Session 580

Seth Speaks, Session 580

(“If everything exists now, or at once, how can it be added to through constant creation and expansion?  Or to put it another way: If we are constantly creating, how can All That Is exist as complete now?”)

All That Is is not done and finished.

Everything within your three-dimensional system occurs simultaneously.  Each action creates other possibilities of itself, or other actions from the infinite energy of the universe, which itself is never still.  The answer is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

All That Is simultaneously and unendingly creates itself.  Only within your particular frame of reference does there seem to be a contradiction between action that is simultaneous and yet unending.  This has to do mainly with the necessary distortions arising from your time concept and the idea of duration; for duration to you presupposes existence continued within a time framework – predisposing to beginnings and endings.

Experience existing outside of that reference is not dependent upon duration in your terms.  There is no “perfect ending”, no completed perfection beyond which further experience is impossible or meaningless.  All That Is is a source of infinite unending simultaneous action.  Everything happens at once, and yet there is no beginning and end to it in your terms, so it is not completed in your terms at any given point.

Your idea of development and growth, again, implies a one-line march toward perfection, so it would be difficult for you to imagine the kind of order that pervades.  Ultimately a completed or finished God, or All That Is, would end up smothering His creation.  For perfection presupposes that point beyond which development is impossible, and creativity at an end.

There would be an order in which only predestination could rule, each part fitting in with a particular order without freedom to change the pattern given it.  There is order, but within this order there is freedom – the freedom of creativity, that characteristic of All That Is, that guarantees its infinite becoming.

Now in that infinite becoming, there are states that you would call perfected, but had creativity rested within them, all of experience would be destined to grind to a halt.  Yet this great complexity is not unwieldy; it is as simple, in fact, as a seed.

All That Is is inexhaustible.  Infinity rests within simultaneous action, in a way that you cannot presently understand.

All That Is is alive within the least of itself, aware within for example the molecule.  It endows all of its parts – or its creations – with its own abilities that then act as inspiration, impetus, guiding lines and principles, by which these parts then seek to further create themselves, their own worlds and systems.  This is freely given.

These powers and abilities will be used by these creations in various ways.  In your own case mankind is forming his reality through the use of these gifts.  He is learning to use them efficiently and well.  He uses them to exist.  They form the basis of his reality.  Within that framework, individually and as a whole, mankind may seem to make errors, to bring ill health, death or desolation upon himself, but he is still using those abilities to create a world.

Through observing his creations he learns how to use these abilities better.  He checks on his inner progress by seeing the physical materialization of his work.  The work, the reality, is still a creative achievement, although it may portray a tragedy or unspeakable terror in your terms at any given time.

(“Well, you’re leading into the next question then.  How do you account for the pain and suffering in the world?”)

I am indeed.  A great painting of a battle scene, for example, may show the ability of the artist as he projects in all its appalling drama the inhuman and yet all-too-human conditions of war.  The artist is using his abilities.  In the same way, man is using his abilities, and they are apparent when he creates a real war.

The artist who paints such a scene may do so for several reasons: because he hopes through portraying such inhumanity to awaken people to its consequences, to make them quail and change their ways; because he is himself in such a state of disease and turmoil that he directs his abilities in that particular manner; or because he is fascinated with the problem of destruction and creativity, and of using creativity to portray destruction.

In your wars you are using creativity to create destruction, but you cannot help being creative.

Illness and suffering are not thrust upon you by God, or by All That Is, or by any outside agency.  They are by-products of the learning process, created by you, in themselves quite neutral.  On the other hand, your existence itself, the reality and nature of your planet, the whole existence in which you have these experiences, are also created by you, using the abilities of which I have spoken.

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.

Within your particular plane of activity, and speaking practically, no one fully or completely can use all the energy available to them, or completely materialize the inner sensed identity that is multidimensional.  This inner identity is the blueprint however against which you judge, ultimately, your physical actions.  You strive to express as best you can the entire potential that is within you.

Within that framework, it is possible to have sane and healthy minds within healthy bodies, to have a sane planet.  The release and use of creative energy expended simply to maintain your planet and your existence, is impossible to conceive of.  The great amount of energy available to you gives you great leeway in its use.

