Physical Reality and Illusion

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 9, Session 443

Seth Two On Physical Reality And Illusion

You are like children, in your terms, with a game, and you think that the game is played by everyone.  Physical life is not the rule.  Identity and consciousness existed long before your earth was formed.

You see physical bodies and suppose that any personality must appear in physical terms.  None of you are physical; that which is enduring is not physical.  In that respect at least you are no different than I.  Consciousness is the force behind matter, and it forms many other realities beside the physical one.  It is only because your own viewpoint is presently so limited that it seems to you that physical reality is the rule and the mode and the purpose of existence.

The source and power of your consciousness is not and has never been physical, and where I am many are not even aware that such a physical system exists.  You have chosen your own illusion, and so you must accept it, and from its viewpoint must you try to understand the realities that exist beyond it.

There are many illusions, but the illusions are also real since they are created and since they exist.  Yours is simply not one that I have pursued, and one of the purposes of any appearance at these sessions is to acquaint the one you call Ruburt with inner travel, for he must leave the system as you know it, and in doing so set up habits and paths that can be used to advantage.

The situation is not quite stable at this point however.  Those where I am have not been acquainted with your system directly.  We have not been a part of it, though some of us have watched its developments, and interacted within it in other ways.

We have helped nurse it along by our energy.  Others like yourself have introduced various concepts to it and been more directly involved.  We were long before your beginning in physical terms …

Seth One On Our Fixation On The Illusion Of Physical Reality

Now that big brother has had his say, I will bring our Ruburt back to you, and let you take a break.  He will be quite here, very shortly.

You have been so immersed in physical reality through reincarnations, that even your dreams involve you with objects; and even in your dreams you hardly escape the physical units that you have constructed.

It is highly difficult for you to perceive any knowledge or reality unless it is interpreted in physical terms, even though such interpretation highly distorts the information itself.  When you allow yourselves freedom in the dream state, when you allow yourself direct experience of reality, when you do not remember it.

In dreams you continue to create pseudo-objects; even in your travels into experiences in other fields of reality, you continue to insist upon the paraphernalia of objectivity until it imprisons you, and you cannot see beyond it.

The inner portions of your own identity and reality are not known to you, for you cannot objectify them and therefore you do not perceive them.  So much of your energy is used in these productions that you cannot afford to perceive any realities except your own.  Like children playing with blocks your focus of attention is upon physical blocks.

Other shapes and forms that you could perceive, you do not; even in explaining other realities to you I must use word shapes and forms, or you would not understand what I mean.

You have your mathematics from us.  You have a shadow of mathematics, for here again you have insisted upon hemming in realities, of applying larger elements of thought to your blocks.  Your idea of progress is building bigger blocks, like children sitting upon the floor.  Yet none of us would think of kicking aside your block constructions in ire, or telling you to put aside children’s toys, though one day you shall do so.

Later in your time all of you will look down into the physical system like giants peering through small windows at the others now in your position, and smile.  But you will not want to stay, nor crawl through the small enclosures, nor have we any intentions of doing so.

In all ways we protect all such systems.  We do not have to be aware of them.  Our basic and ancient knowledge and energy automatically reaches out to nourish all systems that grow –

(... Jane suddenly cried out and began to shake her head violently from side to side as she sat in her rocker.  Her movements were so violent I feared she would tip over in the chair.  John jumped up to steady her from her right.  A glass of beer hit the floor.  A second later I was at her left side, having to go around the coffee table to reach her.

(Jane’s eyes had been closed, and remained so.  Oddly enough her glasses were on; nor did she lose them in the violent shaking.  She was quiet now but it took some minutes before John and I could coax her out of trance.  Needless to state the sudden end and reaction had been most startling to us.  When her movements started I called loudly to her but did not get through.

(When she could finally talk Jane revealed that she had been experiencing a concept to accompany the personality’s words; this she has done before when speaking for Seth’s entity, and we have been told before that this is one of the reasons or purposes for her speaking for this new personality.  But this one was a rough trip, Jane said.  This experience, Jane said, “wasn’t great”.

(It wasn’t clear, Jane said, extremely difficult to put into words, but she found while speaking the appropriate lines that she was a giant, looking at John and me in the room, although her eyes were closed.  She then experienced a tremendous feeling of growth.  She felt her “organs growing”, along with John and me and everything in the room.  Everything maintained its relative scale, but there was this enormous feeling of growth, as though each of us grew to the size of elephants, Jane said.

