Hi Len,
Seth does talk of a void, but it is not a state of non-being. These terms can all be confusing because of our "normal, everyday" use of them or understanding of them. As I see it, people kind of blend together the following concepts, as they understand them: The VOID versus NONBEING versus NIRVANA versus NOTHINGNESS versus a VACUUM.
Seth has spoken on each of them. Here are some examples (I have put the key words in BOLD CAPS for emphasis only):
SETH ON VOID
Seth (Session 453):“The planetary system of which we spoke in our last session was the first one within your universe, when you are speaking in terms of time.
“It is very difficult to explain to you that the universes that you see, the stars and planets that you view, are one-dimensional, comparatively speaking. You only perceive the portions of them that are apparent within your own system of reality.
“You are seeing shadows upon a blank and a black screen. The three- dimensional system is like a shadow of realities that you do not perceive.
“(Pause.) The heavy hydrogen molecules had a large part to play in the birth of that system. Consciousness had first to create the VOID, or the dimension in which the system could exist, and also to endow that VOID with all the probabilities for development that have come about in your time, and are to come about.
“The VOID, in other terms, can therefore be compared to a mind, and who can predict what images or thoughts will be given birth there? There are as I have told you, many, indeed countless such systems, and yet within them all there is identity, and there is direction.
“This vast VOID, this infinite mind, came out of another that was greater than itself. (Pause, smile.) The possibilities that have come to reality within this universal system have each given birth to other systems and other realities, as one tree bears a thousand seeds. (Pause.) You yourselves through your own mental actions create realities of which you yourselves are unaware, and you give birth to more than physical children.
“You do not understand the dimensions into which your thoughts drop, for they continue their own existence, and others look up to them and view them like stars. Now I am telling you that your own dreams and thoughts and mental actions appear to the inhabitants of other systems like the stars and planets within your own; and those inhabitants do not perceive what lies within and behind the stars in their own heavens.
SETH ON NON-BEING:
Seth (Session 426): “There is, and this will certainly seem a contradiction in terms, there is NON-BEING. (Pause. Jane lit a cigarette.) It is a state, not of NOTHINGNESS in your terms, but a state in which probabilities and possibilities are known, anticipated, but blocked from all expression. Dimly, through what you would call a history; hardly remembered, there was such a state. It was a state of agony in which the powers of creativity and existence were known, but the ways to produce them were not known. This is the lesson that All That Is had to learn, and that could not be taught. This is the agony from which creativity originally was drawn, and its reflection is still seen.”
Seth (ESP Class, 6-5-73): “Being and NON-BEING are aspects of each other. NON-BEING exists.
Life and death are aspects of each other, like two sides of a coin. When you look at one side of the coin you call it life. When you look at the other side of the coin you call it death. When you look at one side, you call it being. When you look at the other side, you call it NON-BEING. In the terms of which you are speaking, they both exist -- and they both are. NON-BEING is not only latent being, in your terms, but being in an entirely different kind of dimension. To you, it only becomes being when you perceive it in your reality, but it is always being. So the terms are used in your context, NON-BEING is that reality that you do not perceive, and it is not meaningful now, in your now, for you. Life is NON-BEING on the other side of the coin, then. Think of that!”
Seth (ESP Class; 1-22-74): “God manifests himself through what you are. And if he wanted always to be one, and not individualistic, then he would have remained latent and never materialized in individual form. In certain terms, these glasses are a manifestation of what God is, as you are a manifestation of what God is. And through understanding the infinite validity of your own individuality, do you therefore glorify All That Is, and to the extent that you deny your individuality, do you deny what God is. If God wanted to be a nebulous, psychological cloud of NON-BEING, so would he be. You cannot find God by denying the vitality of your being. You cannot find Him by trying to hide in a NIRVANA, by trying to bury your individuality in a NON-BEING.
Barrie Comments: So, the state of “NON-BEING” that Seth would accept as existing—is NOT one of “NOTHINGNESS” or of a “VOID”—but rather a “state in which probabilities and possibilities are known, anticipated, but blocked from all expression.”
SETH ON NIRVANA:
Seth (ESP Class, 3-10-70):“You are already a part of All That Is, and you cannot disentangle yourself from that reality. There is no NIRVANA if you mean by NIRVANA a state in which your individuality is lost and gobbled in a great fish of a god that consumes you as the whale consumed Jonah.
“Instead you see, your individuality is used and developed. For your individuality means that there is one more highly unique, original way by which consciousness can express itself. And to lose that individuality, my dear friend, would mean that god had lost one of his voices, and that god had become deaf in one way and that one tone was forever lost.”
Seth (ESP Class, 8-14-73): “Now, if you will excuse me, there is nothing more deadly than NIRVANA. At least your Christian concept gives you some twilight hopes of a deadly and boring paradise, where at least your individuality can realize itself, and NIRVANA offers no such comforts. Instead, it offers you the annihilation of your individuality in a bliss that destroys the integrity of your being. Run from such bliss!”