I have 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.

Session 578

Questions and Answers

Seth Speaks, Session 578

(“Was the statement given by Jane, while speaking for you, correct, that there have been millions of Speakers?  Or was that distorted?”  See the 568^th session, in Chapter Seventeen.)

It was not distorted.  The Speakers are gifted according to their own characters, some having far more abilities than others, but all playing roles in communication of inner data.  In your terms, therefore, some Speakers would be much more accomplished than others.  For example, there have been a far smaller number of truly prominent Speakers than the numbers given.

There have been less than thirty great Speakers.

The Christ entity was one.  The Buddha was another.  These Speakers are as active when they are nonphysical as when they are physical.  The Christ entity had many reincarnations before the emergence of the Christ “personality” as known; as did the Buddha.

The greatest Speakers do not only translate and communicate inner data, but also go much further into these inner realms of reality than others connected with your physical system.  They add, then, to the basic inner data.  The greatest Speakers have not needed the intensive training necessary for most.  Their unique combination of characteristics has made this unnecessary.

At another level, Emerson was a Speaker.

A man named Maubundu, in Africa, 14 B.C.  The Speakers, more than most, are highly active through all aspects of existence, whether physical or nonphysical, waking or sleeping, between lives or at other levels of reality.  As certain physical data are carried along in the gene structure, so this inner information is codified within whatever psychological structures the Speakers may inhabit; but far more readily available than it is to other personalities.  It needs, often, trigger points to release it, however.  These can take place in either the waking or dream state, and they serve to open up the reservoirs of knowledge and make past training available.

(“Is it possible to name, or describe, a first Speaker?”)

In greater terms, there was no first Speaker.  Imagine that you wanted to be ten places at once, and that you actually sent one portion of yourself to each of these ten places.  Imagine that you could scatter yourself in those ten directions, and that each of the ten portions were conscious, alert, and aware.

You – being the ten of you – would be aware of existence in each of the ten places.  It would be impossible to ask which of the ten arrived first, except to say that all began with the original who decided to visit the ten locations.  So it is with the Speakers, who in the same way do not originate in the locations or in the times in which they may appear.

(“What is the original source of the Speaker data?  Where did it come from, and when?”)

The original source of the Speaker data is the inner knowledge of the nature of reality that is within each individual.  The Speakers are to keep the information alive in physical terms, to see that men do not bury it within and dam it up, to bring it – the information – to the attention of the conscious self.

They speak the inner secrets, in other words.  In some civilizations, as mentioned earlier in this book, they played a much stronger part, practically speaking.  At times they were consistently, consciously and egotistically aware of this information.  It was then that it was memorized.  They realized it was always available at an unconscious level.

They imprinted it, however, upon the physical brain through the use of memory.  There was always great interaction however between inner and outer existence for them, as there is today.  Valid information gained in the dream state was memorized in the morning.  One Speaker heard another’s lesson in the dream state.  On the other hand, pertinent physical data was also communicated one to another in the dream state, and both states were utilized to a high degree.

(Can Speakers work with us while they are between physical lives?”)

They can, and do indeed.  Both of you are being trained by other Speakers who are themselves between lives, this occurring in your dream states.  The Speakers themselves obviously attain varying degrees of efficiency.

The large amount of their work is done from a nonphysical state, earthly existences being somewhat like very important field trips.

(“In Chapter Seventeen you said it would require more training on Jane’s part before she could deliver a Speaker manuscript, and that even then the work involved could take five years.  What kind of training?”)

I was speaking specifically of what you would term an ancient Speaker’s manuscript, and I thought that was what you were referring to.

(“Yes.”)

Ruburt would not be familiar with a good many of the words and phrases used, even if translation from the original languages was made.  There is a difference even in some basic concepts.  To maintain any purity of translation, training in different kinds of inner perception would be necessary.  Some of these languages dealt with pictures rather than words.  In some the symbols had multidimensional meanings.  To deliver such information through Ruburt would be an immense task, but it is possible.  Oftentimes words were hidden within pictures, and pictures within words.  We speak of manuscripts, yet most of these were not written down.

