Inverted Time and Associative Processes of Mind

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 5 Session 239

There are some additions, Joseph, that I would like to make concerning our inverted time system. An understanding of this system will serve to explain to the psychologists certain things that are not now plain lo them.

For one thing, association is not clearly understood by any means. It cannot be clearly understood simply because at present psychologists believe that association works only in connection with past events.

They also underestimate dream events, for many associations in your present are the result of events which have occurred in the dream state. The mind is hardly shut off when you dream. It continues to use its associative processes. Therefore any given personal association may originate from a dream event as well as from a past waking event.

Psychologists, generally speaking, have not accepted the latest theories of your own physicists, however. They continue to consider time as a series of moments, one following the other.

The inverted time system recognizes the actual nature of time, however. There is room in this system for a rather complete explanation of the mind's associative processes.

Now. The mind as opposed to the brain, perceives time in terms of the spacious present. It is true that the mind works on associative principles. Therefore these associations are drawn not only from the past, but also from the future.

Take an example here. Frederick Y. becomes ill whenever he smells a certain perfume. He does not know the reason. A psychologist would explain this reaction by presuming some kind of unpleasant event occurred in the past. An event that was connected with his sensual perception of this particular perfume.

The explanation is a good possible one. However, it is the only one that your psychologists would consider, and at least two other possible explanations exist. Frederick may be reacting to an unpleasant event experienced within the dream state, where in the dream the upsetting situation was accompanied by the odor of a particular perfume.

Frederick however could also be reacting to the same sort of event that has not yet occurred, however, to his perception—that is, to an event in the future. For the mind does not divide time into a series of moments. This is done by the physical brain and the physical senses.

The ego is not as a rule aware of this broader time experience. The subconscious however is so aware, and the associative processes of the mind can, and do, react to a future event, while the ego is closed off to it. Therefore it is possible for Frederick, this year, to become ill at the smell of a particular perfume because subconsciously he knows that in 1980 his mother will be wearing that perfume when she dies.

The associative processes work both backwards and forwards. An understanding of this will help in a study of the associative processes in general.