JUST SETH

Consciousness

    At one time on your earth, in the way you look at time, there were many such species: water dwellers, with brain capacities as good as and better than your own. Your legends of mermaids, for example, though highly romanticized, do indeed hint of one such species’ development. There were several species smaller than the dolphins, but generally the same structurally. Their intelligence was indisputable, and old myths of sea gods arose from such species. There is even now an extremely rich emotional life on the part of the dolphins, to which you are relatively blind; and more than this, on their part a greater recognition of other species than you yourselves have.

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    The dolphins possess a strong sense of personal loyalty, and an intimate family pattern, along with a highly developed individual and group recognition and behavior. They cooperate with each other, in other words. They go out of their way to help other species, and yet they do not take pets. There were also, however, many varieties of water-dwelling mammals — some combining the human with the fish, though roughly along the lines of a combination chimpanzee-fish type, hyphen. These were small creatures who moved with amazing rapidity, and could emerge onto the land for days at a time.

    In other probabilities, water-dwelling mammals predominate. They farm the land as you farm the water, and are only now learning how to operate upon the land for any amount of time, as you are only now learning how to manipulate below the water.

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume One; Section 2: Session 688 March 6, 1974 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

Note:: Extensive quotes about The Beginning can be found in the webpage Just Seth | DREAMS, “EVOLUTION”, AND VALUE FULFILLMENT, VOLUME I & Volume II Link 1 & Link 2

Units of Consciousness

Vision Crystal by Alex and Allyson Grey (Greyscale edit)
Click image for original version link..

    We must unfortunately often deal with analogies, because they can form bridgeworks between concepts. There are units of consciousness,³ then, as there are units of matter. I do not want you to think of these units as particles. There is a basic unit of consciousness that, expressed, will not be broken down, as once it was thought that an atom was the smallest unit and could not be broken down. The basic unit of consciousness obviously is not physical. It contains within itself innately infinite properties of expansion, development, and organization; yet within itself always maintains the kernel of its own individuality. Despite whatever organizations it becomes part of, or how it mixes with other such basic units, its own identity is not annihilated.

    It is aware energy, identified within itself as itself, not “personified” but awareized. It is therefore the source of all other kinds of consciousness, and the varieties of its activity are infinite. It combines with others of its kind, forming then units of consciousness — as, mentioned often, atoms and molecules combine.

    This basic unit is endowed with unpredictability. That very unpredictability allows for infinite patterns and fulfillments. The word “soul” unfortunately has been so used in regard to your species that it becomes highly difficult to unravel the conceptual difficulties. Using usual definitions, you would call a soul the result of a certain organization of such units, which you would then recognize as a “soul.”

    That leads to the old inevitable questions: Do animals have souls — or do trees, or rocks? In line with the usual definition then, in your terms, this smallest unit would be “soul stuff.” That viewpoint however is highly limited, for “above you,” using that scale, there are other more developed organizations of these units; and so from that “more exalted viewpoint,” you would seem to be junior souls indeed.

    So I prefer, here at least, to speak of these units of consciousness instead. Their nature is the vitalizing force behind everything in your physical universe, and others as well. These units can indeed appear in several places at once, and without going through space, in your terms. Literally now, these basic units of consciousness can be in all places at once. They are in all places at once. They will not be recognized because they will always appear as something else.

    Of course they move faster than light. There are millions of them in one atom — many millions. Each of these units is aware of the reality of all others, and influences all others. In your terms these units can move forward or backward in time, but they can also move into thresholds of time with which you are not familiar.⁴

    All probabilities are probed and experienced, and all possible universes created from these units. Therefore, there are realities in which the endless probabilities of one given event are probed, and all experience grouped about that venture.⁵ from your standpoint, is made to endure for the life of a universe. I do not mean that a moment is simply stretched, or that time is slowed down alone, but that all the experiences possible within a moment become realities within that framework. Such systems have little to do with you in any practical manner, nor is such information given to dwarf your idea of what your own consciousness is. It is important, however, that you realize the fact that there is more creativity and variety in an inner reality than you ever physically perceive.

    These units of consciousness do not have human characteristics, of course. They do, however, possess their own “inclinations,” leanings, propensities — and perhaps “propensities” comes closest to the term I want. I do not want you to think of them as miniature people. Nevertheless, neither are they clumps of “idle” energy. They are vitalized, aware, charged, with all the qualifications of being.

    All psychological structures then are composed of such organizations, however long-or short-lived in your terms. They are innately endowed with the desire or propensity for growth and creative organization. They are not found alone, then, in isolation. Since these units of consciousness exist at once, they are aware of all the organized self-structures of which they are a part. To this extent, all probable realities are connected in that basic manner. These units grow out of themselves. Since I have told you that in your terms your past, present, and future exist at once, these units are constantly emerging out of your now-point from both the future and the past.

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    All matter is based upon the units mentioned, with their unpredictability and their propensity for exploring all probabilities. Even your atomic structure, then, is poised between probabilities. If this is true, then obviously “you” are aware of only one small probable portion of yourself — and this portion you protect as your identity. If you think of it as simply a focus taken by “your” greater identity, then you will be able to follow what I am saying without feeling puny by contrast, or lost.⁶ The focus that you have is indeed inviolate.

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    These basic units move toward organizations then of a selective nature. Having an unpredictable field to draw from, they select activity according to those significances. Period. Various kinds of significances are the result of the units’ individual natures. The body that you have is a probable body. It is the result of one line of “development” that could be taken by your particular earth personality in flesh. All of the other possible lines of development also occur, however. They occur at once, but each one simultaneously affects every other. There is actually far greater interaction here than you realize, because you are not used to looking for it. The harder you work to maintain the official accepted idea of the self in conventional terms, the more of course you block out any kind of unpredictability.

    Because of the great organizing nature of these basic units, there are also psychological structures that are quite capable of holding their own identities while being aware of any given number of probable selves. Life after death has great meaning in your reality, because death is a part of it. Your greater reality obviously transcends both your births and your deaths. The idea of one universe alone is basically nonsensical. Your reality must be seen in its relationship to others.⁸ Otherwise you are always caught in questions like “How did the universe begin?” or “When will it end?” All systems are constantly being created.

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    3. A note added later: Of course, as soon as Seth mentioned units of consciousness in “Unknown” Reality I thought of the electromagnetic energy units (EE units, as he called them) that he’d discussed in 1969 and 1971. See sessions 504 through 506 in the Appendix of The Seth Material, and the 581st session in Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks, respectively. In the latter material he used several evocative analogies to describe his EE units: “… basically emanations rising from consciousness … the invisible breath of consciousness … The emanations are actually emotional tones … The units are just beneath the range of physical matter.”

    However, nowhere in tonight’s 682nd session does Seth refer to EE units by name — and for a reason, as will be seen late in the next session. In his earlier material he left himself plenty of room to add to his data on such units of consciousness. “They are one form [my emphasis] that emotional energy takes,” he told us in the 504th session. And in the 581st session: “There are many ranges and great varieties of such EE units, all existing beyond your perceivable reach. To lump them together in such a way, however, is misleading, for within all of this there is great order.”

    4. Again, see the 581st session in Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks for material on EE units and postulated faster-than-light particles like the tachyon. (It’s been stated in theory, incidentally, that although tachyons themselves travel faster than light, their radiation doesn’t. This radiation, then, the carrier of all of the information we could gather about tachyons [or similar particles], would be observable by us.)

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume One; Section 1: Session 682 February 13, 1974 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

Spectral Lotus by Alex Grey (Greyscale edit)
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    Through these units consciousness makes its mark, and not one scribble is ever annihilated.

    The experience of any given unit, constantly changing, affects all other units … Give us time … It is difficult to explain because your concepts of selfhood are so limited … These units contain within themselves, in your terms, all “latent” identities, but not in a predetermined fashion. Selves may be quite independent within the framework of their own reality, while still being a part of a larger reality in which their independence works not only for their own benefit, but for the sake of a greater structure.

    Within these units there is, again, a propensity for growth and organization. Within a literally infinite field of activity, meaningful order arose out of the propensity for significance. Briefly, certain units would settle upon various kinds of organization, find these significant, then build upon them and attract others of the same nature. So were various systems of reality formed. The particular kind of significance settled upon would act both as a directive for experience and as a method of erecting effective boundaries, within which the selected kind of behavior would continue. The units can and do intermix, yet because of the propensity for selectivity and significance, whole groups of them will “repel” other whole groups, thus providing a protective inner system of interaction.

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume One; Section 1: Session 683 February 18, 1974 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    The CU’s, or units of consciousness,^l are literally in every place and time at once. They possess the greatest adaptability, and a profound “inborn” propensity for organization of all kinds. They act as individuals, and yet each carries within it a knowledge of all other kinds of activity that is happening in any other given unit or group of units.

    Coming together, the units actually form the systems of reality in which they have their experience. In your system, for example, they are within the phenomenal world. They will always come under the guise of any particular pattern of reality, then. In your terms they can move forward or backward in time, but they also possess another kind of interior mobility within time as you know it.

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    There is the constant surge into your universe of new energy through infinite minute sources. The sources are the CU’s themselves. In their own way, and using an analogy, now, in certain respects at least the CU’s operate as minute but extremely potent black holes and white holes, as they are presently understood by your physicists.

    The CU’s, following that analogy, serve as source points or “holes” through which energy falls into your system, or is attracted to it — and in so doing, forms it. The experience of forward time and the appearance of physical matter in space and time, and all the phenomenal world, results. As CU’s leave your system, time is broken down. Its effects are no longer experienced as consecutive, and matter becomes more and more plastic until its mental elements become apparent. New CU’s enter and leave your system constantly, then. Within the system en masse, however, through their great and small organizational structures, the CU’s are aware of everything happening — not only on the top of the moment, but within it in all of its probabilities.

    Now: This means that biologically the cell is aware of all of its probable variations, while in your time and structures it holds its unique position as a part, say, of any given organ in your body. In greater terms the cell is a huge physical universe, orbiting an invisible CU; and in your terms the CU will always be invisible — beyond the smallest phenomenon that you can perceive with any kind of instrument. To some extent, however, its act can be indirectly apprehended through its effect upon the phenomenon that you can perceive.

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    The EE units mentioned earlier⁵ represent the stage of emergence, the threshold point that practically activates the CU’s, in your terms. We will have more to say about these later.

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume One; Section 2: Session 688 March 6, 1974 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

Mystic Eye by Alex Grey
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    The CU’s form all systems simultaneously. Having formed yours, and from their energy diversifying themselves into physical forms, they were aware of all of the probable variations from any given biological strain. There was never any straight line of development as, say, from reptiles to mammal, ape, and man. Instead there were great, still-continuing, infinitely rich parallel explosions of life forms and patterns in as many directions as possible. There were animal-men and man-animals, using your terms, that shared both time and space for many centuries.⁶ This is, as you all well know, a physical system in time. Here cells die and are replaced. Knowing their own indestructibility, the CU’s within them simply change form, retaining however the identity of all the cells that they have been. While the cell dies physically, its inviolate nature is not betrayed. It is simply no longer physical.

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    The experience of your species involves a certain kind of consciousness development, highly vital. This necessitated a certain kind of specialization, a certain “long-term” identification with form. Cellular structure maintains brilliant effectiveness in the body’s present reality, but knows itself free of it. Man’s particular kind of consciousness fiercely identified with the body. This was a necessity to focus energy toward physical manipulation. To some important extent the same applies to the animals. The cell might gladly “die,” but the specifically oriented man-and-animal consciousness would not so willingly let go.

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    Man’s consciousness, and to some extent that of the animals, is more specifically identified with form, however. In order to develop his own kind of individualized awareness, man had to consciously ignore for a while his own place within the structure of the earth. His experience of time would seem to be the experience of his identity. His consciousness would not seem to flow into his body before birth, and out of it after death. He would “forget” there was a time to die. He would forget that death meant new life. A natural message had to replace the old knowledge.

    In the body certain cells “kill” others, and in so doing the body’s living integrity is maintained. The cells do each other that service. In the exterior world certain animals “kill” others. You had for centuries, then, speaking in your limited terms, a situation in which men and animals were both hunters and prey. In those misty eras⁷ — from your standpoint — these activities were carried on with the deepest, most sacred comprehension. Again, the slain animal knew that it would “later” look out through its slayer’s eyes⁸ — attaining a newer, different kind of consciousness. The man, the slayer, understood the great sense of harmony that existed even in the slaying, and knew that in turn the physical material of his body would be used by the earth to replenish the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

    Even when you lost sight — as you knew you would — of those deep connections, they would continue to operate until, in its own way, man’s consciousness could rediscover the knowledge and put it to use — deliberately and willfully, thereby bringing that consciousness to flower. In your terms this would represent a great leap, for the egotistically aware individual would fully comprehend unconscious knowledge and act on his own, out of choice. He would become a conscious co-creator. Obviously, this has not as yet occurred.

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    The physical universe serves then as a threshold for probabilities, and all possible species find their greatest fulfillment within that system, each of them neurologically tuned into their own reality and their own “time.” So the body itself, as it presently exists, is innately equipped with other neurological responses that to you would seem to be biologically invisible. Nevertheless, your consciousness and your beliefs are what direct this neurological recognition. At birth, and before structured learning processes begin, you are far freer in that regard.

