We’re writing to announce that Sethnet is moving to a new home! As you may know, Sethnet began in cyberspace in October 1998 on a “free” email webhost called Onelist, which was bought by eGroups, and then by Yahoo! So far we’ve had three homes, and we’re excited about moving to a fourth to be hosted on the NewWorldView website.

The main benefit of the move will be our independence from the “free” webhost email list system. While Yahoo! has provided a lot of useful features over the years, email list software has evolved to the point where we can now create our own Seth-based webhost relatively cheaply with better functionality. We’ll have better global search, rich text HTML editors, emoticons, private messaging, more in-depth user profiles, personal photo galleries, links, file downloads, user avatars, community calendar, and more. Technical and moderation support will be available directly by phone and email. People helping people! Also, we will be better able to integrate the rich content of the Sethnet website (from cafemuse.com) – including our popular Sethnet Journal – into NewWorldView.

Another benefit will be additional content to explore. The NewWorldView Library includes the best collection of Seth/Jane Roberts reference materials currently available, and there will be other conscious creation resources, email lists, and blogs including former ESP class member Richard Kendall’s blog – Running Dialogues with Rich Kendall.

Additionally, we want to encourage those of you who may wish to open your own email list or blog on NewWorldView to contact us, and would love to have someone host an Abe or Bashar email list or blog.

So this means that Sethnet Yahoo!, or what we will soon be calling Sethnet Classic, will become an archival site. We will be moving as many files into the new system as possible. Sethnet Classic is NOT going away, but will morph into a new, more integrated format on NewWorldView, while remaining an archival site on Yahoo! So all the old posts, images, files, etc. will be available for as long as necessary.

As such, the current Sethnet Yahoo! will no longer accept new posts, photos, links, etc. beginning Thursday, September 7, 2006, at which time the NewWorldView Sethnet will open. And since we will not be manually transferring all the user accounts, you will need to create your own accounts, passwords, and profiles on the new system. We apologize for any inconvenience, but it’s really easy and we’ ll do everything possible to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Finally, the NewWorldView website will receive a major upgrade to integrate Sethnet and more. That will also open on September 7th. We will send out a reminder with any last minute details during the week of September 4th.

We thank you for everything you’ve done to make Sethnet one of the best online communities available and hope you will join us for continuing adventures in consciousness on NewWorldView. See you in September!

Jim Ferrigno, Don Johnson, Paul & Joanne Helfrich, and John McNally

The God of Mike
by Mike Nelson Pedde

When I was young, I was told about a God who lived in Heaven, a far away place that you could only get to when you died, and if you were good. He was a God of love, or so I was told. However, I was also told, in roundabout ways, that He was a God of contradiction. He brought droughts and plagues to people who didn't listen to His word, and brought wholesale slaughter at times to suit His needs. I was told that Jesus was the Son of God, and that Mary was His mother, but She was also God's daughter. God had representatives on earth who were supposed to be His emissaries; what I couldn't understand was that they were somehow closer to God than you were. I was an inquisitive and sensitive child, but I was told in no uncertain terms that I couldn't question the Word of God, nor the interpretations of His emissaries. This was considered blasphemy, and was certain to send you to Hell, where bad people spent eternity.

By the time I was about twelve, I left behind these emissaries of God (and God Himself) because they didn't have answers for my many questions and tried instead to turn me away from the path on which I had placed my feet. Having faith only took me so far, and I couldn't understand or believe in a loving God who would give us beauty and curiosity and dreams and then deny us the use of those gifts and abilities. Yet, I was told repeatedly this was what I had to do, in His name. So I gave up on that God and began to learn of a new God called Science. Now, the God of Science wasn't called that at all; in fact Science frowned upon any mention of God. Within the realms of Science I felt I had found my home at last. Here there was variety in an infinite amount and every question held an answer that led to several more questions. I learned the terminology of Linnaeus, the theories of Darwin and Lamarck, and contrasted the complexity of science against the simplicity of my former religion.

In time I found this new God of Science had taught me much about the world in which I lived, but while I had learned about evolution and progress and struggle and life and death, I found I was wholly unprepared to live in the world we humans had created for ourselves. In wandering the world of humans and watching how they lived their lives, I came to discover the God of Power and the associate God of Money. I discovered these new Ways had temples called banks and investment houses, and that within these there lived a truly powerful Being. This God of Power was fickle and the undercurrents were many, but still I found premises of evolution, the survival of the fittest and the idea of every man for himself. Millions upon millions of people carried with them icons of this religion and showed them to others. These people felt good about themselves if they could be worthy of exchanging their time, their bodies, their selves and their lives for these symbols of prosperity.

Still, within the tenets of these Ways I found much unhappiness. I searched the archival banks of computers, taught myself their languages and discovered their secrets. Deep within, far, far out I searched but no real answers could be found. Gaining access to those sacred halls of knowledge, I associated myself with other bastions of this Way: printers and scanners, CD-ROM drives and input/ output devices. I followed along with others in the pursuit of pure logic, but no wholeness could be measured there.

Eventually I left, wandered east and discovered the Ways of wu chi and the Tao, the consciousness of Buddhism and the synthesis of Nirvana. I looked into the past, long gone, and spoke with Mohammed and Jehovah. Quetzlcoatl and Itzamna came to call, and I learned their ways also.

While all of these Ways have merit, I found that none of them suited me. I was told by some that religion wasn't a buffet from which I could pick and choose. I couldn't just fill a shopping cart with Allah and binomial nomenclature, Judas and financial ledgers; I had to pick one Way and follow it only. Still, I countered that in all I have found there is only one real song and everyone is singing it in their own voice. There are many, many verses, but the Ways of the Earth Mother, the Spirit That Lives in All Things and the Goddesses of ancient Greece have a place beside the priests of my youth. I found that while each person or oak or ant, each leaf and pebble is different, unique and special in their own way, we are all composed of the same measures of existence. I learned also that hierarchy and harmony are the same thing in different guises and that within each of us there is a spark of pure creativity. I learned that the only negativity we have in our lives is what we create for ourselves. Finally, I found we are all intimately tied to each other. Our concept of individuality is a thin veneer overlaying a universal spirit. Each of us is a strand of that light; we all carry a `piece' of God within us. Our spirit expresses itself through us when we allow it, in Love, in kindness, in art, in music, in all the myriad ways we become who we Are. The whole IS greater than the sum of the parts. Nevertheless, it is the uniqueness of the parts, individually and in all the ways we intersect with and complement each other, that make the whole what it is.

And I called it the God of Mike.

On Dreams (Subtle Field, Involution)

“Man has no body distinct from his Soul: for that called Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.” ~ William Blake

In this section we are going to further explore some of Seth’s concepts on multidimensional personality. If the physical field is just an accident of chance, and evolution is mindless and amoral, then personality is only an “accident” of chaotic, mindless quantum fields. We need nothing more than natural selection and genetic mutation to explain the mechanics of personality. But not so fast. Even those theories don’t yet fully explain how consciousness actually emerged if it were not present in some proto-form to begin with. They still require a miracle to evolve from insentient matter to sentient mind. As such, the modern materialist theory of consciousness remains hampered by a promissory science, one that claims its methods will eventually fill in the “missing links.” In reality, those claims are based upon the same faith as any religion.

In the meantime, as we continue to explore the dynamics of consciousness – waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and altered states – the postmodern impulse intuits that there is a far-reaching, fundamental multiverse that lies beyond our five-senses-only experience of quantum fields. Seth has presented extensive material on the nature of consciousness, and outlined a nested model of causal CUs and subtle EEs, which in turn form quantum fields. Is it possible that consciousness and matter are simply different forms of the same essential phenomenon, and as such, exist in simultaneous but different ratios and relationships that we’re simply calling causal, subtle, and physical fields? This may be the essential insight that postmodern theories of consciousness will finally codify in the twenty-first century.

Modern physicists currently focus on string, p-brane, and other models in which energy-matter is deemed nonconscious. Their reductionist approach completely ignores nested physical, subtle, and causal aspects in the CU/EE metaphor that, if considered, could open the door to new conceptualizations of energy-matter. For instance, modern physicists still exclude dreaming in their current praxis. Not only their own, but the dreaming and subtle nature of energy-matter. Consciousness remains defined as an epiphenomenon of random physical and biological processes. The modern search for the unified field theory, or theory of everything, will remain a dead end as long as it excludes a viable theory of consciousness that not only explains how noos wakes, dreams, and experiences altered states, but also how physios and bios do as well.

According to parapsychologist Charles Tart (b.1937), in States of Consciousness (2000) dreams were considered hallucinations and unreal by the scientific community until 1953 when the first EEG research made the correlation between REM or rapid eye movement sleep cycles, dreaming, and the brain. All of a sudden, once there were measurable brain correlates, then dreams became real! Decades earlier, of course, Freud, Jung, and others found that dreams provided a gateway to the so-called unconscious, or what Seth defines as subconscious mind, where repressed emotions, traumas, fears, and the like are stored. So modern depth psychology first understood that dreams were real and played an important role in healing emotional and psychosomatic disorders, but modern scientists in the disciplines of physics, chemistry, and biology still are not able to find any practical use for them.

Seth’s CU metaphor also maps directly onto another important theory – the universe as a hologram, a holistic view where every part contains the Whole. A hologram is a three-dimensional picture that appears on a two-dimensional surface. It is created through a process of imprinting multiple images onto a photosensitive chemical layer, usually on glass, from reflected laser light. If you break the hologram into pieces, and shine light on it, you still see a fuzzy version of the entire image in each piece. Thus, the Whole is seen in each of its parts. This metaphor suggests that the physical field is coupled with a hidden, source field (or fields). As such, it may help to expand current models to consider nested physical, subtle, and causal fields.

The holographic or holonomic metaphor was inspired by neuroscientist Karl Pribram (b.1919) and physicist David Bohm (1917-1992) in the 1980’s. Pribram wanted to understand how the brain stored and accessed memories. Evidence suggested that humans and animals with brain damage, or even with portions removed, still retained unbroken memories. So Pribram began to suspect that memory was not localized to specific portions of the brain, but distributed somehow. Bohm worked with Pribram on a holonomic theory to explain how memory is not stored in cells, but in wave interference patterns. Bohm wanted to see if the micro world of quantum principles scaled up to the macro world of brains. In Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980) he speculated on the existence of a explicate and implicate orders, similar to Seth’s Frameworks 1 and 2, whose quantum potentials were infinite.

