connections which compose the past were largely made by the individual perceiver, and the perceiver of course is always a participator.

The connections therefore can be changed at any time, and such changes are far from uncommon. They happen spontaneously on a subconscious basis a good deal of the time. The past was seldom what you remember it to be, for you have already rearranged it from the instant of any given occurrence.

There is of course a composite past that is composed of such individual electromagnetic connections, and this composite past is not the same past that once existed, in those terms. The past itself is being continually recreated by every individual, as attitudes and associations change. This is an actual recreation, and not a symbolic one. The child is indeed still within the man, but he is not the child that once was, in those terms. For even the child within the man continually changes, and again I am not speaking of symbolic change.

Now. Difficulties are caused when such changes in the past do not occur automatically. Such difficulties as severe neurosis are often caused precisely because the individual has not automatically changed his past. Once more, the only reality that can be assigned to the past is that granted to the symbols and associations and memory images that exist electromagnetically both within the physical brain and within the mind.

But this is the only reality that can be granted to the present. I am speaking now in your terms only, and this point should be clearly understood, for I am simplifying conditions considerably. A change of attitude, a new association, any of innumerable other actions, will automatically set up new electromagnetic connections, and break others. Now part of this we shall explain later, for these changes obviously affect both the future and the past. But the past, again, is continually changed by you, and by every individual. For basically you see, it is not something done and finished with, as is supposed.

And you are more free than you imagine to completely alter many aspects of your own past. If you say that the future is dependent upon the past, therefore, you must also say that the past is dependent upon the future. Once more, the past was never an independent, concrete object existing apart from the perceiving participator; for he made his past, and its only reality exists in the electromagnetic connections within his own organic and psychic structure.

Every action changes every other action. We return to our ABC's. Therefore every action in the present affects those actions which you call the past. Ripples from a thrown stone go out in all directions.

I am going to go out rather far on the limb right here. Remembering what you now know about the nature of time, you should know that the apparent boundaries between past, present and future are only illusions, caused by the amount of action you can physically perceive. Therefore, it is more than possible to react in the past to an event that has not yet occurred, to be influenced by your own future.

We are not getting involved here in the free will or predestination question, though we have spoken about it, and we shall discuss it thoroughly in connection with time in general. Suffice it to say that it is more than possible for an individual to react in the past to an event in the future which may never occur.

This takes us into the problem of probabilities. I do not want to get too complicated. However I should explain the last statement to some degree.

Now. I am sure that you remember the couple that you saw at York Beach.

(“Yes”)

I have explained that these were psychic projections, given physical reality and projected subconsciously into the physical world by you and Ruburt. You then reacted to them in present time, at the time, you understand.

("Yes."

(See the 9th, 15th, 17th, 69th and 80th sessions. Jane and I saw this couple, who bore remarkable physical resemblances to us, in the dancing room of the Driftwood Hotel, York Beach, Maine, in August 1963. These sessions began in December, 1963. See Volumes 1 and 2)

Now. This couple also represented a sort of time projection, for quite literally you could have become what they were. This existed in the present as a probability. You perceived this portion of the probable future in that present, reacted to it; and the probable transformation of yourselves into those images did not occur. Because the past, present and future exist simultaneously however, there is no reason why you cannot react to an event whether or not it happens to fall within the small field of reality which you usually observe and participate in.

On a subconscious basis you react to many events that have not yet occurred, as far as your egotistical awareness of them is concerned. Such reactions are carefully screened out, away from conscious awareness, by the ego. The ego finds such occurrences extremely distracting and annoying, and when forced to admit their validity will resort to the most far-fetched rationalizations to explain them.

Now. The inner self exists in quite a different fashion than that seen by Dunne. For the inner self can indeed perceive events that will occur after physical death. It is not, and never was, imprisoned by ego time. Its perceptions of other times are merely inhibited by the ego. The inner self can perceive events that will occur to itself after physical death, and it also can see events that will occur in which it is not involved.

In all of these instances however there are uncertainties, for probable future events can be foreseen as clearly as events that will more actually occur. No event is destined to occur, and it can be changed, not only before and during, but after its occurrence. Again, I do not speak symbolically, and I am leaving myself open to many strong critical remarks which cannot all be answered in one evening.

You have yourself doubtless thought of some, but we shall do our best to make these ideas clear and understandable, and to explain various complications that can be anticipated. There are for example certain limitations set here that must be clearly stated; but within these limitations you will find that events can he changed, and are constantly changed, regardless of the point or the apparent point of their original occurrence.

All of this applies unless for example an individual is taken completely out of the physical time system. A murdered man will not be returned to physical life in the same fashion, whole and intact, as he was before the murder, for example; for he has been taken out of the particular system of action of which we are speaking.

He may return to the system however, as you know, through reincarnation. Many changes may occur however in that same point for the murderer who is still within the system.

