|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 8, 2017 9:01:46 GMT -5
Physical structures vs. psychological structures (2)
Seth: These psychological structures exist as prerequisites for the material structure of your universe. The inner senses represent such psychological structures. They become physically apparent to some degree in the emotions, which do have definite form, certain mass, depth, and solidity in the realm of psychological perspective which you do not physically perceive.
In their own way they have what amounts to shape, color and structure. These prerequisite psychological forms exist before the construction of matter and physical form by an individual. He grapples with, and manipulates and juggles these inner psychological shapes before constructing them, his version of them, into physical form.
Some of the basic shapes in your physical universe are, therefore, reflections of these inner psychological structures, more or less reproduced in matter. These are in one sense certainly tangible to the inner self. It is these inner psychological structure patterns to a large degree that determine the shape and form of physical structures.
(Session 73)
|
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 9, 2017 2:34:20 GMT -5
Physical structures vs. psychological structures (3)
Seth: The individual attempts to project these psychological structures into physical reality, where they will then be known, realized, manipulated, and to some extent mastered as matter. To some extent then, physical structures are symbols of psychological structures; and psychological structures are adopted by consciousness and will be projected in many fields, differing in appearance and outward structure, but always following faithfully the inner psychological structure.
The psychological structure existing in a perspective which you cannot physically perceive, must be first put together by individual consciousness before it can then be constructed materially. There is therefore a process of psychological construction where basic psychological structures are manipulated and formed in a perspective which, physically, you do not perceive.
This psychological construction takes place in what you call the subconscious. Before physical construction can occur therefore, psychological perception, manipulation and construction of inner data or inner structures must be performed. These psychological structures and constructions are the basis for material construction, and therefore this inner manipulation of psychological structures is extremely important.
(Session 73)
|
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 10, 2017 20:08:12 GMT -5
The psychedelic experience vs. mystic experience (1)
Seth: The psychedelic experience can give you some glimmerings as to the nature of these more advanced psychological structures. As I have mentioned many times, at present you focus your attentions and consciousness within the physical system. This alone can be compared to what Leary calls imprinting. Existence within any system will necessitate some imprinting. The imprinting simply involves an adjustment whereby consciousness is attuned to a particular station, so to speak. The consciousness so attuned however is only a small portion of the individual's total consciousness. In your system it is now fashionable to refer to this as the ego.
Your LSD and similar drugs do to some extent lift the imprinting process, though never completely. In some personalities they will lead to what you call a mystic experience. They will carry the personality into new realms of perception. They will momentarily break up usual patterned organizations of perception. You will see with new inner eyes. To some extent you will view some aspects of reality apart from the usual physical structures that you impose upon it as a whole. There is therefore a freedom for the inner self.
There may be a strong feeling of oneness with All That Is. This is of course much to those who have been primarily ego oriented, and it represents a meaningful breakthrough that can indeed provide the opportunity and impetus for a far more fulfilling earthly existence.
(Session 306)
|
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 11, 2017 8:38:56 GMT -5
Value fulfillment (1)
Seth: Each being experiences life as if it were at life's center. This applies to a spider in a closet as well as to any man or woman. This principle applies to each atom as well. Each manifestation of consciousness comes into being feeling secure at life's center — experiencing life through itself, aware of life through its own nature. It comes into being with an inner impetus toward value fulfillment. It is equipped with a feeling of safety, of security within its own environment with which it is fit to deal. It is given the impetus toward growth and action, and filled with the desire to impress its world.
The term “value fulfillment” is very difficult to explain, but it is very important. Obviously it deals with the development of values — not moral values, however, but values for which you really have no adequate words. Quite simply, these values have to do with increasing the quality of whatever life the being feels at its center. The quality of that life is not simply to be handed down or experienced, for example, but is to be creatively added to, multiplied, in a way that has nothing to do with quantity.
In those terms, animals have values, and if the quality of their lives disintegrates beyond a certain point, the species dwindles. We are not speaking of survival of the fittest, but the survival of life with meaning. Life is meaning for animals. The two are indistinguishable.
(Session 863)
|
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 11, 2017 20:39:22 GMT -5
Value fulfillment (2)
Seth: Value fulfillment always implies the search for excellence—not perfection, but excellence. Excellence in any given area—emotional, physical, intellectual, intuitional, scientific—is reflected in other areas, and by its mere existence serves as a model for achievement. This kind of excellence need not be structured, then, into any one aspect of life, though it may appear in any aspect, and wherever it appears it is an echo of a spiritual and biological directive, so to speak. There are different historical periods, in your terms, where the species has showed what it can do—and what is possible in certain specific directions when the genetic and reincarnational triggers are touched and opened full blast, so that certain characteristics appear in their clearest, most spectacular light, to serve as individual models and as models for the species as a whole.
