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Part 8 of Seth’s Concepts in a Nutshell – What Is the Nature of Time?

Seth material, organized to answer Andy Hughes’ questions

“Time as you experience it is an illusion caused by your own physical senses. They force you to perceive action in certain terms, but this is not the nature of action.

“The apparent boundaries between past, present and future are only illusions caused by the amount of action you can physically perceive, and so it seems to you that one moment exists and is gone forever, and the next moment comes and like the one before also disappears. Everything in the universe exists at one time simultaneously.

“The first words ever spoken still ring through the universe, and in your terms, the last words ever spoken have already been said. The past, present and future only appear to those who exist within three-dimensional reality.

“The past exists as a series of electromagnetic connections held in the physical brain and in the nonphysical mind.

“These electromagnetic connections can be changed.

“The future consists of a series of electromagnetic connections in the mind and brain also. In other words, the past and present are real to the same extent.

“You take it for granted that present action can change the future, but present actions can also change the past.

“The past is no more objective or independent from the perceiver than is the present. The electromagnetic connections were largely made by the individual perceiver. The connection can be changed, and such changes are far from uncommon. These changes happen spontaneously on a subconscious basis.

“The past is seldom what you remember it to be, for you have already rearranged it from the instant of any given event. The past is being constantly re-created by each individual as attitudes and associations change. This is an actual recreation, not a symbolic one. The child is indeed still within the man, but he is not the child that “was”, for even the child within the man constantly changes.

“Difficulties arise when such alterations do not occur automatically. Severe neurosis is often caused precisely because an individual has not changed his past.

“A change of attitude, a new association, or any of innumerable other actions will automatically set up new electromagnetic connections and break others.

“Every action changes every other action. Therefore, every action in your present affects actions you call past.

“It is possible to react in the past to an event that has not occurred, and to be influenced by your own future.

“It is also possible for an individual to react in the past to an event in the future, which in your terms, may never occur.

“Because past, present and future exist simultaneously, there is no reason why you cannot react to an event whether or not it happens to fall within the small field of reality in which you usually observe and participate.

“On a subconscious level, you react to many events that have not yet occurred as far as your ego’s awareness is concerned.

“Such reactions are carefully screened out and not admitted to consciousness. The ego finds such instances distracting and annoying, and when forced to admit their validity, will resort to the most far fetched rationalizations to explain them.

“No event is predestined. Any given event can be changed not only before and during but after its occurrence.

“The individual is hardly at the mercy of past events, for he changes them constantly. He is hardly at the mercy of future events, for he changes these not only before but after their happening. An individuals future actions are not dependent upon a concrete finished past, for such a past never existed.

“The past is as real as the future, no more or less.

“There is a part of you that is not locked within physical reality, and that part of you knows that there is only an Eternal Now. The part of you that knows is the whole self, your inner and outer ego (all that you are).

“From within this framework you will see that physical time is as dreamlike as you once thought inner time was. You will discover your whole self, peeping inward and outward at the same “time”, and find that all time is one time, and all divisions, illusions.”


For reference, read When Time Stopped. It tells the story of how time stopped for me when Seth, on tape, was discussing the nature of time to Jane’s class in Elmira, NY. It was an experience of time from the inside-out.

Time

Seth’s Concepts in a Nutshell continued….

{ 2 comments… add one }
  • Caleb Murdock June 1, 2020, 1:58 PM

    I thought I had left a comment here, but I guess I didn’t.

    It is the fact that past, present and future exist in a “spacious present” (as Seth called it) that makes us all immortal. If you exist anywhere in reality, you simply exist, and nothing can erase you or stop you from existing (since all things exist simultaneously). Despite what we experience in this physical universe, the greater universe is essentially nondestructive.

    We don’t get tired of immortality for two reasons: First, once we are out of our physical form, living becomes much easier. Seth said that it takes the lion’s share of our energy just to express ourselves in physical form. Also, human beings have a clock built into our heads, and we do not have that in our spiritual form (since there is no time). So we are not constantly aware of the passage of time. If we exert ourselves too hard in our lives, there are ways to relax and refresh one’s self; but there is never a need to feel that we are tired of simply existing. There are always new challenges to focus on, and new things to experience.

  • Caleb Murdock June 1, 2020, 2:01 PM

    I thought I had left a comment here, but I guess I didn’t.

    It is the fact that past, present and future exist in a “spacious present” (as Seth called it) that makes us all immortal. If you exist anywhere in reality, you simply exist, and nothing can erase you or stop you from existing (since all things exist simultaneously). Despite what we experience in this physical universe, the greater universe is essentially nondestructive.

    We don’t get tired of immortality for two reasons: First, once we are out of our physical form, living becomes easier, if not effortless. Seth said that it takes the lion’s share of our energy just to express ourselves in physical form. Also, human beings have a clock built into our heads, and we do not have that in our spiritual form (since there is no time). So we are not constantly aware of the passage of time. If we exert ourselves too hard in our lives, there are ways to relax and refresh one’s self; but there is never a need to feel that we are tired of simply existing. There are always new challenges to focus on, and new things to experience.

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