("I don't know whether he left me or not", she said, "but suddenly I was me and all this was going on.  It was fantastic.  I was so completely enveloped by it … I can’t describe it.  I was so aware of everything in the room, but my eyes were closed all the time.  It wasn’t great, this experience.”

(I hoped this meant the end of the session, but after a while it was obvious that Jane wanted to continue, or at least was willing to, in spite of the upsetting experience.  I tried to talk her out of it.  Her eyes kept closing.  Finally she decided to continue.

(“I’m on my way to the other guy,” she said.  “I just passed Seth and he joked with me – something about a massive encounter.”

(“Why don’t you just back down?” I asked.

(I don’t know how to.”)

Seth Two Continues

The blocks of physical reality appear very real to you when you dwell within their perspective.

Your Ruburt experienced a transmigration of systems.  It was not meant to be unpleasant.  This was his subjective interpretation.  First he was involved in a microscopic adventure.  Consciousness does not take up space.  You must understand this.  He then entered your own system of physical blocks, and by contrast that system then appeared huge and monstrous.

When we make contact his personality and consciousness in concentrated form makes its journey, in your terms like a speck in space, the consciousness reduced to its essence, and from this experience we then let him fall back into the physical system.  Children’s blocks then become massive by contrast.  It was an experience in concepts, and therefore an advance on your parts.

Psychological Identity

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 9, Session 442

Psychological Identity

There are several points I would like to make concerning psychological identity.  For the sake of analogy only now, imagine your present self at the center of a circle of endless spirals.  You are yourself, and yet one of the spirals that form the circle.  You are a vortex for the circle.  You do not have to contact it nor its other spirals, in that you already belong to it.

Now the same is true of other portions of your entity, if you consider any other given portion as being the vortex of its own circle.  In any psychic investigations or endeavors you will often gain assistance and support from these others who make up the circle of which you are a part.

Now I am speaking simply, for I am speaking of a circle as you understand it in three-dimensional terms, but there are more depths and dimensions to a circle than you can imagine when you picture, say, a globe; and so of course in this analogy identity has other dimensions that do not appear.

There are points or identities more easily reached from any given viewpoint within such a multidimensional structure.  Imagine a superstructure of a circle, put together like a pie, except that each segment is also in itself a globe, and that this structure is in itself an exterior one, the multidimensional equivalent of the pie’s crust or the apple’s skin.

Now the circumference of these circles interlap and bisect each other.  Nor are the dimensions of circumference or radius stationary in your terms, for they exist in value fulfillment rather than in space, and their measurements in terms of intensity rather than in inches or miles.

They are to a large degree, but not entirely, self-perpetuating, as if the seeds of an apple, instead of falling down to the ground, fell backward into some mysterious dimension within the core of the apple itself.  And yet because of the creative abilities of this mysterious dimension, more than inbreeding would be concerned, for it of itself could provide entirely fresh and new elements out of which further creativity could come.

Now this is identity as it is not generally known, and in this analogy lies the truth of the nature of identity.  Later you will understand it better.

You and Ruburt have changed since our sessions began.  I have also changed.  Because I have changed you have changed; and each new encounter continually changes, yet in a way that has nothing to do with developments, not single-line continuity.

From my standpoint your various reincarnated selves are not seen separately, but as your earthly personality.

Our contacts now are not just contacts with Robert F. Butts and Jane Roberts, and that is why I have always used your entity names.  The contact is also with other reincarnated selves that you do not presently recall.  I see a larger portion of your identity than you do.

And when I speak to you I speak also to other portions of you that I have known and do know.

(“What do you see right now?”)

Right now I see you symbolically speaking, in your terms, as the sum of the various people I have known in past lives as you, plus the you that is present, in your terms.  In terms then of vision, I see Joseph rather than Robert.  And I speak through Ruburt rather than the less – rather than the more limited concept of Jane.

Now.  Our relationship, simply in these terms, is multidimensional.  For you also react to me unknowingly on the basis of other relationships with me that you do not consciously recall.

In the future now that Ruburt has loosened, we will deal with your reincarnational backgrounds in some detail.

In terms again of the image set up earlier, there are various reference points where overlapping areas of the various circles penetrate each other; and as has been mentioned earlier, Ruburt’s personality presently is in such a psychological location.

Your reinforcement is necessary however, for you act as an amplifier.  One of the reasons is obvious, to me.  My own personality, as simply as possible, also represents such a reference point or entry point between you and Ruburt and myself.  Because, again as simply as I can explain it, because of our natures a certain field has been set up of receptivity, and though our positions change, the quotients within it do not.

