My problem with Seth

Last time, I talked a little bit about the so-called Seth material channeled by Jane Roberts and how it relates to the idea of a holographic universe. But I have to say that I have trouble taking Seth altogether seriously. Communications issued in his name seem to vary considerably in quality, from provocative and scientifically respectable theories about the nature of reality to highly dubious and rather childish exercises in what appears to be pseudoscience.

Reading further in Roberts' 1970 book The Seth Material, I came across a good example of the latter. It's a passage in which Seth tries to explain the mechanism by which thoughts become things.

Thoughts and images are formed into physical reality and become physical fact. They are propelled chemically. A thought is energy. It begins to produce itself physically at the moment of its conception.

Mental enzymes are connected with the pineal gland. As you know them, body chemicals are physical, but they are the propellants of this thought-energy, containing all the codified data necessary for translating any thought or image into physical actuality. They cause the body to reproduce the inner image. They are sparks, so to speak, initiating the transformation.

Chemicals are released through the skin and pore systems, in an invisible but definite pseudophysical formation. The intensity of a thought or image largely determines the immediacy of its physical materialization. There is no object about you that you have not created. There is nothing about your own physical image that you have not made.

The initial thought or image exists within the mental enclosure. It is not yet physical. Then it is sparked into physical materialization by the mental enzymes.

This is the general procedure. All such images or thoughts are not completely materialized in your terms, however. The intensity may be too weak. The chemical reaction sparks certain electrical charges, some within the layers of the skin. There are radiations then through the skin to the exterior world, containing highly codified instructions and information....

Objects are composed of the same pseudomaterial that radiates outward from your own physical image, only the higher intensity mass is different. When it is built up enough, you recognize it as an object. At low intensity mass it is not apparent to you.

Every nerve and fiber within the body has an inner purpose that is not seen, and that serves to connect the inner self with physical reality, that allows the inner self to create physical reality. In one respect, the body and physical objects go flying out in all directions from the inner core of the whole self.  (pp. 121-122)

If we boil this down, Seth seems to be saying that our bodies exude chemicals through the pores of our skin, and these chemicals somehow coalesce into the physical objects around us. Now, I don't know about you, but I find this explanation preposterous. I don't even think it makes sense on the most basic logical level. Our bodies are themselves physical, so do these mysterious chemicals first form our bodies before proceeding to form the rest of our environment? And aren't the chemicals themselves physical? (It's not of much help to label them "pseudophysical" - this just muddies the waters even further.)

Beyond that, do we really believe that everything we perceive around us is produced by the emanation of chemicals from our own individual body? (Seth insists that each individual creates his own reality in toto, so we're not talking about a reality constructed by the combined chemical output of billions of humans; instead we have to imagine billions of separate realities.) If I stand on a high point in the desert where I can see for 50 miles, are the rock formations on the distant horizon created by chemicals exuding from my body at that moment?

Sorry. I'm not buying it.

I'm not saying Jane Roberts was a fraud. I've read enough of her writings to find this possibility extremely unlikely. I do think, however, that the source of her channeled communications may not have been a deathless extradimensional entity named Seth. Instead, I suspect that the communications were produced by some combination of ESP and the workings of Jane's subconscious mind, as dramatized by the Seth persona. Much of the material has a quality of dream logic. It makes the kind of half-intelligible sense that we find in dreams.

In this respect, it is worth noting that Seth always referred to Jane Roberts by what he claimed was her "entity name" - in other words, the name of the higher entity of which the Jane Roberts personality was only one facet. This entity name was "Ruburt." Clearly, Ruburt sounds a lot like Roberts. Moreover, Jane's husband was named Rob Butts - which also sounds like Ruburt. Is it possible that Jane's subconscious, playing around with both names, came up with a new composite name that symbolically represented them both? The subconscious is very big on symbols and wordplay.

Even if the Seth communications were somehow the result of Jane's roving ESP and her turbulent subconscious, that doesn't mean they are without value. I think there are authentic insights in these communications. Often the subconscious mind can come up with insights and intuitions alien to our conscious awareness. And the subconscious augmented by powerful ESP no doubt can be even more productive.

But not infallible. When people take the Seth writings as gospel, they may be making a mistake.

On the other hand, Seth could be right. In which case, be careful which antiperspirant you choose. Blocking the wrong chemical secretions from your pores may have the unfortunate side effect of erasing whole swaths of reality!

Okay,  /sarc off.

Comments

[william]

Michael I had the same problem with the course in miracles: ACIM. So much on the ego and the medium was a psychologist. hum interesting that a behavioral psychologist would channel Jesus that is big into the ego. I think what did it for me was when Jesus went with Helen shopping for shoes. If I remember right high heels not sandals as Michael suggested. Kind of like your chemical thing with Seth.

The book I am reading now suggests that most of these types of books are of a sub consciousness nature but not all. I have always felt the “intelligence” that came through in the book The Open Door by Theon Wright may have been a channeled book because of how the book ends.

This journey for truth appears to be readers beware but not to become an ultra skeptic as then you fall into the same trap as someone that takes “their” chosen book as gospel; whether that book is Darwin, the Bible, Seth, ACIM, or whatever.

I use a cross validation approach but even that approach has built in hazards.

We humans are just on the cusp of discovering reality. I suspect that Jane and Helen were channeling their sub consciousness from wisdom they had learned in past lives. But I also find that spirits have beliefs as we do and they often teach those beliefs as truths as we humans do.

[Arthur]

A little bit of Seth and a little bit of Jane Roberts, all mixed up together and baked in a pie. Kind of difficult to separate out what belongs to Seth and what comes from Jane Roberts. Like Mayonaise. It's a mixture of eggs and oil whipped up in an emulsion. Very difficult to turn it back into eggs and oil. - Art

[Tony]

Why did my pore secretions populate this world so full of a-holes then? Maybe it is the deodorant.. People didn't use to use deodorant, and everybody seems to think things are worse than they used to be. hmmm... Why did my thoughts create such a horrible deodorant in the first place?

Why am I even posting this question since you all are nothing more than the product of my secretions anyway?

[Tony M]

Remember the television show Northern Exposure? There was an episode where a spirit tried to help the Native American character find his father. At the end, the spirit apologizes for failing. I always loved the response: “That’s okay. You’re a spirit, not a god.”

Michael, your scenario is as plausible as any. (And your point that it is an amalgam of subconscious information and paranormally obtained information is very much on target.) But it is also possible that Seth, Abraham and “God” (Neal Walsh version), et al, are disincarnate entities, they may have valid knowledge and access to insights beyond ours … but that doesn’t mean they are infallible or omniscient. Simply put, Seth might be wrong on that one.