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume One; Section 2: Session 688 March 6, 1974 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

The Development of Consciousness

Nature of Mind (centre panel) by Alex Grey
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    Now: To some extent the development of consciousness as you understand it follows the development of the gods through the ages; and in those stories appear the guises that man might have taken, as well as those that he did.

    All animal gods hint of various experiments and species in which consciousness took different forms, in which the birth of egotistical awareness as you know it tried several areas of exploration. There were, for example, different versions of man-animal comprehension and activity.

    From approximately 50 million to 30 million years ago¹ there were innumerable species that would now seem to you to be mutated forms. The distinction between man-animal and animal-man was not as clear as it is in your time. In some ways consciousness was more mobile, less centered, and more experimental. That early rapport, that early mixture, would later be remembered in myths of gods in animal form. Such a variety existed long before your paleontologists realize that it did. There were many toolmaking animal species, some predating man’s toolmaking facility. Consciousness knows all of the probabilities of fulfillment open to it. Each species carries in its individual and mass psyche the blueprints of such probable actualities. These blueprints are biologically valid — that is, they allow the cells precognitive knowledge, upon which present behavior is based. This applies not only individually, so that the cell knows its future pattern, for example; but in the same way, an entire species will unconsciously have the knowledge of its own “ideal” fulfillment in its overall world environment.

    As specified,² ego consciousness grew. These inner patterns, native to the psyche of any species, turned into concepts, mental images — intuitive projections that were all meant to give conscious direction. The gods served, then, as stimulators of development. Seemingly outside of the self, they were meant to lead the self into its greatest area of fulfillment. The god images would change as consciousness did. The various god concepts that have fallen by the wayside, so to speak, represent areas of development that were not chosen, in your terms, but they are still latent. The totem pole, for example, is a remnant from an era where there was much greater communication between man and the animals — when, in fact, men went to the animals to learn, and from them first acquired knowledge of herbs and corrective medicinal behavior.³

    Historically, it seems to you that mankind was born from an animal’s undifferentiated kind of consciousness into egotistical self-awareness. Instead, many types of consciousness existed in the period of which I am speaking. The animals chose to develop their own kind of consciousness, as you chose your own. Animal awareness may seem undifferentiated to you. It is however highly specific, poised in the moment, but so completely that in your terms past and future are largely meaningless.

    The specific concentration, however, results in an exquisite focus. Ego consciousness lost part of that focus in comparison. The totem poles date back to the time when men and animals understood each other, before that point of departure. Physical species that existed and flourished in those epochs then became probable to you, for they did not develop in your system but became extinct. Their living relics exist in the god concepts that embodied them.

    In one way or another all mythology contains descriptions of other species existing on the earth in various forms. This includes stories of fairies and giants, for example. Mythology tells you about the archaeology of your race psychically as well as physically. There were, then, smaller and larger species of men,⁴ with varying conscious connections with the rest of nature. The larger experiments involved the production of a species that would be a part of the earth, and yet become aware co-creators of it. There were innumerable considerations, innumerable experiments, with size, brain capacity, neurological structure, and with a kind of consciousness flexible enough to change with its environment, and also vigorous enough to explore and alter that environment.

    The emerging consciousness had to have, latently at least, the capacity to become aware of world conditions. When man knew no more than a simple tribal life, his brain already had the capacity to learn anything it must, for one day it would be responsible for the life of a planet.

    Such leeway left room for many probabilities and for many “errors,” but the developing consciousness had to be free to make its own judgments. It would not be programmed any more than necessary by “instinct.” It was, however, biologically locked into earthly existence, and so meant to understand its natural heritage. It could not separate itself too much, then, or become overly arrogant. Its survival was so linked to the rest of nature that it would of necessity always have to return to that base. It responds to an inborn impetus for its own greatest fulfillment, and will automatically change directions in answer to its own experiments and experiences. There are great sweeping changes in religious concepts abroad in your times, and these represent man’s innate knowledge. His consciousness — his psyche — is projecting greater images of his own probable fulfillment, and these are seen in his changing concepts of God.

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume One; Section 2: Session 689 March 18, 1974 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

Beneath these, so to speak, the CU’s (or units of consciousness) are aware of the different kinds of consciousness of which they are part. By their nature certain kinds of organization, behavior, and experimentation exclude other quite-as-valid but different approaches. The CU’s, in their freewheeling nature beneath all matter, are acquainted with all such organizations, so that some of the lessons learned by one species are indeed transferred to another.

    One particular experiment in consciousness may be pursued by one species, for example, and that knowledge given to another, or transferred to another, where it appears as “instinct.” Here it will be used as a basis for a different kind of behavior, exploration, or experiment. I have said that evolution does not exist as you think of it, in any kind of one-line, ape-to-man time sequence.l No other species developed in that manner, either. Instead there are parallel developments. Your time perception shows you but one slice of the whole cake, for instance.

    In thinking in terms of consecutive time, however, evolution does not march from the past into the future. Instead, the species is precognitively aware of those changes it wants to make, and from the “future” it alters the “present” state of the chromosomes and genes² to bring about in the probable future the specific changes it desires. Both above and below your usual conscious focus, then, time is experienced in an entirely different fashion, and is constantly manipulated,3 as physically you manipulate matter.

    The CU’s, forming the structure later in its entirety, form all the atoms, molecules, cells, and organs that make up your world. Land changes and alterations of species are conditions brought about in line with overall patterns that involve all species, or land and water masses, at any given “time.” There is a great organization of consciousness involved on such occasions — sometimes creative cataclysms, in which, again from its own precognitive information, nature brings about those situations best suited to its needs. Such biological precognition is firmly based in the chromosomes and genes, and reflected in the cells. As mentioned earlier (in the 684tb session), the present corporal structure of any physical body of any kind is maintained only because of the cells’ innate precognitive abilities. To the self the future, of course, is not experienced as future. It is simply one of the emerging conditions of an experienced Now (you had better capitalize that). The cells’ practically felt “Now” includes, then, what you would think of as past and future, as simple conditions of Nowness. They maintain the body’s structure in your poised time only by manipulating themselves in a rich medium of probabilities. There is a constant give-and-take of communication between the cell as you know it in present time, and the cell as it “was” in the past, or “will be.”

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume One; Section 2: Session 690 March 21, 1974 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

Families of Consciousness

Love Circuit by Alex Grey (Greyscale edit)
Click image for link.

    Now there are races, physically speaking. There are also psychic counterparts of races — families of consciousness, so to speak — all related, yet having different overall characteristics or specialties.

    Most of the people who come to Ruburt’s classes are Sumari,⁷ for example. There are eight other such psychic families — nine in all. Some of Ruburt’s students are counterparts of each other. Many of the people who come here come home in the ways that [members of a physical] family attend a reunion.

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two; Section 6: Session 732 January 22, 1975 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    You choose to be born in a particular physical family, however, with your brothers and sisters, or as an only child. So, generally speaking, your counterparts are born in the same psychic family of your contemporaries. These families can be called Gramada —

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1. Gra-ma’-da
2. Su-ma’-fi
3. Tu’-mold
4. Vold
5. Mil’-u-met
6. Zu’-li
7. Bor-le’-dim, closest to Sumari
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8. Il’-da
9. And Sumar’-i

    Now these categories do not come first. Your individuality comes first. You have certain characteristics of your own. These place you in a certain position. As you are not a rock or a mineral, but a person, so your individuality places you in a particular family or species of consciousness. This represents your overall viewpoint of reality.

    You like to be an initiator or a follower or a nourisher. You like to create variations on old systems, or you like to create new ones. You like to deal primarily with healing, or with information, or with physical data. You like to deal with sight, or sound, with dreams, or with translating inner data into the working psychic material of your society. So you choose a certain focus, as you choose ahead of time your physical family.¹¹

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two; Section 6: Session 732 January 22, 1975 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    Generally, the Sumari have the capacity to reach out emotionally to others and empathize. To some extent this feeling for humanity often serves as an impetus for creative work. Many of them also have a mystical sense of connection with nature. At the same time they can be relative isolationists, wanting to work in solitude.¹

    Various kinds of seemingly contradictory characteristics may appear, then. One Sumari may have many deeply rewarding personal relationships. Another might find friends a distraction. One Sumari might enjoy performing in front of an audience, while another might not even be able to bear the thought. Since each person is unique, the various Sumari characteristics will then appear quite differently. Some live in cities, basking in the emotional nearness of others, content with a few flowerpots for a reminder of nature’s beauty. Another might have a farm. In most cases, however, the slant of consciousness is primarily creative. Period.

    I am not, again, going into detail about the other families, but I will briefly discuss them because counterparts will generally belong to the same family.

    The first family that I mentioned (Gramada²), for example, specializes in organization. Sometimes its members follow immediately after a revolutionary social change. Their organizational tendencies are expressed in any area of life, however. They are behind art schools, for instance, though they may not be artists themselves. They may set up colleges, although they may or may not be scholars.

    The founders of giant businesses often belong to this family, as do some politicians and statesmen. They are active, vital, and creatively aggressive. They know how to put other people’s ideas together. They often unite conflicting schools of thought into a more or less unifying structure. They are, then, often the founders of social systems. In most cases, for instance, your hospitals, schools, and religions, as organizations, are initiated by and frequently maintained by this group.

    These people (the Gramada) have excellent abilities in putting together solitary concepts that might otherwise go by the wayside. They are organizers of energy, directed toward effective social structures. They usually set up fairly stable, fairly reasonable governments, schools, fraternities, although they do not initiate the ideas behind those structures.

    The next group (Sumafi) deals primarily with teaching. Again, the relationship with others is good, generally speaking. They may be gifted in any field, but their primary interest will be in passing on their knowledge or that of others. They are usually traditionalists, therefore, although they may be brilliant. In a way they are equally related to the family just mentioned (Gramada), and to the Sumari, for they stand between the organized system and the creative artist. They transmit “originality” without altering it, however, through the social structures.

    I say that they (the Sumafi) do not alter the originality. Of course any interpretation of an event alters it, but generally they teach the disciplines while not creatively changing the content. As historians, for example, they pass down the dates of battles, and those dates are considered almost as immaculate facts, so that in the context of their training they see no point in questioning the validity of such information.

    In the Middle Ages they faithfully copied manuscripts. They are custodians in a way. Again, there are infinite variations. Many music or art teachers belong in that category, where the arts are taught with a love of excellence, a stress upon technique — into which the artist, who is often a Sumari (although not always, by any means) can put his or her creativity. Period.

    The next family (Tumold), in the order given, is primarily devoted to healing. This does not mean that these people may not be creative, or organizers, or teachers, but the primary slant of their consciousness will be directed to healing. You might find them as doctors and nurses, while not usually as hospital administrators. However, they may be psychics, social workers, psychologists, artists, or in the religions. They may work in flower shops. They may work on assembly lines, for that matter, but if so they will be healers by intent or temperament.

    I mention various professions or occupations to give clear examples, but a garageman may belong to this (Tumold) group, or to any group. In this case the garageman would have a healing effect on the customers, and he would be fixing more than cars.

    The healers might also appear as politicians, however, psychically healing the wounds of the nation. An artist of any kind, whose work is primarily meant to help, also belongs in this category. You will find some heads of state, and — particularly in the past — some members of royal families who also belong to this group.

    Those in the next group (Vold), are primarily reformers. They have excellent precognitive abilities, which of course means that at least unconsciously they understand the motion of probabilities. They can work in any field. In your terms it is as if they perceive the future motion or direction of an idea, a concept, or a structure. They then work with all of their minds to bring that probability into physical reality.

    In conventional terms they may appear to be great activists and revolutionaries, or they may seem to be impractical dreamers. They will be possessed by an idea of change and alteration, and will feel, at least, driven or compelled to make that idea a reality. They perform a very creative service as a rule, for social and political organizations can often become stagnant, and no longer serve the purposes of the large masses of people involved. Members of this (Vold) family may also initiate religious revolutions, of course. As a rule, however, they have one purpose in mind: to change the status quo in whatever the area of primary interest.

    It is already easy to see how the purposes of these various families can intermesh, complement each other, and also conflict. Yet all in all, almost, they operate as systems of creative checks and balances.

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    The next family (Milumet) is composed of mystics.

    Almost all of their energy is directed in an inward fashion, with no regard as to whether or not inner experience is translated in usual terms. These persons, for instance, may be utterly unknown, and usually are, for as a rule they care not a bit about explaining their interior activities to others — nor, for that matter, even to themselves. They are true innocents, and spiritual. They may be underdeveloped intellectually, by recognized standards, but this is simply because they do not direct their intellect to physical focus.

    Those belonging to this (Milumet) family will not be in positions of any authority, generally speaking, for they will not concentrate that long on specific physical data. However, they may be found in your country precisely where you might not expect them to be: on some assembly lines that require simple repetitive action — in factories that do not require speed, however. They usually choose less industrialized countries, then, with a slower pace of life. They have simple, direct, childish mannerisms, and may appear to be stupid. They do not bother with the conventions.

    Strangely enough, though, they may be excellent parents, particularly in less complicated societies than your own. Period. In your terms, they are primitives wherever they appear. Yet they are deeply involved in nature, and in that respect they are more highly attuned psychically than most other people are.

    Their private experiences are often of a most venturesome kind, and at that level they help nourish the psyche of mankind.

    The next group (Zuli) is involved mainly with the fulfillment of bodily activity. These are the athletes. In whatever field, they devote themselves to perfecting the capacities of the body, which in others usually lie latent.