And yet, Seth named four Frameworks of consciousness. (45) So from his perspective, Seth discerned at least three significant differentiations before matter is created in Framework 1 terms. What’s missing from these holographic theories, then, is some variation of the “Great Chain of Being” because they reduce physical reality to the effects of a single hidden, source reality. Further, some “quantum mystics” equate this hidden field with God, but that puts Primal Cause outside of physical reality, and doesn’t adequately explain how consciousness actually creates the physical field.

According to Seth, All-That-Is is both immanent in the physical field (Framework 1) and transcendent in the subtle field (Frameworks 2-4 ) and causal field (Primary Pyramid Gestalts). Also, there may be additional Frameworks of consciousness before we reach the Causal Field, as hinted by Vedanta, Vajrayana, and other systems. The main difference, then, is that Seth’s CUs consist of simultaneous immanent whole/parts within the transcendent Whole, simultaneous causal CU, subtle EE, and physical quantum aspects, and most holographic theories are limited to a physical and complementary nonphysical source field.

Simultaneous Time (Inner and Outer Egos)

According to Seth, Frameworks 2-4 (the subtle field) are part of a spacious present in which all physical time is simultaneous. So what kind of psychological structure is required for this kind of perception? Seth calls it the inner ego, and Jane Roberts called it the source self in her Aspect Psychology work. This is ontologically similar to what premodern systems refer to as soul, sambhogakaya, and manomayakosha.

So think of outer ego, our waking sense of identity, as a construction of Framework 1 (physical field), and think of inner ego as a construction of Frameworks 2-4 (subtle field). Generally speaking, then, All-That-Is (causal-CUs-as-subtle-EEs-as-quantum-fields) creates nine basic dimensions of time through a nested “particle focus” in Framework 1, and “wave focus” in Frameworks 2-4. That is, there are nine foundational time dimensions that exist within Frameworks 1-4 (physical and subtle fields).

The Now for the outer ego’s “particle focus” is anchored in the PRESENT/present within a given Framework 1 (physical field). On the other hand, the Now for the inner ego’s subtle “wave focus” may be anchored in any of the nine basic dimensions for each “particle focus” aspect. Thus, from the perspective of the inner ego there are multiple simultaneous Framework 1s (physical fields) to manage. In other words, the subtle field’s main function is to act as a mediating structure – a manager and gateway – to a vast multiverse of massively parallel, simultaneous Framework 1s. This is part of what Seth means when he talks about “simultaneous time.”

Our outer ego normally perceives only the Framework 1 that we are focused in during waking state. Our PRESENT/Present perspectives create the perception of literally being the center of the cosmos. It’s no wonder, then, that premodern humans believed, and still believe, that the Earth was the center of the universe. It’s a somewhat logical, though egocentric, assumption that when we are standing still everything else moves around us and our perception. Within any Framework 1, the “particle focus” of CUs-as-EEs-as-quantum-fields creates the perception of PRESENT/present through the actual construction of space-time and energy-matter, but we’re getting ahead of the story.

As we saw, in evolutionary terms our Framework 1 began with the explosive creation of the physiosphere followed eventually by the emergence of biospheres. I use the plural because the odds that Earth is a singular, random cosmic accident are infinitesimal, so biological life probably has emerged on other planets, too. As far as we know, biospheres emerge on planets within solar systems with a sun, but our Earth is the only example for which we have current evidence. However, the basic model outlined by Seth hints that biospheres and noospheres could emerge in endless variations in our Framework 1 alone! For example, planets could manifest a biosphere based upon different percentages of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and other basic molecules. This in turn, would effect what kind of physical forms from which the noosphere emerges.

In our Framework 1, current evidence suggests that our noosphere is only several million years old, and spent most of that time aware only of the PRESENT/present. According to Jean Gebser in The Ever-Present Origin (1949) and Ken Wilber in Up from Eden (1981), perception of PRESENT/past and PRESENT/future is a relatively recent noospheric cognitive development, one that coincides with the emergence of the self-aware or self-reflexive outer ego. The invention of written history, for instance, is only around six thousand years old, though oral histories go back much further, perhaps over a hundred thousand years. The cognition of history thus included new dimensions of PRESENT/past and PRESENT/future within the noospheric “particle focus.” In the context of sixteen billion years of evolution this is a very, very recent development.

Images from Waking Up in Time (1998) by Peter Russell.	Our noosphere began around the time of Homo Erectus.

As seen above, our noospheric perception of past, present, and future is a relatively recent construction. Even though we moderns and postmoderns take it for granted, the fact is that countless eons had to pass before we, as inner egos, could manifest in physical forms supported by a viable biosphere. And all along, our inner egos within Frameworks 2-4 worked, created, and played in what appears to be the “background” from our noospheric Framework 1 perspective. This is another important subplot in Seth’s postmodern conscious creation mythos.

Now, how do these nine dimensions of time impact the physiosphere and biosphere?

To reprise Seth’s theory, CUs-as-EEs-as-quantum-fields create the foundational physiosphere through a process “before the beginning” of involution. Seth did not use that term, but the description of his process matches that of other emanationist or involutionary theories that also account for subsequent evolution (e.g., Aurobindo/1949, Murphy & Leonard/1995, Wilber/1995). Seth claims that all manifest forms of space-time and energy-matter contain consciousness, and thus perspectives and experience. The most common problem people have conceptualizing this is that they anthropomorphosize matter. But it’s ridiculous to think of the quantum vacuum of space, air molecules, clouds, cars, rocks, and rivers as “little people.” Or is it? Actually, it’s not that ridiculous to someone in prerational, egocentric, and preconventional stages of development. So “rocks as little people” is valid and real at those stages of noospheric development! But again, there are three broad spheres of consciousness evolution to date – physios, bios, and noos. Only the noosphere is capable of confusing physios or bios as noos.

Therefore, “in the beginning,” during and right after the Big Bang, the physiosphere was manifest as spirit-in-phyios as consciousness. Though this was the beginning of time in our present Framework 1 as we physically know it, energy-matter – spirit-in-phyios – has always existed. There is no beginning or end to spirit-in-phyios. This is inherent in Seth’s “grid of perception” metaphor explored earlier. Recall that the “grid” gets handed over, reused, reformatted, reconstructed. In other words, in terms of linear time, it gets recycled after reaching a teleological endpoint (e.g. Teilhard’s Omega Point). So there may be endless physical cycles (e.g. Hindu Yugas). Thus, when any biosphere emerges in the “grid of perception,” spirit-in-phyios morphs into spirit-as-bios, which transcends and includes spirit-in-physios.

The actual self-reflexive experience of time as past/present/future only occurs once that stage of the noosphere emerges as researched by Gebser and Wilber. Wilber, after Russian philosopher Berdyaev (1874-1948), simplifies the historical stages of noospheric outer ego development as subconscious (prepersonal), conscious (self-reflexive/personal), and superconscious (transpersonal). Thus, the nine dimensions of time shown above are not experienced by the physiosphere or biosphere in the same way as the noosphere. All spheres are conscious and experience, but we begin to see an increase in the depth of consciousness and experience in the noosphere through the emergence of self-reflexive awareness.

So the self-reflexive outer ego became aware of time relationships that are not found in earlier and less complex, less whole, less evolved, and thus less conscious spheres and stages of evolution. Keep in mind that this is a broad systems theory overview of human development that deals with the center of gravity or average mode of consciousness through long periods of history. On the individual level, since every lifetime begins at stage one, or prepersonal, there are no guarantees how many abilities will develop within any particular lifetime or cultural era. Therefore, overall development is still nonlinear because we may have lifetimes that are more or less evolved in the past or the future. For example, we may be highly developed Cro-Magnon shaman in our past and a severely handicapped or dysfunctional individual in our future. The permutations are endless.

Finally, the nine dimensions of time also show how each noospheric lifetime simultaneously relates to other lifetimes within the same Framework 1, regardless of their overall stages of development. For instance, a lifetime in 1005 BCE is PAST/present in relation to my lifetime in 2005, which is my PRESENT/present. In turn, a lifetime in 3005 CE is a FUTURE/present in relation to my lifetime in 2005. However, 1005 BCE, 2005 CE, and 3005 CE exist all at once from the perspective of my inner ego’s “wave focus.” Thus, my PRESENT/present while appearing absolute to my “particle focus” is simultaneously the PAST/present to my 2,850 CE lifetime and FUTURE/present of my 1005 BCE lifetime. This is another example of what Seth meant by “simultaneous time” as an expression of multidimensional personality.

If we scale this time matrix up to, say, five hundred lifetimes managed by a single inner ego within the same Framework 1, the nonlinear interrelationships scale up to mind-boggling proportions. It hints at the complexity of our inner ego, and also provides a model in which to better understand various kinds of interdimensional “bleedthroughs” between simultaneous lifetimes, for example, what we consider paranormal phenomena like lucid dreaming, near-death experiences, alien encounters, transpersonal healing, poltergeist activity, channeling, and more. At the very least, Seth’s concept of “simultaneous time” suggests that each of us exist within a vast nonlinear psychological structure with simultaneous causal, subtle, and physical characteristics that we’re only beginning to map.

The Inner Ego (Probable Selves, Counterparts, Reincarnation, and Karma)

As we have seen, the inner ego is a vast multidimensional structure designed to manage physios, bios, and noos in multiple simultaneous Framework 1s. There is plenty of evidence for its existence found in premodern and modern cultures. For instance, the Tibetan dakinis, Greek gods and goddesses, Platonic forms, Whiteheadian Eternal Objects, and Jungian archetypes are all translations of the inner ego. My favorite is the Buddhist icon Avalokiteshvara, seen here with dozens of arms and heads representing multiple simultaneous lifetimes. Jane Roberts experienced a version of this “wave focus” and translated it as heroic dimensions and heroic personages in Psychic Politics (1976). All these are translations into noospheric “particle focus” terms of the multidimensional “wave focus” of the inner ego in the subtle field.

The “simultaneous time” charts above also suggest how other Sethian concepts like probable selves, probable universes, counterparts, reincarnational selves, and karma are managed by the inner ego. Again, it is a BIG psychological structure!

“Reincarnation simply represents probabilities in a time context – portions of the [subtle] self that are materialized in historical contexts. Period. All kinds of time – backward and forward – emerge from the basic unpredictable nature of consciousness [CUs], and are due to ‘series’ of significances. Each [physical] self born in time will then pursue its own probable realities from that standpoint [i.e., a ‘particle focus’].” (46)

Probable selves are fragments of outer egos that splinter off into probable Framework 1s to become probable outer egos. Seth gives examples of parents who have two children in this Framework 1, but also have three children in others, or only one, or none. Seth is not clear on what forces cause the splintering action, but existing examples seem to involve major life-changing choices like probable marriages, children, jobs, death, new homes, and the like as opposed to what shoes should I wear today or will it be tea or coffee with breakfast. Therefore, the splintering action is caused largely by noospheric free will.

