I finished The Seth Material a little while ago, and I have to say that the channeled information became more compelling as the book proceeded – or maybe I was just starting to buy into the Seth worldview a little more. Here we cover Chapter 14 through the appendix.
The first of these chapters deals largely with dreams, which Seth describes as scenarios devised by the larger self which allow the personality to play out various options. He says:
As the personality is changed by any experience, it is changed by its dreams; and as an individual is molded by his physical environment to some extent, so is he molded by the dreams which he himself creates … The self is limitless … On one level the personality attempts to solve problems through dream construction … and often gives freedom to actions that cannot be adequately expressed within the confines of waking life …
Let us speak no more of a conscious or unconscious self. There is one self and it focuses its attention in various dimensions. In the waking state it focuses in physical reality. In the dream state it is focused within a different dimension.
If you have little memory of dream locations when you are awake, you have little memory of "physical" locations when you are in the dream state.
This is clear enough, but then we get into some of the "scientific" explanations, which are less convincing:
Dream locations are not superimposed upon, say, the bed and chest and chair. They exist composed of the very same atoms and molecules that in the waking state you perceive as bed and chest and chair. Objects, remember, are the results of your perception. From energy you form patterns which you then recognize as objects in use …
In some dream states you form from these same atoms and molecules the environment in which you will operate.
I don't find the idea that dream environments are composed of "the very same atoms and molecules" that make up the physical world very persuasive. However, the appendix of the book offers a somewhat more plausible – or at least less obviously implausible – explanation, which we'll get to.
From here, the book proceeds to a discussion of "the self and probable realities." This material seems to lie very close to the heart of Seth's message. He uses the analogy of a tape recorder:
Imagine the whole self is composed of some master tape. Your recorder has four channels. We will give our recorder numberless channels. Each one represents a portion of the whole self, each existing in a different dimension, yet all a part of the whole self [or tape].…
We will now imagine these selves multiplied, for you have selves three, four, five, and six, and so forth. Now on your recorder you have a setting for stereo. This enables you to mix and combine harmoniously the elements of the various channels – simultaneously …
Your stereophonic setting can be compared to what we have termed the inner ego [or the higher self, oversoul, etc. – MP]. Each of the selves experiences time in its own manner according to the nature of its perceptions. When the stereophonic channel is turned on, the selves then know their unity. Their various realities merge in the overall perceptions of the whole self.
Until the whole self is thus able to perceive its own parts simultaneously, then the seemingly separate portions appear to themselves isolated and alone. There is communication between them, but they are not aware of it.
Seth compares this communication to the bleed-through in an audiotape.
In later sessions, a more advanced version of Seth would sometimes speak through Jane Roberts. This super-Seth explained:
I do not want you to feel that I have taken away a friend. I am also a friend. In many ways I am the same friend. Other portions of me are concerned elsewhere, for I am aware of my own existence and other dimensions and keep track of them and direct my many selves …
Our entity is composed of multitudinous selves with their own identities, many of whom have worked in this behalf [molding energy into physical form – MP] … We attempt to translate realities into terms that you can comprehend. We change our face and form, but we are always the one …
I can travel through other selves which I have known and which are a portion of my identity, and yet which are so beautifully unpredetermined, for you do not exist as completed personalities within my memory, but you grow within my memory. You grow through my memory as a tree grows up through space, and my memory changes as you change. My memory of you includes your probable selves, and all of these coordinates exist simultaneously in a point that takes up no space …
You are like children with a game, and you think that the game is played by everyone. Physical life is not the rule. Identity and consciousness existed long before your earth was formed. You see physical bodies and suppose that any personality must appear in physical terms. Consciousness is the force behind matter, and it forms many other realities besides the physical one … Like children playing with blocks, your focus of attention is upon physical blocks. Other shapes and forms that you could perceive, you do not.
In an elaborate analogy, Seth compares multidimensional reality to an infinite number of threads running parallel to each other. The multidimensional self travels many different threads simultaneously, although from the perspective of any individual facet of the self, the other facets would exist in the past or future. The entire system arises from the creative impulses of All That Is, Seth's term for God (elsewhere he uses the term Primary Energy Gestalts). He says:
Now – and this will seem like a contradiction in terms – there is nonbeing. It is a state, not of nothingness, but a state in which probabilities and possibilities are known and anticipated but blocked from expression.
Dimly, through what you would call history, hardly remembered, there was such a state. It was a state of agony in which the powers of creativity and existence were known, but the ways to produce them were not known.