Some were, but at much later dates, and portions exist underground and in caves – in Australia, parts of Africa, and in one area of the Pyrenees.

(“Wouldn’t you say then that these sessions are Speaker training for Jane and me, raised to a conscious level?”)

They are indeed.  The inner information must be consciously recognized.  In your terms, by the time an individual is in his last physical life, all portions of the personality are then familiar with it at the time of death.  The personality is not swept willy-nilly back to another earthly existence, as might be the case otherwise.

The conscious physically oriented portions of the self become acquainted with the inner information.  To some extent the reality of thought is consciously perceived as the innovator behind physical matter.  Such an individual then can understand the nature of hallucinations at the point of death, and with full conscious awareness enter into the next plane of existence.  The information made conscious is then passed on to others where it can be physically recognized and applied.

Now, as to the next question.

(“You told us you were going to elaborate upon what you perceive when you are speaking through Jane to a roomful of people.  In that ESP class session, you mentioned going into a trance yourself, and the effort required by you to pinpoint us in our time and space.”)

I perceive people in a room in a far different manner than they perceive themselves; their various past and future reincarnated personalities, but not their probable selves, are perceivable to me.

I “see” the reincarnated aspects, the various manifestations taken in that regard.  In your terms it would be as if they saw a series of quickly moving pictures, all representing various poses of one personality.  I must remember, in all communications with those in the room, to limit my remarks and focus to the specific reincarnated “present self”.

I see this composite image myself.  It is not registered by Ruburt’s eyes, which do not have the multidimensional depth perception necessary.  I see the composite image clearly, whether or not I am looking through Ruburt’s eyes.  I use his eyes because they narrow down the focus for me, to the one “present” self of which the individual is aware.

Communicating with your system in such a manner demands great diligence and greater discrimination, according to the “distance’ of the communicator from the physical system, for example.  The discrimination comes to bear upon the precision needed to enter your reality at the precise time, the precise point in time and space, upon which you are concentrated.

Present and future experience of those in the room are available to me, and as real as their present experience.  Therefore I must remember what they think has already happened, or not yet occurred, for me it is one.  These patterns of activity, however, are also constantly changing.  I say for example that I am aware of their past and future actions and thoughts; and yet what I am aware of, actually, are ever-shifting and changing patterns, both in the future and in the past.

Some of the events that I see connected very clearly with these persons in the future may not, in your physical system, occur.  They exist as probabilities, as potentials, actualized in thoughts but not turned into definite physical form.  I told you that no events were predetermined.  I would have to tune into a future date, in your terms, and probe it with all of its ramifications in order to ascertain which of the probable actions I saw in your earlier would be actualized in your later.

To a large extent the methods of communication may vary.  A personality based within physical reality, between lives for example, would find entry in many ways easier.  The information he would be able to give, however, would also be limited because of his experience.  I do have a memory of physical existence however, and this automatically helps me in translating your mental data into physical form.  I do perceive objects, for example.  Using Ruburt’s mechanism is of great help here also.  At times I see the room and the people as he, or rather his perceptive mechanisms, do.

In this case I translate or read that data and use it as you might a computer’s.

(“Are you going to tell us about some of the ways you contacted Jane before these sessions began?”)

I mentioned some of that in an earlier chapter.  Much of her training, as Jane, took place in the dream state.  There were frequent out-of-body projections in which she attended classes, taught initially by various Speakers.  The information gained was often brought to conscious layers through the poetry.

There was concentrated training that allowed her to focus inward; an exterior environment that forced her to look inward for answers, and a strong religious structure in which initial growth could take place.  That is enough.

(“Do you have any interest in perceiving our daily lives when you’re not speaking through Jane?  Is this possible?”)

I do not make it a practice to observe.  We are connected, however, in our psychological gestalt, and so I am aware of any intense feelings on your part, or strong reactions of any kind.  This does not mean that I am necessarily aware of all events within your lives, or that I always break down the feelings I receive from you into specifics.

I am generally aware, therefore, of your condition.  If anything upsets Ruburt, he automatically sends me messages about it.  I am aware, within the limitations mentioned, of future events in your lives.  I am much more concerned with your overall spiritual vitality than I am with what you had for breakfast.