So again, the inner ego and its “wave focus” are designed to manage all probable selves and Framework 1s along with concomitant outer egos and multiple “particle foci.” This means that from the perspective of the inner ego, each physical lifetime includes a series or cluster of branched probable births and deaths. This is a parsimonious design that explores many more choices than those available in a single, linear, straight-line reality. It also hints that Framework 1 is indeed a massively parallel multiverse and wholly nondeterministic, because all choices are explored by the inner ego. It is only from the perspective of the outer ego that specific choices and roads not taken occur.

Therefore, conventional belief systems in reincarnation as a sequential affair within a single absolute flow of time is inadequate, because reincarnation does not occur in linear terms of cause and effect. In the physical field there is the construction of linear time, but it is not primary because it’s constructed by the CUs’ “particle focus,” which is simultaneously nested within the “wave focus” of the inner ego. Space-time is real, energy-matter is real, but they are constructions local to the physical field.

I don’t like the term “illusion,” which implies unreal or falsehood. The physical field is constructed, consciously created, but with great desire and intent to experience all its evolutionary potentials. In this postmodern worldview, humans are not cursed to suffer and thus try to escape the hellish wheel of samsara, an accident of birth, or inherently flawed by the “sins” of past or future actions. The physical field has great intention and purpose, and is big enough to contain simultaneous premodern, modern, and postmodern worldviews that interpret intention and purpose quite differently, as we have seen.

Further, and more importantly, Seth’s “simultaneous time” and multidimensional personality mean that future lifetimes are psychologically available to the outer ego. This may help explain certain dreaming, lucid dreaming, and projection experiences. For instance, in a lucid dream in January 2001 I met a woman with shoulder length blond hair in her early 30s, who recognized me as “one of her ancestors.” As such, I instantly knew she was a future self. She intimated that I was one of her well-known focuses and was so honored to actually meet me, face to face, in lucid state. I was really pleased too, having some sense of accomplishment in that moment point.

So I asked her how soon would I become well-known, and what exactly would I be known for, as I really had no strong inkling or sense that this is my purpose in this life, beyond the usual wanting to be a rock star phase of my mid-twenties. She said that it wasn’t appropriate for her to tell me the specifics, and that I should know better than to ask, as it would have intruded upon my own sense of discovery and creation. And in that moment, I realized that she was right, because she was aware of what for her was a PAST/present that was for me a FUTURE/present that I had yet to create. She didn’t wish to interfere.

And though I forget the specifics, I later had an opportunity to say the same thing to her, in effect that “you should know better than to ask that as well.” It was as if we were engaging something exceptional and unusual that changed both of our PRESENT/presents, and we became deeply aware of the responsibility involved in this interaction. Moreover, the future lives I’ve encountered to date don’t hold all the answers. They may be no further along in their development when we contact them than we are right now. The dynamics of attraction between personalities seem to be based upon similar intention. And that translates generally into Seth’s nine families of consciousness on one hand, and more specifically to vocation, career, and other complementary interests on the other.

In all cases, the inner ego manages and is aware of the process. It maintains the “veils of separation” or boundaries between selves for obvious reasons. We, as outer egos, fear what we don’t understand and have developed all sorts of psychological defense mechanisms to maintain mental equilibrium in waking and dream states. However, it’s easier in the dream state and altered states to contact other lifetimes at this stage of cultural development, because the outer ego is less constrained by linear time constructs. Further, once we learn to recognize their energetic signatures, transpersonal therapists can include “future-life progressions” to complement “past-life regressions” as a source of emotional and psychosomatic healing.

In terms of Seth’s “simultaneous time” and the nine basic dimensions explored earlier, this also implies that as more and more individuals begin to become aware of future lives or access to FUTURE/present, and past lives or access to PAST/present, the outer ego is evolving toward the functions of the inner ego. While individuals have done this in the past, and even distant past, to our current knowledge this has not ever occurred as an average mode of cultural consciousness. Rather than a pathology, it may be indicative of emergent capacities that will eventually emerge within the waking state.

A related phenomenon is contacting the dead in waking state. The previous example deals with contacting the living nested in massively parallel Framework 1s. Access to the dead, according to Elias, channeled by Mary Ennis, occurs in Framework 3, as one of the functions of Framework 3 is similar to the Tibetan Bardo or in between state. (47) Popular icons like Sylvia Browne, James Van Praagh, and John Edward are examples of mediums who allegedly contact the dead. Jane Roberts also experimented with this ability and cites anecdotal evidence of contacting the dead in The Seth Material (1969). The point, again, is that the postmodern outer ego seems to be evolving toward functions held by the inner ego. That is, evolving physical versions of subtle field capacities directly into the physical field in waking state.

Another related phenomenon is the counterpart thesis, as Robert Butts called it – simultaneous “reincarnational selves” that share or overlap within the same periods of history. For instance, we can have four or more lifetimes that share this PRESENT/present, and simultaneously three more that may have been born decades before our birth but died in our PAST/present or are still alive, and six more who will be born during our PRESENT/present but continue after we die in a FUTURE/present. Counterparts further expand how Seth defines reincarnation more as simultaneous multiple incarnations and probable selves within massively parallel probable fields within Framework 1.

Also, there are startling implications of the counterpart thesis. Namely, when we go to war, it is possible that we are literally killing our selves! There are many examples in the American Civil War of families fighting on opposite sides, and even in the same battles. How many counterparts have actually met on the battle field throughout history? The permutations quickly become mind-boggling. Still, due to the overall stages of evolution to date, we simply have not yet collectively awakened to these inner familial relationships known within the subtle field to our inner ego.

So how do these concepts impact conventional belief systems of karma as a “cosmic law of cause and effect”? If Seth is correct or at least in the ballpark with his ontology and cosmology, then the conventional notion of karma has been highly distorted by premodern traditions. This is not to deny premodern interpretations, just to say that there have been some really bad cases of “whisper down the lane” from those sages who intuited the concept and its subsequent translation through various lineages. But this is what our integral approach is designed to tease out through extensive cross-comparison.

In terms of the inner ego and subtle field, then, not only does past cause future, but future simultaneously causes past. Though this seems paradoxical, it really isn’t. Seth does not say that the main flow of consciousness evolution is just from past to present in our Framework 1, but that it’s complemented by psychological processes that allow access to multiple FUTURE/presents that we don’t yet fully understand. This is not to say there is no karma whatsoever, just that it, along with conventional notions of reincarnation, suffers from interpretations biased by linear, sequential perception. Thus, there is some kind of karma in terms of our vast inner ego and the actions and beliefs of all our personalities. It’s just not purely linear, one life after another until we reach enlightenment and jump off the wheel of samsara. According to Seth, there are simultaneous, nested linear and nonlinear aspects within our psychology. This is what Seth means when he talks about multidimensional personality.

It’s obvious that all our actions cause and effect other actions, so this is not to suggest that Seth offers a license for anything goes. Just the opposite: we each hold a tremendous responsibility to ourselves, and all our personalities, not to mention those with whom we share our PRESENT/present. Every choice, action, and decision matters and has consequences, and we’ll explore this in depth later in the section on Sethics.

So this is not to deny but clarify premodern concepts of linear reincarnation and karma as literal cause and effect where we are punished in the next life for sins in this life. For as we have seen, there are multiple future lives, and these may effect the past in complementary ways, for example, as a kind of psychological “bleedthrough” that gets misinterpreted as pathology, when it’s merely a natural symptom of the psyche’s attempt to heal itself. Transpersonal psychologists call these “spiritual crises.” But there are also less traumatic potentials that involve the reception of inspiration, solutions to problems, education, and more.

For example, I had a lucid dream in 1998 during a period of intense introspection in which I encountered a future self, an adult female named Shera. The dream began with a face to face encounter. She had a crew-cut-like short hair. She was smaller than me, about five and a half feet tall, but resembled my face from a childhood portrait. She was in her early thirties. Her eyes were piercing, and I was initially attracted to her. As I made an movement towards her, a sexual advance, I suddenly realized that this was inappropriate. That is, my innate moral intuition prevented me from going any further with the encounter. Her hypnotic gaze is forever burned into my memory. She compassionately understood where I was at in terms of my development, and appreciated the challenges I faced. It was a short encounter, but one of the first that I discussed with one of my teachers, and verified that it was indeed a future aspect self. (48)

So the implications of access to future lives and FUTURE/present are very important. It means that physical perception and cognition are not limited to the “inheritance of past occasions” (Whitehead), nor are they limited to “involutionary givens” (Wilber). It also means that we can literally time travel to our PAST/present or FUTURE/present because they already exist within massively parallel Framework 1s managed by the inner ego. However, there are psychological checks and balances between the inner ego and all its personalities that we don’t yet fully understand. These prevent massive bleedthroughs and unnecessary trauma to outer egos whose identities become threatened by seemingly external and intrusive thoughts, visions, or altered states.

Again, regular access to PAST/present, PRESENT/present, and FUTURE/present perspectives may be an indicator that the postmodern outer ego, generally speaking, is evolving toward the functions of the inner ego. Perhaps this kind of cognitive capacity is an emergent trait that will help define the psychosphere as an average mode of consciousness? Could these kinds of paranormal capacities foreshadow what the fourth great stage of consciousness evolution that transcends and includes the noosphere will be like? Phenomena like the Seth material that provide maps and practices to smooth the way may foreshadow what lies ahead.

Finally, it’s trendy today to imagine that nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality, and other computer-based technologies will drive human evolution by enhancing capacities and life span. For example, Hans Moravec (b.1948) in Mind Children (1988) and Ray Kurzweil (b.1948) in The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999) claim that downloading our consciousness into intelligent robots will provide human immortality in the twenty-first century, as processing speeds increase and costs decrease. But what if their work is a well intentioned but slightly misguided preview of emergent mental capacities and technologies based upon the vast multidimensional Self that we already exist within? The inner ego is already immortal, and seeks out physical experiences for the sheer joy of experience. Also, an outer ego who is aware of its multidimensional source has no fear of physical death. Perhaps Moravec and Kurzweil could design machines that make our inevitable deaths easier by accelerating outer ego development to the point where it awakens to its true multidimensional identity? Now that would be an intelligent machine!

