Session 616

SESSION 616, SEPTEMBER 20, 1972, 9:28 P.M. WEDNESDAY em>(As we sat waiting for the session to begin at 9:20, Jane told me she’d just “picked up” the heading for Chapter Three of Seth’s book: “Telepathy and Belief Gathering” — or “Idea Gathering”; she wasn’t sure which. We’ll see how close she came. At 9:25 she said, “I’m getting ready to start now. I can tell …” She lit a cigarette and looked off to one side and down, her attention already turned inward as she prepared to psychically join a very familiar “energy personality essence,” as Seth calls himself.)

Good evening.

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

Now: We will resume dictation.

I quite realize that many of my statements will contradict the beliefs of those of you who accept the idea that the conscious mind is relatively powerless, and that the answers to problems lie hidden beneath.

Obviously the conscious mind is a phenomenon, not a thing. It is ever-changing. It can be concentrated or turned by the ego in literally endless directions. It can view outward reality or turn inward, observing its own contents.

There are gradations and fluctuations within its activity. It is far more flexible than you give it credit for. (Pause.) The ego can use the conscious mind almost entirely as a way of perceiving external or internal realities that coincide with its own beliefs. It is not that certain answers do not lie openly accessible, therefore, but that often you have set yourself on a course of action in which you believe, and you do not want to open yourself to any material that may contradict your current beliefs.

If you are sick, for example, there is a reason. To recover thoroughly without taking on new symptoms, you must discover the reason. You may dislike your illness, but it is a course you have decided upon. While you are convinced that the course is necessary you will keep the symptoms.

Now these may be the result of one specific belief, or caused by a complex of beliefs held together.

The beliefs of course will be accepted by you not as beliefs, but as reality. Once you understand that you form your reality, then you must begin to examine these beliefs by letting the conscious mind freely examine its own contents.

(9:40.) We will speak about health and illness more specifically later in the book. I would like to make one point here, however — that often psychoanalysis is simply a game of hide-and-seek, in which you continue to relinquish responsibility for your actions and reality and assign the basic cause to some area of the psyche, hidden in a dark forest of the past. Then you give yourself the task of finding this secret. In so doing you never think of looking for it in the conscious mind, since you are convinced that all deep answers lie far beneath — and, moreover, that your consciousness is not only unable to help you but will often send up camouflages instead. So you play that game.

When and if you manage to change your beliefs in that self-deceptive framework, then any suitable “forgotten” event from the past will be used as a catalyst. One would do as well as another.

(Pause at 9:45, one of many. Now rock music began to blare out from one of the apartments below us. I felt the very floor vibrate, but Jane, in trance, didn’t seem to be bothered.)

The basic beliefs however were always in your conscious mind, and the reasons for your behavior. You simply had not examined its contents with the realization that your beliefs were not necessarily reality, but often your conceptions of it.

At the same time, in psychoanalysis you are often programmed to believe that the “unconscious,” being the source of such dark secrets, cannot be counted upon as any bed of creativity or inspiration, and so you are denied the help that the inner portions of the self could give to your consciousness.

(9:50.) Usually when you do examine your conscious mind you do so looking through, or with, your own structured beliefs. The knowledge that your beliefs are not necessarily reality will allow you to be aware of all the data that is consciously available to you. I am not telling you to examine your thoughts so frequently and with such vigor that you get in your own way, but you are not fully conscious unless you are aware of the contents of your conscious mind. I am also emphasizing the fact that the conscious mind is equipped to receive information from the inner self as well as the exterior universe.

I am not telling you to inhibit thoughts or feelings. I am asking that you become aware of those you have. Realize that they form your reality. Concentrate upon those that give you the results that you want.

If you find all of this difficult, you can also examine your physical reality in all of its aspects. Realize that your physical experience and environment is the materialization of your beliefs. If you find great exuberance, health, effective work, abundance, smiles on the faces of those you meet, then take it for granted that your beliefs are beneficial. If you see a world that is good, people that like you, take it for granted, again, that your beliefs are beneficial. But if you find poor health, a lack of meaningful work, a lack of abundance, a world of sorrow and evil, then assume that your beliefs are faulty and begin examining them.