[Ulysses]

As a tool for discernment of any channeling material, the following seven points advise from Lee Carroll, a channel for Kryon, seem to be a good starting page:
http://kryon.com/k_25.html#about

[Leo]

Michael I am across this article a Christain Neuroscientist his name is Dr. Warren S. Brown he agrees with the majority of neuroscientists and talks about the difficulties with substance dualism. Now i personally believe in substance dualism I think there is a lot of evidence that supports it the evidence he brings up is the strong correlation between the mind and brain but I honestly don't see that as a problem. He thinks that it would be ahrd for most christians to believe in a immaterial soul because of the neurobiological arguments. But it's not just christians who hold a dualistic view plato did so did decartes, me and many others do as well.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/PsychologyNeuroscience/S&CB10-99BrownJeeves.html

Integrating and reconciling the truth claims made by Christian theology is always challenging. Perhaps most problematic is the challenge presented by modern neurobiology Christian anthropology. Given the presumption that ‘truth cannot contradict truth’, it seems to be increasingly difficult to hold a traditional Christian view of persons in a world of modern neurobiology and neuropsychology. One is caught in the middle of a dilemma or paradox represented by the following contradictory propositions:

Proposition 1: Humans are physical beings who also have non-material souls. It is through our souls that we experience and relate to God.

Proposition 2: Humans are neurobiological beings whose mind (also soul, religious experience, etc.) can, in theory, be exhaustively explained by neurochemistry and ultimately by physics.

The second proposition proposition is that of reductionalist materialism, characteristic of the philosophical view of many scientists but repugnant to Christians. While variations in this position exist, it is difficult to hold this position without mental life being presumed to be epiphenominal. Therefore, free will does not exist, and behaviour is determined by the laws of biology, chemistry, and physics.

The first view is the classic body/soul (or body/mind) dualism we get primarily from Plato, St. Augustine and Descartes, and which is pervasive in the modern Christian view of the person. Here mind are presumed to be non-material with a realm of agency separate, but interacting with, the physical body.

However, such body-soul dualism is faced with two critical problems: (1) the nature of the interaction between a non-material soul and a physical body and is unspecified; and (2) there is a decreasing residue of left-over higher human functions which have not yet been demonstrated to have neurocognitive correlates and therefore constitute evidence for a non-material soul.

Within dualism, to have a separate entity that is the soul in a manner that is more than trivial, the soul must have some realm (or realms) of agency within human mental and physical activity. It must account for something not represented in our neurocognitive systems, and must interact with our ongoing thinking and responding in some way. Otherwise, the concept of a soul is without compelling substance.

For example, if we were to create a list of critical attributes of human nature, and potentials for human experience, that have been presumed by scripture to reflect the activity of the soul, we might include the following: free will, sin and the experience of guilt, acceptance of redemption, the experience of grace, righteousness and ethical behaviour, worship and an inner 'life in the spirit', the experience and expression of love, participation in community, ability to understand and respond to God's revelation, and existence after death.

The knotty problem raised by modern science is that so many of these properties and functions are now known to be strongly influenced or determined by the functions of various neurobiological systems. Although the research in most cases is incomplete, and thus leaves the question open, the strong influence of neurobiological processes on our personal, social, and even spiritual lives, at the very least forces us to consider the embodiment of soulish human functioning. For example: What is the meaning of experiences of nearness to God and intensely personal spiritual moments when these can be elicited by temporal lobe seizures? How do we think about love and interpersonal relationships when in Capgrass syndrome one strongly believes that one's family and close friends are impostors who only look like one's family and friends, suggesting an inability to couple recognition with the feeling of familiarity necessary for love? And what of the failure of moral restraint on behaviour in some cases of frontal lobe brain damage, or the dramatic infringement of Alzheimer's dementia on the spiritual and religious lives of some patients.

Thus, a neuroscience perspective strongly questions a separate, non-material agency for the soul by which certain domains of human experience can remain unaffected by changes in brain function. At the very least, we should be uncomfortable with simple answers regarding the nature of the human soul.

Brain Damage and the Mind

Over the past 150 or so years, evidence for the tight coupling between brain function and human behaviour has come from increasing knowledge regarding the behavioural outcomes of focal brain damage. The past decade has seen a dramatic acceleration of this knowledge based upon the new technology of functional imaging of brain processes during specific cognitive states or behavioural activities. Malcolm Jeeves reviewed this ever-tightening link that is being established between brain function and complex human thought and behaviour.

The unity of the body-mind-soul is clear in clinical neuropsychological phenomena such as the moral and religious breakdown in some individuals with Alzheimer's disease, or the hyper-religiosity of some individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy, or spiritual depression secondary to physical disorders. Thus the subjective experiences of soul and spirit rest deeply in the functions of the physical brain which abide by physical/biological laws.

Does this make our behaviour determined? Is our deciding, intending, willing and even religious believing merely an illusion? As with genetics, changes in brain function associated with neurological damage or disease can only be said to influence the range of potential behaviours available to the individual. While remembering may become more difficult, some memories survive. Although planning of behaviour may be deficient, behaviour is seldom totally chaotic. While brain damage or dysfunction may enhance or diminish the probability of various religious or moral behaviours, there remains a significant residual of the person's premorbid religious life influencing what is said and done. Though increasingly severe brain damage may progressively restrict the range of behavioural possibilities such as to make the person appear strongly 'determined,' only in the most severely brain damaged (i.e. nearly comatose) does one find a sense of inevitability in the patient's behaviour.

Human Intelligence and Relatedness

If the line between the physical and the spiritual is not drawn between humans and lower animals, but between humans and God, what has become of the soul? In what ways might a neurobiologically embodied centre of consciousness be considered spiritual? How do we understand the 'soul' language of scripture and Christian tradition? Warren Brown attempted to take the argument of nonreductive physicalism somewhat further by proposing that 'soul' is a capacity for a particular realm of experience rather than a non-physical essence inhabiting the body. Working backwards from the phenomena generally associated with soul, it was suggested that a critical element in human soutishness is the capacity for, and experience of, personal relatedness. It was further argued that the capacity for deep and meaningful personal relatedness emerges from the operation of an interactive web of core cognitive abilities, each of which are present in lower primates, but markedly more developed in humans. Soul is the music made by an ensemble of players (the various lower-level cognitive abilities) who perform together to create the capacities for interpersonal dialogue as well as self-awareness and internal self-reflection (intrapersonal experiences). Played out in relationship to God who chooses to be in dialogue with his human creatures, the cognitive capacity for personal relatedness embodies spirituality.