Additional Involutionary Concepts

The simultaneous time charts above help us conceptualize how the inner ego functions, and emerging potentials for the outer ego. Thus far we’ve focused mainly on the concepts germane to Seth’s creation mythos. However, the Seth material contains a host of metaphysical concepts that shed further light on the relationships between the outer ego in the physical field (Framework 1) and inner ego in the subtle field (Frameworks 2-4). For example:

• Blueprints are macro archetypes or involutionary givens that influence the collective direction of all inner egos involved with any civilization and historical era in any Framework 1. They are not predetermined, fixed, and static like Platonic forms, but living, dynamic, subtle energy currents that inform involutionary and evolutionary processes.
• Cordellas function as communications blueprints for “translating” all source energy from its potential subtle Framework 2 state into physical Framework 1 constructions. These source “alphabets” imbue quantum structures with an innate tension toward increased complexity as evolutionary physios, bios, and noos, including a predisposition for languages, music, and art.
• Families of consciousness are one way to imagine how sentient, innate intention in Frameworks 2-4 (subtle field) creates involutionary potentials that fuel all evolutionary processes in Framework 1 (physical field).
• Life clouds are a metaphor for causal personality essences that seed various subtle and physical fields.
• Master events are macro-level nonphysical source events that explore all probable outcomes to seek the most efficient and preferred lines of probabilities for physical fields.
• Mechanics of transition (afterdeath experience) are the process the outer ego encounters after physical death in Frameworks 2 & 3. Similar to the Tibetan Bardo or in between state, it is a process that involves taking stock of the previous life, opportunities to remanifest as a new personality in the physical field or transitioning toward an inner ego in the subtle field.

• Mental enzymes are micro-level catalysts used by the inner ego for constructions in any Framework 1.
• Mental genes are micro-level archetypes used by the inner ego for constructions in any Framework 1.
• Sexuality, Gender, and Preference. The inner ego is the transsexual source of all gender and sexual orientation – “a bank from which sexual affiliations are drawn.” This means that all outer egos are inherently bisexual by design to some degree (thinking also of Carl Jung’s (1875-1961) anima and animus). Therefore, bisexual, gay, and lesbian orientations are not pathological, but inherent choices for physical experience.

Seth also used entity names to identify the inner ego. For example, he referred to Jane Roberts as Ruburt, and husband Robert Butts as Joseph. Seth also called students in Jane’s ESP class by entity names. His intent was to personalize the inner ego, and make it real. Jane Roberts developed this concept further in her “God of Self” concept in The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (An Aspect Psychology Book) (1981). Again, the idea is that the inner ego serves as a direct, personalized, mediator to All-That-Is without the need for any middle folk.

The use of entity names continues as there are at least two subsequent North American channelers, Mary Ennis (Elias), and Serge Grandbois (Kris), who also use essence names to acknowledge this deeper, subtle identity. From personal experience, it adds an intimate and expansive feeling to the personal interactions during a channeling session.

Lastly, the nature of CUs’ “wave focus” and “particle focus” may help us better interpret paranormal experiences. Altered states like astral projection, lucid dreaming, near-death experiences, alien encounters, extraordinary athletic feats, channeling, and superconsciousness all involve some degree of access to the subtle field, and beyond. However, these experiences are always translated into physical and social terms we can understand. Our interpretations are always dependent on our overall biopsychosocial development in the physical field. They can range from prerational, to rational, to transrational. So, it is critical to recognize the many differences between pre- and transrational interpretations of altered states, since both are nonrational.

States and Fields of Consciousness

Thus far, we have talked about physical, subtle, and causal fields in the context of Seth’s creation myth. As we just saw, altered states are an important part of the bigger picture. But how do they actually relate to physical, subtle, and causal fields? Let’s begin with the fact that every twenty-four hours we cycle through waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless states. According to the premodern Vedantic traditions, these correspond directly to the physical (waking), subtle (dreaming), and causal (deep dreamless) fields we’ve explored thus far.

The test is our degree of alert awareness in each of those states. In the waking state most of us experience some kind of alert awareness. In lucid dreams and astral projections, we experience alert awareness in the subtle field. In deep dreamless sleep, sustained experience of alert awareness occurs in the formless causal field. The sages of Advaita Vedanta, Vajrayana, Dzogchen, and many other traditions provide substantial evidence for this. For example, in Talks with Ramana Maharshi (2001), Maharshi (1879–1950) repeatedly states that our aspect of Alert Awareness which remains during waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep states is evidence of Causal Consciousness, Buddha-mind, or All-That-Is.

Now that is another loaded statement, but is something we can test out for ourselves through meditation and dream yoga practices, for example. Though meditation takes persistence, like learning to play the piano or fly a jet, it is a time-tested paradigm that discloses direct experience and data. It can be confirmed or rejected by a community of practitioners adequate to the paradigm. If you really want to prove this through first person experience, that is one sure way to go. Research shows that it takes approximately six years to become adequate in meditation practice, so this requires a serious commitment. Personally, I have done various practices for the past twenty-nine years, including the many exercises in the Seth material, that have proven Maharshi’s claim to be valid, and not a source of pathology or delusion.

Additionally, there are practices detailed by Seth to access past lives, racial and species information, and inner ego consciousness through the use of alpha states. Seth outlined a simple map in Seth Speaks (49).

There are five main subdomains:

A1a (enhanced creativity, concentration, study, refreshment, rest, meditation)

» A1b (horizontal into alternate realities)

Group/mass probabilities, racial matters, civilization

» A1c (greater mobility, moving further “away” from present physical laws)

A2 (reincarnational selves, issues, and beliefs)

A3 (mass issues, geographical histories, racial info, species of animals)

A4 (“beneath” matter, source of civilization-changing inspiration, available in sleep state, personal conversions originate here) (50)

A5 (seldom reached, meeting ground of clear communication for any aspect self, no-time, out-of-body experiences can occur here, interaction with Speakers imaged as angels, gods, disciples)

This is a nonlinear spectrum of consciousness. In other words, we don’t necessarily move through one to get to the next sequentially, we must learn to shift mental and neural frequencies. For example, our brain/mind acts like a radio that receives transmissions over various “stations,” and we can learn to change stations. The key is intention and desire. Again, adequate access to these states takes time and practice, but Seth also provides exercises in which to test out the waters. For example, see Seth Speaks (1994) and Susan Watkin’s Conversations with Seth (1999) which features experiments with alpha states.

However, Seth’s alpha states don’t map directly to current dream research maps. For instance, dream researchers define the alpha state as a relaxed state that precedes sleep. It occurs from roughly eight to fourteen cycles per second in the brain. It is possible that Seth’s five areas are subsets of the alpha state, but until further research is done we won’t know in empirical terms.

Meanwhile, dream research remains in its infancy in the West, having only recently acknowledged lucid dreaming, but mostly from a modern materialist perspective. To date researchers have mapped four main brain states, though there may be others that current equipment cannot yet detect:

1. Beta – 14-100 cycles per second, normal alert waking state. Higher range associated with anxiety, dis-ease, fight or flight conditions.

» Gamma – a subset of Beta, 40 cycles per second, but range from 24 to 70 cycles per second. Associated with an alert waking state, these have been found in meditative and lucid dreaming (REM) states. (Included as a subset because they are assoicated with a sense of clarity and wakefulness in the brain and mind, even though the rest of the body may be in a sleep, meditative, or trance state.)

2. Alpha – 8-13.9 cycles per second, just below the normal state of alertness. Associated with light relaxation, daydreaming, and self-reflection. A non-drowsy, yet relaxed, tranquil state of inward awareness that occurs before sleep. Beginning access to subconscious mind.
3. Theta – 4-7.9 cycles per second, deep relaxation, reverie, lucid dreaming, mental imagery, meditation, increased memory and focus, deep-rooted memories, and inspiration. Characterized mainly by light sleep, rapid eye movement (REM) dreams, and hallucinations. Hypnogogic imagery, deep meditation, access to subconscious mind.
4. Delta – .1-3.9 cycles per second, the deepest, most rejuvenating stage of dreamless, non-REM sleep and deep meditation. It also produces stress reduction, which can promote healing of the body. Human growth hormones released and loss of body awareness.

Thus, we can map these four “normal” brain states to physical, subtle, and causal fields:

• Waking States (beta, alpha) - Physical Field
• Dreaming States (alpha, theta) - Subtle Field
• Deep Dreamless State (delta) - Causal Field

However, nonordinary states feature admixtures of the above:

• Meditative (beta, theta, and delta)
• Drug-induced (beta, alpha, theta, or delta)
• Lucid dreams/Out-of-Body Projections (beta and theta)
• Channeling (beta, alpha, theta, and delta)
• Near-death experiences (none!)
• Peak experiences (beta, alpha, theta, and delta)

Again, more research needs to be done to better understand how the brain functions during these states. The main point is that postmodern worldviews have identified and continue to explore the important relationship between states and fields of consciousness.

Finally, Seth’s alpha states, particularly A3-A5, sound remarkably similar to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s (1875-1961) collective unconscious. This was Jung’s attempt to connect the dots, so to speak, between individual inner symbols found in dreams, and universal collective symbols he called archetypes. For example, the divine mother, father god, and trickster appear in many cultures in dreams, myths, and art. While Jung was criticized for engaging metaphysics that can’t be empirically tested, Seth and other traditions provide time worn praxis to test the waters through direct experience. Again, see Conversations with Seth (1999) for anecdotal evidence from ESP class students who experimented with Seth’s alpha states.

Toward Dream-Art Sciences

“The true art of dreaming is a science long forgotten by your world. Such an art, pursued, trains the mind in a new kind of consciousness – one that is equally at home in either existence, well-grounded and secure in each. Almost anyone can become a satisfied and productive amateur in this art-science but its true fulfillment takes years of training, a strong sense of purpose, and a dedication – as does any true vocation.

“To some extent, a natural talent is a prerequisite for such a true dream-art scientist. A sense of daring, exploration, independence, and spontaneity is required. Such a work is a joy. There are some such people who are quite unrecognized by your [modern] societies, because the particular gifts involved are given zero priority. But the talent still exists.