Now mathematicians will not like this, but in your terms within the multidimensional circle image, we form a triangle.  The triangle is mobile, but we are to some extent eternally allied.  We were always formed something more than we are individually, in your terms.

Now this is not unique by any means.  There are numberless other such situations, and I mean numberless.  Comparatively speaking however, the situation is unique.

Now within our relationship as a triangle, dimensions are open and constantly changing.  Because of it we have all a rather unusual freedom.  Now, I am part of another triangle still, that is within this circle, and through my contacts with this other triangle there are abilities, perceptions, insights, talents available to you that you have barely begun to tap.

You will (to me) particularly since Ruburt makes his way from his own dark age.  One of these developments will occur in our sessions, one in particular through Ruburt outside of a session, I believe, and another should take place initially Joseph through you.  Or with you as main agent and instigator.

The other personality for which Ruburt has spoken is a part of this other triangle.  Which leaves you with two unknown elements you see.  Surprises are not surprises unless their main elements are withheld.  I tell you this so that later when developments occur, you may find that within our sessions, again, that the ground has been prepared.

The circle image that I gave you is meant to represent the basic meaning of each individual’s entity.  Within it each individual is free.  In the simplest of terms I have tried to suggest through analogy the multidimensional aspects of a basic self.

You sleep and dream and waken daily, and know that you are you.  So in your physical life you die and begin a new life, with little memory of the one that has gone before, as you find it so difficult to recall your dreams.  Through exercises you can consciously remember some dreams.  Through exercises you can consciously remember some reincarnations.

If you are interested I will give you such exercises, but whether or not you remember these lives consciously is of little importance, for you have subconscious knowledge of them.  This is your last reincarnation, in your terms.  At death you will consciously realize the sum of your reincarnated selves. To me that is your personality, but this is only a small part of your overall self.  To me it is as if you had finished one life, you see.  To you it will seem as if you had finished many.

Then the integration will take place, and you will realize that the various incarnated selves were as but days in your present existence.

(To me.)  I speak to you as Joseph, and all unknowingly you react as Joseph; for Robert F. Butts alone, or Jane Roberts alone, would never have met me.

Time And "Notime"

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 9, Session 437

Time And “Notime”

Now.  You come out of notime into what you think of as time, and back to notime again.

In notime experiences are far more direct.  Words in your terms are not needed to describe them.  In notime is the energy that provides the basis for time as you presently experience it.  All individuals and consciousness cooperatively form and sustain the frameworks that you know.

There is less differentiation, in your terms, in notime, but far more differentiation in terms of consciousness, and psychological experience.  All probabilities have their reality in notime, and the creative accomplishments that take place within notime generate all the probable realities that will ever exist or have existed within the various time systems.  In various dream states you do delve into notime, and it is of course here that you have your primary existence and ground of your identity.

It therefore pervades your time system, which is only transposed upon it.

Session 438

Time And “Notime” (2)

Now.  All probabilities and all possibilities have their origin in notime.

Some of these are perceived and experienced as definite events within your own system.  It is you who choose among the probabilities, and from these you form the given collection that compose any particular event.

You use probabilities like blocks to build events.  You choose. 

Now.  This presupposes inner knowledge and calculations, for you must be aware of the probabilities in order choose from them.  The inner self therefore has and uses this knowledge.  These probabilities include web works and probable action and reaction, involving not only yourself but others.

Your computers are toys when compared with these inner workings.  The main nature of events, the majority of events, do not “solidify” until the last moment, in your terms.  According to your understanding and interpretation of the word, events, none are predetermined by a source outside of yourselves.

The given environment of your childhood for example was chosen by you and determined by you.  Within this framework you also gave yourself the freedom to manipulate and change.  The main events of a civilization are chosen by its people, but because a course is begun this does not mean that it cannot at any point be changed.

Events are materialized in your time from their origins in notime, then.  There is no end in those terms to the source or supply of probabilities, therefore notime is not a static, completed cosmic storehouse.  It is being continually added to.  Each event that you form from any given set of probabilities automatically gives rise to new probabilities.

The nature of any given probable action does not lead to any particular inevitable concluding act.

Probabilities expand in terms of value fulfillment.  One given act does not necessarily then lead to act B and C, and hence to a concluding action.  Instead it has offshoots in infinite directions, and these offshoots have offshoots.  Sessions on the creative dilemmas and the sessions dealing with relative non-being will help here.

This is what I know of reality, but there is more to be known.

“Outside” of the realities of which I am aware and others are aware, there are systems that we cannot describe.  They are massive energy sources, cosmic energy banks, who make possible the whole reality of probabilities.

