“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The rockbed reality is the one in which the perceiver is focused. From that standpoint all others would seem peripheral. Taking that for granted, however, any given reality system will be surrounded by its probability clusters. These can almost be thought of as satellites. Time and space need not be connected, however — that is, the attractions that exist between a reality and any given probability cluster may have nothing to do with time and space at all. The closest probability satellite to any given reality may, for example, be in an entirely different universe altogether. (Pause.) In that regard, you may find brethren more or less like yourselves outside of your own universe — as you think of it — rather than inside it. You imagine your universe as extending outward in space (and backwards in time). You think of it as an exteriorized manifestation, expanding perhaps, but in an exterior rather than an interior fashion.¹

(Slowly:) Your idea of space travel, for example, is to journey over the “skin of your universe.” You do not understand that your system is indeed expanding within itself, bringing forth new creativity and energy (underlined).

“Their time measurements, based on camouflage [physical information] to begin with, are almost riotously inadequate and bound to give distortive data, since the universe simply cannot be measured in those terms. The universe was not created at any particular time, but neither is it expanding into nowhere like an inflated balloon that grows forever larger — at least not along the lines now being considered. The expansion is an illusion, based among other things upon inadequate time measurements, and cause-and-effect theories; and yet in some manners the universe could be said to be expanding, but with entirely different connotations than are usually used.”

From the 43rd session: “The universe is expanding in the way that a dream does … this in a most basic manner is more like the growth of an idea.”

From the 250th session for April 11, 1966: “The atom you ‘see’ does not grow larger in mass, or expand outward in your space, and neither does your universe.”

Seth’s material in those early sessions, given well over a decade ago for the most part, reflected of course his reactions to current astronomical theory about the state — and fate — of our physical (camouflage) universe. The idea of an infinitely expanding universe, with all of its stars ultimately burned out and all life extinct, is still the view largely accepted today; it’s based on the red shift measurements of some of the supposedly receding galaxies, their apparent brightnesses, the “missing mass” of the universe, and other very technical data. Yet I find it most interesting to note that now some astrophysicists and mathematicians believe our universe may be destined to contract — indeed, to collapse in upon itself — after all. But again, these ideas aren’t based on the kind of thinking Seth espouses (that consciousness comes first, that its creations are continuous), but upon other quite complicated camouflage observations and measurements. One of these is the discovery of at least some of that missing mass, thus indicating that gravitational fields may exist among the galaxies, and galactic clusters, strong enough not only to halt the expansion of the universe but to pull all matter back together again.

In scientific terms, it doesn’t seem likely that the conflict between the two views will ever be resolved, or any decision reached that our universe may be an oscillating one, forever contracting and expanding. There are too many variables in measurement and interpretation, including the difficulties the human mind encounters when it attempts to grasp the enormous spans of time and space involved.