“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We will call the world as you physically experience it, Framework 1. In Framework 1, you watch television programs, for example. You have your choice of many channels. You have favorite programs. You follow certain scenes or actors. You watch all of these dramas, hardly understanding how it is that they appear on your screen to begin with. You are certain, however, that if you do buy a television set it will perform in an adequate fashion, whether or not you are familiar with electronics. Period.

You switch from channel to channel with predictable results. The programming for Channel 9, for example, does not suddenly intrude on Channel 6. Even the actors themselves, taking part in such sagas, have but the remotest idea of events that are involved in order that their own images will appear on your television screen. Their jobs are to act, taking it for granted that the technicians are following through.

Now somewhere there is a program director, who must take care of the entire programming. Shows must be done on time, actors assigned their roles. Our hypothetical director will know which actors are free, which actors prefer character roles, which ones are heroes or heroines, and which smiling Don Juan always gets the girl — and in general who plays the good guys and the bad guys.

There is no need in my outlining in detail the multitudinous events that must occur so that you can watch your favorite program. You flip the switch and there it is, while all of that background work is unknown to you. You take it for granted. Your job is simply to choose the programs of your choice on any evening. Many others are watching the same programs, of course, yet each person will react quite individually.

(9:40.) Now for a moment let us imagine that physical events occur in the same fashion — that you choose those which flash upon the screen of your experience. You are quite familiar with the events of your own life, for you are of course your own main hero or heroine, villain or victim, or whatever. As you do not know what happens in the television studio before you observe a program, however, so you do not know what happens in the creative framework of reality before you experience physical events. We will call that vast “unconscious” mental and universal studio Framework 2.

In this book I will try to tell you what goes on behind the scenes — to show you the ways in which you choose your daily physical programs, and to describe how those personal choices mix and merge to form a mass reality. For now, we will go back to television again. You can turn off a program that offends you. You can choose to buy or not buy a product whose virtues are being praised. Television presents you with a mirror of your society. It reflects and rereflects through millions of homes the giant dreams and fears, the hopes and terrors of events in the most private individual.

You are aware through your newspapers and magazines of the dramas, news broadcasts, or other programs that are presently being offered. In the same way you are aware, generally speaking, of the “programs” being physically presented in your own nation and throughout the world. You decide which of these adventures you want to take part in — and those you will experience in normal life, or in Framework 1.

Actors visit casting agencies so that they know what plays need their services. In your dreams you visit “casting agencies.” You are aware of the various plays being considered for physical production. In the dream state, then, often you familiarize yourself with dramas that are of a probable nature. If enough interest is shown, if enough actors apply, if enough resources are accumulated, the play will go on. When you are in other than your normally conscious state, you visit that creative inner agency in which all physical productions must have their beginning. You meet with others, who for their own reasons are interested in the same kind of drama. Following our analogy, the technicians, the actors, the writers all assemble — only in this case the result will be a live event rather than a televised one. There are disaster films being planned, educational programs, religious dramas. All of these will be encountered in full-blown physical reality.