(Session 912)
|
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 12, 2017 22:52:41 GMT -5
Value fulfillment (3)
Seth: Psychologists often speak of the needs of man. Here I would like to speak instead of the pleasures of man, for one of the distinguishing characteristics of value fulfillment is its pleasurable effect. It is not so much that man or nature seeks to satisfy needs, but to exuberantly, rambunctiously seek pleasure—and through following its pleasure each organism finds and satisfies its needs as well. Far more is involved in the experience of life, however, than the satisfaction of bare needs, for life is everywhere possessed with a desire toward quality—a quality that acknowledges the affirming characteristics of pleasure itself.
In your terms, there is a great pleasure to be found in both work and play, in excitement and calm, in exertion and rest, yet the word "pleasure" itself has often fallen into disrepute, and is frowned at by the virtuous. One of the main purposes of dreaming, therefore, is to increase man's pleasure, which means to increase the quality of living itself.
(Session 933)
|
|
|
|
Post by zin on Aug 14, 2017 21:47:54 GMT -5
Natural Guilt
In your terms man is an animal, rising out of himself, from himself evolving certain animal capacities to their utmost; not forming new physical specializations of body any longer (again in your terms), but creating from his needs, desires and blessed natural aggressiveness inner structures having to do with values, space and time. To varying degrees this same impetus resides throughout all creaturehood.
Such a task meant that man must break out of the self-regulating, precise, safe and yet limiting aspects of instinct. The birth of a conscious mind, as you think of it, meant that the species took upon itself free will. Built-in procedures that had beautifully sufficed could now be superseded. They became suggestions instead of rules. Compassion 'rose' from the biological structure up to emotional reality. The 'new' consciousness accepted its emerging triumph —freedom— and was faced with responsibility for action of a conscious level, and with the birth of guilt.
A cat playfully killing a mouse and eating it is not evil. It suffers no guilt. On biological levels both animals understand. The consciousness of the mouse, under the innate knowledge of impending pain, leaves its body. The cat uses the warm flesh. The mouse itself has been hunter as well as prey, and both understand the terms in ways that are very difficult to explain. At certain levels both cat and mouse understand the nature of the life energy they share, and are not —in those terms— jealous for their own individuality. This does not mean they will not struggle to live, but that they have a built-in unconscious sense of unity with nature in which they know they will not be lost or immersed.
Man, pursuing his own way, chose to step outside of that framework — on a conscious level. The birth of compassion then took the place of the animals' innate knowledge; the biological compassion turned into emotional realization. The hunter, freed more or less from animal courtesy, would be forced to emotionally identify with his prey. To kill is to be killed. The balance of life sustains all. He must learn on a conscious level then what he knew all along. This is the intrinsic and only real meaning of guilt and its natural framework. You are to preserve life consciously, then, as the animals preserve it unconsciously. (...)
Natural guilt then is the species' manifestation of the animals' unconscious corporeal sense of justice and integrity. It means: Thou shalt not kill more than is needed for thy physical sustenance.
(session 634)
|
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 15, 2017 1:36:52 GMT -5
Seth Two speaks (1)
Seth Two: The physical universe is like a very poor photograph. As the pictures and representations in a photograph are only dim, incomplete symbols for the people and objects they represent, so the physical universe is but a dim image of the reality for which it stands. You would learn little of what it means subjectively to be a human being by simply studying a picture of one. And you learn little of basic reality by studying the physical universe as if it were more than a symbol of what it represents.
True identity is as much divorced from ego reality as the photograph is from the person. There are connections between an individual and his photograph, and there are connections between the physical individual and the inner self, but the person must recognize the image in the photograph, for it will not recognize him.