This is the lesson that All That Is had to learn, and that could not be taught. This is the agony from which creativity originally was drawn, and its reflection is still seen … All That Is retains memory of that state, and it serves as a constant impetus – in your terms – toward renewed creativity. Each self, as part of All That Is, therefore also retains memory of that state. It is for this reason that each minute consciousness is endowed with the impetus toward survival, change, development, and creativity …
When I speak of All That Is, you must understand my position within It. All That Is knows no other. This does not mean that there may not be more to know. It does not know whether or not other psychic gestalts like It may exist. It is not aware of them if they do exist.…
It is conceivable, then, that It has evolved, in your terms, so long ago that It has forgotten Its origin, that It has developed from still another Primary which has – again, in your terms – long since gone Its way. So there are answers that I cannot give you, for they are not known anywhere in the system in which we have our existence …
Desire, wish, and expectation rule all actions and are the basis for all realities. Within All That Is, therefore, the wish, desire, and expectation of creativity existed before all other actuality. The strength and vitality of these desires and expectations then became in your terms so insupportable that All that Is was driven to find the means to produce them.
He goes on to say that individuality is real, because in order to actualize Its intentions, All That Is had to "lose" a portion of Itself by setting those portions free. "From its agony, It found the way to burst forth in freedom, through expression, and in so doing gave existence to individualized consciousness. Therefore is It rightfully jubilant. Yet all individuals remember their source, and now dream of All That Is as All That Is once dreamed of them. And they yearn toward that immense source … and yearn to set It free and give It actuality through their own creations.
After this, Seth goes into some practical instructions on how to activate the "inner senses" and develop one's psychic and mystical potential. An appendix provides material of a somewhat more technical nature. This material perhaps makes a little more sense of the claim that "atoms and molecules" are somehow extruded by the physical body to produce the physical environment – a claim we examined rather skeptically in Part One of this book review.
The material is too complicated to summarize in detail, but essentially Seth posits the existence of electromagnetic structures of constantly varying size and shape that follow rules of attraction and repulsion in order to combine, separate, and recombine. He calls them EE units, short for "electromagnetic energy units," and says they are a form taken by emotional energy and are "basically animations rising from consciousness … molecular consciousness, cellular consciousness, as well as the larger gestalts of consciousness with which you are usually familiar." They are electromagnetic in the sense that they follow "their own patterns of positive and negative charge [and] certain laws of magnetism." They are "the intuitive force just beyond the range of matter, upon which matter is formed," and their behavior is dictated by "the intensity of the original emotional energy." They are:
the forms that basic experience takes when directed by this inner self. These [EE units] form physical objects, physical matter. Matter, in other words, is the shape that basic experience takes when it intrudes into three-dimensional systems. Matter is the shape of your dreams. Your dreams, thoughts, and emotions are literally transformed into physical matter purposefully by this inner self.
The individual inner self, then, through constant massive effort of great individual intensity, cooperates with all other inner selves to form and maintain the physical reality that you know, so that physical reality is an offshoot or by-product of the highly conscious inner self.
Buildings appear to be made of rock or stone or steel. They appear fairly permanent to the physical senses. They are actually oscillating, ever-moving, highly charged gestalts of EE units … organized and maintained by the collective efforts on the part of the inner selves. [The buildings] are solidified emotions, solidified subjective states, given physical materialization.
it's difficult to know how what to make of this, but at least it makes more sense than the notion that atoms and molecules, as such, are emitted by the body to form the physical world. Instead, the idea seems to be that these electromagnetic energy units arising from desire or will underlie all physical forms, including atoms and molecules, and serve as a substrate even for dream environments. It's possible that the earlier material was distorted, owing to limitations in Jane Roberts's scientific vocabulary (which Seth chronically complains about), and that this EE unit teaching comes closer to the intended meaning.
Overall, I have mixed feelings about The Seth Material. Some of it is genuinely provocative, even mind expanding. Seth's concept of a multidimensional self traversing many paths through a universe of almost infinite possibilities and probabilities, many of which are nonphysical in nature, and of a God that finds a way to express its creative impulses through the creation of individualized psyches set free to follow their own path, rings true to me and dovetails with some of my own speculations and with some mystical traditions.
On the other hand, some of Seth's claims are confusing or seemingly too far-fetched to be taken seriously.
Anyway, I can understand the appeal of Jane Roberts's books, and I can also understand doubts that have arisen about them.
On that appropriately ambiguous note, I finally end this extended review. Whew!
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