The following capacities were suggested as those which are significantly superior to those of our closest non-human fellows and which are critical for personal relatedness: language (the capacity to communicate a potentially infinite number of propositions)-, a theory of mind (an ability to consider the most likely thoughts and feelings of another person); episodic memory (a conscious historical memory of events, persons, times and places (i.e., more than memory for actions and their consequences), conscious top-down agency (conscious mental control of behaviour), a future orientation (the ability to run mental scenarios of the future implications of behaviours and events); and emotional modulation by complex social and contextual cognition which serves to guide ongoing behaviour and decision making.

The particular cognitive abilities described were not meant to be exhaustive, but rather were chosen to suggest how areas of cognitive ability subserve relatedness and to indicate how these capacities compare between humans and our nearest primate relatives. Each of the cognitive abilities are not unique in humankind, but are nevertheless substantially enhanced in humans relative to apes. While the quantitative increase in level of each ability may or may not amount to a qualitative human uniqueness, certainly the richness of personal relatedness emerging as these abilities function in concert is unique to humans.

A view of the soul as emerging from the experience of personal relatedness is attractive in that it rescues the concept of soul from the individualism that is deeply ingrained in modern Western culture. Soul is not something that stands for our individuality, but something that links us to other individuals and to our community, and to God.

Fraser Watts, who served as discussant for the symposium, agreed that there are no absolutely unique human qualities, but that many of the important qualities related to mind are significantly enhanced in humans, and that it is the outcome of these enhanced qualities that go together to create what most people have in mind when they think about 'soul'. Watts therefore agreed that soul is something that has emerged. What is more, Watts advocated 'moving away from traditional formulations of humans as the "pinnacle" of creation, and seeing us rather as the "hinge" of creation, the point at which the natural world, that takes its origin from God, gives rise to the soul qualities that permit an explicit relationship to God.' In this view Watts distances himself from any suggestion about the 'perfection' or finality of human nature, but would allow that humans have reached a stage of development that gives rise to unique soul qualities.

[Leo]

True Michael I agree with you on Seth there is a lot of speculation but no evidence.

[Barbara]

You point out the problem I have with any so-called channeled material, and that is confusion about who is talking when. I prefer to think of such material as being written by the living person involved rather than attribute it to another intelligence, keeping in mind that some of it might come from elsewhere. I think, from all I've read, that channeling, if it works at all, is far too subtle a technique to take 100% seriously, or even seriously any more than I take any other writings. But then, discernment is necessary when reading a newspaper or a scientific report, or listening to a government leader.

I also think that if we experience any kind of spiritual revelation, oftentimes those epiphanies or revelations are meant for the receiver alone. Even if true and valid, I think that often they aren't meant for public consumption. When they're shared there's the risk that they'll become scripture and applied to everyone. This is how fundamentalist religions are born, with people assuming an entire text is the literal word of "God" when a lot of it may very well be senseless drivel -- or manipulative spin.

But I am fascinated with the possibilities and with some of what is revealed in this way. It raises a lot of questions, along with a lot of inconsistency.

[Barbara]

But the passages, on a second reading, remind me a little of how I've read mirror neurons work, as well as the idea that we create the picture of our surroundings using our senses and filter their information through our brains. I've read that when a person who's been blind from birth somehow gains the ability to see, he has to be trained how to interpret what he sees, which most of us do as infants.

[Mark Turner]

I do not channel but have studied it for quite some time. Channeling is said to be the melding of consciousnesses. Distortions occur. Much like one has difficulty making sense of thoughts snatched from the world of dreams, the channeler must translate the pure thoughts and ideas of the channelee/personality/whatever into words. As a writer yourself, Michael, you know that words can be an imperfect medium.

Jane Roberts was a writer, not a scientist and she was quick to point this out. She struggled to translate the concepts Seth presented. Though the description above is admittedly clumsy, I do understand the gist of what Seth is trying to say. I submit that even our top scientists would do no better in light of the paltry knowledge we have about how our world truly works.

At the end of the day, though, the ultimate test of legitimacy is one's own bullshit detector. For me the Seth books have always rung true. As always, your mileage may vary. :)

I appreciate the open mindedness tempered with large doses of healthy skepticism I find here. The psychic field can use a lot more of that.

Best Regards,
Mark

[william]

Neal Walsh’s god contradicted itself within 20 pages in one of his books. I thought it interesting that god contradicted itself. Actually his books have helped a lot of Christians break thorough some of the dogma they have been taught since a child.

Tony m: “disincarnate entities, they may have valid knowledge and access to insights beyond ours … but that doesn’t mean they are infallible or omniscient”

That is my take on spirits coming through mediums.

Leo: the soul emerges but the vitality or spirit was always there whether in a dog or a human. But even this does not explain entities coming through mediums and the family pet is there with grandma.

Barbara: I have read of children being blind at birth but when they experience a near death experience they can see. That is kind of neat and should give one pause about matter creating consciousness.

Mark: “I appreciate the open mindedness tempered with large doses of healthy skepticism I find here. The psychic field can use a lot more of that.”

Me too mark on most blogs I am pretty much treated as a heretic but here it feels good to post and be pretty much ignored but at least most people on here are not in an attack mode. The atheist’s blogs appear to be the most hostile. Scary thought considering they think they could do a better job of running the world. Of course it would be tough to beat the religious folks when it comes to running (ruining) the world.

[Arthur]

Tony m: “disincarnate entities, they may have valid knowledge and access to insights beyond ours … but that doesn’t mean they are infallible or omniscient”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

People who have near death experiences often talk about having had "all knowledge" while they were on the other side. If you think about it this would make perfect sense in a holographic universe because you were connected to everything at once. They say that all they had to do was think about something and they would know everything about it. Mark Horton said he literally felt like he was everywhere in the Universe at once. What's my point? I'm not as interested in channeling and mediums as I am about NDE's because it's too difficult for me to figure out what belongs to the spirit and what's coming from the medium. That's not to say that I don't believe that some Mediumship is real. I used to watch John Edward's Crossing Over religiously and I loved it. Every once in a while he'd say something that would blow me away. Once he told two girls that he was seeing a Victrola. They replied that their deceased mother's favorite posession was an old Victrola. I think we are all a little bit psychic but some people are just more attuned or able to listen to the information they are recieving. I've even had little brief flashes of it myself.

[Bill Ingle]

Dear Michael:

The Seth material improves over time, session by session (these went on from 1963 until Jane's death in 1984) as Jane becomes better at "translating" the information and as she and Rob work with it, attempt to understand it, become familiar with its concepts, and so on. Thus some of Seth's earliest explanations improve with later elucidations. He can only feed them so much at a time, being limited to an extent by their understanding.

This was a process, in other words; it begins with some gibberish obtained in the early 60s when Jane and Rob experimented with a ouija board, but the two persisted. In Jane's words:

"My psychic initiation really began one evening in September, 1963, however, as I sat writing poetry. Suddenly my consciousness left my body, and my mind was barraged by ideas that were astonishing and new to me at the time. On return to my body, I discovered that my hands had produced an automatic script, explaining many of the concepts that I'd been given. The notes were even titled -- The Physical Universe as Idea Construction.