Session 577

Seth Speaks, Session 577

Any one of these various layers of consciousness can be used as the normal acting consciousness, reality being viewed from that specific standpoint.

Physical reality is therefore glimpsed by other kinds of personalities in other systems, from their own unique viewpoint.  Peering at it from this angle, so to speak, you would not recognize it as your own home system.  From some of these viewpoints, your physical matter has little or no permanency, while to others your own thoughts have a shape and form, perceived by observers but not by yourselves.

In traveling through the states of consciousness, these other personalities would try to attain some focus and perceive your environment, trying to make sense of data with which they are largely unacquainted.  Since many of them are unaware of your idea of time, they would find it difficult to understand that you perceive events with intervals between, and would not perceive the inner organization that you thrust upon your normal environment.  Yours is obviously a probable system to other fields also touched by the field of probabilities.

As these systems are adjacent to yours, so is yours adjacent; alternate focus allows personalities from other realities to perceive your own, then as it can theoretically at least allow you a glimpse into their existence.

Session 576

Seth Speaks, Session 576

The various levels of consciousness discussed here may appear to be very divorced from ordinary waking ones.  The divisions are quite arbitrary.  These various stages all represent different attributes and directions inherent within your own soul; clues and hints of them, shadows and reflections appear even in the consciousness that you know.  Even normal waking consciousness, then, is not innocent of all other traces of existence, or devoid of other kinds of awareness.  It is only because you usually use your waking consciousness in limited ways that you do not encounter these clues with any regularity.

They are always present.  Following them can give you some idea of those other directions, and those other levels of which we have spoken.  Often, for example, seemingly unrelated symbols or images may rise into your mind.  Usually you ignore them.  If instead you acknowledge them and turn your attention to them, you can follow them to several other layers, at least, for example A-1 and A-2, with ease.

The symbols or images may change as you do so, so that you perceive little similarity between, say, the initial image and the next one.  The connection may be highly intuitional, however, associative, and creative.  Often a few moments’ reflection afterward will allow you to see why the one image merged into the other.  A single image may suddenly open up into an entire mental landscape, but you will know none of this if you do not acknowledge the first clues that are just beneath present awareness, and almost transparent if you are only willing to look.

Alternate focus is merely a state in which you turn your consciousness in other than its habitual direction, in order to perceive quite legitimate realities that exist simultaneously with your own.  You must alter your perception to perceive any reality that is not geared practically toward the material form.  This is something like looking out of the corner of your eye or mind, rather than straight ahead.

Using alternate focus, with practice it is possible to perceive the different physical formations that have filled any given area of space, or that will fill it in your terms.  In some dream states you may visit a particular location and then perceive the location as it was, say, three centuries ago and five years hence, and never understand what the dream meant.  It seems to you that space can be filled only by a given item at a time, that one must be removed to make room for another.

Instead you only perceive in this fashion.  In alternate focus you can dispense with the root assumptions that usually guard, direct, and limit your perception.  You are able to step aside from the moment as you know it, and return to it and find it there.  Consciousness only pretends to bow to the idea of time.  At other levels it enjoys playing with such concepts and perceiving great unity from events that occur outside of a time context – mixing, for example, events from various centuries, finding harmony and points of contact by examining both historical and private environments, plucking them out of the time framework.

Again, you even do this in your sleep.  If you do not do it in the waking state, it is because you have held your consciousness in too tight a rein.

As mentioned somewhat earlier in this book, while your normal waking consciousness seems continual to you, and you are aware usually of no blank spots, nevertheless it has great fluctuations.  To a large extent it has memory only of itself and its own perceptions.  In normal consciousness, then, it seems as if there are no real other kinds of consciousness, no other areas or levels.  When it encounters “blank spots” and “returns”, it blots out awareness that the moment of nonfunction occurred.

It forgets the stumble.  It cannot be aware of alternate kinds of consciousness while being itself, unless methods are taken that allow it to recover from this amnesia.

It plays hopscotch in and out of reality.  It is gone sometimes and you are not aware of it.  On such occasions your attention is focused elsewhere, in what you might call mini-dreams or hallucinations, or associative and intuitive processes of thought that go quite beyond normal focus.