“... A practitioner of this ancient art learns first of all how to become conscious in normal [outer ego] terms, while in the sleep state. Then he becomes sensitive to the different subjective alterations that occur when dreams begin, happen, and end. He familiarizes himself with the symbolism of his own dreams, and sees how these do or do not correlate with the exterior symbols that appear in the waking life that he shares with others.” (51)

Learning to control and access various states of consciousness is hardly new. The contemplative traditions in the East and West have long known about them, and developed methods to access them. However, many of these premodern traditions have not yet integrated the breakthroughs of modern science, for example, the insights gleaned from modern cognitive and developmental psychologies and therapies. Ken Wilber’s Integral Psychology (2000) is the first to explore a full spectrum model of the mind, including physical, subtle, and causal fields and states. While it serves as a solid theoretical tome, the actual paradigms required to produce data remain in their infancy.

Seth outlined what he called dream-art science in The “Unknown” Reality, Vol. 1 (1977). This is another theoretical tome, but it makes a solid case for the inclusion of what he calls the high intellect, an epistemology, or way of knowing truth, that integrates reason and deep intuitions, left and right brain functions, and various states of consciousness. As exemplars, he outlined the dream-art scientist (generic scientist), complete physician (healer), and true mental physicist. All three integrate first person experience, emotions, and intuition, as well as third person objectivity and empiric-analytic skills.

These exemplars, offered in 1977, along with Wilber’s more recent work and those who follow, suggest what authentic postmodern sciences that integrate a viable theory of consciousness might look like. They would of necessity expand their epistemology to include empiricism (five senses), rationalism (logic), and mysticism (inner senses, translogic). Their paradigms would include intensive training in all three general areas, with specialization in chosen areas like healing, engineering, physics, anthropology, political science, etc. They would also expand their ontology and cosmology to include a minimum of causal, subtle, and physical fields of consciousness.

Seth’s moniker of dream-art science includes expanded ways of knowing and being. However, this doesn’t mean that we throw reason and logic out the window at the expense of including dreaming and art. On the contrary, dream-art science includes the very best of scientific methodologies that have been developed to date. In the most general view, these methods include three fundamental strands:

1. paradigms, praxis, exemplars
2. engage step 1 to produce experience and data
3. verification or falsification by a community of peers adequate to step 1

The above three strands are intended to create solid, predictable models and results in physical, biological, and psychological disciplines. Though there is much work still to be done, there are many heralds at the bridge whose recent work is helping to pave the way toward postmodern and eventually dream-art sciences. The following is only a small sample, but certainly represent the “best of class” of the pioneers of postmodern sciences.

Aldous Huxley’s (1894-1963) The Perennial Philosophy (1945) and Huston Smith’s (b.1919) Forgotten Truth (1976) resurrected the importance of premodern wisdom supposedly debunked by modern sciences, namely, Causal Consciousness, the “Great Chain of Being,” and transpersonal ways of knowing reality. Smith also included the concept of scientism, coined in the 1940s by sociologists to describe those scientists who unthinkingly accept scientific theories as unquestioned Truths, or even falsify data for personal gain.

Psychologist Charles Tart (b.1937) in States of Consciousness (1983) outlined a systems approach to human consciousness, one that recognized the inherent bias that conventional science is pursued in only the waking state. Dreaming, deep sleep, meditative, and drug-induced altered states are considered unreal, out of bounds, pathological, and something that will ruin your career. And yet, Tart insightfully concluded that “we need to develop state-specific sciences. Insofar as a ‘normal’ [state of consciousness] is a semi-arbitrary way of structuring consciousness, a way that loses some human potentials while developing others, the sciences we have developed are one-state sciences [i.e., waking state]. They are limited in important ways. Our ordinary sciences have been very successful in dealing with the physical world, but not very successful in dealing with particularly human psychological problems. If we apply scientific method to developing sciences within various [altered states], we can evolve sciences based on radically different perceptions, logics, and communications, and so gain new views complementary with our current ones.” (p.8)

Again, no one is talking about throwing out the rational modern baby with the premodern fairy-tale bathwater. This clearly hints at transrational sciences that transcend yet include conventional, waking state rationality, and complements them with dreaming, meditation, and other altered states. Further, in Mind Science: Meditation Training for Practical People (2001), Tart explores how premodern meditation practices can be integrated. “... I think we have some possibilities for a science of consciousness that uses concentrative meditation, vipassana meditation and sensing, looking, listening. I think we have possibilities to create a network of people who practice meditation, who are aware of biases, who eventually begin to see and filter out their biases, who begin pooling their knowledge, both observational and theoretical – and this may be a vital part of developing a real, Western science of consciousness. And such a science of consciousness could include state-specific work within various [altered states] also.” (p.165)

In Exploring the Word of Lucid Dreaming (1990), Stephen LaBerge (b.1948) provides evidence of lucid dream research along with dozens of practices to explore. He also coined the term oneironauts to describe people who explore dream states. He formed The Lucidity Institute to do further research on dream states, incubation, and practical applications. His work was preceded by Robert Monroe who detailed his personal experiences with lucid dreaming and astral projection in three books, Journey Out of the Body (1977), Far Journeys (1982), Ultimate Journey (1994). Monroe founded The Monroe Institute where they developed hemi-sync technology that entrains both brain hemispheres to increase access to altered states and programs to develop personal skills.

In Meaning and Medicine (1991) Larry Dossey (b.1940) outlined three eras of medicine that hints at how something like Seth’s complete physicians may develop. Era I is the modern allopathic model that treats body as a mechanism only and disease as something to be cured by doctors, not by patients. Mental disease is not in their domain. Era II includes mind and body with emotions the primary interface between mind and body. Neuropeptides form the biology of emotion. Era III includes nonlocal approaches such as prayer and remote healing. Consciousness is considered primary, not matter. Era II medicine, now called alternative medicine, has rapidly grown during the last fifteen years. Era III approaches have also been recently formulated by Marilyn Schlitz and sixty others including Deepak Chopra, Ken Wilber, Larry Dossey, Candace Pert, and Dean Ornish in Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine (2005).

Michael Murphy (b.1930) in The Future of the Body (1992) brilliantly detailed what he calls synoptic, multidisciplinary, or integral empiricism that influenced Wilber, and many others. “The acquisition and verification of data from mainstream science, psychical research, comparative studies of religious experience, and other fields that are ordinarily kept apart by scientists and scholars. This approach utilizes experience acquired through sensory, kinesthetic, and the extrasensory modalities.” (p. 589) Murphy outlined the three great stages of evolution in the physical field to date: the physical (physiosphere), biological (biosphere), and psychosocial (noosphere). He offers extensive cross cultural evidence in metanormal capacities, and outlines integral transformative practices to enhance personal and collective development. “... the self-evident break with normal consciousness and behavior, the transcendence of certain needs, and the self-mastery of mind and flesh characteristic of metanormal functioning would, if realized by enough people, create a new kind of life on this planet. This new life, it seems to me, would involve new types of social interaction, new styles of energy consumption, greater care for the physical environment, more wisdom in dealing with human aggressiveness, new rituals of work and play. As it began to appear among large groups, such functioning might not appear at first so dramatic that it comprised a new kind of evolution, but it would, I believe, eventually exhibit features and regularities we cannot predict from the pattern of ordinary human existence.” (p.30)

In The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World (1993) Amit Goswami (b.1936) outlined how material realism (modern Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm) was no longer an adequate model to explain phenomena revealed by quantum physics. He proposed a solution he called monistic idealism drawn in part from Advaita Vedanta (nondual) that included consciousness as Primal Cause, not a mere epiphenomenon of matter. “Is [modern] science compatible with monistic idealism? If not, we must abandon metaphysics when doing science, adding to the looming crisis of faith. If yes, we must reformulate [a postmodern] science in accordance with the demands of philosophy. ... monistic idealism is not only compatible with quantum physics but even essential to its interpretation. The paradoxes of the new physics disappear when we examine them from the point of view of monistic idealism. Furthermore, quantum physics combined with monistic idealism gives us a powerful paradigm with which we can resolve some of the paradoxes of mysticism, such as the question of transcendence and plurality. Our work points toward the beginnings of an idealist science and the revitalization of religions.” (p.57) Goswami also began to integrate various psychological approaches including behaviorism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, etc. with philosophy and quantum physics to help further define consciousness in relation to its expression in material (body) and nonmaterial (mind) fields.

Important work has been sponsored by the Institute for Noetic Sciences founded in 1973 by Apollo moonwalker Edgar Mitchell (b.1930). In The Scientific Exploration of Consciousness: Toward an Adequate Epistemology (1994), Willis Harman (1918-1997) and Christian de Quincey (b.1949) argue for a postmodern epistemology (way of knowing truth), one that includes first person and intersubjective perspectives, in addition to conventional third person objectivity. They recommend “dedicated and lengthy training in psycho-spiritual discipline in order to test conceptual models of consciousness against the sharp edge of direct [first person] experience.” Further, “If at this point it sounds as though we are talking religion or spirituality as much as science it is because the new epistemology we are indicating transcends that distinction when we come to investigate consciousness.” (p.47) They laid a critical epistemological foundation toward a viable theory of consciousness, one that does not reduce human consciousness to quantum fields in the brain.

In The Radiance of Being: Understanding the Grand Integral Vision; Living the Integral Life (1995), psychologist Allan Combs (b.) outlines an integral theory of consciousness that features the Wilber-Combs Matrix, a preliminary way to map and interpret altered states of consciousness within overall stages of development. The idea is to begin to properly situate general human stages of development – preconventional, conventional, postconventional, post-postconventional – within physical, subtle, and causal fields of consciousness. This is a huge step forward because it integrates a premodern Vedantic version of the “Great Chain of Being” with the insights of modern evolutionary and developmental sciences. “The idea that people interpret and describe their experience of states of consciousness differently, according to their own developmental level, opens the door to a better understanding of why spiritual or religious encounters seem so different for different people.” (p.194) Wilber first outlined his version independently in A Sociable God: Toward a New Understanding of Religion (1983) as preliminary considerations toward developing a transpersonal sociology, one that mapped entire cultures. Their work further paves the way to integrate altered states into expanded scientific theories and methods.

Though it’s already been cited, Ken Wilber’s (b. 1949) Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution (1995) needs to be included in this sample. It contains the first comprehensive version (Wilber-4) of his postmodern theory of consciousness called AQAL (pronounced “ah-qwul”), which stands for “all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types.” It is the first synthesis of the world’s main knowledge and wisdom traditions from premodern, modern, and postmodern sources. Notably, Wilber integrated the concept of holons and holarchy, or the idea All-That-Is is constructed of wholes that are simultaneously parts, all the way up and all the way down. Wilber codified the twenty tenets of holons while also chronicling the involutionary and evolutionary action of Causal Consciousness. As mentioned earlier, the latest version (Wilber-5) integrates physical, subtle, and causal fields. It also outlines an integral methodological pluralism (IMP) that addresses eight foundational perspectives derived from his quadrants, and employs an integral post-metaphysical approach, a fancy way to describe an expanded epistemology based upon empiricism (five senses), rationalism (logic), and mysticism (inner senses, translogic). In this sense, Wilber may be the father of authentic dream-art sciences since his work synthesized so many premodern and modern knowledge systems to pave the way toward Seth’s exemplars. Thus, any viable postmodern theory of consciousness will have to contend with his comprehensive model.