Because of that experience, I began doing research into psychic activity, and planned a book on the project. In line with this, my husband, Rob, and I experimented with a Ouija board late in 1963. After the first few sessions, the pointer spelled out messages that claimed to come from a personality called Seth."

This led, before long, to Jane's voice channelling Seth, Rob taking notes in his own unique shorthand for later transcription. (Rob, still alive and now quite elderly, was always part of this process, contributing his own "psychic energy" to the actual channelling as well as more usual mental and physical energies to the publishing efforts.)

Improvement is immediately evident in the very next book, _Seth Speaks_, but the favorite of many is the next book, _The Nature of Personal Reality_, while, the earliest expositions of "probable realities" becomes much more sophisticated in _The "Unknown" Reality_.

I did not pick up _The Seth Material_ and start reading it, becoming wildly enthused; in fact, I initially dismissed all such material as rubbish.

Instead, I had the very unusual experience I supplied the link to, in which, during my first attempt to meditate, I "saw" a crystal clear full-color image of the paperback cover of _Seth Speaks_, which I had glanced at and dismissed in a bookstore.

This got my attention, and transcended rational objections, you might say.

_Seth Speaks_ broadens and improves the explanation you ridicule, becoming something less easy to dismiss.

Reviewing:

"If we boil this down, Seth seems to be saying that our bodies exude chemicals through the pores of our skin, and these chemicals somehow coalesce into the physical objects around us. Now, I don't know about you, but I find this explanation preposterous. I don't even think it makes sense on the most basic logical level. Our bodies are themselves physical, so do these mysterious chemicals first form our bodies before proceeding to form the rest of our environment? And aren't the chemicals themselves physical? (It's not of much help to label them "pseudophysical" - this just muddies the waters even further.)"

What you end up with many sessions (and several books) later is expressed much better, as the creation of "individual space continua."

I sometimes describe these as "physical reality fields."

This might still appear to be utter nonsense, save for those endless exercises that appear within the material, enabling those who experiment with them to transcend the limited words and concepts Seth is forced to deal with.

Thus each and every physical being (the extent of this -- life -- is much greater than biology supposes) creates such a field; another way to describe the creation process is that this is the transduction of non-material energies into physical "matter."

Now we can begin to relate Seth's concepts to many other teachings, from those of the ancient world (Egypt, for example) to even Gurdjieff's "ray of creation." (Who knows where that originated?)

This means that, say, in a room, there are as many versions of objects as there are beings. Restricting this to people, and employing a well known example from the material, take a glass sitting on a coffee table in a room with two people.

There are two glasses -- each person in the room creates their own version.

They agree, however, on the parameters of the glass -- its color, size, weight, and so on; this is accomplished by some form of _usually_ unconscious non-material communication.

Unless they are aware of this process of the unique creation of individual space continua, they will each see one glass and assume that is all there is; the same applies, of course, to everything each of us sees. This usual view, based on physical perception, is the basis of "common sense" understanding of reality and Newtonian science. (Nevertheless, Seth does say there is an "objective" reality but that it won't be fully understood for _centuries_.)

This simple example is greatly extended in later books, as for example in _The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events_.

("This is absurd!" "Can anyone _prove_ this?" some are thinking as they read this.)

Note how this evolving channelled explanation can now _begin_ to be connected with certain ideas (and experimental data) regarding "observation," and how those remain an enigma in physics, although even now many physicists refuse to extend the implications beyond the very tiny world of quanta.

There is some real depth to this and related concepts, then; think phenomenology; think of The Critique of Pure Reason. Seth is not nearly as preposterous as reading a few sentences in one of the earliest books might lead one to imagine.

Closely related is a concept unknown to science, namely "coordination points."

Anyone who has ever personally investigated these _knows_ that this is no cow manure. "CPs" also transduce energies, as though part of some huge earth consciousness. (See http://www.realitytest.com/gcpe/index.htm -- the GCPE site is somewhat tongue-in-cheek but how else can such strange information and experience be easily presented?)

Regarding Seth's "identity" and his relation with "Ruburt" or Jane: If you immerse yourself in the material and its exercises, you'll gradually become used to the idea that whoever or whatever "Seth" is (and Seth attempts to describe his own identity in different ways at different moments) there is more than just a simple connection, that Seth, Jane, and Rob are, ultimately, different aspects of the same larger being, but then a key concept in the material (found in many places, many traditions) is that _all_ of us are aspects of the same being, the same All, the same One -- Seth's short version of this is: "There is no separation."

In other words, we _think_ of ourselves as separate physical beings, the boundaries of our identities our skin -- we _believe_ this, but as mystics have known for a very long time, and as difficult as this may be for a great many to accept, this is simply not so. (Need I quote D.T. Suzuki or even Alan Watts?)

Nevertheless, Seth places value on the individual; what we end up, as I express it, are "regions of identity," but those regions are really based on unique experience, whether a single human experience, a collection of human experiences, or much, much more.

Thus Seth _does_ arise from Jane's "subconscious," but then that is the very "place" in which anyone shall discover their own "soul." Even so, this is not the same as Jane's imagination, just as your own inner being is not simply the creation of your imagination. (There is much more there, if you explore it, than simply your own experience -- you are _connected_ to everything and everyone else, and the path, the connection, begins here, not "outside" of yourself.)

(This is one primary key to "ghost hunting," btw; meanwhile, to make another connection, one of my favorite books by Jane -- not Seth -- is _The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher: The World View of William James_.)

I would say that Jane Roberts was a truly great channeller, a person who developed her natural talent in this direction in the way great artists develop their talent. Channelling must be treated as a creative endeavor like writing, like painting, like musicianship -- it is _not_ a science and must not be confused with scientific endeavors, restricted as those are to the scientific method, no matter how creative a particular scientist may be, no matter to what extent a particular scientist relies on his or her intuitive powers above and beyond logical and practical abilities.

I could continue endlessly. The Seth material begins somewhat simplistically, and grows in sophistication; further, those who _do_ the exercises (and _experience_ the concepts) begin to comprehend the great difficulties Seth faced in attempting to translate what he understands (and he confesses to limits, to the fact that he is still learning) into our very limited and imperfect words, all while what is most basic to him runs contrary to almost everything we believe about the nature of reality.

He tries again and again, coming at this from different directions, each new attempt complementing previous attempts, including the "framework" idea of later books that Friedman uses as a connection to the physics of Bohm, and also the intermediate idea of "camouflage reality," which ties in directly with the Hindu "maya," but is more sophisticated in certain ways.

You might think that Jane's death marked the end of the Seth material.