We are moving in that direction.  Portions of the entity “arrive” before other portions, and send us communications that we can hardly understand.  The other personality who speaks is on the edge of such a system.  The other system is the inside of the inside.  It has seen the birth and death of many physical universes such as your own; and the entities within it “at one time” were the inhabitants of such universes.

They have evolved beyond all probabilities as we understand them, yet outside of probabilities they still have existence.  This simply cannot be explained in words.  They form energy sources.  Yet also all of this and all of probabilities does not minimize nor deny the individual, for it is the individual upon whom all else rests, and it is from the basis of the individual that all entities have their existence, and from which all kinds of evolutions spring.

Nor are the memories and emotions of an individual ever taken from him.  They are always at his disposal, and those who have had connections with one another are always free to renew them, or to ignore them.

Most of these probable systems, returning to our earlier discussion, are open.  You simply do not realize that this is the case.

In your system it seems as if you have chosen one course, and that is the end of it.  On other existences however you choose other probabilities.  Now your own system is relatively closed, in that within it as a rule only one ego predominates, and you think of yourself as that ego.

In other systems this is not necessarily the case.  The time system within them is entirely different than your own.  In these the inner self is aware of itself as more than one ego.  The inner self can play more than one role at once, consciously in other words.  Simply as an analogy, it would be as if within physical reality you lived, say, the life of a rich man of great talent, the life of a poor man with entirely different talents, and the life of a mother and career woman.  You would be aware of yourself in each of these three roles, and find qualities being developed in each of the separate lives.

Again this is an analogy, for in several respects it could lead you astray if you took it too literally.  In such a system there would be no breakup of time for example, since time does not exist in the same manner.

You would not spend for example part of a day as one personality and part as another.  This will all be explained in good time.

Time and Multidimensional Personalities

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 9 Session 433

Time Structure Limits Perception

Now.  Any time structure is an aid, organizing experience along certain lines.  To a large extent it limits perception, and is a protective device.  You are learning to handle perception and experience, and time gives it to you in slow and small doses.

The doses become larger.  Finally you can sample experience without these limitations.  Nontime represents the freedom to do so.  You organize experience along your own lines because you have learned now to do so.  You do not misuse experience when you have reached that point.

You understand the basic reality of subjective life.  You will then still organize experience, but you will not need artificial aids such as time to lean upon.  You will not need to see thoughts materialized in physical matter, for you will have long since learned that the thoughts and not the matter are the basic reality.  You will be able therefore to dispense with many seemingly permanent mass images, but when you form them you will realize why and how.

It is important that you understand that time puts limitations and barriers in the way of perception.  This does not meant that each individual at such a stage is isolated, nor that he dwells in some universe of his own, for interactions always exist.

In nontime you perceive at your own rate.  You organize experience in your own way.  These experiences however will always involve you with others.  Indeed you can go far further in such relationships.  The relationships between multi-dimensional personalities is far more complicated than those you know.

Relationships Between Multidimensional Personalities

Entities, if they prefer, and under various conditions, when they become acquainted with others, may introduce to each other if they prefer, various portions of their personalities.  These various portions will be able to help each other and to aid in development.  Take for example entity A and entity B.  Self 4 personality of entity A may get along quite nicely with B’s self 6.  A’s self 2 and B’s self 2 may not get along well at all, so the entities will shift to those personalities which have the greatest rapport, and use them to establish a relationship.

In nontime these portions of the entity exist quite freely, without any time barriers to separate them.  Many such relationships have been established, as indeed I speak with you because we get on so well.  I am also familiar with your particular system, and found it emotionally satisfying.

Multidimensional personalities can therefore establish contact at various levels.  Their relationships involve a trust that yours do not have.  They have many areas of agreement open.

Now your physical relationships may or may not have anything to do with personal affiliations after any given existence within your system.  There are mothers and fathers that you have forgotten, and children that you do not know.  Psychically and subjectively the relationships did not take.  You are not burdened with them, nor they with you.

This simply means that you did not spark creative impetus of any kind within each other.

Now, you did not bring forth response from one another.  This perhaps is more important.  You did not challenge one another.  You may have gotten along quite well with each other.

No strong love was generated.  If ever a hatred was generated, then the relationship continued in one way or another through several existences.  It would be worked out, you see.

In almost the same manner some personalities are more remote from the entity than others.  They may even move out further into another psychic organization that offers more promising development, or to them a more pleasing psychological climate.