We will later discuss the nature of mass reality, but for now we are dwelling upon the personal aspects. The main point I wanted to make in this chapter was that your conscious beliefs are extremely important, and that you are not at the mercy of events or causes that dwell far beneath your awareness.

That is the end of the chapter, and you may take a break.

(“Thank you. Very good.”(10:01. There were several developments during break, and I’ll try to discuss them in order before we get into Chapter Three. To begin with, Jane left her excellent trance easily, saying she had barely heard the music. It still boomed up from below us, but she wasn’t interested in that. Instead she talked about “feeling sort of funny,” without being able to elaborate.

(While we had a quick snack I asked her if she thought the recent strange behavior of our cat, Willy, could stem from his reactions to our own psychic states. We’d seen this happen before, although not recently. Early this month Willy had picked up a case of fleas that was stubbornly resisting treatment. He’d taken to staying outside all night as well as most of the day. He was also losing weight. Our other cat, Rooney, had always seemed to be immune to us in such matters, and even now was conducting himself in his usual leisurely fashion.

(Willy was outside now, in a light rain that had begun a couple of hours ago. At supper time he’d actually seemed to feel that the inside of the house was forbidden territory, and had refused to come in. Now I went down the back stairs and called for him as I circled the house. No Willy. I met Jane in the front hall. Here the music was even louder, thundering out from the first floor apartment.

(Once we were back upstairs in our living room, the music led me to talk about peer groups involving young people. We like rock and often dance to it; it’s alive and vital. I also believe that Jane uses its energy when we hear it in the house during sessions. I commented upon the value many youths obviously placed upon conforming in their nonconformity. Jane described her own similar, intense concerns in high school and college. I had evidently chosen not to be much influenced by those factors, though; I’d always been something of a loner.

(I asked that Seth comment upon Willy’s behavior, if he cared to, after dictation. Then Jane said, “I knew I was feeling funny tonight. Now l get it. It’s like I’ve got three channels from Seth going at once …(“I’ve even got directions.” She pointed off to her upper right as she sat in her rocker. “Seth comes through on his book from here, on this channel.” Next she indicated her lower right. “Then over here, immediately available, is Seth on you and me and Willy. And also on the portrait you asked me about the other day — the one you just finished.

(“Over here now,” Jane said, designating her upper left, “is Seth on what you were just saying about peer groups — how young people feel it’s so important to fit in with their own kind, and why. And why I felt that way, but you didn’t. Hey, I’ve even got a bunch of history about that, all ready to deliver — a lot of material on each idea … I was really confused for a while, yet now I see that each thing’s separate, already prepared by Seth. You’re not going to get two sentences about one subject, then switch to another one …” Jane laughed. “Which channel do you want?”(“I’m keeping my mouth shut,” I said, joking. “How about going back to the book?” I thought doing that would help her control the proliferation of channels until we could learn more about the development. The possibility had been indicated often: witness Seth’s ability to discuss a variety of subjects with the members of a group, even if they were strangers to Jane. The new step in her abilities would be her conscious awareness of the blocks of material already prepared and awaiting delivery. Jane promptly agreed to resume book work.

(“I’ve never felt just this way before — like I’ve been programmed in advance. It’s as though I need three voice boxes. That’s really weird. I do get it as sound, though. If I could talk three times at once, I could deliver finished material on those three things. Now I have to pick the right channel to get Seth back on his book; and it almost seems that if someone else came here now and mentioned a subject, I’d have that information all ready too.

(“Each channel is as clear as a bell. There’s no static or bleed-through between them. There: Now I’ve just got another one”— Jane pointed to her lower left — “and it explains all of this.” She laughed again. “Just call me station J-A-N-E …”)

^* See Jane’s Introduction for material on the development of her Sumari abilities.

^* Jane learned on her own some time ago that a very moderate amount of alcohol goes well with the sessions. So does tobacco. Subsequent reading informed us that both substances depress the central nervous system. We think Jane combines the resulting spontaneity with her natural psychic abilities in these sessions. She doesn’t begin tasting any beverage, however, until the session is under way.

^* In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma is thought of as the total moral sum of an individual’s acts in any one life — thus determining the person’s fate or destiny in the next. Seth sees reincarnational lives as all existing at once, so there is constant give-and-take among them. A “future” life, then, can affect a “past” one, so karma as it is usually considered does not apply.