    To some extent they serve as physical models. The vitality of creaturehood is demonstrated through the beauty, speed, elegance, and performance of the body itself. To some extent these people are perfectionists, and in their activities there are always hints of “super” achievement, as if even physically the species tries to go beyond itself. The members of this family actually serve to point out the unrealized capacity of the flesh — even as, for example, great Sumari artists might give clues as to the artistic abilities inherent, but not used, in the species as a whole. The members of this group deal, then, in performance. They are physical doers. They are also lovers of beauty as it is corporally expressed.

    Members of this (Zuli) family can often serve as models for the artist or the writer, but generally speaking they themselves transmit their energy through physical “arts” and performance. In your terms only, and historically speaking, they often appeared at the beginnings of civilizations, where direct physical bodily manipulation within the environment was of supreme importance. Then, normal physical reactions were simply faster than they are now, even while normal body relaxation was deeper and more complete.

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two; Section 6: Session 736 February 5, 1975 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    The next family (Borledim) deals primarily with parenthood. These people are natural “earth parents.” That is, they have the capacity to produce children who from a certain standpoint possess certain excellent characteristics. The children have brilliant minds, healthy bodies, and strong clear emotions.

    While many people are working in specific areas, developing the intellect, for example, or the emotions or the body, these parents and their children produce offspring in which a fine balance is maintained. No one aspect of mind or body is developed at the expense of another aspect.

    The personalities possess a keen resiliency of both body and mind, and serve as a strong earth stock. It goes without saying that members of one family often marry into other families. Of course the same thing happens here. When this occurs new stability is inserted, for this particular family acts as a source-stock, providing physical and mental strength. Period. Physically speaking, these people often have many children, and usually the offspring do well in whatever area of life is chosen. Biologically speaking, they possess certain qualities that nullify “negative” codes in the genes.² They are usually very healthy people, and marriage into this group can automatically end generations of so-called inherited weaknesses.³

    These people (the Borledim) believe, then, in the natural goodness of sex, the body, and the family unit — however those attributes are understood in the physical society to which they belong. As a rule they possess an enchanting spontaneity, however, and all of their creative abilities go into the family group and the production of children. These are not rigid parents, though, blindly following conventions, but people who see family life as a fine living creative art, and children as masterpieces in flesh and blood. Far from devouring their offspring by an excess of overprotective care, they joyfully send their children out into the world, knowing that in their terms the masterpieces must complete themselves, and that they have helped with the underpainting.

    [The Borledim] are the stock that so far has always seen to it that your species continues despite catastrophes, and they are more or less equally distributed about the planet and in all nationalities. They are most like the Sumari. They have the same love of the arts, the same general attitudes. They will usually seek fairly stable political situations in which to bear their children, as the Sumari will to produce their art. They demand a certain amount of freedom for their children, however, and while they are not political activists, like the Sumari their ideas often spring to prominence before large social changes, and help initiate them. The one big difference is that the Sumari deal primarily with creativity and the arts, and often subordinate family life (as Jane and I have done), while this family thinks of offspring in the terms of living art; everything else is subordinated to that “ideal.”

    The Sumari often provide a cultural, spiritual, or artistic heritage for the species. This (Borledim) family provides a well-balanced earth stock — a heritage in terms of individuals. These people are kind, humorous, playful, filled with a lively compassion, but too wise for the “perverted” kind of compassion that breeds on other individuals’ weaknesses.

    An artist expects his paintings to be good — or, if you will forgive a jingle: at least he should. These people expect their children to be well-balanced, healthy, spiritually keen, and so they are. You will find members of the Borledim family in almost any occupation, but the main consideration will be on the physical family unit.

    These parents do not sacrifice themselves for the sake of their children. They understand too well the burden that is placed upon such offspring. Instead, the parents retain their own clear sense of identity and their individual characteristics, serving as clear examples to the children of loving, independent adults.

    The next family (Ilda) is composed of the “exchangers.” They deal primarily in the great play of exchange and interchange of ideas, products, social and political concepts. They are travelers, carrying with them the ideas of one country to another, mixing cultures, religions, attitudes, political structures. They are explorers, merchants, soldiers, missionaries, sailors. They are often members of crusades.

    Throughout the ages they have served as the spreaders of ideas, the assimilators. They (the Ilda) turn up everywhere. They were pirates and slaves as well, historically speaking. They are often primarily involved in social changes. In your time they may be diplomats, as they were also in the past. Their characteristics are usually those of the adventuresome. Very seldom do they live in one place for long, although they may if their occupation deals with products from another land. Individually they may seem highly diverse in nature, one from the other, but you will not find them as a rule in universities as teachers. You might find them as archaeologists in the field, however.

    A good many salesmen belong in this (Ilda) category. In your terms they may be cosmopolitan, and often wealthy, so that frequent travel is possible. On the other hand, however, in certain frameworks, a humble merchant in a small country who travels through nearby provinces might also belong to this family. These are a lively, talkative, imaginative, usually likable group of people. They are interested in the outsides of things, social mores, the marketplace, current popular religious or political ideas. They spread these from place to place. They are the seed-carriers, both literally and figuratively.

    They can be “con men,” selling products supposed to have miraculous values, blinding the local populace with their city airs. Yet even then they will be bringing with them the aura of other ideas, often inserting into closed areas concepts with which others are already familiar.

    The members of that family of consciousness provide frequent new options. They may be scientists, or the strictest kind of conventional missionaries abroad in alien lands. In your present time they are sometimes Indians (from India, that is), or Africans or Arabs, journeying to your civilizations. They add to the great flow of communication. They may be emotional rather than intellectual, as you understand those terms, but they are restless, usually on the move. They can be actors, also.

    In the past some (Ilda) have been great courtesans, and even though they were not able to travel physically, they were at the heart of communication — that is, a part of court life, or involved with diplomats who did travel.

    Many of the courtesans who ruled the salons of Europe belonged in the (Ilda) category, then. The Crusades⁴ involved great movement of this family, in which trade and commerce, and the exchange of political ideas, were far more important than the religious aspects. Some members of this family served as initiators of new orders in the (Catholic) church in the past — the worldly Jesuits, for example, and some of the more sophisticated popes⁵, who had a fine eye out for commerce and wealth. These people may be appreciators of fine art, but usually for its commercial value.

    Now you can often find them in the departments of government, in those areas where travel is involved, or in finance. They frequently enjoy intrigue. All in all, they mix mores.

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two; Section 6: Session 737 February 17, 1975 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    6. I listed the families of consciousness (along with simple clues to their pronunciations) when Seth first gave them at 11:14 in the 732nd session. Here I’ll not only remind the reader of the sessions in which Seth described the characteristics of each family, but will try to summarize in a few words the overall function of each one.

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two; Section 6: Session 737 NOTES © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

The Characteristics of Consciousness

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    Consciousness is a way of perceiving the various dimensions of reality. Consciousness as you know it is highly specialized. The physical senses allow you to perceive the three-dimensional world, and yet by their very nature they can inhibit the perception of other equally valid dimensions. Most of you identify with your daily physically oriented self. You would not think of identifying with one portion of your body and ignoring all other parts, and yet you are doing the same thing (smile) when you imagine that the egotistical self carries the burden of your identity.

    I am telling you that you are not a cosmic bag of bones and flesh, thrown together through some mixture of chemicals and elements. I am telling you that your consciousness is not some fiery product, formed merely accidentally through the interworkings of chemical components.

    You are not a forsaken offshoot of physical matter, nor is your consciousness meant to vanish like a puff of smoke. Instead, you form the physical body that you know at a deeply unconscious level with great discrimination, miraculous clarity, and intimate unconscious knowledge of each minute cell that composes it. This is not meant symbolically.

    Now because your conscious mind, as you think of it, is not aware of these activities, you do not identify with this inner portion of yourselves. You prefer to identify with the part of you who watches television or cooks or works - the part you think knows what it is doing. But this seemingly unconscious portion of yourself is far more knowledgeable, and upon its smooth functioning your entire physical existence depends.

    This portion is conscious, aware, alert. It is you, so focused in physical reality, who do not listen to its voice, who do not understand that it is the great psychological strength from which your physically oriented self springs.

    I call this seemingly unconscious the “inner ego,” for it directs inner activities. It correlates information that is perceived not through the physical senses, but through other inner channels. It is the inner perceiver of reality that exists beyond the three-dimensional. It carries within it the memory of each of your past existences. It looks into subjective dimensions that are literally infinite, and from these subjective dimensions all objective realities flow.

    All necessary information is given to you through these inner channels, and unbelievable inner activities take place before you can so much as lift a finger, flicker an eyelid, or read this sentence upon the page. This portion of your identity is quite natively clairvoyant and telepathic, so that you are warned of disasters before they occur, whether or not you consciously accept the message, and all and all communication takes place long before a word is spoken.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    The “outer ego” and the inner ego operate together, the one to enable you to manipulate in the world that you know, the other to bring you those delicate inner perceptions without which physical existence could not be maintained.

    There is however a portion of you, the deeper identity who forms both the inner ego and the outer ego, who decided that you would be a physical being in this place and in this time. This is the core of your identity, the psychic seed from which you sprang, the multidimensional personality of which you are a part.

    For those of you who wonder where I place the subconscious, as psychologists think of it, you can imagine it as a meeting place, so to speak, between the outer and inner egos. You must understand that there are no real divisions to the self, however, so we speak of various portions only to make the basic idea clear. [... 4 paragraphs ...]

    For many people, I hear, have lived for years within New York City and never taken a tour through the Empire State Building, while many foreigners are well acquainted with it. And so while you have a physical address, I may still be able to point out some very strange and miraculous psychic and psychological structures within your own system of reality that you have ignored.

    I hope, quite frankly, to do far more than this. I hope to take you on a tour through the levels of reality that are available to you, and to guide you on a journey through the dimensions of your own psychological structure -- to open up whole areas of your own consciousness of which you have been relatively unaware. I hope, therefore, not only to explain the multidimensional aspects of personality, but to give each reader some glimpse of that greater identity than his own.

[... 3 paragraphs ...]

    The self that you know is but one fragment of your entire identity. These fragment selves are not strung together, however, like beads of a string. They are more like the various skins of an onion, or segments of an orange, all connected through one vitality and growing out into various realities while springing from the same source.

    I am not comparing personality to an orange or an onion, but I want to emphasize that as these things grow from within outward, so does each fragment of the entire self. You observe the outside aspect of objects. Your physical senses permit you to perceive the exterior forms to which you then react, but your physical senses to some extent force you to perceive reality in this manner, and the inside vitality within matter and form is not so apparent.

[... 3 paragraphs ...]

    For convenience’s sake, you close out the multitudinous inner communications that leap between the tiniest parts of your flesh, yet even as physical creatures, you are to some extent a portion of other consciousnesses. There are no limitations to the self. There are no limitations to its potentials. You can adopt artificial limitations through your own ignorance, however. You can identify, for example, with your outer ego alone, and cut yourself off from abilities that are a part of you. You can deny, but you cannot change, the facts. The personality is multidimensional, even though many people hide their heads, figuratively speaking, in the sand of three-dimensional existence and pretend there is nothing more.

—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part One: Chapter 1: Session 512, January 27, 1970 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    Consciousness has many characteristics, some of course known to you. Many of the characteristics of consciousness, however, are not so apparent, since presently you largely use your own consciousness in such a way that its perceptions appear in quite other than “natural” guises. You are aware of your own consciousness, in other words, through the medium of your own physical mechanism. You are not nearly as aware of your own consciousness when it is not operating primarily through the mediumship of the body, as it does in out-of-body states and some dissociated conditions.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    The characteristics of consciousness are the same whether you are in a body or outside of one. The peaks and valleys of consciousness that I mentioned exist to some degree in all consciousness despite the form adopted after death. The nature of your consciousness is no different basically than it is now, though you may not be aware of many of its characteristics.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    Now your consciousness is telepathic and clairvoyant, for example, even though you may not realize it. In sleep when (when) you often presume yourself to be unconscious you may be far more conscious than you are now, but simply using abilities of consciousness that you do not accept as real or valid in waking life. You therefore shut them out of your conscious experience. Consciousness, yours and mine, is quite independent of both time and space. And after death you are simply aware of the greater powers of consciousness that exist within you all the time.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    Since they do, of course, you can discover them now and learn to use them. This will directly assist you in after-death experience. You will not be nearly so startled by the nature of your own reactions if you understand beforehand for example that your consciousness not only is not imprisoned by your physical body, but can create other portions at will. Those who “overidentify” their consciousness with their body can suffer self-created torment for no reason, lingering about the body. Indeed, quite the forlorn soul, thinking it has no other place to go.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    You are, as I said earlier, a spirit now; and that spirit has a consciousness. The consciousness belongs to the spirit then, but the two are not the same. The spirit may turn its consciousness off and on. By its nature consciousness may flicker and fluctuate, but the spirit does not.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    Consciousness does not refresh itself in sleep. It is merely turned in another direction. Consciousness does not sleep then in those terms and while it may be turned off it is not like a light.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    Turning it off does not extinguish it in the way that a light disappears when a switch is turned. Following the analogy, if consciousness were like a light that belonged to you, even when you switched it off, there would be a sort of twilight, but not darkness.

[... 3 paragraphs ...]

    It is very important to understand that consciousness is never extinguished….

