On Truth

Seth Speaks, Appendix, Session 596

The Physical Universe as Idea Construction, mentioned by Ruburt in his Introduction, did indeed represent our first formal contact, although Ruburt was not aware of it at that time.

The experience came within a framework that he could accept – that of highly accelerated inspiration.  His consciousness left his body only after he was in the throes of what seemed to him to be inspiration of almost unbearable intensity.  Had his habits instead led him, say, to regular prayer, then that framework could also have been used.  In all such cases several qualities are apparent: an ability to look inward, to concentrate deeply, to lose the sharp edges of the physically oriented self in contemplation, and an intense desire to learn.  These must be coupled with the inner confidence that pertinent knowledge can be directly received.  To those who believe that all answers are known, there is little need to search.

Such information, such inspired writing, usually appears within frameworks of the personality that have already been set and formed.  The context in which such knowledge appears will often vary, therefore.  In some cases, the framework itself is used for a final time, with the initial inspired knowledge – the knowledge itself – escaping from the framework and growing out of the context that allowed for its birth.

Above all, individuals who receive such information in states of expanded consciousness are already those who feel deeply within themselves connections not only with the earth itself, but with deeper realities.  Consciously they may often be unaware of this basic quality within themselves.  They do not accept answers given by others, but insist upon finding their own.

These searches may appear erratic.  There is a fine impatience, a divine discontent that drives them on until the frontiers within their own personalities are finally opened.  The knowledge gained must then be integrated by the physical personality, and yet by its nature, valid knowledge of this kind will shed out its light and make its own way.

The energy generated by some such experiences is enough to change a life in a matter of moments, and to affect the understanding and behavior of others.  These are intrusions of knowledge from one dimension of activity to another.  They are highly charged and volatile.  Unknowingly, the individual who receives such information is himself a part of it.  The entire feeling-tone of his present personality is changed – and directly – by the information he receives.

To the extent that he is true to his own vision, possibilities of expansion are available to him that he could hardly have achieved otherwise.  Often the information given clashes with previously held ideas and beliefs, however.  Otherwise, there would be no need for the sometimes explosive, intrusive qualities of such experiences, for there would be no barriers.

Such personalities often then must learn to correlate their intuitive knowledge, to reform intellectual frameworks strong enough to support it.  Such personalities also are usually gifted with the ability to draw upon unusual amounts of energy.  Often they must learn at a fairly young age not to dissipate the energy.  They can seem, for example, to go off in many directions at once, before this lesson is brought home.

The late thirties and early forties are frequently involved simply because the need to know in such personalities often reaches a peak then.  The required patterns of behavior are sufficiently set.  The energy has been directed, and the individual has had enough time to realize that the accepted frameworks and answers make little sense to him.

At their strongest, such experiences can propel intuitive knowledge from the private domain to change civilization.  The incredible charge is always in the initial experience.  Contained within it is the condensed energy from which all other developments come.

The personality involved can react in many ways.  Great adjustments are necessary, and often changes of behavior.  The individual now realizes that he is indeed a living web of reality, and this becomes immediate conscious knowledge.

Such knowledge requires not only more responsive and responsible behavior, but involves a sympathy with life that may earlier have been lacking.  The sympathy brings with it a sensitivity that is strong, challenging and intense.  Many individuals have experienced unusual, quite valid and intense expansions of consciousness, but found themselves unable to correlate the new knowledge with past beliefs, to make the changes necessary to handle the sensitivity.  Indeed, they were not strong enough to contain the experience.  In such cases, they tried to close it off, deny it, forget it.

Others never allowed it to escape from the framework or the context from which it had sprung.  They were then unable to escape.  They could not free themselves.  If the information seemed to be coming initially from their God, for example, they continued in their particular way about God, even though the experience and the information given should have brought them far beyond such a point.

Ruburt, for example, would have made the same error had he not been led by his experience beyond the framework of inspiration that had given it birth.  In his case, then, he was propelled into new concepts because he had the sense to reject old ones, and the courage to go ahead.

The going-ahead involved him with my ideas of the god concept.  Before our sessions, he was so disillusioned that he would not even consider any questions dealing with “religious matters”.

Now such experiences or such doorways to knowledge are available to each individual, and to some extent each individual partakes in them.  They appear in much less conspicuous form, often in intuitive decisions made with seeming suddenness, beneficial changes, intuitive hunches.  Often midway in life an individual will suddenly seem to see things clearly in a physical manner, straightening out his affairs.  A life that seems headed for disaster will suddenly become victorious, for example.  These are all variations of the same experience, though in lesser form.

In normal living and in day-by-day experience, all the knowledge you need is available.  You must, however, believe that it is, put yourself in a position to receive it by looking inward and remaining open to your intuitions, and most important, by desiring to receive it.

I said a few paragraphs back that individuals such as Ruburt are themselves a portion of the knowledge they receive.  This applies to each person, each reader.  There is a great fallacy operating.  People believe that there is one great truth, that it will appear and they will know it.  Now a flower is a truth.  So is a lamp bulb.  So is an idiot and a genius, a glass and an ant.  There is little exterior similarity, however.

Truth is all of these seemingly distinct, separate, different realities.  So Ruburt is a part of the truth he perceives, and each of you are part of the truths that you perceive.

“Truth”, reflected through Ruburt, becomes in a way new truth, for it is perceived uniquely, (as it would be for each individual who perceived it).  It is not less truth or more truth in those terms.  It becomes new truth.

Such "new truths" can still be very ancient indeed, but truth is not a thing that must always have the same appearance, shape, form, or dimension.  Those who persist, therefore, in shielding their truths from questions threaten to destroy the validity of their knowledge.

Again, those who are so certain of their answers will lack that need to know that can lead them into still greater dimensions of understanding.  Any valid expansion of consciousness is itself, of course, a part of the message.  The personality finds itself encountering living truth, and knows that truth only exists in those terms.

I have used the term “expansion of consciousness” here rather than the more frequently used “cosmic consciousness”, because the latter implies an experience of proportions not available to mankind at this time.  Intense expansions of consciousness by contrast to your normal state may appear to be cosmic in nature, but they barely hint at those possibilities of consciousness that are available to you now, much less begin to approach a true cosmic awareness.

The ideas presented in this book should allow many readers to expand their perceptions and consciousness in ways they may not have believed possible.  The book itself is written in such a way that all those ready to learn will benefit.  There is meaning not only in the written words themselves, but connections existing between them that do not appear, and that will have meanings to various levels of the personality.

The integrity of any intuitive information depends upon the inner integrity of the person who receives it.  Expansion of consciousness, therefore, requires honest self appraisals, an awareness of one’s own beliefs and prejudices.  It brings a gift and a responsibility.  All who wish to look within themselves, to find their own answers, to encounter their own “appointment with the universe”, should therefore become well acquainted with the intimate workings of their own personality.

Such self knowledge is in itself highly advantageous, and in one way is its own reward.  It is impossible, however, to look inward with any clearness if you are unwilling to change your attitudes, beliefs, or behavior, or examine those characteristics that you consider uniquely your own.

You cannot examine reality without examining yourself, in other words.  You cannot hold encounters with All That Is apart from yourself, and you cannot separate yourself from your experience.  You cannot see “truth”.  It cannot be manipulated.  Whoever thinks he is manipulating truth is manipulating himself.  You are truth.  Then discover yourself.