Time Inversion and Perception by Psychological Structures

Seth's Early Sessions, Vol 5, Session 221

An inverted time system actually presents us with a system that more closely approximates the true nature of time. Time does indeed turn in upon itself, even as it explodes outward from itself. The expanding universe theory applies much more truly to time than it does to the physical universe. You think of a steady progression into the future. However, as you know there is no real progression, moment by successive moment, as you suppose.

(Seth dealt with the expanding universe theory in sessions 42-45, saying among other things that our physical universe is not expanding as is currently thought; he had much to say on the distortive data furnished us by our instruments.)

You think of the past as done with and completed, but on a subconscious basis you travel through the past. The past therefore becomes present. You know that precognition is a fact. The steady line of time does not exist. Inversion in terms of value interwound upon value, energy compressed, contained, working upon itself, contained but with momentum—this comes much closer to reality.

However, the momentum works both ways. I am referring now to your own terms of reference. For if time speeds ahead, my dear friends, or if you say that times speed ahead, which is an entirely different thing, then you must say also that it speeds backwards. For this energy moves in all directions from its core, and the core at times becomes its outer surface.

In an inverted time system the momentum is recognized and it is also taken advantage of, in that it is utilized by individual consciousness, so that your so-called present, past and future can be viewed as existing in a spacious now. Again, this sort of a system is very close to the true nature of time.

I mentioned that the inhabitant of the other system with whom you made contact perceived your existence in both the future and the past. He also was aware however of your own comparative imprisonment in a limited present. For the present as you know it is very limited indeed. He realized therefore, when the incident occurred, how it would end. He can relive the incident at his leisure, and experience it as present if he so chooses.

He can also remember it from any viewpoint in his future, if he chooses. He can give this information about this event to his own image as it existed in time before the contact was made. He can therefore make alterations in any aspect of time as it affects him.

In essence you see the past can be changed. Present actions can change future events that would otherwise occur. But when this is admitted, then we must admit also that present events can alter the past, for there is no element in the past that has a different structure or composition or characteristic, that is not present in the future.

(Seth has referred to the ability of suggestion to change experience which has already passed. See the 187th and 202nd sessions.)

Time does not have certain characteristics when you view it as past, or when you view it as future, or when you view it as present. Any seeming difference between the past and the future is simply due to your own perception. Much of the material that I have given you concerning the nature of physical matter will be helpful when considered in connection with this material on time.

(See the 60-73rd sessions in Volume 2.)

We will try here to give you an example. Take for example then the house in which Ruburt spent his childhood. Now as you know, that was never one definite unchanging object. That house was a conglomeration of atoms and molecules, perceived generally as a house, but perceived specifically by everyone who saw it as a slightly different house. For each observer quite literally created from his own subconscious energy an approximation of a house, a general shape then perceived as a house, and further embellished by personal judgments.

It was, say, in 1943, even then merely a portion of space perceived by all who saw it in their own light. It did not exist devoid or apart from those who viewed it.

Time inversion would merely permit the recreation of a particular perception. The year for example 1943 was simply an artificial collection of events loosely agreed upon. The past exists to the same extent that the present or future exists, and it is only the perception that is limited.

… Shortly we shall consider various psychological frameworks, for there are endless varieties; though we shall discuss only a few, the few with which I am familiar.

These psychological structures obviously act as stabilizing platforms, so to speak, from which energy can view itself. The psychological frameworks simply are various organizational structures that are equipped to perceive reality discriminately.

They are equipped to focus along particular directions. This material will be extremely interesting when we come to it. It is extremely difficult for a psychological structure to view itself, for in order to do so it must lift itself from the limitations and abilities of its own nature. In many realities such scrutiny is simply impossible, while the structure operates in a given fashion.

Gradually psychological structures are able to focus upon vaster areas, and in order to achieve proficiency in this manner you do indeed begin to build up layered selves that have been independent identities. These varying perceptive abilities organize so that their perceptive powers are pooled in a gestalt that eventually forms a new identity, a more complicated psychological structure that is capable of perceiving larger areas of reality.

Even within a given system however all individuals are not at the same point. Now, in our sessions I am sure that by now you are at least to some extent aware of what would seem to be something quite strange: the emergence of a self that observes the self of which you have been ordinarily aware; a self with a slightly different time system, a slightly different viewpoint of reality, a self with greater control over the physical material that composes your physical image, a self with some quite effective control over your personal future.

I am speaking now of course of both of you. That is, each of you should by now be aware of such an emerging psychological unit. It is the result of your ability to step out of your own system to some small extent, for you cannot do this until you are ready. For the very attempt, or successful attempt, results in an extension of the self out of the system in which you were nurtured.

From the viewpoint of this emerging self you can view to some extent the system in which the earlier self was mainly imprisoned. Now I speak of imprisonment. I do not speak in terms of compulsory confinement however. Your perceptions simply kept you where you were. You could not clearly see even where you were, for the dimensions were not clear to you from the inside. You could not scale the wall, so to speak. You had to grow taller, if you will forgive me for using another analogy.

I will have more to say along these lines, for we shall shortly be considering the psychological structures in terms of action, and in their relationship to time. We will first relate them to this emerging self that you can sense personally, and then we shall go further.