Lighting Strange Worlds

"You make your own reality. When I say that, you interpret it to mean that you make your own reality. You think that that you is the only you that concerns you. You think that you is your consciousness. You still hold that idea in conventional terms, now, of your own identity, so that you identify with what seems to be a whole consciousness that makes its reality.

"But each portion of your consciousness, your identity, is --using an analogy-- composed of an infinite number of glittering points of consciousness that come together to form your identity. And you hold them and grip them tightly and call them your own. Now your identity is your own. It will not dissolve under any circumstances. Yet you can have a much more adventurous kind of identity if you hold yourselves in less rigorous a grip.

"If you can, for example, sometimes in playful moments, imagine those separate, glowing points of consciousness like fireflies, glittering on and off and lighting strange worlds. If you close your eyes and imagine such a point and follow it in your imagination, where does it go? You will not lose yourself, you will discover a portion of yourself that you did not realize existed. You will begin to reclaim an ancient and yet new knowledge.

"In your terms, you will begin to learn that delicious alchemy that connects the so-called animals and the so-called gods.

"For this exercise -- for this play, for this game, for this delightful endeavor -- you must make a dangerous compromise, for you must pretend momentarily to forget your name. For you were before your name existed, and you will be when you have forgotten what your name was. Your name, accept for now, is not important. You will be yourself whether or not you have it.

"In this multidimensional drama, what you do is this: you imagine the consciousness that you have as an endless glowing sequence of pointed lights, emerging, swarming, coming and going. Always each point of consciousness is coming and going. No matter where it is, it knows that it is a part of you. So you need not fear that you will lose yourself.

"Each point journeys. Each point mixes and intermixes with the consciousness of animals, plants, worlds that you do not recognize. And if you want to know what these realities are about and your part in them, then follow where those points of light lead you. You will not be left in the darkness...

"You create your own reality -- here. What other realities do you help create? What other realities are you a part of? When I tell you to explore the dream state, you explore it with your own identity like a soldier going to battle: 'Ah ha! What have we here tonight, what adversary?' But when you dream at certain levels of awareness, your consciousness, now, separates into all of its parts and explores the physical universe and other worlds.

"You are not dispersed, in your terms. You do not break apart. The morning comes, and gloriously, there you are, girded for another day in which to survive. Yet when you sleep and dream and forget the Bible, only then do you understand the nature of the creativity that allows you to survive. Only then do you realize that, by not worrying about it, the magic happens. By taking it for granted that you know, then you know."

-Jane Roberts as Seth, American Trance Medium (Unsourced)