(Session 410)
|
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 15, 2017 1:41:28 GMT -5
Seth: Psychologists often speak of the needs of man. Here I would like to speak instead of the pleasures of man, for one of the distinguishing characteristics of value fulfillment is its pleasurable effect. It is not so much that man or nature seeks to satisfy needs, but to exuberantly, rambunctiously seek pleasure—and through following its pleasure each organism finds and satisfies its needs as well. Far more is involved in the experience of life, however, than the satisfaction of bare needs, for life is everywhere possessed with a desire toward quality—a quality that acknowledges the affirming characteristics of pleasure itself. There you go. This is why 'follow your bliss!' is such good advice.  |
|
|
|
Post by laughter on Aug 16, 2017 19:50:25 GMT -5
Seth: Psychologists often speak of the needs of man. Here I would like to speak instead of the pleasures of man, for one of the distinguishing characteristics of value fulfillment is its pleasurable effect. It is not so much that man or nature seeks to satisfy needs, but to exuberantly, rambunctiously seek pleasure—and through following its pleasure each organism finds and satisfies its needs as well. Far more is involved in the experience of life, however, than the satisfaction of bare needs, for life is everywhere possessed with a desire toward quality—a quality that acknowledges the affirming characteristics of pleasure itself. There you go. This is why 'follow your bliss!' is such good advice. ok, but the obvious pitfall is that peeps get too much of a good thing.  |
|
|
|
Post by laughter on Aug 16, 2017 20:13:54 GMT -5
From Chapter 4: This lept out off the page because of the similarity to this and this. It's such a simple suggestion: "get quiet, look inward, see what's there". So for kicks I tried this out. Interesting stuff. This wasn't the first time that I've used meditation as a way to help sort out the contents of my mind in a material sense. It turns out that there can be some VERY practical benefits possible from an open exploration of the question "what is the source of thought?".  The method I used was to examine interests as they arise, and reinforce the ones I wanted to cultivate by deliberately intensifying the state of attention as they came into focus, and analyzing and dismissing the interests I wanted to attenuate. The way I'd describe the effect was as a sort of post-hypnotic suggestion that operated to shift my habits over time. As simple as "get quiet, look inward" is, it turns out that the experience of playing with the content of mind this way varies quite a bit based on what the orientation toward the contents of it is. Despite the obvious difference between the Seth quote and these other ideas, there's really only a little bit of variation in the details ... but wow, the difference in the experience is like a ton of bricks. It was surprising, because I've enough time doing this over the years that I almost overlooked the Seth advice as just more of the same. I'm interested to see what pursing this particular prescription might lead to. To be clear, what I think of as the "emptiness meditations" are far more substantive .. because, well, it's kind of a serious deal. |
|
|
|
Post by zin on Aug 17, 2017 20:25:00 GMT -5
Development of conscious mind
In terms of simple biological function, you now had a species no longer completely dependent upon instinct, yet still with all the natural built-in desires for survival, and the appearance within it of a mind able to make decisions and distinctions. ...
This new kind of consciousness brought with it the open mirror of memory in which past joy and pain could be recalled, and so the realization of mortal death became more immediate than it was with the animals. An association could trigger the clear memory of a past agony in the bewildered new mind. At first, there was a difficulty in separating the remembered image from the moment in the present. Man's mind then struggled to contain many images —past, present, and future imagined ones— and was forced to correlate these in any given moment of time. A vast acceleration took place.
It was only natural that certain experiences would seem better than others, but the species' new abilities made it necessary that sharp distinctions be made. Good and evil, the desirable and the less so, were invaluable aids then in helping form the basis for such separations. The birth of imagination initiated the largest possibilities, and at the same time put great strain upon the biological creature whose entire corporeal structure would now react not only to present objective situations, but imaginative ones. At the same time members of the species had to cope with the natural environment as did any other animal. Imagination helped because an individual could anticipate the behavior of other creatures.
In another way, animals also possess an 'unconscious' anticipation, but they do not have to come to terms with it on an aware basis as the new consciousness did. Again, good and evil and the freedom of choice came to the species' aid. The evil animal was the natural predator, for example. It would help here if the reader remembers what has been said about natural guilt earlier in this book. It would aid in understanding the later myths and the variations that came from them.
As the mind developed, the species could hand down to its offspring the wisdom and law of the elders. This is still being done in modern society, of course, when each child inherits the beliefs of its parents about the nature of reality. Apart from all other considerations, this is also a characteristic of creaturehood. Only the means are different with the animals. The acceleration continues, however. Ideas of right and wrong are always guidelines that are then individually interpreted. Because of the connection with survival mentioned earlier, there is a great charge here. Initially the child had to be impressed with the fact, for example, that a predator animal was 'bad' because it could kill. Today a mother might unwittingly say the same thing about a car.
The early acquiescence to beliefs has a biological importance, therefore, but as the conscious mind attains its maturity it is also natural for it to question those beliefs, and to assess them in relation to its own environment. Many of my readers may have certain ideas about good and evil that are very hampering. These may be old beliefs in new clothing. You may think that you are quite free, only to discover that you hold old ideas but have simply put new terms to them, or concentrated upon other aspects. Your daily experience is intimately connected with your ideas of worth and personal value.