In these lapses you are perceiving other kinds of reality – with other than normal waking consciousness.  When you return, you lose the thread.  Normal waking consciousness pretends there was never any break.  This happens with some regularity, and to varying degrees, from fifteen to fifty times an hour according to your activities.

At various times many people do catch themselves, the experiences being so vivid that it leaps the gap, so to speak, with perception so intense that even normal waking consciousness is made aware of it.  These intervals are quite necessary to physical consciousness.  They are woven through the fabric of your awareness so cleverly and so intimately that they color your psychic and feeling atmosphere.

Normal waking consciousness weaves in and out of this infinite supportive webwork.  Your inner experience is so intricate that verbally it is almost impossible to describe.  Normal waking consciousness, while having memory of itself, obviously does not retain all memory all of the time.  It is said that memory of past events drops back into the subconscious.  It is still intensely alive, and by alive I mean living and active, although you do not focus upon it.

Inner portions of your personality also have memory of all of your dreams.  These exist simultaneously, and suspended, so to speak, like lights over a dark city, illuminating various portions of the psyche.  These memory systems are all interconnected.  Now in the same way you have your memory of past lives, all quite complete and all operating in the entire memory system.

In periods of conscious “blank spots” or certain fluctuations, these memory systems are often perceived.  As a rule the conscious mind with its own memory system will not accept them.  When a personality realizes that such other realities exist and that other experiences with consciousness are possible, then he activates certain potentials within himself.  These alter electromagnetic connections both within the mind, the brain, and even the perceptive mechanisms.  They bring together reservoirs of energy and set up pathways of activity, allowing the conscious mind to increase its degree of sensitivity to such data.  The conscious mind is set free of itself.  To a large measure it undergoes a metamorphosis, taking on greater functions.  It is able to perceive, little by little, some of the content before closed to it.  It need no longer perceive the momentary “blank spots” fearfully, as evidence of nonexistence.

The fluctuations mentioned earlier are often quite minute, yet highly significant.  The conscious mind knows well of its own fluctuating state.  When once it is led to face this, it finds not chaos, or worse, nonexistence, but the source of its own abilities and strength.  The personality then begins to use its own potential.

Periods of reverie and creative moments of consciousness both represent excellent entryways into these other areas.  In the usual creative state of consciousness, the regular waking consciousness is suddenly supported by energy from these other areas.  Waking consciousness alone does not give you the creative state.  Indeed, normal waking consciousness can be as afraid of creative states as it is of blank states, for it can feel that the I is being thrust aside, can feel the upthrust of energy that it may not understand.

It is precisely in the low points of fluctuation that such experiences originate, for normal consciousness is momentarily at a weak state and in a period of rest.  The whole physical organism undergoes such normal fluctuations, again, that are usually quite unnoticed.  These periods also fluctuate, following rhythms that have to do with the characteristic personality.  In some the waves of motion are comparatively long and slow, the valleys within being sloped; with others, the reverse is true.

With some, the lapses are more noticeable, outside of the norm.  If the situation is not understood, then the personality may find it difficult to relate to physical events.  If he is able to perceive the other areas of consciousness, he may find himself in still more difficulty – not realizing that both systems of reality are valid.

The fluctuations also follow seasonal changes.  Events from any given layer of consciousness are reflected in all other areas, each being actualized according to the characteristics of the given layer.  As one dream is like a stone thrown into the pool of dream consciousness, so any act appears in this pool also in its own guise.  Alternate focus allows you to perceive the many manifestations of any given act, the true multidimensional reality of a given thought.  It enriches the normal consciousness.

You are active in these other layers whether or not you are aware of it.  You learn not only in physical life and in the dream state, but in these interior existences of which you have no memory.  Creative abilities of a specific nature, or healing abilities, are often trained in this fashion, only then emerging into physical actuality.

Your future thoughts and acts are as real in these dimensions as if they had already occurred, and as much a part of your development.  You are formed not only by your past but by your future, and by alternate existences.  These great interactions are only a part of the framework of your soul.  You can, therefore, change present reality as you understand it from any of these other layers of consciousness.