In some respects this was so, but not entirely; some of those inspired by the material and Jane's creative translation of it eventually thought to channel Jane.

(There is a published book supposedly based on a channelled version of Jane, but the channeller in question never read any of Seth's books and the book is worthless except as an example of a poorly conceived project.)

Those enthusiasts who have channelled Jane have, so far as I know, never sought to publish, to hitch a ride Seth's coat tails,
but you never know.

Regards

Bill I.

[Arthur]

Regarding Seth's "identity" and his relation with "Ruburt" or Jane: If you immerse yourself in the material and its exercises, you'll gradually become used to the idea that whoever or whatever "Seth" is (and Seth attempts to describe his own identity in different ways at different moments) there is more than just a simple connection, that Seth, Jane, and Rob are, ultimately, different aspects of the same larger being, but then a key concept in the material (found in many places, many traditions) is that _all_ of us are aspects of the same being, the same All, the same One -- Seth's short version of this is: "There is no separation." - Bill Ingle
____________________________________________

excerpt from Michelle M's NDE:
"I remember understanding the others here.. as if the others here were a part of me too. As if all of it was just a vast expression of me. But it wasn't just me, it was .. gosh this is so hard to explain.. it was as if we were all the same. As if consciousness were like a huge being. The easiest way to explain it would be like all things are all different parts of the same body." http://nderf.org/michelle_m's_nde.htm

excerpt from Rany Gehling's (age 10)NDE:
"That was really cool! I kind of felt as though my body exploded - in a nice way - and became a million different atoms - and each single atom could think its own thoughts and have its own feelings. All at once I seemed to feel like I was a boy, a girl, a dog, a cat, a fish. Then I felt like I was an old man, an old woman - and then a little tiny baby." http://near-death.com/experiences/animals04.html

[filip]

Nice comment Bill Ingle.
I agree that the quality of the seth material increases with time but I think in the later years it starts to decrease again.
With the lumerian songs and stuff, in another way it just sounds a little way to out there for me...
Channeling is not an easy thing, it is so subtle, there is always a subconscious influence and I remember jane having difficulties to find the right words sometimes etc.
If jane wasn't in a deep trance and leaving her body then I think the quality is less deep because more subconscious influence is possible.
I really like the seth material, it's one of 2 channeled sources that I find to be of high quality and contains some great insights. Especially the mental exercices are pretty fun.

greets,
Filip

[Bill Ingle]

Filip: "I agree that the quality of the seth material increases with time but I think in the later years it starts to decrease again."

It definitely peaks, Filip, then Jane's fears take over (she had a very severe and traumatic Catholic childhood), leading to what many consider a tragedy -- her unnecessary death.

This is actually explored in the last books, wherein Seth begins to fade somewhat, as Jane's illness (and "sinful self") predominates. (The "sinful self" is that part of Jane that thought she was promoting something devilish, an inner conflict she never resolved; part of the tragedy is that despite such an impressive channelling output neither she nor Rob ever mastered certain basic concepts of the material.)

"With the lumerian songs and stuff, in another way it just sounds a little way to out there for me..."

You mean "Sumari." Lumania is the name Seth gave to a prehistoric (yet very technologically sophisticated) civilization centered in Australia (it failed, as did its successor -- attempts to deal with human aggressive tendencies leading to its downfall; interestingly, Seth suggests remnants still exist and can be found, today.)

Initially, I found The Sumari (and "families of consciousness") material unpalatable; I skipped it at first, but later realized that there was something to it, owing to a vivid dream (certain sections I'd ignored suddenly made sense after that dream).

This deals, I'd say, with a different or alternate way of viewing inner connections between people ("inner alignments," perhaps), and also a very different apprehension of time; it _is_ a bit "out there" -- even further out than the rest of the material.

Even so, there is a very interesting connection between the Sumari "family of consciousness" and ancient Sumer; a brief comment on this by Seth is amongst the unpublished material archived at Yale University. Somewhere, too, Seth comments on Enki, the Sumerian god, suggesting a very intriguing situation lies behind the myth.

There is so much we do not understand, so much that is more or less completely unknown; so much that is buried in our long history as a species -- reality is much stranger and richer than many of us were initially led to believe...

Regards

Bill

[Benjamin]

I disagree with Michael Prescott's thoughtful analysis of this particular portion of the Seth Material. He would be benefited by remembering the message that Seth would repeat continuously: All things occur simultaneously, all time is simultaneous, and thus our ideas of "cause and effect" are erroneous.
The portion of the Seth Material that is found above, and which Prescott analyzes, is describing how thoughts form matter in terms of "cause and effect". On the face of it all, this may seem to be a contradiction, but I believe Seth describes the process to us in this way because (a) our language itself demands linear-time description, and (b) our minds demand linear-time explanations. Therefore, the above-quoted Seth Material is at best an approximation of concepts that otherwise would be incommunicable.

[Kevin]

Anytime we encounter information which seems influenced or generated by the subconscious, whether our own or someone else's, we should probably keep the warning "caveat emptor" in mind. As Barbara points out, the information may be of specific reference and intent, having a degree of usefulness which is much less or non-existant for others. Moreover, the INTENT of the information is unknown (and probably unknowable), so our hopes of gaining insight and understanding through its inclusion may become compromised,our desire for certainty betraying us. Michael is right to be cautious, and Bill is only too right to describe whatever we regard as "reality" as being "stranger and richer" than may superficially appear. The term "high strangeness" has been frequently used to describe not only quantum physics, but some UFO reports, psi manifestations of many kinds, and even the oddity that a mathematical expression can have ANY correlation to physical existence. Obviously, the description of "strangeness" refers to the difference between the prejudice called "common sense" and an actuality we are struggling to comprehend, but it seems to intimate how far removed those prejudices are from the "truth", whatever it might be. David Bohm once said: "Most people think they are thinking when they are only rearranging their prejudices". My hope is that blog threads like this one will help stimulate the thoughts which ultimately provide at least a viable direction for inquiry. Meanwhile, I scan my prejudices again and again, with an added hope that I can recognize them all.

[Michael Prescott]

>on most blogs I am pretty much treated as a heretic but here it feels good to post and be pretty much ignored but at least most people on here are not in an attack mode.

William, I hope you don't feel you're being ignored just because people don't always respond to you. I certainly read your posts. In fact, I just bought a used copy of The Open Door, by Theon Wright, because of your recommendation.

[william]

michael you made my day. thank you for that. it starts slow but please stay with it as it gets much better.

hope you decide to discuss it on this blog.

george and nella wright are two of my favorite people ever.