Seth (ESP Class, 7-17-73):
Class Transcript: (A guest for the evening, had been speaking about the ego and the annihilation of the ego. Seth joined the conversation:)
Seth: “There is a very ancient old ego here that has simply refused to be annihilated. But you are indeed playing with terms. The self that you know now, whatever you want to call it, that self is not annihilated. It is inviolate. It is not swallowed by a super god or by a super un-god or in feelings of bliss in heaven or NIRVANA, it is not destroyed by a hell even of your own making. You cannot get rid of yourselves so easily.
Seth (ESP Class, 1-29-74): “I return you to your self. Ruburt returns you to your self. But beyond that here is indeed a new framework, in your terms, ladders that you can climb that lead you not from mountain to austere mountain of dogma and denials, not from NIRVANA to NIRVANA of denial and NON-BEING, but instead, steps that are alive and growing that lead you to the further reaches of yourself; steps not created by a god or a devil or a guru, but sent out and projected by you through the centuries; steps born of your living selves and leading you into the knowledge of your ever growing beings. And so therefore with joy do I speak to you.”
Seth (Session 637): "The you that you consider yourself is never annihilated. Your consciousness is not snuffed out, nor is it swallowed, blissfully unaware of itself, in some NIRVANA. You are as much a part of NIRVANA now as you will ever be."
Seth (Session 647): The concept of NIRVANA (see the 637th session in Chapter Nine) and the idea of heaven are two versions of the picture, the former being one in which individuality is lost In the bliss of undifferentiated consciousness, and the latter one in which still-conscious individuals perform mindless adoration. Neither theory contains an understanding of the functions of the conscious mind, or the evolution of consciousness or, for that matter, certain aspects of greater physics. No energy is ever lost. The expanding universe theory* applies to the mind as well as to the universe.
SETH ON NOTHINGNESS:
Seth (Session 534): “Consciousness does not refresh itself in sleep. It is merely turned in another direction. Consciousness does not sleep then in those terms and while it may be turned off it is not like a light. Turning it off does not extinguish it in the way that a light disappears when a switch is turned. Following the analogy, if consciousness were like a light that belonged to you, even when you switched it off, there would be a sort of twilight, but not darkness. The spirit, therefore, is never in a state of NOTHINGNESS, with its consciousness extinguished It is very important to understand that consciousness is never extinguished.”
Seth (Session 329): Look where nothing seems to be, for no place is truly empty. Where there appears to be nothing, there will be no distortion. Within that seeming NOTHINGNESS, reality can show itself if you know how to look. That which appears full, that space which appears full, is misleading, for reality is already given to a rigid form.
SETH ON VACUUM:
(Barrie Note: Seth only uses this term to mean “something is not there yet.” I find no use of it to anywhere in the material to mean something like void, nothingness, etc. Also, Seth uses this term only a handful of times, when not referring to a vacuum cleaner. I will put ALL EXAMPLES that I can find below:
Seth (Session 338): “The beginning of your physical universe occurred when conscious energy directed enough of its attention (long pause) in what was generalized dimension, to spark the formation of physical properties. The creation was just that. The first explosion of physic energy in an ungeneralized dimension sparked the birth of specifics. Before this the generalized dimension was simply nonexistent, a VACUUM, which consciousness had not yet filled. Since consciousness or action can never fully materialize itself, there are literally infinities of such nonexistent areas from which new dimensions can spring.
Seth (Session 511): What I will tell you has been told before throughout the centuries, and given again when it was forgotten. I hope to clarify many points that have been distorted through the years. And I offer my original interpretation of others, for no knowledge exists in a VACUUM, and all information must be interpreted and colored by the personality who holds it and passes it on. Therefore I describe reality as I know it, and my experience in many layers and dimensions.
Seth (Session 620): Such a person would have to believe that an unhealthy condition was the best way to serve another purpose. Other means would seem closed to him because of various personal beliefs that would form a VACUUM in his experience-that is, he would see no other way, perhaps, to achieve the same end.
Seth (Deleted Session; 12-3-73): “He is so used to automatically negative suggestions that to say nothing to himself leaves a VACUUM. But here he can say now instead: “It is not necessarily so. Perhaps I can move easier. I’ll try it,” which allows a breathing space...”
Seth (Session 708, Deleted Portion): “He (Ruburt) was afraid that despite his efforts he could not get better. Now you also have shared that belief strongly enough in any case so that your joint beliefs merged. His symptoms represent for him the one point of VACUUM, comparatively speaking, where the acceleration that has otherwise occurred has not as yet clearly penetrated; and jointly they represent the area in which your combined beliefs have not caught up to your knowledge.
Topic: Seths 'undifferentiated level', Buddist 'jhana', + my 'void states' (Read 17111 times)