Stanislav Grof (b.1931) co-founded transpersonal psychology in 1969 with Abraham Maslow (1908-1970). In Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research (2000), Grof summarized forty years of research that used altered (holotrophic) states induced by psychedelics and breathwork (pranayama) to explore perinatal and transpersonal experience that reach beyond outer egoic identity. He greatly expanded the work of Freud and Jung, and influenced the work of Ken Wilber. “My classification of transpersonal experiences is strictly phenomenological and not hierarchical; it does not specify the levels of consciousness on which they occur [e.g., as the Combs-Wilber matrix does]. It is, therefore, interesting to compare this scheme with Ken Wilber’s description of the levels of spiritual evolution that, according to him, follow the full integration of the body and mind (postcentauric levels of consciousness evolution in this terminology). It is not difficult to show the parallels between his developmental scheme and my cartography of transpersonal experiences. ... My own data are drawn from clinical observation in contemporary populations in Europe, North and South America, and Australia, complemented by some limited experience with Japanese and East Indian groups. My work thus provides empirical evidence for the existence of most of the experiences included in his scheme. It also shows that the descriptions in ancient spiritual sources are still to a great extent relevant for modern [and postmodern] humanity.” (p.65)

In Mind into Matter: A New Alchemy of Science and Spirit (2000), and Matter into Feeling (2002), physicist Fred Alan Wolf (b.1934) outlines what he terms the new alchemy which is consonant with Seth’s true mental physicist. He proposes the integration of empiricism, rationalism, and mysticism with the rigors of scientific method, again, combining subjective and objective experience, key factors missing from Darwinian models and theories. “So, can we in the [postmodern] world pass beyond the veil? ... I affirm that we can. That armed with the [premodern] ancient knowledge and ... modern physics, particularly quantum physics, we can rediscover what the ancients may have known. All we need are a few basic concepts – a new way of seeing the old way. I have given a name to these new ways of seeing; I call them the new alchemy. So, perhaps we can call ourselves new alchemists.” (p.7) “... our ultimate goal being to understand the sacred transmutation of mind into matter.” (p.9) Or simply put, how consciousness actually creates energy-matter and space-time.

In Radical Nature (2002), postmodern philosopher Christian de Quincey (b.1949) outlines a theory of consciousness and matter based upon the lineage of panpsychism or panexperientialism that extends over 2,500 years ago to Greek philosopher Pythagoras (582-496 BCE). “The central tenet of radical naturalism that matter is intrinsically sentient – it is both subjective and objective.” (p.48) “It is also the kind of epistemological shift that ... will be required for philosophers of mind to ‘crack’ the hard ontological problem of the mind-body relationships, and to bridge the epistemological explanatory gap, and for scientists to break the ‘mind barrier’ and develop a true science of consciousness.” (p.124-125) De Quincey’s theory also calls for all researchers to vigorously pursue a personal transformative practice, and include that in any research paradigm. His work expands that of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) who developed a process philosophy based upon actual events as processes, not things, substances, or static objects. Historically speaking, then, the Seth material is part of the panpsychist, panexperientialist, and radical naturalist traditions.

Though we already cited evolutionary theorist Ervin Laszlo’s (b.1932) Science and the Akashic Field (2004), we need to include The Connectivity Hypothesis (2003) which is the more technical version that preceded it. Laszlo’s Akashic Field is similar to Seth’s Framework 2 and subtle EEs. His work, along with David Bohm and others, have laid the initial scientific foundations to probe the surface aspects (Framework 2) of what we’ve been calling the subtle field. So his work shows a correlation between postmodern physics and Sethian metaphysics. The mathematical functions used in various branches of physics already dip into the subtle field though their paradigms don’t yet conceptualize their praxis in terms of states and fields of consciousness. Thus, modern physicists still wrestle with the many paradoxes and so-called counter-intuitive aspects of current theory. However, this will change significantly as we expand our ontological and epistemological models to include consciousness and first person experience as inherent aspects of matter, and focus on interrelated processes, not isolated stuff.

Lastly, William Tiller (b.1929), Walter Dibble (b.1948), and Michael Kohane (b.1953) have formulated a postmodern physics that is clearly a stepping stone toward Seth’s true mental physicist. In Conscious Acts of Creation: The Emergence of a New Physics (2001), they detail an expanded physics paradigm based upon a cosmology that acknowledges Causal Consciousness and consciousness-directed intention. While the mathematical principles upon which it is based have yet to be proven, early results are very encouraging. Simply put, they are exploring the impact of human intention on conditioning space, something that modern quantum physics does not yet recognize. They define the quantum vacuum not as empty nothingness, but infinitely potential somethingness.

To date, Tiller and colleagues have been able to produce significant changes in water temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, and DC magnetic field polarity effects, and accelerating in vitro development of fruit flies. They have developed a protocol in which two to six advanced meditators condition an IIED (Intention Imprinted Electrical Device) about the size of a nine volt battery. Tiller writes specific intention statements for each IIED that guides the meditator’s intentionality. The IIEDs are shipped to labs where they are put next to water and fruit fly samples for six months. The samples are measured and all state changes recorded. All four of their initial experiments produced significant changes well beyond statistical chance. Moreover, they noticed that their control labs gradually began to produce similarly significant results. That is, some kind of nonlocal wave entanglement or sympathetic resonance began to produce results without any IIEDs present in labs up to twenty miles away.

Tiller applies the principle of coherence, which is a highly organized energetic state between two or more systems, so that changes in one system simultaneously occur in other system. In musical terms, it's called sympathetic vibration. For example, when you strike a low C on a piano it causes other strings, including middle C, to vibrate without being struck. On the human scale, if enough people meditate, pray, or otherwise concentrate their intention, the effects on IIEDs potentiate exponentially. So group dynamics and focus are critical. If a person or group are disorganized, unfocused, or hampered, then they will not be able to generate the kinds of conditioned spaces that Tiller and group produce. It requires a loving, caring, and committed approach to the research. This is also why skeptics may not be able to initially reproduce the results until they themselves become adequate to the paradigm, which means personal transformation toward postconventional levels of cognition, emotion, and morals. Postconventional stages of development go hand in hand with this new science.

Tiller refers to the subtle field as a frequency domain, similar to Bohm’s quantum potential, that is interpenetrated within physical space-time. It contains sources of infinite potential energy for the physical field, similar to what Seth implies in his EEs or electromagnetic energy units. Tiller also talks about converting each laboratory to a sacred space, that is, literally conditioning the space through human intention similar to those found in premodern Cathedrals, meditation caves, and healing places like Lourdes, France.

The implications of their work is far reaching. It involves a radical expansion over traditional modern physics paradigms. It also opens the door to new technologies, including noninvasive medical treatments. For example, rather than treating cancer with poisonous chemicals or radiation, the specific subtle energy structure of tumors can be targeted and destroyed without even touching the body. The IIEDs simply manipulate the frequency domain of the tumor. Broken bones or torn ligaments can be healed in accelerated fashion, again with noninvasive manipulation of the subtle energy aspects. They are also working on several patents which includes something Tiller calls a “prana pump” that would allow individuals to begin to manipulate their subtle energy bodies and sacred spaces. Obviously, this is just a beginning, but one that clearly paves the way toward Seth’s dream-art sciences.

Now, at some point scientists will also learn to directly access the subtle field through meditative states, lucid dreams, and projections of consciousness – abilities that are still considered paranormal or metanormal by modern science. This will further change the paradigms and produce new, as yet undreamed of technologies. But if Seth is right, and CUs and EEs dream and have inner senses, then the causal and subtle fields have some kind of permanence interdependent with the physical field. Again, fields and states are two key attributes of All-That-Is. According to Seth we have causal selves (pyramid energy gestalts) and subtle selves (inner ego) already focused in these fields. Together, they co-involve and co-evolve the outer ego in the physical field.

In dreaming states, then, we alternately experience a version of the “wave focus” of our causal and subtle dreaming selves, and thus our dream memories are simply translations into the physical field of our ongoing activities there. Again, waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless states act as connective psychological tissue between the three great fields of All-That-Is. And as we saw earlier, evolution to date hints at the eventual emergence of subtle potentials into the physical, further concentrating and evolving the waking state toward as yet only imagined capacities.

We can see, from this short overview that we have a long way to go before something like Seth’s dream-art science emerges. And yet, at the very least, these trends show that postmodern worldviews are clearly emerging. Right now dream-art science is the stuff of science fiction, a promissory science, but we need to consider why Seth suggested them in the first place. Again, if evolution has a direction, pull, or telos toward increasing complexity, what if Teilhard, Aurobindo, Murphy, Leonard, Wilber, Roberts, and others are in the ballpark? What if humanity is only three-fifths of the way toward realizing Eden on Earth? Could it be that the next major phase in our collective development is toward the emergence of what we earlier called the psychosphere? If so, how and when it will happen is still a matter of collective worldview dynamics. (52)

Dream-art science will be a science of the soul, one that explores the “unknown” reality of the causal and subtle fields as they pertain to the physical field. Thus, the anthropology, archeology, sociology, zoology, etc. of the causal and subtle fields will require appropriate tools that include a highly trained “eye” of the soul – transrational mysticism, or what Seth simply calls the inner senses. The premodern traditions, particularly in the East, talk about a “science of religion” in this way, having long ago discerned the stages of development involved in training the inner senses.

The problem with causal and subtle explanations in the premodern East, however, was that they became too subtle- and causal-bound, and the physical field, in turn, became a Hellish cycle to be abandoned or escaped from. Quite the contrary with dream-art science. It demands a synthesis, a convergence of the best practices of premodern religions and modern sciences, and leaves the fairy tale baggage behind. This is, again, a postmodern attempt to heal the dissociation between modern science and premodern religion.