[Bill Ingle]

Almost anyone with the name of William automatically commands my respect. This is owing to the fact that my own oversoul long ago chose the name for our communications, a kind of inside joke that would take too long to explain here. (The short version: A friend an early Internet enthusiast arrived one day, took my photo, then created a business page for me, all without asking me whether I wanted one; further, he called me "William Ingle" when in business I have always been known as "Bill." Angry, I had him take the site down. A short time later, I first a mother and daughter team from Vermont, the mother a published author and the widow of a famous Brit Rock & Roller, turned out to be a powerful natural medium; so powerful that the very air around her bristled with an unearthly electricity. Both she and her daughter shared the jet black hair -- in those days -- of a native American forebear; when I met them, these two dark-haired ladies were cloaked and hooded as a hurricane had just missed the little tiny penninsula I lived on then (and still do), a place very close to the former residences of Colonel Edward House, John Hammond (the Guggenheim's wealthy mining engineer), and John Hammond, Jr., the inventor who built a castle for a home.

Anyway, they stayed in my small apartment that night (a bold move, as prior to this occasion we'd only known each other via Internet mailing list). Late that night, they asked if perhaps my other guest and I would like to be entertained by a bit of ouija board use. ("Ouija board -- what a junior high school sort of thing to do!" I thought, completely forgetting how Jane Roberts had begun.)

Sorry -- the whole story really is far too long for Michael's blog. They contacted my oversoul, who began to speak through the mother (that's how she employs the board, as a kind of tether to physical reality as she channels), and at exactly that moment I experienced what was later described by others as a "crown chakra expansion." This felt as though a 3-foot invisible sphere had erupted from my head.

Anyway, my oversoul made a point of being called "William."

So -- seeing your comment to Michael, William, I did a search on "The Open Door" and immediately discovered that the entire book can be read on-line -- Google has scanned it.

I'm reading it now.

Thanks!

Bill

[agc]

">on most blogs I am pretty much treated as a heretic but here it feels good to post and be pretty much ignored but at least most people on here are not in an attack mode."

It's a far cry from usenet where I cut my teeth. I'm having a hard time adjusting.

[Michael Tymn]

I found Bill's interpretation or analysis very interesting and intriguing. As I recall, "Seth" more or less gave a different twist to reincarnation, one that seems to fit into the "oversoul" concept and one that is consistent with the information set forth by Frederick Bligh Bond in his book about Glastonbury Abbey. A spirit entity identifying himself as Johannes of Glastonbury, a monk who had lived from 1497 to 1533, communicated by means of automatic writing a number of messages to Bond, the director of excavations at the abbey, concerning the layout of the abbey grounds in his day. Johannes alluded to a group soul when it was suggested by another spirit entity that Johannes might be “earthbound” and his recollection colored somewhat by “clinging to vanished dreams.” In fractured English, Johannes responded: “Why cling I to that which is not? It is I, and it is not I, butt parte of me which dwelleth in the past is bound to that which my carnal soul loved and called home these many years. Yet, I, Johannes, amm of many partes, and ye better parte doeth other things – Laus, Laus Deo – only that part which remembreth clingeth like memory to what it seeth yet.”

Silver Birch likened the soul to an iceberg in which one small portion is manifesting and the greater portion not manifesting. He apparently was referring to what others have called the “Higher Self,” the “Greater Self,” or the “Oversoul.”

I think Seth, Johannes, and Silver Birch are talking about the same thing, but maybe Bill can correct me.

[william]

Bill did not know that this book could be read on line. It is worth the price as I have been reading it at least the intelligence that came through for about 8 years when I want something to stimulate my brain and have not found a new book to read.

I have read it so much George and Nella seem like old friends. Now that’s scary.

It appears to me that I learn something each time I read it.

[Filip]

Hey Bill,

"You mean "Sumari." Lumania is the name Seth gave to a prehistoric (yet very technologically sophisticated) civilization centered in Australia (it failed, as did its successor -- attempts to deal with human aggressive tendencies leading to its downfall; interestingly, Seth suggests remnants still exist and can be found, today.)"

Yeah that's what I meant. The sumari songs, The lumari, those originated around india if I'm not mistaking, a few years ago I saw some articles discussing cities that were inundated thousands of years ago. With pictures from what they found during their diving etc. But it never got wide media attention.

"This deals, I'd say, with a different or alternate way of viewing inner connections between people ("inner alignments," perhaps), and also a very different apprehension of time; it _is_ a bit "out there" -- even further out than the rest of the material."

Yeah I agree completely, it doesn't resonate with me so I left it behind, there are so much ways to make inner connections or get balanced. I was just reading a book that talks about how the west always uses it's concepts of rationality etc as the standard when analysing other cultures while their are so much other methods possible which have been usefull for other cultures for centuries...

Do you know the law of one material channeled by Carla Rueckert? This one stands next to the seth material for me. It's interesting to see how a lot of concepts are similar, they also talk about lemuria etc. Carla always left her body during channeling which made it a very deep trance channeling. A summary of the stuff can be found on http://www.spiritofra.com/Ra-section%201.htm

Greets,
Filip

[Bill Ingle]

William: I stand corrected (my brain was greatly fatigued last night); The Open Door found scanned on Google is a 1914 novel by Richard Little Wright, NOT the book you recommended! I apologize for this and also for the poorly edited words of my last post. (Nevertheless, the 1914 novel does successfully convey a sense of the bygone time in which it was written!).

Michael T: The references you provide do allude to the connectedness, the larger regions of self Seth discourses upon, in their own way. In a "normal" mode of consciousness I know of this second-hand, intellectually; there are other moments, however, in which I experience this more directly. I summarize the basics of my approach here.

Filip:

I am familiar with Carla's work, having explored it before I encountered _Seth Speaks_. Later, David Wilcock became involved with RA but, after exploring his work through his website and Yahoo Groups I decided it wasn't my cup of tea at all.

As I've posted, every channeller colors, filters -- translates -- such information through their own mind, some being much clearer (better able to get out of the way, perhaps) than others; Wilcock, although definitely an interesting and very bright fellow, allows too much of his conscious beliefs (and extensive theorizing) to interfere, in my opinion, but each to their own.

Regards

Bill I.

[william]

bill: glad you cleared that up. I looked high and low for that book on google. the open door is a good read hope people take a look at it.

would love to dialog on the teachings of what george and nella called the master mind or master teacher.

[Michael Prescott]

>The Open Door found scanned on Google is a 1914 novel by Richard Little Wright, NOT the book you recommended!

So it was Wright, but not the right Wright, which makes it wrong.

[william]

I suspect there are a lot more wright's out there than wrong's.

[drew hempel]

Michael -- the "chemicals exuding from the skin" is definitly true -- it's called IMMORTAL BREATHING and is discussed in detail in

TAOIST YOGA: ALCHEMY AND IMMORTALITY trans. by Charles Luk.