(session 647)
|
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 18, 2017 9:38:41 GMT -5
Seth Two speaks (2)
Seth Two: We have told you that information is meaningless unless it is interpreted so that you can understand it. In larger terms knowledge cannot simply be given. It must be experienced. Although you do not find me as warmly personal as the Seth with whom you have been acquainted, I am a personality. The information is not coming to you out of nowhere. Knowledge does not exist in those terms. Without the sort of directed knowledge that you are receiving, you have what appears as inspiration, a hit-or-miss affair, highly distorted as a rule.
A personality is needed or the information would appear highly chaotic, and you would not know how to unscramble it, even if you were able to receive it. This is rather important. We not only give you information and help interpret it or translate it for you, but we also add to it our own experience with it. Your Seth would say we unscramble it for you, and then serve it neatly on a supper platter. The unscrambled information, again, would be meaningless, and even undependable. Ruburt’s initial experience represented such an encounter. It is only because of his own abilities that he was able to translate the information for himself to any degree. Seth gave him the information in a dream. He was afraid of Seth but not of the information.
Now, changing the coordinates does involve a shifting of inner focus and an extension of the inner senses. One of the reasons for the change in the sessions is to give Ruburt experience along these lines. He is forced in one way to reach further into inner reality, for I do not come as immediately to you as Seth as you knew him did. Since I am not here that immediately, then Ruburt must go further. Seth is always there between us to help in this procedure.
(Session 411)
|
|
|
|
Post by zin on Aug 22, 2017 8:25:31 GMT -5
Waking and sleep states 1
As mentioned in Seth Speaks, my earlier book, great distinctions are made between your waking and sleeping states. They are neatly divided, with little effort really made to relate the two. Many of you will not find it practical to alter your sleeping hours because of work commitments. Some of you will be able to do so, however, and those of you who are really interested in this endeavor can at least achieve some variation, on occasion, that will allow you to connect your sleeping and waking activities with far greater effectiveness.
Those of you who are able will discover that a somewhat altered arrangement will work greatly to your advantage. I suggest a six-hour sleeping block of time at one session, and no more. If you still feel the need for a greater amount of rest, then a two-hour-at-the-most nap can be added. Many will find that a five-hour steady sleeping period is quite sufficient, with a nap as required. A four-hour block is ideal, however, reinforced by whatever nap feels natural.
In such circumstances, there are not the great artificial divisions created between the two states of consciousness. The conscious mind is better able to remember and assimilate its dreaming experience, and in dreams the self can use its waking experience more efficiently. Often in the aged you find such frameworks coming into being naturally, but those who awaken spontaneously after four hours consider themselves insomniacs because of their beliefs, and so cannot utilize their experience properly. Both the conscious and unconscious would operate far more effectively, however, under an abbreviated sleeping program, and for those involved in 'creative' endeavors this kind of schedule would bring greater intuition and applied knowledge.
Individuals following such natural behavior would feel much greater stability in themselves. Within the general patterns I have mentioned, each will, of course, find his or her own particular rhythm, and some experimentation might be necessary until you learn the maximum balance. But the flow of vitality would be heightened.
It is true that the patterns will have their own flow at certain points in your life. Following your own rhythm, longer or shorter periods will naturally ensue. Your consciousness as you think of it will be expanded through such practices. Generally speaking, eight-hour sleep periods, or longer ones, are not beneficial, nor in larger terms are they natural for the race. There is a give-and-take chemical reaction, or rather chemical rhythms of reactions, that are far more effective in the shorter sleep periods. Many of you sleep through periods that should be those of your greatest creativity and alertness, in which the conscious and unconscious are most beautifully focused and at one. The conscious mind is often drugged with sleep just when it could be deriving its greatest benefits from the unconscious, and be able to poise most meaningfully in the reality that you know. In these instances the beauty and illumination of your dream state can be clear in the conscious mind, and used to enrich your physical life. Contrasts in your experience will appear to you in their united clarity. .......
Such a change in your waking and sleeping patterns very nicely helps cut through your habitual ways of looking at the nature of your own personal world, and so alters your conception of reality in general. To some extent, there is a natural and spontaneous merging of what you would think of as conscious and unconscious activity. This in itself brings about a greater understanding of the give-and-take that exists between the ego and other portions of the self. The unconscious is no longer equated with darkness, or with unknown frightening elements. Its character is transformed, so that the 'dark' qualities are seen as actually illuminating portions of conscious life, while also providing great sources of power and energy for normal ego-oriented experience.