So much so, that authentic postmodern sciences will no longer be hampered by separation of “Church and State” – physics, biology, chemistry, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, theology, etc. will all be properly situated and integrated. Anything less will not be postmodern by definition. As Harman and De Quincey pointed out earlier, “the new epistemology we are indicating transcends [the] distinction” between science and religion altogether. It simply is no longer an issue! In the mean time, given the current state of worldview dynamics, separation of “Church and State” needs to continue, lest we mistakenly elevate literal interpretations of the Bible, Qu’ran, Torah, Sutra, and Tantra to empirical fact as we see with the Intelligent Design movement.

Therefore, authentic postmodern sciences will also include what German philosopher Jürgen Habermas (b.1929) calls a post-metaphysical approach. In part, this means putting aside the fairy tale baggage from the religions that are unsupportable, for instance, Moses parting the Red Sea, virgin births, and resurrected corpses. Wilber takes it even further into what he calls an integral post-metaphysics. This requires stringent experimental evidence open to falsification by a community adequate to the eye of empiricism (five senses), eye of rationalism (logic), and eye of mysticism (inner senses), for example, as outlined in The Marriage of Sense and Soul (1998).

As such, dream-art scientists will have to develop past what are currently considered postconventional stages of cognitive development to master these empirical, rational, and mystical intelligences. We are not talking about throwing out logic, just imagining what forms translogic will take. This is rocket science for the soul! And this is exactly what the Seth material hints at down the road as potentials.

Although we can always take collective steps backward before making a momentous leap forward, dream-art science as defined by Seth represents highly fulfilling probable futures for humanity. As such, any culture that could socially, economically, educationally, legally, and politically support them will be unlike anything we postmoderns can dream of. [Follow this link for more info on Seth’s dream-art science sessions 700-704.]

Finally, I’d like to close with the visionary words of Teilhard de Chardin written in 1938. While he wrestled with the limits of Christian and scientific concepts, his vision still paves the way from the postmodern toward authentic dream-art sciences:

“The time has come to realise that an interpretation of the universe – even a positivist one [i.e. modern reductionist] – remains unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior of things; mind as well as matter. The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world.” (53)

Endnotes

(45) The following excerpts – the only ones published to date that deal with Frameworks 3 and 4 – are offered to flesh out Seth’s version of the "Great Chain of Being" or All-That-Is.

“I told you that there was a Framework 3 and mentioned a Framework 4 some time ago. You must understand that I am making distinctions for your benefit.

“Framework 2 is connected with the creativity and vitality of your world. In your terms, the dead waken in Framework 2 and move through it to Framework 3, where they can be aware of their reincarnational identities and connection with time, while being apart from a concentration upon earth realities. In those terms, the so-called dead dip in and out of earth probabilities by traveling through Framework 2, and into those probabilities connected with earth realities.

“Some others may wind up in Framework 4, which is somewhat like Framework 2, except that it is a creative source for other kinds of realities not physically oriented at all and outside of, say, time concepts as you are used to thinking of them. In a way impossible to describe verbally, some portion of each identity also resides in Framework 4, and in all other Frameworks.” [Jane Roberts, The God of Jane, Chapter 13, Seth on the Big Flats Affair, p. 129.]

“I should also note that Seth has made one short, rather mysterious reference to the existence of Frameworks 3 and 4. Two days after he’d first talked about his concept of Frameworks 1 and 2, he came through with the following statement in another private session. Jane and I have yet to ask him to elaborate upon it: ‘There is, incidentally, a Framework 3 and a Framework 4, in the terms of our discussion – but all such labels are, again, only for the sake of explanation. The realities are merged’.” [Jane Roberts, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, p. 71.]

“... While our meetings take place in your time, and in the physical space of your house, say, the primary encounter must be a subjective inner one, an intersection of consciousnesses that is then physically experienced.

“The encounters themselves occur in a Framework 3 environment. That framework of course, again in terms of an analogy, exits another step away from your own Framework 2. I do not want to get into a higher-or-lower hierarchy here, but the frameworks represent spheres of action. Our encounters initially take place, then, beyond the sphere that deals exclusively with either your physical world or the inner mental and psychic realm from which your present experience springs.” [Jane Roberts, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, p. 88.]

“I should note that Seth has briefly – very briefly – referred to the existence of Frameworks 3 and 4. He says, I believe, that initially his encounters with Jane take place in a Framework 3 environment. It’s my own guess that Framework 4 might involve our communication – through the first three frameworks – with some of those nonhuman probable realities I mentioned not long ago.

“But if the interactions between or among frameworks exist for everybody, in our terms, then as far as I’m concerned they exist for each thing as well – and I do mean the so-called ‘inanimate.’ (This isn’t the place to go into it, but Seth maintains that for many reasons we arbitrarily decide what’s living and nonliving.) Each reincarnational self, each counterpart self and probable self has its complement of frameworks. So does the most minute living or nonliving entity and the most gigantic. So, ‘probably,’ do most of the far-out probable realities one can imagine – for I won’t go so far as to deny that some probable realities may exist without such framework structures. Strange one-dimensional ‘flatlands’ indeed! But in each case where those framework interactions operate, they help each creation, each presence, each essence or vital principle fulfill ‘a larger picture that the conscious mind may not be able presently to perceive.’ In ways I can’t even begin to describe here, all frameworks must ultimately be joined within the ineffable context of All That Is.” [Jane Roberts, Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, Vol. 1, p. 68.]

(46) Jane Roberts, Op. cit., p. 52.

(47) Elias, channeled by Mary Ennis (b.1954), has greatly expanded many of the foundational concepts presented in the Seth material. For example, he has offered more information regarding the nature and function of Frameworks 3 and 4. Framework 3 is where the action of afterdeath transition occurs, though it is not limited solely to this function. (Technically, Elias refers to Frameworks as Regional Areas, so he talks about Regional Area 3, but it is ontologically equivalent).

Further, Elias has outlined what he calls energy deposits that are equivalent to the worldviews accessed by Jane Roberts in her Worldview books (e.g., James, Cezanne, and Rembrandt). These energy deposits or worldviews, then, exist in the subtle field, specifically in Framework 3. So mediums like Browne, Van Pragh, and Edward access Framework 3 when they do their work. This is different from what we have been discussing in terms of accessing FUTURE/presents and PAST/presents within Framework 1.

Moreover, the ability to access past, present, and future lives suggests that Framework 1 is massively parallel, and space-time, as most moderns conceptualize it, is not a linear, sequential process in any absolute, universal sense.

For more information on the relationship between the Seth material, and information offered by Elias, see A Seth, Elias Comparative Overview (2000) by Paul Helfrich.

For more information from Elias on Regional Areas, see Digests: Regional Areas; an overview (2000) by Paul Helfrich.

For more information from Elias on transition, see Digests: the action of transition (2000) by Paul Helfrich.

(48) I discussed this dream with Elias, channeled by Mary Ennis. The following are notes from my dream journal.

Upper Darby, PA. Tuesday, January 6, 1998, 7:58 A.M.

“Woke up at 4:37 A.M., Nirshala, our niece Erin’s friend who has just moved in with us, had come in very late (as is her pattern sometimes). I fell back asleep round 6:30 A.M. I was following a teacher/secretary through an office environment. Suddenly I popped awake, and I was in the presence of what I first thought was an asexual human. I then realized that she was a female, though she had a crew cut, closely cropped white blond hair. She was seated at a plain desk and the background was just black, dark, nothing else, almost as if we were meeting in some in the middle area. I started toward her to kiss her, because I was attracted to her. But as I approached her I realized that this type of intimacy was ‘wrong.’ My own belief systems kicking in there. So I backed off. Any communication was telepathic in nature. I started to drift, float up to her left side. On reflection, I believe she was a future focus of mine as I have been meeting these lately (see Manson encounter, July 20, 1997).

“I was really excited to be in this state and was like a kid in a candy store. This woman was just smiling at me with this big shit-eating grin. Her face could almost be transposed over a picture of me as a child. Her smile was almost of amusement at my lack of focus and control. But it was so loving that I realize that she was an aspect focus of my own.

“I also noted that I was reading the Early Seth sessions and referring to Seth’s discussions on the UFO phenomenon as an interdimensional bleedthrough action. So this had an affect on my mental state, but I conclude that this was a probable reality alternate focus of mine. I also wanted to note that I didn’t get a name here (could this be Cyril from the July 15, 1997 meditation?), but knew as I fell back asleep that I would be able to have an OOB and in fact willed it to happen as a result.”

The following is my brief discussion of the experience with Elias during a group session in Castaic, California.

PAUL: “... About two weeks ago I had a lucid dream in which I saw a female with almost crew-cut hair. Initially I was attracted to this female and approached her, and realized it was inappropriate to continue some sort of romantic advance. I pulled back and realized it was some aspect of myself. And once again, I got so excited to be lucid and connecting! (Elias grins) And those eyes! I remember the eyes and the compassion. They were just staring at me with the greatest compassion and love. Then I kind of lost the focus and zipped back into the dream state. Upon reflecting upon it, I believe that it’s a future focus of mine. I could transpose my mental image of myself as a child over that face and it just fits, so that was some way of connecting with that. I’m just wondering if you could comment on the nature of that, and also why I lost the focus so quickly; why I couldn’t be stable.”

ELIAS: “You are correct; this is a future focus. But you find yourself, in your excitement and your zeal, to be connecting to this focus, in your recognition of it, that you move into the area of intimacy; which within your subjective awareness, you automatically know that this is not acceptable. Therefore, you fade within the focus, which this is a natural action; for to be becoming intimate with another focus is also altering, and may not be beneficial to either you or the other focus.”

PAUL: “That was clear in that experience.” [session 262, January 25, 1998]

When the Seth material was delivered between 1963-1984 the concept of “simultaneous time” was new and challenging to those of us indoctrinated by a consensus reality that claimed space-time was linear, flowed in a single direction, and we live once and die. However, Seth often spoke of reincarnational selves and reincarnation, which was easy to misinterpret in premodern terms of linear reincarnation found in various religions. I know I did this initially in my early twenties. But with time and experience, it became clearer that Seth was pushing toward an expanded definition. Moreover, in the mid-1990s, with channeled sources like Elias and Kris, Seth’s “simultaneous time” expanded to the logical next step to include access to future lifetimes without violating so-called laws of causality and thermodynamics.

(49) Jane Roberts, Op. cit., p. 271-279.

(50) These five alpha states offer a beginning “map” or template in which to understand altered states and their usefulness. Seth offers some further advice that hints at potential uses of these states and reminds us of how much more we have yet to learn.