I achieved this in 2000 during my training with qigong master Chunyi Lin. Consider that qigong master Chunyi Lin sat in full-lotus in a cave for 40 days with NO FOOD, NO WATER AND NO SLEEP.

Basically the body and mind become full of electromagnetic energy which then causes the acupressure points to "breathe" or ionize chemicals in order to produce both water and oxygen and all the other necessary chemicals for the body. At this stage of meditation it is not necessary to breathe using the lungs or nose or mouth. The palms and center of the feet actually pulsate thereby transducing oxygen into the body -- just like the passive respiration of deep sea life.

The closest concept in physics -- since this violates the Pauli Exclusion Principle -- is the Auger Effect relying on AUTOIONIZATION.

[floridasuzie]

William,
re:>but here it feels good to post and be pretty much ignored <
It was very surprising for me to read this because for what it's worth - although I don't always agree with your views and I'm sure you don't know me from Adam anyway - you're the very person on this blog I most often look forward to reading, mostly because I respect the way you say it.
Suzie

[floridasuzie]

William,
Oops, forgot to say...and this is hard...grrr - although I don't agree with everything you say, because of the way you say it I do listen. You caught me on something I stated a few months ago and after I thought about it I realized you were right. After that I made it a distinct point to follow what you say carefully, even though I don't post on this blog much anymore I do follow it and appreciate your thoughts.

[william]

Wow! thanks for the update floridasuzie. Hey I guess it is ok to say you are ignored. Maybe someday you will share what it was that I stated.

I try my best not to fall into the trap of thinking my truths are thee truths. But this is very, very difficult to do. Our beliefs become “thee” truths and we humans tend to put the wrath of God/Chance on anyone not agreeing with our truths. Atheist and evangel alike.

The intelligence that comes thru George Wright has some interesting insights on truths. Check it out.

I have during this last 16 years of my research into the mysteries of life had to change my “truths” several times. Each time it was somewhat mentality painful.

I think this may be the reason it is so difficult to change our beliefs. It is just too painful so we tend to prefer paradigm paralysis to challenging our cherished beliefs.

[Bill Ingle]

Michael: "So it was Wright, but not the right Wright, which makes it wrong."

Correct -- this was the wrong Wright. Do two Wrights make a wrong?

Bill

[william]

Maybe not wrong maybe you were meant to read this "wrong" Wright book.

Little things impress me with this intelligence that came through George Wright that George called the master mind such as life is about process not results.

Considering I spent some of my career working for a Japanese consulting company teaching something called Kaizen that emphasizes focusing on being process oriented over results only oriented.

Funny how we like teachings that agree with our view of the world. But I have to admit when I worked in industry with its accepted wisdom that we must put our emphasis on the results there was something intrinsic within me that keep telling me that corporations by putting their focus on the results and not process they were sub optimizing their potential because of this lack of knowing.

Do spiritual laws such as karma and being process oriented apply to corporations and even societies like they do to individuals? Appears to be so.

How did I know this intrinsically? Nothing in my educational training prepared me to know this. Past lives? Spiritual guidance?

[Filip]

Bill I think there is a huge difference between the stuff Carla channeled in the 80's and the stuff David is channeling now.
What David is doing is not deep trance as Carla was doing and like you say with David there is a lot of interference with his conscious beliefs. But the law of one material channeled by Carla stands on its own and it's this one that I find very interesting together with the seth material.
I like David Wilcock his work but his channeling is not my cup of tea either...

greets,
Filip

[Barbara]

William wrote: "I have read of children being blind at birth but when they experience a near death experience they can see."

William, I've read that too, and also that many report having 360 degree vision during the experience.

BTW, you shouldn't feel ignored. I always find your comments here insightful and thoughtful, and have wondered if you have a blog. I don't always respond, but I've sometimes had the same feeling online, so I understand it. We just don't see others' attention to our words online the way we might in person. Sometimes there's not much more to say except to agree. :)

[Arthur]

William, I've read that too, and also that many report having 360 degree vision during the experience. - Barbara
____________________________________________

360 degree vision in NDE's is another one of those corroborations of the holographic naure of the Universe. - Art

[william]

Barbara: thanks for the insight. I was very gratified to know that Michael has ordered the book the open door and was hoping others would read it as to give me some feedback on this intelligence that came through George Wright.

This intelligence that came through automatic writing appears to be with such depth that one could spend a lifetime of study and still some words and statements can elude the reader. I suspect that our level of consciousness determines how much we can “absorb” of this material.

People are very hungry for knowledge as to life after death and the purpose and meaning of their lives. I waited until I was 50 years of age to investigate these mysteries. Fifty appears to be a common age for many men to look past materialism and religion and do their own seeking.

[Arthur]

I waited until I was 50 years of age to investigate these mysteries. - William
_______________________________________

I'll be turning 55 in a few months. I got interested in "life after death" stuff about 7 years ago. I'm not exactly sure what facilitated my interest but it might have had something to do with John Edward's show "Crossing Over." I was pretty amazed by some of his hits or validations. Every once in a while he'd say something that was mind boggling. Like "where did that come from?" One guy he told him he had a connection to Portuguese and the name Fernando. Turns out that his father who he hadn't seen or had contact with since he was a kid had gone to Brazil and learned Portuguese and had lived on an island called Fernando. Because of his reading with John Edward he also found two half-sisters that he didn't know he had. - Art

[spope]

"TAOIST YOGA: ALCHEMY AND IMMORTALITY trans. by Charles Luk."

Does anybody ever have the slightest idea what the fuck this Drew Hempel guy is talking about? Frankly, his posts contain the most bizarre occult voodoo nonsense that I've ever seen.

[william]

Art: I watched all of john Edwards shows as part of my research into mediums thanks to being able to record them if I was not available. I remember the show you mentioned very well. This was one of his best hits. This hit ruled out telepathy or cold reading.

Compared to some of the books I have read such as Eda Twigg's book john Edwards is a medium of average ability but after two years of watching his show he is I believe is doing more than cold reading or telepathy.

The best hit I thought he made was the tweedy bird hit where a young boy died after being hit in the chest with a ball and this stopped his heart. His pet was a small bird he called tweedy bird. John beat on his own chest and stated that someone died due to a chest injury and for some reason he keeps seeing the carton tweedy bird. That did it the parents and his sister broke at that moment and cried.

I have known two people that have been on his show and they claimed no fraud was noticed. Besides you could not keep that many people quiet for that long if fraud was involved.

Ultra skeptics (debunkers) say with enough practice they can do what Edwards does but please note none of them have stepped up and actually proved they can do what john Edwards does. Swartz has invited these ultra skeptics to come and test at this lab and then spend two years practicing and come back and test again to see if they could raise the number of their hits. To date no skeptic has shown up to be tested.

