Thoughts on The Seth Material

More thinking about the The Seth Material. I am dwelling on what he said about reality. I have problems with thing like The Secret on philosophical grounds, because I just can’t see how it could work in any reasonable way. I mean, just think of what would happen if everybody could, and did, manipulate reality for their own personal benefit? Wouldn’t the world be a total chaos of competing interests? What would happen when the interests of different people clash, like both wanting the same thing? You can see the problem here.

One possible out here, is to say that you need to be enlightened, to a certain point, before you can make any meaningful impacts on outer reality. That way, you will not be totally greedy and will work with the flow, so to speak, aiming for general benefits. Well, Seth says that’s not so: We all constantly construct our own realities, apparently using some template, but filled in using our conscious and subconscious beliefs as the guide. The trick is that each one of us has our own, personal, reality, which implies that how we experience the world doesn’t necessarily correspond to what others see, and that there is no objective reality out there. He uses the example of three people in a room with a book. In this example, there are three copies of the book, one constructed by each person, none more “real” than any of the others. The books are similar, but never identical. He also says that our personal realities only connect at a few points. I am truly not clear about what that means.

Notice that he said that we construct our personal realities. That everything we see and hear and touch and experience is constructed by us, for us, and no one else can see or perceive any of it. This raises a several questions for me.

My first thought has to do with the psychic and paranormal: Are these perceptions part of our constructed reality, or are they “leaks,” as it were, around the edges of our constructed realities, allowing us glimpses of what is behind the curtain? This is certainly logical and makes a lot of sense, given the context, that, no matter how well we construct our worlds, they will still require a certain about of “buy in” from us in order to be accepted fully. Just like in movies and games, where it requires a willing suspension of disbelief in order to become fully immersed, we have to play along with the rules and not notice the flaws and inconsistencies that might ruin the effect. Paranormal perceptions could be one of those flaws, which might explain some of the enormous interest in, and the incredible resistance to, the subject.

If we all construct our on versions of reality, how do they correspond so closely to each other, especially considering that Seth says they barely connect at all? (Maybe they don’t correspond as closely as we think, how would we tell, after all?) Is there some kind of underlying reality or….something…that connects us all and keeps us in sync with one another? It’s said that we’re all connected through our higher selves. That would provide a mechanism for connection, and the fact that we are generally not aware of this connection allows for information to be exchanged between individuals to co-ordinate their realities on a subconscious level. There is still a lot of speculation here, and I plan to keep reading. I’m most interested in information on just how we manipulate this reality that we’ve created. (Isn’t everyone?) Subject of another post.