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.