“... You must not take the root assumptions [physical laws] of physical existence with you as you journey through these levels of consciousness [A1-A5]. Divest yourself of as many of them as possible, for they can cause you to misinterpret your experiences.

“There are other layers of awareness beneath this one [A5], but here there is a much greater tendency for one to merge into the other. In the next level [beyond Alpha], for example, communication is possible with various kinds of consciousness that have never been physically manifested, in your terms – personalities who do not have a physical reality in either your present or future, yet who are connected with your system of reality both as guardians and custodians [e.g. Seth 2].

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

“The ‘stuff’ of the environment will have its origin in the mind of the projectionist, being symbolic of his idea, for example, of life after death. A Speaker or Speakers will appear in whatever guise will be most acceptable to the projectionist, whether it be the guise of a god, an angel or a disciple. This is the most characteristic kind of experience from this level.” – Seth Speaks, session 575, Amber-Allen, San Rafael, CA, 1994, pg. 281.

(51) Roberts, The “Unknown” Reality, Vol. 1, p. 182.

(52) To be clear, I associate the mature emergence of the psychosphere with the CORAL vMeme of Beck’s Spiral Dynamics, and the Psychic stage of Wilber’s AQAL in the left-hand quadrants. That is, when the average mode of consciousness evolves to these stages collectively, that will define the fourth great stage of evolution, because the psychosphere will transcend, yet include, preserve, yet negate the noosphere in a development that is envelopment. Such is the inexorable unfolding of evolution in Framework 1. Thus, Seth’s dream-art sciences will be the norm within those consensus realities.

Finally, if we factor in Seth’s notion of “simultaneous time” and multidimensional ontology, then these FUTURE/presents also exert at telos, or pull on this PRESENT/present to evolve toward these probable futures that complement the push of “involutionary givens” (Wilber) and “inheritance of past occasions” (Whitehead).

For more info on these broad trends, see Integral Conscious Creation Maps.

(53) Teilhard, Ibid, p. 35-36.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

"When that point of awareness strikes you fully...a new kind of consciousness is born in you...You feel the birth of intellect and intuition together, in a high intellect, in which you recognize your own superior functioning." --Seth

."Such realizations have their own biological effects,. propelling the mind toward "higher" organizations, in which all of life's seeming inadequacies are understood to be redeemed. --Seth

" Now you may call this a spiritual or psychological or psychic exploration as you prefer. ...There are far more wonders to be achieved through this inward exploration than you can possibly believe. -- Seth

This 2 day workshop will focus on Seth's teachings on the importance and methods of achieving "higher" states of consciousness, "spiritual" exploration, and communication with our own greater being. It will also address the connection between these higher states of consciousness and the art of creating your own reality, including the elimination of any limiting beliefs that interfere with our energy, growth or fulfillment.

Throughout the body of the Seth Material, Seth discusses a major step in our growth which involves moving out of the "official line of consciousness," the conventional framework of viewing reality. Again and again, Seth encourages us to take the steps that will lead to a new birth of consciousness, a new far more effective and far more expansive mode of operation, that he has alternately described as the "higher intellect," the "spacious mind," an expansion of identity," the "magical approach," and "spiritualized creaturehood."

Using a variety of "consciousness expansion" and "inner sense" exercises, discussion, belief work, and interaction with people of like mind, this workshop will provide a concentrated and experiential presentation of key areas of the Seth material. Select Audiotape excerpts of Seth speaking on these topics during Jane Robert's classes, including some never before published, will be integrated into the workshop. Topics covered will include:

• a.. How to trigger the "higher intellect" and "accelerated states of consciousness."
• b.. Using direct links to the wisdom of the inner self.
• c.. Letting Go - Joining with the spontaneous self.
• d.. The "inner senses" and our capacity for "Direct Comprehension."
• e.. Conscious creation - The art of using your unlimited energy and power to create your ideal life. . .
• f.. Reconnecting with your non-physical "entity."
• g.. Expanding your concept of identity and becoming a "new, larger" you.
• h.. The "magical" approach and the pitfalls of the conventional "rational" approach.
• i.. Moving out of the "official line of consciousness" - How to break free from stubborn cultural limiting belief systems.

INSTRUCTOR: Rick Stack, M.S. Ed., is the President of New Awareness Network Inc. and publisher/editor of The Seth Audio Collection, The Early Sessions (Books 1-9 of the Seth Material), The Personal Sessions (Book 1-7 of The Deleted Seth Material), and other books by Jane Roberts. He was a friend and student of Jane Roberts and personally attended over 100 Seth sessions given in Jane Roberts' classes in Elmira, NY. Author of "Out Of Body Adventures" (Contemporary Books 1988), he has been teaching workshops on the Seth Material, Dreams, Out of Body Experiences and metaphysics throughout the United States and abroad for over 25 years. He is currently continuing work with Robert Butts on the publication of the remaining unpublished Seth material.

Two Workshops currently scheduled- New York City (Oct 21 & 22, 2006) & Los Angeles (Nov 18 & 19, 2006)

Location: New York City-Manhattan- SLC Conference Center, 352 7th Ave (16th Floor) (between 29th and 30th St.)

Dates and Times: (2 Day workshop) Sat October 21 and Sunday October 22th - 10:AM- 5:00 PM (1/2 hour lunch break)

Location: Los Angeles- LA Radisson Hotel, 6161 West Centinela Avenue, CA- 10:AM- 5:00 PM (1/2 hour lunch break)

Dates and Times: (2 Day workshop)Sat November 18 and Sunday November 19 - 10:AM- 5:00 PM (1/2 hour lunch break)

Workshop Fee: $225

(Early Registration Fee - $200 for registration at least one month prior to workshop)

To Register:

1) - On line at sethcenter.com

2)- By Phone - 516-869-9108

For Questions call 516-869-9108 Mon-Fri 10-5 PM EST. If you get a machine please leave name, number and best time to be reached and we will get back to you.

Yale Manuscripts: A Guide to the Jane Roberts Papers

A complete listing of all Jane Roberts' writings that have been stored in the Yale archives are now online. The listing includes Seth sessions as well as Jane's journals and book manuscripts.

Sethworld - A board game based on the Seth Material

Explore your beliefs! Stretch your imagination! Delve into your dreams! Challenge your creativity!

Seven years in the making, I am so pleased to be able to offer you SethWorld - The Game of All That Is! SethWorld is a totally unique game, the first metaphysical board game based on the Seth material - maybe the first metaphysical board game, ever! It is designed to explore and uncover beliefs while having fun. There are no winners, no losers, and NO RULES! A 24-page pamphlet included with the game gives a probable framework for play, 6 sample "moves," and a glossary of 61 concepts.

SethWorld -- You've never played anything like it!

Marion the Magnet’s First Mission
By Sharon Hackleman
Illustrated by John Blair Moore

Marion the Magnet is chosen to travel to the planet Earth with his wise grandfather to teach the children about their own magnetic powers…the magnetic power of thought!

In the book Marion helps a young girl, Katie, understand the importance of thinking and daydreaming about what she wants to attract with her magnetic powers of thought. When the other children are using their magnetic powers to attract fun things such as skateboards and new video games Katie is trying to use her magnetic powers to help her family through a challenging situation. Her father has been out of work for sometime and they are close to the point of becoming homeless.

WHAT A COINCIDENCE Understanding Synchronicity In Everyday Life
by Susan M Watkins

Overview:

What if all those seemingly insignificant little What a coincidence! moments you've experienced were actually connected, were part of a larger, more complex coincidence story?

What if they were hinting at something very personal and important about yourself—and about the workings of human consciousness?

Would you listen?

Susan Watkins does. For more than 35 years she's been documenting and studying the coincidences that have happened in her life. What she's discovered is that seemingly simple coincidences—thinking of an old friend and their calling seconds later, for example—are often pieces of larger, more complex and meaningful "coincidence clusters."

A former newspaper reporter and the author of five books, Watkins has always been intrigued by coincidences—what they mean in our everyday lives, and in the grander scheme of things. What, she asks, do these coincidence clusters say about human consciousness and human connection? In What a Coincidence! she presents coincidence clusters that are utterly astounding. What they reveal is life- altering.

What a Coincidence! is an exciting, groundbreaking journey. Along the way Watkins offers profound insights as well as practical pointers on how to become aware of the coincidence clusters in our own lives. She also shows us how to document coincidences so that we, too, can reap their valuable rewards. We'll never brush off those What a Coincidence! moments again.

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

Seth Sessions Listing – compiled by Mary Dillman.

See what we look like. Add your own picture! – John M. set up a webpage where we can add our photos. It also features a global map that shows where folks are located.

The Personal Sessions, Vol. 7 – The series deleted sessions dealing with personal material are now available. Vol. 7, now in process, will complete publication of ALL the Seth Material! By Rick Stack and New Awareness Network.

Sethnet Speaks, January 2006 – compiled by Paul Helfrich.

The Classic Seth Portrait by Rob Butts This is a low resolution scan for those interested.

Check out the Mindscapes Music CD - Listen online to 22 tracks of music from Paul Helfrich. Also available for purchase.

Conscious Creation Links – Conscious Creation Publishers, Book Stores, Websites, Journals, Newsletters, Mailing Lists, Message Boards, and more.

The Elias forum - website by Paul & Joanne Helfrich contains an expansion of many of the conscious creation concepts introduced by Seth/Jane Roberts, channeled by Mary Ennis.

What if the Seth material was a foundation to be expanded later by other channeled sources? Can any perennial source ever be considered complete AND infallible?

Seth readers will want to check out:
Introduction & Overview
A Seth, Elias Comparative Overview (Updated!)
Digest: Seth, Jane Roberts

The Kris Chronicles - an expansion of many of the conscious creation concepts introduced by Seth/Jane Roberts, channeled by Serge Grandbois.

A Kris, Seth, Elias Comparative Overview (Updated!) - a preliminary comparison of core concepts in the Seth material, information offered by Elias, and Kris Chronicles

Otherfocus.com the personal website of Donald R. Johnson

Explore the creative worlds of John McNally and Kristen Fox Cofounders of the Conscious Creation Website and Email group John and Kristen share interests in writing, art, photography and cooking which they explore on a variety of websites:

John's weblog: Parabolic Mirror
Intuitive Astrology site: Psychic Weather
Writing: Mind Altering Fiction
Photography: Telepathicfrog
Cooking: Food Follies
Shop: Telepathic Frog Designs
Shop Powered By Tshirts

Kristen's weblog: FoxVox
Art & Photo Gallery: Art of FoxVox
Art & Photo Prints: Deviant Art</