On the other hand, areas of ordinary behavior that may have seemed opaque before, cloudy or dark —personal characteristic behavior that was not understood, for instance— may suddenly become quite clear as a result of this transformation, in which the shadowy aspects of the unconscious are perceived as brilliant. Barriers are broken down, and with them certain beliefs that were based upon them.
(sessions 651-2)
|
|
|
|
Post by zin on Aug 22, 2017 8:32:38 GMT -5
Waking and sleep states 2
Many of your misconceptions about the nature of reality are directly related to the division you place between your sleeping and waking experience, your conscious and unconscious activity. Opposites seem to occur that do not exist in actuality. Myths, symbols and rationalizations all become necessary to explain the seeming divergences, the seeming contradictions between realities that appear to be so different. Individual psychological mechanisms are activated, sometimes, in terms of neurosis or other mental problems; these bring out into the open inner challenges or dilemmas that otherwise would be worked out more easily through an open give-and-take of conscious and unconscious reality.
In the natural body-mind relationship the sleep state operates as a great connector, an interpreter, allowing the free flow of conscious and unconscious material. In the kind of sleep patterns suggested, optimum conditions are set up. Neurosis and psychosis simply would not occur under such conditions. And in the natural back-and-forth leeway of the system, exterior dilemmas or problems are worked out in the dream situation, and interior difficulty may also be solved symbolically through physical experience. Illumination concerning the inner self may appear clearly during waking reality, and in the same way invaluable information about the conscious self may be received in the dream state. There is a spontaneous flow of psychic energy with appropriate hormonal reaction in both situations. You do not have energy dammed up through repressions, for example, and emotions and their expression are not feared.
In your present system of beliefs, and with the dubious light in which the unconscious is considered, a fear of the emotions is often generated. Not only are they often hindered in waking life, then, but censored as much as possible in dreams. Their expression becomes very difficult; great blockages of energy occur, which in your terms can result in neurotic or even stronger, psychotic, behavior. The inhibition of such emotions also interferes with the nervous system and its therapeutic devices. These repressed emotions, and the whole charge behind such distorted concepts about the unconscious, result in a projection outward upon others. In your individual area there will be persons upon whom you will project all of those charged, frightening emotions or characteristics. At the same time you will be drawn to those individuals because the projections represent a part of you. On a national basis the characteristics or qualities will be projected outward onto an enemy. Within a nation they can be directed against those of a particular race, creed or color.
You did not simply come upon your sleep patterns. They are not the result of your technology or industrial habits. Instead they are a part of those beliefs that caused you to develop your technological, industrial society. They emerged as you began to categorize experience more and more, to see yourselves as separate from the spring or fountainhead of your own psychological reality. In natural circumstances the animals, while sleeping at night, are still partially alert against predators and danger. There is within the innate characteristics of the mammalian brain, then, a great balance in which complete physical relaxation can occur in sleep, while consciousness is maintained in a 'partially suspended, passive-yet-alert' manner. That state allows conscious participation and interpretation of 'unconscious' dream activity. The condition gives the body its refreshment, yet it does not lie inert for such long periods of time. .......
In your current beliefs, again, consciousness is equated in very limited terms with your conception of intellectual behavior: you consider this to be a peak of mental achievement, growing from the 'undifferentiated' perceptions of childhood, and returning ignominiously to them again in old age. Such wake-sleep patterns as I have suggested would acquaint you with the great creative and energetic portions of psychological behavior — that are not undifferentiated at all, but simply distinct from your usual concepts of consciousness; and these operate throughout your life. .......
Those of you who cannot practically make any alterations in sleeping habits can still obtain some benefits by changing your beliefs in the areas discussed, learning to recall your dreams and resting briefly when you can, and immediately afterward recording those impressions that you retain. You must give up any ideas that you have as to the unsavory nature of unconscious activity. You must learn to believe in the goodness of your being. Otherwise you will not explore these other states of your own reality. When you trust yourself then you will trust your own dream interpretations — and these will lead you to greater self-understanding. Your beliefs of good and evil will become much more clear to you, and you will no longer need to project repressed tendencies out upon others in exaggerated fashion.
(session 652)
|
|
The method I used was to examine interests as they arise, and reinforce the ones I wanted to cultivate by deliberately intensifying the state of attention as they came into focus, and analyzing and dismissing the interests I wanted to attenuate. The way I'd describe the effect was as a sort of post-hypnotic suggestion that operated to shift my habits over time.