In such instances the entity does not try to hold the personality back.  The personality itself may simply pull away, exist by itself.  It may become a part of another entity, as it searches for support.  It may on the other hand attract, because of its strength, personalities who are searching for support.  They may join it in a new formation.  This may ultimately turn into another entity.

There are no barriers as far as development and experience are concerned, nor to creativity.  A personality then, starting out with one main purpose, may find itself involved in experience that opens new areas, and it may pursue them.  In nontime there is full recognition and sometimes use of time systems, but the personality realizes that it dwells in nontime, and it forms a time schedule or system to get where it wants to go in the same way that you would make a road or path.

Use Of Time Systems By Multidimensional Personalities

Sometimes the road or path may be used by others, and sometimes not.  Now, many personalities may work together to form a time system, as many men may labor to form a national highway.  One personality may also form for his own purposes a time system of his own, as a man might make a path to his own garden.

Sooner or later the man will cease walking merely from his house to his garden, and use other roads or forge new paths.  Sooner or later the personality will use or form other time systems in which to achieve developments, but nothing forces him to do so.

Now.  Time then is an aid in one way, and it is used by multidimensional personalities for their own benefit.  Use again the analogy of a road.  Other dimensional personalities realize that they are perfectly free to leave the road, and that much more exists on all sides.

In your theory of time however you believe yourselves bound to the road, do not realize that you have made it, and are unable to perceive other realities.  You have chosen to do this however.  Since you are learning and can only handle so many perceptions, you have forgotten that you have created the road.  Multidimensional personalities do not need to forget.  They are also aware of different such devices formed by others.

They don particular types of clothing to travel these roads, or they use certain vehicles.  They do not believe that they are bound to those vehicles.  There are certain time structures that are used by many.  Well traveled.  There are certain systems of reality that are well traveled.  In these to some extent mass perceptions predominate.

There are others, far less numerous, where highly venturesome personalities chose to set up new trails and strike out in new ways.  There are ruined time structures as well as ruined physical structures.

There are realities that are used no longer.  The purpose for which they were constructed, in your terms, no longer exists.  In your terms again there are incipient time structures and realities, probable systems that may or may not become a part of any mass venture.

Time therefore is formed out of and from nontime.  Non-time is psychological experience, psychological reality, and time is always at its service.  Entities then form the time in which they seem to dwell.  Experience itself is always plastic, and again, form is not dependent upon mass.  Mass belongs to your camouflage system.  Form does not.

Form adopts mass within the physical system, but form is not dependent upon it.  Form can exist and does exist without mass and without physical matter.  Form, like time, is an aid, an organization of experience.  Form is used as time structures may be used, but multidimensional personalities know that they construct form as they may construct various time systems as an aid toward organizing perception.

There are in other words many other kinds of time systems that are constructed, beside the one you know, dealing with continuity of moments.  The probable systems could be called time systems, only their experience is highly organized in a different fashion, and continual moments do not exist in your terms.

Now, there are some systems that do deal with a serial time unit, but in these the personalities are well aware that the serial time is of their own construction.  Certain types of personalities will construct or be attracted to certain time systems.  They will find certain patterns of development, particular perceptive mechanisms, that go with it more to their liking.

You could say that various time systems are like games, and there are many of them; and in each one the rules and the goals are different.  In your system one of the rules is that you forget you are playing a game in order to concentrate better on the affairs at hand.

The game however is for a purpose.

You cannot apply the rules of your game to the universe however, nor project them in such a manner and expect any valid results.  Still, playing the game will sharpen your perceptions and give you certain qualities that will allow you to understand reality once you cease playing the game.

How you do in the game will affect your score elsewhere, in other words.  Time then is superimposed upon nontime, as mass within your system is superimposed upon form.

Now to some extent, to some large extent, time as you know it with its continual moments is a highly specialized illusion, even within your physical system.

Your own race is the only one who plays with any facility.  Other myriad life forms have nothing to do with it at all.  You merely transpose your values upon them.  They do not experience time as you do.

This does not mean that they are not advanced enough to understand the reality of your time.  They do not share the illusion.  Almost all animals, plants, birds, insects, rocks and trees perceive according to intensities.  The intensity of an experience is their present; but in many ways that I will not explain to you at this point, their present is of wider duration than yours.  This does not necessarily mean that they perceive more of the past and future within their present than you do, for they do not in those terms.  But in terms of quality and value fulfillment there is greater duration and the “moment” is more intensely perceived.

Be reminded here that they are not concerned with moments in your terms.  Each experience is highly intense, however.  The organism responds to an acute degree.  This applies to both birds and rocks, though there is a large scale of difference between the extremes.