—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part One: Chapter 8: Session 534, June 8, 1970 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

Body Consciousness & Inner Awareness

Laughing Man by Alex Grey (Greyscale edit)
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    The body consciousness, on its own, is filled with exuberance, vitality, and creativity.

    Each most microscopic portion of the body is conscious, strives toward its own goals of development, and is in communication with all other parts of the body.

    The body consciousness is indeed independent. To a large degree its own defense mechanisms protect it from the mind’s negative beliefs — at least to a large extent. As I have mentioned before, almost all persons pass from a so-called disease state back into healthy states without ever being aware of the alterations. In those cases the body consciousness operates unimpeded by negative expectations or concepts.

    When those negative considerations are multiplied, however, when they harden, so to speak, then they do indeed begin to diminish the body’s own natural capacity to heal itself, and to maintain that overall, priceless organization that should maintain it in a condition of excellent strength and vitality.

    There are also occasions when the body consciousness itself rises up in spite of a person’s fears and doubts, and throws aside a condition of illness in a kind of sudden victory. Even then, however, the person involved has already begun to question such negative beliefs. The individual may not know how to cast them off, even though he or she desires to do so. It is in those instances that the body consciousness arises and throws off its shackles.

    With free will, however, it is not possible for the body consciousness to be given full and clear dominion, for that would deny large areas of choices, and cut off facets of learning. The main direction and portent, however, of the body consciousness on its own is always toward health, expression, and fulfillment.

    The molecules, and even the smaller aspects of the body act and react, communicate, cooperate with each other, and share each other’s knowledge, so that one particle of the body knows what is happening in all other parts. Thus, the amazing organization usually works in a smooth, natural fashion. Many body events that you think of in your society as negative — certain viruses, for example — are instead meant as self-corrective devices, even as fever actually promotes health rather than impedes it.

    The main characteristic of bodily consciousness is its spontaneity. This allows it to work at an incredibly swift rate that could not be handled by the topmost conscious portions of the mind. Its operation is due to an almost instantaneous kind of consciousness, in which what is known is known, with no distance between, say, the knower and the known.

    The act of seeing, and all of the body’s senses, are dependent upon this inner spontaneity.

—The Way Toward Health; Part One: Chapter 1: January 7, 1984 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts

    Before we can really study the nature of health or illness, we must first understand human consciousness and its relationship with the body.

    You know that you have a conscious mind, of course. You also possess what is often called the subconscious, and this merely consists of feelings, thoughts or experiences that are connected to your conscious mind, but would be considered excess baggage if you had to be aware of them all of the time. Otherwise they would vie for your attention, and interfere with the present decisions that are so important. Period.

    If you tried to hold all of those subconscious memories uppermost in your mind all of the time, then you would literally be unable to think or act in the present moment at all. You do more or less have a certain access to your own subconscious mind, however. It is perhaps easier to imagine a continuum of consciousness, for you have a body consciousness also, and that body consciousness is itself made up of the individual consciousness of each molecule that forms all parts of the body itself.

    It is sometimes fashionable to say that men and women have conscious minds, subconscious minds, and unconscious minds — but there is no such thing as an unconscious mind. The body consciousness is highly conscious. You are simply not usually conscious of it. Reasoning takes time. It deals with problem-solving — it forms an hypothesis, and then seeks to prove it by trial and error.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    If you had to use that kind of process before you could move a muscle, you would get nowhere at all, of course. The other portions of your consciousness, then, deal with a kind of automatic thinking, and operate with a kind of knowledge that takes no time in your terms.

    You might say that the varying portions of your own consciousness operate at several different speeds. Translations between one portion of consciousness and another goes on constantly, so that information is translated from one “speed” to another. Perhaps you can begin to understand, then, that the whole picture of health or illness must be considered from many more viewpoints than you might earlier have supposed. Many of you have been saturated by conventional, distorted ideas concerning health and illness in general. You might think, for example, of the body being invaded by viruses, or attacked by a particular disease, and these ideas, then, may make you question. You might well wonder why the body consciousness does not simply rise up and cast off any threatening diseases: why would the body allow certain cells to go berserk, or outgrow themselves? The very concept of the immunity system suggests, at least, the disease invader against which the body’s immunity system must or should surely defend itself.

—The Way Toward Health; Part One: Chapter 3: March 16, 1984 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts

    Body is also pattern. Period. While the material that composes it changes constantly, the pattern maintains its own integrity. The form is etched in space and time, and yet the pattern itself exists outside of that framework also — the body is a projection, therefore, into the three-dimensional field.

    The consciousnesses of the cells within it, however, are eternal. The physical framework, then, is itself composed of immortal stuff. The projection in time and space may disappear, in your terms, wither and die. The main identity continues to exist, even as the consciousnesses of millions of cells still exist that at one time were part of the body.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    While inhabited by the usual human consciousness, the living body operates as an intense focus point. The conglomeration of consciousnesses within it on all levels focuses its own network of communication. This private network is connected to all others like it. There are levels of interaction then simply between all bodies, electromagnetically and biologically. The network is more far-reaching than that, however. Not only can all cells respond to each other, but their mass activity triggers even higher centers of consciousness to respond to a given set of world conditions, rather than to other quite-as-legitimate world conditions that do not fit the accepted pattern. Probabilities to some extent, then, are determined along cellular lines. This should be obvious.

    The body’s very structure will in itself set patterns for the kinds of probabilities that can be practically experienced. The source-reality out of which all else springs is never predetermined — that is, predestined, or even set. The universe in any terms is always being created. Period.

    When consciousness is being specified, it always sees itself at the center of its world. All specifications of consciousness and all phenomenal appearances occur when the basic units of consciousness, the CU’s, emerge into EE units, and hence into the dimensions of actuality in your terms. Your mainly accepted normal consciousness is within the matter of your body, and through it — the body — you view your world. There is nothing to prevent you from viewing your body from a standpoint outside of it, except that you have been taught that consciousness is imprisoned within the flesh.

    The body is a sending and receiving organism; your home station, so to speak, and the focus for your activity. You can, however, quite consciously leap from it — and you do often, when for a while, particularly in the dream state, you view the world from another perspective.

    In some adventures you do visit other probable realities in which you have a body structure quite as real as “your own.” Your own psychological makeup, for that matter, achieves its marvelous complexity because it draws from the rich bank of your greater probable existences. Even a small understanding of these ideas can help you glimpse how limiting previous concepts of psychology have been.

    The self that you know and recognize carries within it hints and traces of all of your probable characteristics that can be actualized within your system of reality. Your body is equipped to bring any of these to fulfillment. Now, because of the selectivity mentioned earlier,¹ certain directions may be easier than others, and some may appear impossible. Yet within the psychological and biological structure of your species, the roads of probabilities have more intersections than you know.

    The conscious mind as you normally think of it directs your overall action, and its ideas determine the kind of selectivity you use. It is for this reason that I am trying to expand your conscious ideas, so that you become better equipped to choose your line of physical experience from all those probable ones open to you.

—The “Unknown” Reality: Volume One; Section 1: Session 685 February 25, 1974 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

Empowerment by Alex Grey (Greyscale edit) Click image for link “The ego is a very specialized portion of your greater identity. It is a portion of you that arises to deal directly with the life that the larger You is living. The ego can feel cut off, lonely and frightened, however, if the conscious mind lets the ego run away with it. The ego and the conscious mind are not the same thing. The ego is composed of various portions of the personality — it is a combination of characteristics, ever-changing, that act in unitary fashion — the portion of the personality that deals most directly with the world.” —The Nature of Personal Reality; Part One: Chapter 1: Session 613, September 11, 1972 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts

    You usually think of your conscious mind as your ego. It is directed toward action in physical life. Many schools of thought seem to have the curious ideas that the ego is inferior to other portions of the self, or “selfish,” and imagine it to be definitely of a lower quality than the inner self, or the soul.

    In the first place, it is really impossible to separate portions of the self, and we make such distinctions only in an effort to explain the many facets of the personality. It is generally understood, then, that you do have an ego, directed toward exterior activity, and in those terms you also have an inner ego. It is also conscious, and is the director of all automatic interior activity.

    Most people do not realize that they can indeed have access to this inner awareness. This inner ego or inner self should not be thought of as superior to your ordinary mind. It should not be thought of, really, as something separate from your ordinary mind. Your ego and your ordinary consciousness bring into focus all of your physical experiences, and make possible the brilliant preciseness of physical experience.

    It is true that physical life represent only one —

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    — condition of being. You have other kinds of existence, then. The conscious mind is one brilliant segment of your larger consciousness, but it is composed of the same universal energy and vitality that composes all consciousness. There are ways of communicating with the inner ego or inner self, however, and we will discuss some of these very shortly. It is important, again, to remember that this inner ego or inner self uses a process that is far swifter than reasoning.

    When such communications are made, therefore, they often consist of inspiration, intuition, impulses, and deal with feelings far more than with usual logical thinking.

—The Way Toward Health; Part One: Chapter 3: March 18, 1984 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts

    Each person is a vital, conscious portion of the universe. Each person, simply by being, fits into the universe and into universal purposes in a way no one else can. Each person’s existence sends its own ripples throughout time. The universe is conscious at every conceivable point of itself. Each being is an individualized segment of the universe; then, in human terms, each person is a beloved individual, formed with infinite care and love, uniquely gifted with a life like no other.

    No animal considers itself a failure, obviously. People, however, often identify with their seeming mistakes, forgetting their abilities in other directions, so that it seems that they are misfits in the universe, or in the world. The conscious mind can indeed have such thoughts because it so often tries to solve all problems on its own, until it begins to feel frightened, overburdened, and a failure in its own eyes.

    The inner ego, however, always identifies with its source-identity as a beloved, individualized portion of the universe. It is aware of the universal love that is its heritage.

    It is also aware of the infinite power and strength that composes the very fabric of its being. Through being made aware of these facts, the exterior ego can begin to feel a quicker sense of support and nourishment. The knowledge can let it relax, let go, so that it feels its life couched and safe, and knows itself to be indeed a beloved child of the universe, both ancient and young at once, with an identity far beyond the annals of time.

    It is of great value, then, that each person remember this universal affiliation. Such a reminder can often allow the inner self to send needed messages of strength and love through the various levels, appearing as inspiration, dreams, or simply pure bursts of feeling. The inner ego draws instant and continuous support from the universal consciousness, and the more the exterior ego keeps that fact in mind, the greater its own sense of stability, safety, and self-esteem.

    One of the attitudes detrimental to good health is that of self-condemnation, or dislike of the self. Such attitudes are unfortunately sometimes fostered by parents, schools, schools, and religions. Feelings of self-worth, self-esteem, and pleasant with one’s abilites promote feelings of well-being, health, and exuberance.

—The Way Toward Health; Part One: Chapter 3: March 19, 1984 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts

The vast reservoir of energy and potential within you is called into action under the leadership of your conscious mind.

    Because you are reasoning as creatures, because you have available such varieties of experience, the [human] species developed reasoning abilities that are meant to evolve and grow as they are used. Your consciousness expands as you use it. You become “more” conscious as you exercise these faculties.

    A flower cannot write a poem about itself. You can, and in so doing your own consciousness turns around about itself. It literally becomes more than it was. Existing in such diversified, rich environment-possibilities, the human psyche needed and developed a conscious mind that could make fairly concise and accurate “minute by minute” judgments and evaluations. As the conscious mind grew, now, so did the range of imagination. The conscious mind is a vehicle for the imagination in many ways. The greater its knowledge the further the reach of imagination. In return imagination enriches conscious reasoning and emotional experience.

    You have not learned to use your consciousness properly or fully, so that it seems that imagination, emotions and reasoning are separate faculties, or sometimes set against each other. The mature conscious mind, once more, accepts data from the exterior world and from the interior one. It is only when you believe that consciousness must be attuned only to exterior conditions that you force it to cut itself off from inner knowledge, intuitional “voices,” and the depths from which it springs. pg 66 the

—The Nature of Personal Reality; Part One: Chapter 4: Session 620, october 11, 1972 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts

Progress of the Soul: The Seer by Alex Grey (Greyscale edit) Click image for link “The entity [soul], the true multidimensional self, is aware of all of its experiences, and this knowledge is to some extent available to these other portions of the self, including of course the physical self as you know it. These various portions of the self in fact will eventually (in your terms) become fully aware. Period. This awareness will automatically alter what now seems to be their nature, and add to the multiplicitude of existence.” —Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part Two: Chapter 14: Session 559, November 9, 1970 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    “There are styles of thinking, just as there are various styles of dress.

    The official line of consciousness is a certain mental stance, a kind of convention. When you were a child you thought in a freer fashion. But little by little, you were educated to use words in a certain way. You discovered that your needs were met more quickly. And you received approval more often when you thought and spoke in that particular manner. Finally it seemed to be the only natural mode of operation.

    Your entire civilization is built around that kind of inner framework. The way of thinking becomes so automatic as to be mentally invisible. With creative people, however, there are always intrusions, hints or clues from ways of thinking that certainly appear foreign. And creative people use those hints and clues to construct an art, a musical composition, or whatever. They sense a surge of power beneath.

    You and Ruburt have had the feeling many times — but what we are trying to do is change over completely from one mode of operation to another, and to construct, say, new inner blocks of meaning that will give rise to the next era.

    What you are involved in then is really, of course, a completely new educational procedure, so that you are at least able to distinguish one style of thought from another, and therefore be freer to make choices.