I have read somewhere the Amazing Randi tried in England to duplicate what Edwards does but made a fool of himself so the producers never showed that segment of a show they did on the paranormal.

My own personal readings with mediums are suspect but three of the 5 readings I had with 5 different mediums did read me as having been in a certain profession in several past lives. I thought that information might be due to more than chance.

[Martha]

My husband and I lived 15 minutes from Yale, where Jane Roberts' published and unpublished material is archived. I read all of her diaries and every scrap of poetry she wrote. I was fascinated, even if I don't pretend to understand most of it. I think that it's really easy to read the words, but without experiencing some of the concepts -- like in an OBE or NDE -- it's impossible to really GET it. That said, one of my favorite questions is "what is the intersection between the Individual and the Mass Event?" Why AM I living in this time when I can SEE so many "parallel universes" that I would never participate in -- genocide, pedophilia, drug addiction, Bush is president?? -- you get the picture. I don't think there's any way that this 3-D Self can know what my expanded Self gets out of seeing those things from a distance, mostly in the 2-D space of the TV or in the news. I surely would have thought that if I were really creating my own reality, the air, water and land would be clean and that people and animals would be honored and loved. Our business would have taken off in a big way, according to our hopes and expectations, a few years ago. Go figure. I'm sure when I get Expanded Awareness it will all be clear. For now, I assume that Seth is correct, that somehow everything I see is me, but I find myself saying QUITE often "no, I'm not that," or "no, I wouldn't choose that reality for myself," or "no, I don't choose to be a part of that drama." And mostly I'M NOT. I see those "other" things, but they aren't really in my world -- any more than the Black Plague or the Dark Ages, which you can also read about or see on TV. btw: 2 things Seth was wrong about. 1) He predicted that the continents would start rising and falling in the year 2000. 2) He predicted that Jane would quit smoking. She probably died with a cig in her hand (back when you could smoke in the hospital!).

[Arthur]

The best hit I thought he made was the tweedy bird hit where a young boy died after being hit in the chest with a ball and this stopped his heart. His pet was a small bird he called tweedy bird. John beat on his own chest and stated that someone died due to a chest injury and for some reason he keeps seeing the carton tweedy bird. That did it the parents and his sister broke at that moment and cried. - William
___________________________________________

Another one of John Edward's hits that I was pretty amazed at was when he was reading two women and he said he was seeing a Victrola. Those girls responded that their mother's most prized posession was a Victrola. I thought that was pretty cool. - Art

[william]

MARTHA: your recent post reminds me of the question: if God is love why so much human suffering and how in the world did we Americans ever get into this “mess” when we had such potential as a country and society?

After studying Dr Hora’s (PAGL) and Buddhist teachings for many years it came to me in an instant that most of our suffering is due to “not knowing that which is available to be known”. The Buddhists call this condition ignorance. So I spent 6 years on one question. What is the origin of that ignorance?

If you would like to discuss my discovery let me know. It is so simple it eluded me for 6 years. Too simple to comprehend: Weird I know but it is. It may help to answer some of the questions you stated on your post: or not.

Interesting to me at least is that most Buddhists monks I have contacted on the Internet confuse symptoms with root causes. (I.e. they state such things as attachment, craving, grasping and some even state desire as the causes of our suffering. These are symptoms of our ignorance not the origins of most of our suffering).

[Martha]

Your problem with Seth is your own incomprehension. You should really try to resist judging an entire body of work by one book.

Seth also said..."A true understanding of the way in which an idea becomes physical matter would result in a complete revamping of your so-called modern technology. As long as the psychic reality behind physical matter is ignored, then you cannot use those methods effectively that do exist, nor can you take advantage of them. You cannot understand the psychic reality that is the true impetus for your physical existence unless you first realize your own psychic reality, and independence from physical laws. You must clear away some of the intellectual and superstitious debris that prevents you from recognizing your own potentialities and freedom."

[Arthur]

if God is love why so much human suffering? - william
____________________________________

Physical pain imprints on the soul the physical parameters of a body. What it means, looks, and feels like to inhabit a body. Like computer code. The soul comes from a place where time and space do not exist so the only way to know and understand 3D + 1T space is to spend some time experiencing it. The soul is the "driver" of the human body. This is the reason why "cutters" take knives or broken glass or whatever they can find and cut themselves, or why people eat roaring hot peppers and intentionally burn their lips and tongues, or why religious fanatics in Malaysia shove giant pieces of steel through their lips and cheeks, or why Philipino Catholics intentionally re-enact the crucifixion of Christ, or why during the Middle Ages people intentionally flagellated themselves. Cutters are usually girls who come from protected sterile homes where they don't experience bug bites or scratches or kinds of physical experience that the soul craves; so it guides the girls to experience 3D + 1T space in other ways. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience and what we are here to experience is duality and separation, time and space, and imprint memories of what it's like to live in 3D + 1T space. I've explained numerous times why we experience duality and separation. It imprints on the soul what it means and how it feels to be separate because there is no separation in the Spiritual Universe due to it's holographic nature. Numerous NDE'ers have commented on how they felt totally connected and "one" while on the other side. They also state that time and space didn't seem to exist. excerpt from Mark H's NDE: "There is no distance here. So time does not exist." http://www.nderf.org/mark_h's_nde.htm Excerpt from Mark Horton's NDE: "This was very pleasant and comforting and went on for microseconds or billions of years, I have no idea since time just wasn't an operative construct and had no meaning or relevance to existence." http://www.mindspring.com/~scottr/nde/markh.html

[john Sawyer]

We can believe just about anything we choose to believe. As for me, I see too much evidence that we do NOT create our own universe. We have effects on it, but we did not create the whole thing. A key aspect of maturity is to keep the ego restrained to a normal level, and see how much we do not create the universe, but rather live in it largely as we see it. Go hiking in the Grand Canyon, and you can get a flavor for how much we're a part of the universe, not its creators. That's not to detract from the vastness of our influence, both past and the potential of our future; but we don't want to forget about the very real phenomenon of paranoid schizophrenia, and its often real-seeming delusions. Life is more interesting than that.

[Arthur]

Near death experiencers often state that as they were leaving their bodies that they felt no emotional attachment to them. They looked back on their body with about as much emotion as we might reserve for a pair of worn out tennis shoes. This ain't the main show. We're just here for a short while before moving back into the Spiritual Universe; sort of like going away to college, only in this case instead of learning about physics and chemistry and math and history the soul is learning about time and space and emotion and feelings and taste, touch, sounds, and colors, all those things that are easily quantifiable. Stuff that you have to participate in to fully understand. Watching a DVD of sex is nowhere near the same thing as actually making love to another person. - Art

[Arthur]

"all those things that are easily quantifiable." - art
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Whoops! "not easily quantifiable."

Art