—The Way Toward Health; Part One: Chapter 2: February 15, 1984 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts

    That is simply because everything is now scheduled in a fashion, with the time available. That material, however, is “excellent medicine,” and can indeed be life-saving. It is indeed unfortunate that those beliefs that show themselves so simply and effectively in nature seem so mysterious to the usual line of official consciousness.

    The official line does have its role, of course — but once again, by itself it must remain isolated from the deep, creative, healing functions of body consciousness. The official line of consciousness is really the “worrier,” because it recognizes that it can only go so far, and usually it is not educated enough to realize it is itself sustained and supported — and now I bid you a fond good afternoon, and I do indeed adjust those coordinates that do quicken Ruburt’s healing processes.

—The Way Toward Health; Part One: Chapter 2: February 14, 1984 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts

Comment: Despite only short passages on this aspect of consciousness, the fact that our whole civilisation is effected makes it important. This strongly reminds me of the beliefs of Robert Maxwell who states that our English language is actually designed to create spells. Since this is important, it is pointed out for serious readers to investigate this matter for themselves.

Streams of Consciousness

Contemplation by Alex Grey (Greyscale edit) Click image for link “Consciousness is a way of perceiving the various dimensions of reality.” —Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part One: Chapter 1: Session 512, January 27, 1970 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    The so-called stream of consciousness is simply that — one small stream of thoughts, images, and impressions — that is part of a much deeper river of consciousness that represents your own far greater existence and experience. You spend all your time examining this one small stream, so that you become hypnotized by its flow, and entranced by its motion. Simultaneously these other streams of perception and consciousness go by without your notice, yet they are very much a part of you, and they represent quite valid aspects, events, actions, emotions with which you are also involved in other layers of reality.

    You are as actively and vividly concerned in these realities as you are in the one in which your main attention is now focused. Now, as you are merely concerned with your physical body and physical self as a rule, you give your attention to the stream of consciousness that seems to deal with it. These other streams of consciousness, however, are connected with other self-forms that you do not perceive. The body, in other words, is simply one manifestation of what you are in one reality, but in these other realities you have other forms.

    “You” are not divorced from these other streams of consciousness in any basic way; only your focus of attention closes you off from them, and from the events in which they are involved. If you think of your stream of consciousness as transparent, however, then you can learn to look through and beneath it to others that lie in other beds of reality. You can also learn to rise above your present stream of consciousness and perceive others that run, for analogy’s sake, parallel. The point is that you are only limited to the self you know if you think that you are, and if you do not realize that that self is far from your entire identity.

    Now often you tune into these other streams of consciousness without realizing that you have done so — for again, they are a part of the same river of your identity. All are therefore connected.

    Any creative work involves you in a cooperative process in which you learn to dip into these other streams of consciousness, and come up with a perception that has far more dimensions than one arising from the one narrow, usual stream of consciousness that you know. Great creativity is then multidimensional for this reason. Its origin is not from one reality, but from many, and it is tinged with the multiplicity of that origin.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    Now in moments of solitude you may become aware of some of these other streams of consciousness. You may at times for example, hear words, or see images that appear out of context with your own thoughts. According to your education, beliefs, and background you may interpret these in any number of ways. For that matter, they may originate from several sources. On many occasions, however, you have inadvertently tuned in on one of your other streams of consciousness, opened momentarily a channel to those other levels of reality in which other portions of you dwell.

    Some of these may involve the thoughts of what you would call a reincarnational self, focused in another period of history as you know it. You may instead, “pick up” an event in which a probable self is involved, according to your inclination, your psychic suppleness, your curiosity, your desire for knowledge. In other words, you may become aware of a far greater reality than you now know, use abilities that you do not realize you possess, know beyond all doubt that your own consciousness and identity is independent of the world in which you now focus your primary attention. If all of that were not true, I would not be writing this book and you would not be reading it.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    Now: These other existences of yours go on quite merrily whether you are waking or sleeping, but while you are awake ordinarily you block them out. In the dream state you are much more aware of them, although there is a final process of dreaming that often masks intense psychological and psychic experience, and unfortunately what you usually recall is this final version.

    In this final version the basic experience is converted as nearly as possible into physical terms. It is therefore distorted. This final touching-up process is not done by deeper layers of the self however, but is much more nearly a conscious process than you realize.

    One small point might explain what I mean here. If you do not want to remember a particular dream, you yourself censor the memory on levels quite close to consciousness. Often you can even catch yourself in the act of purposely dropping the memory of a dream. The touching-up process occurs almost at this same level, though not quite.

    Here the basic experience is hastily dressed up as much as possible in physical clothes. This is not because you want to understand the experience, but because you refuse to accept it as basically nonphysical. All dreams are not of this nature. Some dreams themselves do take place in psychic or mental areas connected with your daily activities, in which case no dressing-up process is necessary. But in the very deep reaches of sleep experience — those, incidentally, not yet touched upon by scientists in so-called dream laboratories — you are in communication with other portions of your own identity, and with the other realities in which they exist.

    In this state you also pursue works and endeavors that may or may not be connected with your interests as you know of them. You are learning, studying, playing; you are anything but asleep as you think of term. You are highly active. You are involved n underground work, in the real nitty-gritty of existence.

    Now let me emphasize here that you are simply not unconscious. It only seems that you are, because as a rule you remember none of this in the morning. To some extent, however, some people are aware of these activities, and there are also methods that will enable you to recall them to some degree.

    I do not want to minimize the importance of your state of consciousness; as, for example, you read this book. Presumably you are awake, but in many ways when you are awake, you are resting far more than you are in your so-called unconscious nightly state. Then to a larger extent you realize your own reality, and are free to use abilities that in the daytime you ignore or deny.

    At a very simple level, for example, your consciousness leaves your body often in the sleep state. You communicate with people in other levels of reality that you have known, but far beyond this, you creatively maintain and revitalize your physical image. You process daily experience, project it into what you think of as the future, choose from an infinity of probable events those you will make physical, and begin the mental and psychic processes that will bring them into the world of substance.

    At the same time, you make this information available to all these other portions of your identity, who dwell in entirely different realities, and you receive from them comparable information. You do not lose contact with your ordinary waking self. You simply do not focus upon it. You turn your attention away. In the daytime you simply reverse the process. If you were looking at your daily normal self from the other viewpoint, you see, using an analogy here, you might find that physically waking self as strange as you now find the sleeping self. The analogy will not hold however, simply because this sleeping self of yours is far more knowledgeable than the waking self of which you are so proud.

    The seeming division is not arbitrary, or forced upon you. It is simply caused by your present stage of development, and it does vary. Many people take excursions into other realities — swim, so to speak, through other streams of consciousness as a part of their normal waking lives. Sometimes strange fish pop up in those waters!

    Now I am obviously such a one in your terms, swimming up through other dimensions of reality and observing a dimension of existence that is yours rather than my own. There are, therefore, channels that exist between all these streams of consciousness, all these symbolic rivers of psychological and psychic experience, and there are journeys that can be made from my dimension as well as yours.

    Now initially Ruburt and Joseph and I were a part of the same entity, or overall identity, and so symbolically speaking, there are psychic currents that unite us. All of these merge into what has often been compared to as an ocean of consciousness, a well from which all actuality springs. Start with any one consciousness, and theoretically you will find all others.

—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part One: Chapter 7: Session 531, May 25, 1970 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

Deeper States of Consciousness

Praying by Alex Grey (Greyscale edit) Click image for link “Consciousness is an attribute of the soul, a tool that can be turned in many directions. You are not your consciousness. It is something that belongs to you and to the soul. You are learning to use it. To the extent that you understand and utilize the various aspects of consciousness, you will learn to understand your own reality, and the conscious self will truly become conscious.” —Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part Two: Chapter 19: Session 575, March 24, 1971 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    Let us begin with the normal waking consciousness that you know. But one step away from this is another level of consciousness into which you all slip without knowing. We will call it “A-l.” It is adjacent to your normal consciousness, separated from it very slightly; and yet in it very definite effects can appear that are not present in your usual state.

    At this level many abilities may be used, and the present moment can be experienced in many different fashions, using as a basis the physical data with which you are already familiar. In your normal state you see the body. In A-l your consciousness can enter the body of another, and heal it. You can in the same manner perceive the state of your own physical image. You can, according to your abilities, manipulate matter from the inside consciously, with lucidity and alertness.

A-1 may be used as a side platform, so to speak, from which you can view physical events from a clearer standpoint. Using it you are released momentarily from bodily pressures, and with that freedom, you can move to relieve them. Problems that seem beyond solution can often, though not always, be solved. Suggestions given are much more effective. It is easier to form images, and they have a greater mobility. A-1 is a sidestep away, therefore, and yet an important one.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    Now it can be used as the first of a series of steps, leading to “deeper” states of consciousness. It can also be used as the first of a series of adjacent steps. Each of the deeper layers of consciousness can also be used as first steps leading to other adjacent levels. A-l is simple to enter. When you listen to music that you like, when you are indulging in an enjoyable quiet pursuit, you can sense the different feeling. It may be accompanied by your own characteristic physical clues. You may tap your fingers in a certain way. There may be a particular gesture. You may stare or look dreamily to the left or right.

    Any such physical clues can help you differentiate between this state of consciousness and the usual predominating one. You have only to recognize it, learn to hold it, and then proceed to experiment in its use. As a rule, it is still physically oriented, in that the abilities are usually directed toward the inner perception and manipulation of matter or physical environment. You can therefore perceive the present moment from a variety of unique standpoints not usually available.

    You can perceive the moment’s reality as it exists for your intestine, or your hand; and experience, with practice, the present inner peace and commotion that exist simultaneously within your physical body. This brings a great appreciation and wonder, a sense of unity with the living corporeal material of which you are physically composed. With practice you can become as intuitively aware of your internal physical environment, as [of] your external physical environment.

    With greater practice, the contents of your own mind will become as readily available. You will see your thoughts as clearly as your inner organs. In this case you may perceive them symbolically through symbols you will recognize, seeing jumbled thoughts for example as weeds, which you can then simply discard.

    You can request that the thought content of your mind be translated into an intense image, symbolically representing individual thoughts and the overall mental landscape, then take out what you do not like and replace it with more positive images. This does not mean that this inner landscape must always be completely sunny, but it does mean that it should be well balanced.

    A dark and largely brooding inner landscape should alert you, so that you begin immediately to change it. None of these accomplishments are beyond my readers, though anyone may find any one given feat more difficult than another. You must also realize that I am speaking in practical terms. You can correct a physical condition for example, in the manner just given. If so, however, by examining the inner landscape of thoughts, you would find the source here that initially brought about the physical ailment.

    Feelings can be examined in the same way. They will appear differently, with much greater mobility. Thoughts, for example, may appear as stationary structures, as flowers or trees, houses or landscapes. Feelings will appear more often in the changing mobility of water, wind, weather, skies and changing color. Any physical ailment, then, can be perceived in this state by looking inward into the body and discovering it; then by changing what you see you may find yourself entering your body or another’s as a very small miniature, or as a point of light, or simply without any substance, yet aware of the inner body environment.

    You change what needs to be changed in whatever way occurs to you, then — by directing the body’s energy in that direction, by entering the flesh and bringing certain portions together that need this adjustment, by manipulating areas of the spine. Then from this adjacent platform of A-l consciousness, you perceive the mental thought patterns of yourself or the other person in whatever way you find characteristic of you.

    You may perceive the thought patterns as quickly flashing sentences or words that are usually seen within your mind or within the other mind, or as black letters that form words. Or you may hear the words and thoughts being expressed, or you may see the earlier mentioned “landscape” in which the thoughts symbolically form into a picture.

    This will show you how the thoughts brought about the physical malady, and which ones were involved. The same thing should then be done with the feeling pattern. This may be perceived as bursts of dark or light colors in motion, or simply one particular emotion of great force may be felt. If it is very strong, one emotion may be felt in many such guises. In the case of both thoughts and emotions, with great confidence you pluck out those that are connected with the malady. In such a manner you have made adjustments on three levels.

    A-1 may be used also as a great framework for creativity, concentration, study, refreshment, rest and meditation. You may evolve your own image of this state to help you, imagining it as a room or a pleasant landscape or platform. Spontaneously, you will find your own symbol for this state.

[... 3 paragraphs ...]

    Now: This state may be used also as a step to the next state of consciousness, leading to a deeper trance condition; still relating however to the reality system that you understand. [A-1-a]

    Or it may be used as a step leading to an adjacent level of consciousness; two steps away, therefore, on the same level from normal reality. In this case it will lead you not into a deeper examination and perception of the present moment, but instead into an awareness and recognition of what I will call alternate present moments.

    You will be taking steps aside from the present that you know. This leads to explorations mentioned earlier in this book, into probabilities. This state can be extremely advantageous when you are trying to solve problems having to do with future arrangements, decisions that will affect the future, and any matters, in fact, in which important decisions for the future must be made. In this state you are able to try out various alternative decisions and some probable results, not imaginatively but in quite practical terms.

    These probabilities are realities, regardless of which decision you make. Say, for example, that you have three choices and it is imperative that you select one. Using this state, you take the first choice. The alternative present is the moment in which you make that choice. Having made it the present is changed, and quite clearly you perceive exactly the way it is changed and what actions and events will flow from the change into the future that belongs to that particular alternate present.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    In like manner you explore the mental and feeling aspects, then you turn your attention “outward,” toward the environment that results from this alternate present. Mentally, events will appear to you. You may experience these strongly, or merely view them. They may become so vivid that you momentarily forget yourself, but if you maintain your contact with this level of consciousness, this will happen seldom. As a rule you are very aware of what you are doing.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    There is an A-1-b, you see, still adjacent to this one, and still starting off from an alternate present that can be used for manu other purposes.

    It is not as easy for the ordinary individual to enter, and it deals with group presents, with mass probabilities, racial matters, the movement of civilization. It is one that would be most beneficial to politicians and statesmen, and it also can be used to probe into probable pasts as well. Here it would be of benefit in learning of old ruins for example, and vanished civilizations, but only if the specific probable past were probed in which these existed.

    The next adjacent level now would be A-1-c, which is an extension of the one just given, in which there is greater freedom of action, mobility and experience. Here to some extent there is some participation in the events perceived. There is no need to go deeply into any of these beyond this point, because ordinarily you will not be involved with them, and they lead into realities that have little reference to your own. They are states of consciousness too divorced, and under usual circumstances, this is as far as your present consciousness is able to go in that particular direction.

    The first state, A-1-a, is the most practical and the easiest for you, but often you must still have a good feeling for the A-1 level before you are willing to take that next adjacent step. It allows for great expansion, however, within its limitations. Using it, you can discover for example what would have happened if “I did this or the other.” Remember, these are all adjacent levels, going out horizontally.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    There is still relation to environment, however, and awareness of it. This may be purposely blocked off for greater efficiency, but it is not necessary. In many cases the eyes may be open, for example, though it may be easier to close them. Here sensitivity is quickened. Without necessarily following the methods given in A-1, the mental, physical and feeling aspects of past personalities will appear.

    They may be perceived in various ways according to the characteristics of the individual who is in this state. This can be used to discover the origin of an idea in the past, or to find anything that has been lost there, as long as it is within your probability system.

    Directly beneath A-l, now, you will have A-2, which is a slightly deeper state, using the analogy of up and down direction. It is less physically oriented than A-l. You still have excellent lucidity and awareness. This state can be used to explore the past in your terms of reference, within the probable system that you know.

    Reincarnational pasts are known to you here, and if some personal malady cannot be solved from A-1, you may have to go to A-2 discovering that it originated from another existence. This state is distinguished by a slower breathing pattern and, unless other directions are given, by a somewhat lowered temperature and longer alpha waves; a slower frequency.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    Directly beneath this is A-3. You have an extension, again, here dealing with mass issues — movements of land, the history of your planet as you know it, the knowledge of the races that inhabited it, the history of the animals, the layers of gas and coal, and of the various ages that swept across the planet and changed it.

—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part Two: Chapter 19: Session 574, March 17, 1971 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    A-4 brings you to a level that is beneath matter formations, a level in which ideas and concepts can be perceived, although their representations do not appear in the present physical reality that you know.

    From this layer many of the deepest inspirations come. These ideas and concepts, having their own electromagnetic identity, nevertheless appear as “the symbolic landscape” at this level of consciousness. This is difficult to explain. The thoughts do not appear as pseudoimages for example, or assume any pseudomaterialization, yet they are felt vividly, perceived and picked up by portions of the brain — those seemingly unused portions for which science has found no answer.

    These ideas and concepts obviously came from consciousness. However, they represent incipient latent developments that may or may not occur in physical reality. They may or may not be perceived by any given individual. The characteristic interest and abilities of the personality involved will have much to do with his recognition of the realities within this layer of consciousness.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    The material available, however, represents building blocks for many probable systems. It is an open area into which many other dimensions have access. It often becomes available in sleep states. Complete innovations, world-shattering inventions — these all lie waiting, so to speak, in this huge reservoir. Strong personal “conversions” are often effected from this level.

    Now any individual can pass through these levels and remain relatively untouched and unaware, can travel through them unperceiving. The overall intentions and characteristics of the personality will determine the quality of perception and understanding. The material mentioned is available in each of the levels of consciousness given, but it must be sought out, either through conscious desire or strong unconscious desire. If it is not, then the gifts available and the potentials simply remain unused and unclaimed.

    The states of consciousness merge also one into the other, and it is obvious that I am using the terms of depth to make the discussion easier. Starting with the ego or waking consciousness as the outer self focused toward exterior reality, these states are broad, more like plains to be explored. Each one, therefore, opens in great adjacent areas also, and there are many “paths” to be taken according to your interest and desire.

    As your ordinary waking state perceives an entire universe of physical data, so each of these other states of consciousness perceive realities as complicated, varied, and vivid. It is for this reason that it is so difficult to explain the experiences possible within any given one.

    A-5 opens up a dimension in which the vital consciousness of any personality can at least theoretically be contacted. This involves communicating not only with past personalities in your terms, but future ones. It is a level of consciousness very seldom reached. It is not, for example, the layer used by most mediums. It is a meeting ground in which personalities from any time or place or probable system can communicate with each other in clear terms understood by all.

    Since past, present, and future do not exist, this is a level of crystal clear communication of consciousness. Those involved have an excellent knowledge of their own backgrounds and histories, of course, but in this state possess also a much larger perspective, in which private and historical backgrounds are seen as a portion of a greater perceivable whole. At this level, messages literally flash through the centuries from one great man or woman to another. The future speaks to the past. The great artists have always been able to communicate at this level and while living literally operated at this level of consciousness a good deal of the time. Only the most exterior portions of their personalities bowed to the dictates of historical period.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    I do not mean to imply, however, that only the great share in this communication of consciousness. A great simplicity is necessary, and out of this, many of the most lowly in men’s terms also share in these communications. There is an unending conversation going on throughout the universe, and a most meaningful one. Those from both your past and your future have a hand in your present world, and at this level the problems that have been met and will be encountered are being discussed. This is the heart of communication. It is most usually encountered either in a protected deep level of sleep or in a sudden spontaneous trance state. Great energy is generated.

[... 3 paragraphs ...]

    In many cases memory remains unconscious as far as waking self is concerned, but the experiences themselves can completely change the structure of an individual life. Disastrous courses can be averted through such inner communications and illuminations, whether or not the ego is aware of them.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    Almost all experiences from this level will be symbolically represented, for otherwise they would have no meaning to you. The experiences will all have to do in one way or another with nonphysical life, noncorporeal consciousness and forms, and the independence of consciousness from matter. These experiences will always be supportive. Out-of-body experiences will often be involved here, in which the projectionist finds himself in an unearthly environment or one of great beauty and grandeur.

    There are other layers of awareness beneath this one, but here there is a much greater tendency for one to merge into the other. In the next level, for example, communication is possible with various kinds of consciousness that have never been physically manifested, in your terms — personalities who do not have a physical reality in either your present or future, yet who are connected with your system of reality both as guardians and custodians.

    The “stuff” of the environment will have its origin in the mind of the projectionist, being symbolic of his idea, for example, of life after death. A Speaker or Speakers will appear in whatever guise will be most acceptable to the projectionist, whether it be the guise of a god, an angel or a disciple. This is the most characteristic kind of experience from this level.

[... 3 paragraphs ...]

    You may have several quite valid experiences in level four for example, without any awareness of the first three. The stages are there for those who know what they are and how to use them. Many quite spontaneously find their own way. The other adjacent levels on the horizontal line, now, involve you in various alternate realities, each one a greater distance from your own. Many of these involve systems in which life and death as you know it does not occur, where time is felt as weight; systems in which the root assumptions are so different from your own that you would only accept any experiences as fantasy.

[... 3 paragraphs ...]

    Often you visit such areas of consciousness in the dream state where you fall into them spontaneously, remembering in the morning a fantastic dream. Consciousness must use all of its parts and activities, even as the body must. When you are sleeping, therefore, your consciousness turns itself in many of these directions, often perceiving, willy-nilly, bits and pieces of reality that are available to it at its different stages. This also happens beneath your normal physical focus to some extent, even as you go about your waking activities. The alternate presents of which I spoke are not simply alternate methods of perceiving one objective present. There are many alternate presents, with you focused only in one of them.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    When you are proficient you will not be swept willy-nilly into other stages of consciousness as you sleep, but will be able to understand and direct these activities. Consciousness is an attribute of the soul, a tool that can be turned in many directions. You are not your consciousness. It is something that belongs to you and to the soul. You are learning to use it. To the extent that you understand and utilize the various aspects of consciousness, you will learn to understand your own reality, and the conscious self will truly become conscious.

    You will be able to perceive physical reality because you want to, knowing it to be one of many realities. You will not be forced to perceive it alone, out of ignorance.

—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part Two: Chapter 19: Session 575, March 24, 1971 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    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-l and A-2, with ease.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    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 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. [...]

—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part Two: Chapter 19: Session 576, March 29, 1971 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

Quirks Of Consciousness

Progress Of The Soul | Kiss of the Muse (Mirror edit)
Click image for link

    You think of one I-self as the primary and ultimate end of evolution. Yet there are, of course, other identities with many such I-selves, each as aware and independent as your own, while also being aware of the existence of a greater identity in which they have their being. Consciousness fulfills itself by knowing itself. The knowledge changes it, in your terms, into a greater gestalt that then tries to fulfill and know itself, and so forth. There have been experiments upon your earth (by consciousness) with both men and animals at a different level than just mentioned, but with that in mind — herds of animals, for example, with each animal quite aware of the joint knowledge of the herd, the dangers to be encountered in any individual territory, and a psychological structure in which the mass consciousness of the herd recognized the individual consciousness of each animal, and protected it.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    The same thing with variations happened with your own race, and for that matter is happening. In the past as you think of it historically, several groups experimented along those lines. At those times the individual consciousness became so entranced with its own experiences, however, that the clear-cut, steady, and conscious communication with the mass consciousness went underground, so to speak. It became available to those who looked for it, but the same kinds of psychological organization did not result on those occasions.²

   Other kinds of psychological gestalts have been and are being tried — some that would appear quite inconceivable to you; and yet now and then versions of them appear within your system.

    It is quite possible, for example, for several selves to occupy a body, and were this the norm it would be easily accepted. That implies another kind of multipersonhood, however, one actually allowing for the fulfillment of many abilities of various natures usually left unexpressed. It also implies a freedom and organization of consciousness that is unusual in your system of reality, and was not chosen there.

[... 3 paragraphs ...]

    In some systems of physical existence, a multipersonhood is established in which three or four “persons” emerge from the same inner self, each one utilizing to the best of its abilities those characteristics of its own. This presupposes a gestalt of awareness, however, in which each knows of the activities of the others, and participates; and you have a different version of mass consciousness. Do you see the correlation?

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    In the systems in which evolution of consciousness has worked in that fashion, all faculties of body and mind in one “lifetime” are beautifully utilized. Nor is there any ambiguity about identity. The individual would say, for example, “I am Joe, and Jane, and Jim, and Bob.” There are physical variations of a sexual nature, so that on all levels identity includes the male and female. Shadows of all such probabilities appear within your own system, as oddities. Anything apparent to whatever degree in your system is developed in another.

    The point of all this is that these units are unpredictable, and fulfill all probabilities of consciousness. Any concepts of gods or other beings that are based upon limited ideas of personhood will ultimately be futile. You view the fantastic variety of physical life — its animals, insects, birds, fish, man and all his works — with hardly a qualm; yet you must understand that the nature of consciousness itself is far more varied, and you must learn to think of an inner reality that is as infinite as the exterior one. These concepts alone do alter your present consciousness, and change it in degree. The present idea of the soul, you see, is a “primitive” idea that can scarcely begin to explain the creativity or reality from which mankind’s being comes. You are multipersons. You exist in many times and places at once. You exist as one person, simultaneously. This does not deny the independence of the persons, but your inner reality straddles their reality, while it also serves as a psychic world in which they can grow.³

    I do not want to get involved in a discussion of “levels,” in which progression is supposed to occur from one to the other. All such discussions are based upon your idea of one-personhood, consecutive time, and limited versions of the soul. There are red, yellow, and violet flowers. One is not more progressed than the others, but each is different.

    These units combine into various kinds of gestalts of consciousness. Basically, it is not correct to say that one is more progressed than another. The petal of a flower, for example, is not more developed than the root. An ant on the ground may see that the petal is way above the root and stem, but ants are too wise to think that the petal must be better than the root.

    Now: Consciousness flowers out in all directions —

[... 1 paragraph ...]

All directions taken by the flower of consciousness are good. The flower knows it is alive in the bulb, but it takes “time” for the bulb to let the stem and leaves and flower emerge. The flower is not better than the bulb. It is not even more progressed than the bulb. It is the bulb in one of its manifestations. So in your terms, it may seem as if there are progressions, or consecutive steps of development, in which more mature comprehensive selves will emerge. You are a part of those selves now, as the petals are of the bulb. Only in your system is that time period meaningful.

    Your idea of one soul, one self, forms a significance and a selectivity that blinds you to these other realities that are as much “here and now” as your present self. The units of consciousness that compose your physical being alone are aware of those greater significances, to which your limited ideas make you opaque.

    The concepts in such a system as this can help break those barriers. There are, then, stratas of consciousness existing at once. The ones you are not aware of yet seem more progressed, developed than your own. You are a part of them now. You can know them as you begin to stretch your concepts of personhood and awareness. In terms of time you have many bodies, as you are born and reborn in earth experience. Your consciousness straddles those existences, and even the atoms and molecules within your present body contain the coded knowledge of those other (really simultaneous) forms. These units of consciousness are within all physical matter, containing their own memories. Both biologically and psychically, then, you are aware of your multipersonhood.

    Now: Your system does not include the kind of experience mentioned earlier (in this session), where the body is able to contain in one lifetime the experience of many selves. It uses a time context instead, with each self given a body and a time; but a knowledge of the ideas of multipersonhood could help you realize that you have available many abilities not being used, latent to you but still important in your entire identity, and significant enough to you personally to be developed.

    Reincarnation simply represents probabilities in a time context — portions of the self that are materialized in historical contexts. Period. All kinds of time — backward and forward — emerge from the basic unpredictable nature of consciousness, and are due to “series” of significances. Each self born in time will then pursue its own probable realities from that standpoint. Again, each such self is immediate.

    All consciousness, in all of its forms, exists at once. It is difficult, without appearing to contradict myself, to explain. Go back to our bulb and flower. In basic terms they exist at once. In your terms, however, it is as if the flower-to-be, from its “future” calls back to the bulb and tells it how to make the flower. Memory operates backward and forward in time. The flower — calling back to the bulb, urging it “ahead” and reminding it of its (probable future) development — is like a future self in your terms, or a more highly advanced self, who has the answers and can indeed be quite practically relied upon. The gods can be seen in the same light, only on a larger scale; and understood in that context, they can be relied upon. It is almost a natural tendency to personify the gods while you are caught up in limited ideas of personhood. Larger concepts of personhood will indeed lead you to some glimpse of the truly remarkable gestalts of consciousness from which you constantly emerge.

    These are emotional and psychological beings of such richness that your concepts of selfhood force you to dilute them to a degree that you can understand.⁴ Each of your persons is a part of that greater personhood. Again, these ideas alone can help you, so that to some degree you can emotionally and intellectually sense that greater godhood out of which personhood emerges.

    That godhood is formed from the eternal yet ever-new emergence and growth of those basic units of consciousness. The reality of the godhood straddles the reality of each unit, and the mass reality of all units.

—The ”Unknown” Reality: Volume One; Section 1: Session 683 February 18, 1974 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

Animal Consciousness

Squirrel by Alex Grey (Greyscale edit) Click image for link Reincarnation exists, then, on the part of all species. Once a consciousness, however, has chosen the larger classification of its physical existences, it stays within that framework in its “reincarnational” existences. Mammals return as mammals, for example, but the species can change within that classification.1 This provides great genetic strength, and consciousnesses in those classifications have chosen them because of their own propensities and purposes. The animals, for example, seem to have a limited range of physical activity in conscious terms, as you think of them. An animal cannot decide to read a newspaper. Newspapers are outside of its reality. Animals have a much wider range, practically speaking, in certain other areas. They are much more intimately aware of their environment, of themselves as separate from it, but also of themselves as a part of it. In that regard, their experience deals with relationships of another kind. —Dreams, "Evolution", and Value Fulfillment: Volume One; Chapter 5: Session 903, February 25, 1980 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    Animals have varying degrees of self-consciousness, as indeed people do. The consciousness that is within them is as valid and eternal as your own, however. There is nothing to prevent a personality from investing a portion of his own energy into an animal form. This is not transmigration of souls. It does not mean that a man can be reincarnated in an animal. It does mean that personalities can send a portion of their energy into various kinds of form.

    Perhaps reincarnations are over for a given individual, for example, yet within him is still some sense of yearning for the natural earth with which he has so often been involved. So he may project a fragment of his consciousness in such a way into an animal form. When this is done, the earth is then experienced in the way natural for the form. A man is not an animal, then, nor does he invade, say, the body of one.

    He simply adds some of his energy to that present in the animal, mixing this vitality with the animal’s own. This does not mean that all animals are fragments in this manner, however. Animals, as any pet owner knows, have their own personalities and characteristics, and individual ways of perceiving the reality available to them. Some gobble experience. Their consciousness can be immeasurably quickened by contact with friendly humans, and emotional involvement with life is strongly developed.

    The mechanics of consciousness remain the same. They do not change for animals or men. Therefore there are no limitations set upon the development of any individual consciousness, or growth of any identity. Consciousness both in the body and without finds its own range, its own level. A dog, then, is not limited to being a dog in other existences.

    A certain level, again, of consciousness is necessary, a certain kind of knowledge, a certain understanding of energy organization before an identity can manipulate a complicated physical organism.

    As you know, consciousness has a great tendency to maintain individuality, and yet to join in gestalts at the same time. An animal consciousness after death may form such a gestalt with other such consciousnesses, in which abilities are pooled and the combined cooperation makes possible, for example, a change of species.

    In these and other cases, however, the innate individuality is not lost but remains indelibly imprinted. Consciousness must by its nature change, and so identities must also change — not one blotting out the other, but building upon it while each succeeding step is maintained and not discarded, you see.

—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part Two: Chapter 20: Session 581, April 14, 1971 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    Health and illness are both evidences of the body’s attempt to maintain stability. There is a difference in the overall health patterns in men and animals because of the quite diverse nature of their physical experience. More will be said about this particular subject later. Overall, however, in the animals illness and disease play a life-giving role, keeping balance both within a species and between them, therefore insuring the future existence of all involved.

    In their own ways, the animals are quite aware of this fact. Some of them even bring themselves to their own destruction through what you would call suicide, and en masse. At that level the animals understand, and are always in touch with deep biological connections in which they know their own continuances within the chain of nature.

    Man grants rich psychological activity to his own species but denies it in others. There are as many luxuriant and diverse kinds of psychological movement as there are species, however. The cycles of health and disease are felt as rhythms of the body by the large variety of animals, and even with them illness or disease has life-saving qualities on another level.

    Instinct is fairly accurate, for example, guiding the beasts to those territories in which proper conditions can be found; and even for them the well-being of the body represents physical evidence of their “being in the proper place at the proper time.” It reinforces the animals’ sense of grace, in terms mentioned earlier in this book. (See the 636th session in Chapter Nine.)

    They understand the beneficial teaching quality of disease, and follow their own instinctive ways of treating it. In a natural situation, this might involve a mass migration from one territory to another. In such cases the illness of only a few animals might send a whole herd to its safety, and a new food supply.

    Man is so highly verbal that he finds it difficult to understand that other species work with idea-complexes of a different kind, in which of course thought as you consider it is not involved. But an equivalent exists; using an analogy, it is as if ideas are built up not through sentence structure reinforced by inner visual images, but by like “mental” patterns structured through touch and scent — in other words, thinking, but within a framework entirely different and alien to you.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    Such “thinking” exists, using the analogy, within the framework of instinct, whereas your own verbalized thoughts can also intrude outside of that framework. One of the main differences between you and the animals, and one of the significant meanings in terms of free will, is involved here.

    Animals, then, understand the beneficial directing elements of disease. They also comprehend the nature of stress as a necessary stimulant to physical activity. Observing even a pet, you will notice its marvelous complete relaxation, and yet its immediate total response to stimulus. So animals in captivity will fight to provide themselves with necessary health-giving stress factors.

[... 6 paragraphs ...]

    Animals, then, do not think of illness in terms of good or bad. Disease in itself on that level is a part of the life-survival process, and a system of checks and balances. With the emergence of man’s particular kind of consciousness, other issues become involved. Mankind feels its own mortality even more than the beasts do.

    With the growth of this particular variety of self-consciousness came the exteriorization, magnification and intensification of definite elements that lie latent in other animals, the individuation of strong emotional activity to a new degree, for example. The emergence of the “pause of reflection” mentioned earlier (in the 635th session in Chapter Eight, for instance) and the blossoming of memory along with the emotional intensification, led to a situation in which members of the new species recalled, in the present, the dead and the diseases that killed them. They became frightened of disease, particularly in the case of plagues.

    Man forgot the teaching and healing elements, and concentrated instead upon the unpleasant experience itself. To some extent this was quite natural, for the new species developed in order to change the nature of its consciousness, to follow a reality in which instinct was no longer “blindly” followed, and to individualize in strong personal focus corporeal experience that had previously taken a different pattern.

[... 5 paragraphs ...]

    Now: Man has a far greater leeway. He forms his reality according to his conscious beliefs, even while its basis lies in the deep unconscious nature of the earth in corporeal terms. Man’s “I am,” [seemingly] apart from nature — a characteristic necessary for the development of his kind of consciousness — led him into value judgments, and also necessitated some break with the deep inner certainties of other species.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    An individual who had himself survived many diseases was considered a sage. Such people often watched the animals and observed nature’s own therapies and treatments.

    In certain eras, the lines between the species were not completely drawn, and there were long periods where men and animals mixed and learned from each other. Man’s imagination made him a great maker of myths. Myths as you know them represent bridges of psychological activity, and point quite clearly to patterns of perception and behavior through which, in your terms, the race passed as it traveled to its present state. Mythology bridges the gap between instinctive knowledge and the individualization of idea.

    When an animal is sick it immediately begins to remedy the situation, and unconsciously it knows what to do. It does not bother thinking in your terms of good and evil. It does not wonder what it did to get into such a situation. It does not think of itself as inferior. It automatically begins its own therapy.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    The individuals alive at such a time will also have a hand in such decisions, however. Once more, because you are self-conscious beings your beliefs regulate your reality. An animal knows unconsciously that it is unique and has a place in the scheme of being. Its sense of grace is built-in. Your free will allows for the freedom of any belief, including one that says you are unworthy, with no right to your existence.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    In order for consciousness to develop in your terms, there must be freedom for the exploration of all ideas individually and en masse. Each of you are living entities, growing toward your own development. Each of your beliefs, therefore, has its own unique origin and feeling patterns, so you must for yourself travel back through your beliefs and your own feelings until intellectually and emotionally you realize your rightness, your completely original existence in time and space as you know it.

    This knowing will give you the conscious knowledge that is a counterpart of the animal’s unconscious comprehension.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    (Jane said there was much more to the idea of natural therapy in animals. She began tuning in to this information on her own, rather than getting it through one of Seth’s channels. Ages ago, humans not only watched the animals, but went to them for help. It had to do with shock treatment, she said wonderingly. If a human was in a catatonic state after a battle, for instance, the “animal medicine man” would purposely shock the patient into an emotional reaction to bring him out of the state.

    (“I think these animal doctors were a variety of apelike ancestor,” Jane said. “Not apes as we think of them, but a bridge between animals and human beings. They were our size, more or less. They weren’t four-footed. I saw creatures who walked upright — hairy, with brilliant compassionate eyes….”

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    Now: An animal has no need of conscience, in any terms.

—The Nature of Personal Reality; Part Two: Chapter 12: Session 648, March 14, 1973 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts

From Session 837 for February 28, held on the evening of the day Billy died: “My dear friends: Existence is larger than life or death. Life and death are both states of existence. An identity exists whether it is in the state of life or in the state of death. Your cat’s consciousness never was dependent upon its physical form. Instead, the consciousness was itself choosing the experience of cathood. There was nothing that said: ‘This consciousness must be a cat.’

    “Billy belonged in another probability, and in a fashion you switched probabilities for him, though without his consent, when you took him from the animal shelter, where he would have soon been ‘done away with.’ His three years with you represented a grace period for him. . . . He did not make this probability his own because of what you may call ‘other commitments’ — or rather, other purposes.

    “There is no such thing as a cat consciousness, basically speaking, or a bird consciousness. In those terms, there are instead simply consciousnesses that choose to take certain focuses. We have not touched upon some of these matters, and some are, again, most difficult to explain, as we wish to avoid distortions. These would have nothing to do with Ruburt per se, but simply the way you put concepts together at this stage of development.”

    From Session 838 for March 5: “I want to avoid tales of the transmigration of the souls of men to animals, say — a badly distorted version of something else entirely. If there is no consciousness ‘tailored’ to be a cat’s or a dog’s, then there is no prepackaged, predestined, particular consciousness that is meant to be human, either . . .

    “You both knew Billy was about to die. So did the plants in your house, and the trees outside your door. The cellular announcement was made that the strong possibility existed, for the birth and death of each cell is known to all cells in the world….” (For material on cellular communication, see Session 804 after 10:45.)

    “Cellular communication is too fast for you to follow. The cat could have changed its mind, of course, but the signals were sent out, and ahead of time. [Several people who wrote to you] picked up on that probability….” With some amazement Jane and I had noticed this in letters we received — from both friends and strangers — during the days immediately following Billy’s death.

    From Session 839 for March 7: “The quality of identity is far more mysterious than you understand, for you assign an identity in a blanket fashion, say, to each living thing. Now your dead cat, Billy, exists in the following manner:

    “The units of consciousness that organized to form his identity as you knew it, still form that pattern — but not physically. The cat exists as itself in the greater living memory of its own ‘larger’ selfhood. Its organization — the cat’s — exists inviolately, but as a part of the greater psychic organization from which it came.

    “That identity of Billy’s remains vital, known to itself whether or not it is reactivated in your terms. This is not necessarily always the case — and there is great variation — but Billy identified with ‘the larger organization’ of the litter [that is, with his brothers and sisters, all of whom are also dead], and the consciousnesses of that litter are now together. They are forming a gestalt, where the five consciousnesses will merge to form a new identity.”

    On separate days, both Jane and I had vivid psychic experiences involving our perceptions of Billy not long after his death: Each in our own way, we saw him “larger than life,” performing with amazing vitality and grace. In my own case, the experience was so vivid as to be almost frightening. Jane hopes to use both events, plus some material she wrote on scientific experimentation with animals, in one of her own books.

The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts – Part Three: People Who Are Frightened of Themselves – Chapter 6: Controlled Environments, and Positive and Negative Mass Behavior. Religious and Scientific Cults, and Private Paranoias – Session 840, March 12, 1979 | NOTES

Trans-Species Consciousness

Trees & Heads Puzzle (Greyscale edit. Found on Yandex )
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    There are affiliations of a most “sophisticated” fashion that leap even the boundaries of the species. You look upon your cultural world with its art and manufacture, its cities, technology, and the cultivated use of the intellectual mind. You count your religions, sciences, archeologies, and triumphs over the environment, and it seems to you that no other consciousness has wrought what man’s has produced. Those “products” of your consciousness are indeed unique, creative, and form a characteristic mosaic that has its own beauty and elegance.

    There are organizations of consciousness, however, that leapfrog the species, that produce no arts or sciences per se — yet these together form the living body of the earth and the physical creatures thereon. Their products are the seas upon which you sail your ships, the skies through which your airplanes fly, the land upon which your cities sprawl, and the very reality that makes your culture, or any culture, possible.

    Man is a part of that trans-species consciousness also, as are the plants and animals. Also, part of man’s reality contributes to that trans-species organization, but he has not chosen to focus his practical daily consciousness in that direction, or to identify his individuality with it. As a result he does not understand the greater natural mobility he himself possesses, nor can he practically perceive the natural psychological gestalts of which he is a part, that form all of your natural — meaning physical — world.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    Any section of the land has an identity, so to speak, and I am not talking symbolically. Such identities represent the combined organizations of consciousness of land, man, and animal, within any given realm. Simply enough put, there are as many kinds of consciousnesses as there are particles, and these are combined in infinite fashions. In the dream state some of that experience, otherwise closed to you, forms the background of the dream drama. Your consciousness is not one thing like a flashlight, that you possess. It is instead a literally endless conglomeration of points of consciousness, swarming together to form your validity — stamped, as it were, with your identity.

    Whether dispersed, concentrated in a tight grouping, appearing “alone” or flying through other larger swarms, that particular organization represents your identity.

    Using an analogy, its “particles” could be dispersed throughout the universe, with galaxies between, yet the identity would be retained. So unknowingly, now, portions of your consciousness mix and merge with those of other species without jarring your own sense of individuality one whit — yet forming other psychological realities upon which you do not concentrate.

    In the dream state, animals, men, and plants merge their realities to some extent so that information belonging to one species is transferred to others in an inner communication and perception otherwise unknown in your world.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    The natural structures of the earth are formed as the result of the biological cooperation of all species, and consciousness itself is independent of any of the forms that it may at one time or another assume.

    Therefore, at levels that would appear chaotic to you, there is a great mixing and merging of consciousness, a continual exchange of information, so to speak; an open-ended exploration of possibilities, from which in your terms events privately and en masse emerge.

    I am simply explaining the characteristics, aptitudes, abilities, and tendencies of Nature, with a capital N. There are so many different levels in what you call the dream state that they are impossible to list, except in stereotyped ways. This is particularly because some dream sequences involve biological comprehensions that are not literally translatable.

    It has been truthfully said that the “unconscious” is intimately aware of the most minute details of your health, state of mind, and relationships. “It” is also aware of the state of the earth’s health — even of the environmental conditions on the other side of the planet. It is familiar with the cultural climate also. Your recognized consciousness operates as it does because of immense information-gathering procedures — procedures that unite all species. Biologically such information is coded, but that physical information, such as in the genes and chromosomes, can be altered through experience and mental activity in other species as well as your own.

    On the one hand, dreaming on the part of animals — and men in particular — involves not only information processing, but information gathering. Dreaming prevents life from becoming closed-ended by opening sources of information not practically available in the waking state, and by providing feedback from other than the conventional world. Data gained through waking learning endeavor and experience are checked in dreaming, not only against physical experience, but are also processed according to those “biological” and “spiritual” data: Again, that information is acquired as the sleeping consciousness disperses itself, in a manner of speaking, and merges with other consciousnesses of its own and other species while still retaining its overall identity. These [other consciousnesses] are dispersed in like manner.

    In such ways each individual maintains a picture of the everchanging physical and psychological mass environment. Physical events as you understand them could not exist otherwise. Basically, information is experience. In dreams you attain the necessary information to form your lives. That state of sleep, therefore, is not simply the other side of your consciousness, but makes your waking life and culture possible.

—The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression; Chapter 9: Session 791, January 17, 1977 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts

Death: Consciousness Never Dies

Dying by Alex Grey
Click image for link

    What happens at the point of death? The question is much more easily asked than answered. Basically there is not any particular point of death in those terms, even in the case of a sudden accident. I will attempt to give you a practical answer to what you think of as this practical question, however. What the question really means to most people is this: What will happen when I am not alive in physical terms any longer? What will I feel? Will I still be myself? Will the emotions that propelled me in life continue to do so? Is there a heaven or a hell? Will I be greeted by gods or demons, enemies, or beloved ones? Most of all the question means: When I am dead, will I still be who I am now, and will I remember those who are dear to me now?

    I will answer the questions in those terms also, then; but before I do so, there are several seemingly impractical considerations concerning the nature of life and death, with which we must deal.

    First of all, let us consider the fact just mentioned. There is no separate, indivisible, specific point of death. Life is a state of becoming, and death is a part of this process of becoming. You are alive now, a consciousness knowing itself, sparkling with cognition amid a debris of dead and dying cells; alive while the atoms and molecules of your body die and are reborn. You are alive, therefore, in the midst of small deaths; portions of your own image crumble away moment by moment and are replaced, and you scarcely give the matter a thought. So you are to some extent now alive in the midst of the death of yourself — alive despite, and yet because of, the multitudinous deaths and rebirths that occur within your body in physical terms.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

In many ways you can compare your consciousness as you know it now to a firefly, for while it seems to you that your consciousness is continuous, this is not so. It also flickers off and on, though as we mentioned earlier, it is never completely extinguished. Its focus is not nearly as constant as you suppose, however. So as you are alive in the midst of your own multitudinous small deaths, so though you do not realize it, you are often “dead,” even amid the sparkling life of your own consciousness.

    I am using your own terms here. By “dead,” therefore, I mean completely unfocused in physical reality. Now your consciousness, quite simply, is not physically alive, physically oriented, for exactly the same amount of time as it is physically alive and oriented. This may sound confusing, but hopefully we shall make it clearer. There are pulsations of consciousness, though again you may not be aware of them.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

Remember this is an analogy, so that the word “instant” should not be taken too literally. There is, then, what we can call an underside of consciousness. Now, in the same way, atoms and molecules exist so that they are “dead,” or inactive within your system, then alive or active, but you cannot perceive the instant in which they do not exist. Since your bodies and your entire physical universe are composed of atoms and molecules, then I am telling you that the entire structure exists in the same manner. It flickers off and on, in other words, and in a certain rhythm, as, say, the rhythm of breath.

    There are overall rhythms, and within them an infinity of individual variations — almost like cosmic metabolism. In these terms, what you call death is simply the insertion of a longer duration of that pulsation of which you are not aware, a long pause in that other dimension, so to speak.

    The death, say, of physical tissue, is merely a part of the process of life as you know it in your system, a part of the process of becoming. And from those tissues, as you know, new life will spring.

[... 7 paragraphs ...]

    This process, you see, continues so smoothly that you are not aware of it. The pulses mentioned earlier are so short in duration that your consciousness skips over them merrily, yet your physical perception cannot seem to bridge the gap when the longer rhythm of pulsation occurs. And so this is the time that you perceive as death. What you want to know, therefore, is what happens when your consciousness is directed away from physical reality, and when momentarily it seems to have no image to wear.

    Quite practically speaking, there is no one answer, for each of you is an individual. Generally speaking, of course, there is an answer that will serve to cover main issues of this experience, but the kinds of deaths have much to do with the experience that consciousness undergoes. Also involved is the development of the consciousness itself, and its overall characteristic method of handling experience.

    The ideas that you have involving the nature of reality will strongly color your experiences, for you will interpret them in the light of your beliefs, even as now you interpret daily life according to your ideas of what is possible or not possible. Your consciousness may withdraw from your body slowly or quickly, according to many variables.

    In many cases of senility, for example, the strongly organized portions of personality have already left the body, and are meeting the new circumstances. The fear of death itself can cause such a psychological panic that out of a sense of self-preservation and defense you lower your consciousness so that you are in a state of coma, and you may take some time to recover.

    A belief in hell fires can cause you to hallucinate Hades’ conditions. A belief in a stereotyped heaven can result in a hallucination of heavenly conditions. You always form your own reality according to your ideas and expectations. This is the nature of consciousness in whatever reality it finds itself. Such hallucinations, I assure you, are temporary.

    Consciousness must use its abilities. The boredom and stagnation of a stereotyped heaven will not for long content the striving consciousness. There are teachers to explain the conditions and circumstances. You are not left alone, therefore, lost in mazes of hallucination. You may or may not realize immediately that you are dead in physical terms.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    If you firmly believe that your consciousness is a product of your physical body, then you may attempt to cling to it. There is an order of personalities, an honorary guard, so to speak, who are ever ready to lend assistance and aid, however.

    Now this honorary guard is made up of people in your terms both living and dead. Those who are living in your system of reality perform these activities in an “out-of-body” experience while the physical body sleeps. They are familiar with the projection of consciousness, with the sensations involved, and they help orient those who will not be returning to the physical body.

    These people are particularly helpful because they are still involved with physical reality, and have a more immediate understanding of the feelings and emotions involved at your end. Such persons may or may not have a memory of their nightly activities. Experiences with projection of consciousness and knowledge of the mobility of consciousness, are therefore very helpful as preparations for death. You can experience the after-death environment beforehand, so to speak, and learn the conditions that will be encountered.

    This is not, incidentally, necessarily any kind of somber endeavor, nor are the after-death environments somber at all. To the contrary, they are generally far more intense and joyful than the reality you now know.

[... 4 paragraphs ...]

    Now: For those of you who are lazy I can offer no hope: Death will not bring you an eternal resting place. You may rest, if this is your wish, for a while. Not only must you use your abilities after death, however, but you must face up to yourself for those that you did not use during your previous existence

The Soul Find It’s Way by Alex Grey
Click image for link

Those of you who had faith in life after death will find it much easier to accustom yourself to the new conditions. Those of you who do not have such faith may gain it in a different way, by following through in the exercises I will give you later in this book; for these will enable you to extend your perceptions to these other layers of reality if you are persistent, expectant, and determined.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

    If consciousness vacated the body for the same amount of time from a normally physically awake state, it would consider itself dead, for it could not rationalize the gap of dimension and experience. Therefore in the sleep state, each of you have undergone — to some degree — the same kind of absence of consciousness from physical reality that you experience during death.

    In these cases, you return to the body, but you have passed over the threshold into these other existences many many times, so it will not be as unfamiliar to you as you may now suppose. Dream-recall experiments and other mental disciplines to be mentioned later will make these points quite clear to all of you who embark upon the suggested exercises.

    Now, you may or may not be greeted by friends or relatives immediately following death. This is a personal matter, as always. Overall, you may be far more interested in people that you have known in past lives than those close to you in the present one, for example.

    Your true feeling toward relatives who are also dead will be known to you and to them. There is no hypocrisy. You do not pretend to love a parent who did little to earn your respect or love. Telepathy operates without distortion in this after-death period, so you must deal with the true relationships that exist between yourself and all relatives and friends who await you.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

    You become aware, then, of an expanded awareness. What you are begins to include what you have been in other lives, and you begin to make plans for your next physical existence, if you decide upon one. You can instead enter another level of reality, and then return to a physical existence if you choose.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

—Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; Part Two: Chapter 9: Session 535, June 17, 1970 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

References

When channeller Jane Roberts died at age 55, her husband Robert Butts who took all the notes met Laurel and 14 years later they got married. Laurel Davies-Butts has worked to help publish more of the Seth Material and that is why she now has copyright of all the published books. Jane and Robert Butts never had children as they were told they both knew at some level that they were done reincarnating on planet Earth and thus did not wish to have any karmic ties.

The Seth Material, (1970, 2011) | Online copy (42 pages only) Link

Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul (1972, 2012) | Online .pdf Link & Internet Archive Link

The Nature of Personal Reality (1974, 1994, 2011) | Online copy Link

The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979, 1995, 2011) | Online copy Link

The “Unknown” Reality: Volume I (1977, 1996, 2012) | Online copy Link

The “Unknown” Reality: Volume II (1979, 1996, 2012) | Online copy Link

Dreams, Evolution And Value Fulfillment, Vol. I (1986, 1997, 2012) | Online copy Link

The Way Toward Health | Extracts only (1997, 2011 )Link

The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events (1981, 1995, 2012 ) | Online copy Link

The Early Sessions: Book 1 of The Seth Material (1964, 2012) | Extracts only Link

Comment: The easiest way to find quotes is by using the Seth Material search engine here. This search engine is not perfect and paragraphs sometimes come unsorted or missing. However, I was able to provide missing paragraphs because I have copies of the most well known early Seth books.