Framework 1 and Framework 2 by Seth, Jane Roberts

You want something, you dwell upon it consciously for a while, you consciously imagine it coming to the forefront of probabilities, closer to your actuality. Then you drop it like a pebble into Framework 2, forget about it as much as possible for a fortnight, and do this in a certain rhythm.

You decide which of these adventures you want to take part in — and those you will experience in normal life, or in Framework 1. The inner mechanisms that happen prior to your experience will take place in the vast mental studio of Framework 2. There, all the details will be arranged, the seemingly chance encounters, for example, the unexplained coincidences that might have to occur before a given physical event takes place.

Events occur as a result of individual beliefs, desires, and intents. There is no such thing as a chance encounter. No death occurs by chance, nor any birth. In the creative atmosphere of Framework 2, intents are known. In a manner of speaking, no act is private. Your communication systems bring to your living room notices of events that occur throughout the world. Yet that larger inner system of communications is far more powerful in scope, and each mental act is imprinted in the multidimensional screen of Framework 2. That screen is available to all, and in other levels of consciousness, particularly in the sleep and dreaming stages, the events of that inner reality are as ever-present and easily accessible as physical events are when you are awake.

It is as if Framework 2 contains an infinite information service, that instantly puts you in contact with whatever knowledge you require, that sets up circuits between you and others, that computes probabilities with blinding speed. Not with the impersonality of a computer, however, but with a loving intent that has your best purposes in mind — yours and also those of each other individual.

You cannot gain what you want at someone else's detriment, then. You cannot use Framework 2 to force an event upon another person. Certain prerequisites must be met, you see, before a desired end can become physically experienced.

I will say then that man's emotional identification with nature is a strongly-felt reality in Framework 2. And there we must look for the answers regarding man's relationship with nature. There in Framework 2 the nature of the psyche appears quite clearly, so that its sweeps and rhythms can be understood. The manifestations of physical energy follow emotional rhythms that cannot be ascertained with gadgets or instruments, however fine.

The world's ideas, fantasies, or myths may seem far divorced from current experience — yet all that you know or experience has its origin in that creative dimension of existence that I am terming Framework 2. In a manner of speaking your factual world rises on a bed of fantasy, myth, and imagination, from which all of your detailed paraphernalia emerge.

In Framework 2 the interior power of nature is ever-changing. The dreams, hopes, aspirations and fears of man interact in a constant motion that then forms the events of your world. That interaction includes not only man, of course, but the emotional reality of all earthly consciousnesses as well, from a microbe to a scholar, from a frog to a star. You interpret the phenomena of your world according to the mythic characteristics that you have accepted. You organize physical reality, then, through ideas. You use only those perceptions that serve to give those ideas validity. The physical body itself is quite capable of putting the world together in different fashions than the one that is familiar to you.

While our meetings take place in your time, and in the physical space of your house, say, the primary encounter must be a subjective inner one, an intersection of consciousnesses that is then physically experienced.

These frameworks, while I speak of them separately, exist one within the other, and each one impinges upon the other. To some extent you are immersed in all realities.

The recognition of Framework 2 would bring you from that point to the production of great art, where words served to express not only the seen but the unseen — not simply facts but feelings and emotions — and where the words themselves escaped their consecutive patterns, sending the emotions into realms that quite defied both space and time.

Each private reality has its existence in an eternal creativity from which, again, your world springs.

Your world, then, is the result of a multidi-mensional creative venture, a work of art in terms almost impossible lor you to presently understand, in which each person and creature, and each particle, plays a living part. Again, in Framework 2 each event is known, from the falling of a leaf to the falling of a star, from the smallest insect's experience on a summer day to the horrendous murder of an individual on a city street. Those events each have their meaning in a larger pattern of activity. That pattern is not divorced from your reality, not thrust upon you, not apart from your experience. It often only seems to be because you so compartmentalize your own experience that you automatically separate yourself from such knowledge.

Creativity docs not deal with compartments. It throws aside barriers. Even most people who are involved in creative work often apply their additional insights and knowledge only to their art, however — not to their lives. They fall back to cause and effect.

Your Framework 1 life is, again, based on the idea that you have only so much energy, that you will wear out, and that a certain expenditure of energy will produce a given amount of work — in other words, that applied effort of a certain kind will produce the best results. In the same way, it is believed that the energy of the universe will die out. All of this presupposes "the fact" that no new energy is inserted into the world. The source of the world would therefore seem no longer to exist, having worn itself out in the effort to produce physical phenomena. In the light of such thinking, Framework 2 would be an impossibility.

Instead, the energy of life is inserted constantly into your world, in a way that has nothing to do with your so-called physical laws. I said (14 years ago) that the universe expands as an idea does, and that is exactly what I mean.

The greater life of each creature exists in that framework that "originally" gave it birth, and in a greater manner of speaking each creature, regardless of its age, is indeed being constantly reborn.

Some portion of each individual is in direct contact with the very source of its own existence. Each individual is innately aware that help is available in every situation, and that information does not need to come through the physical senses alone. Many illnesses are cured, then, through quite natural methods that not only involve physical healings, but bring into play other events — events that have great bearing on the psychological elements that may be involved behind the scenes. For those interactions we will have to look to Framework 2.

Framework 2 is the medium in which your world exists. It represents the vaster psychological reality in which your own subjective life resides.

Some ancient religions put the existence of gods there, and saw the spirits of each living thing as existing primarily in that invisible medium of reality. Therefore, Framework 2 has always been represented in one way or another as a source of your world. Christianity saw it as heaven, inhabited by God the Father, His angels, the saints, and [the] deceased faithful.

Once scientists theorized the ether as the medium in which the physical universe existed.1 Framework 2 is the psychological medium in which the consciousness of the world exists.

The word "ego" is much bandied about, and in many circles it has a poor reputation. It is directed outward into the physical world. It is also aware, however, of some of your "unconscious" activities. It is the you you identify with, so it is as aware of your dreams, for example, as you are, and it is quite conscious of the fact that its existence rests upon knowledge thai it does not itself possess.

As you have an ego, fully conscious, directed toward the physical world, von also have what I call an inner ego, directed toward inner reality. You have, in other words, a portion of yourself that is fully conscious in Framework 2. The ego in your ordinary world, which again we will call Framework 1, is uniquely equipped to deal with that environment. It manipulates with rules of cause and effect and consecutive moments. It deals with an objectified reality. It can stretch its capacities, becoming far more aware of inner events than it is normally allowed to do, but its main purpose is to deal with the world of effects, to encounter events.

The inner ego is fully conscious. It is a portion of you, however, that deals with the formation of events, that glories in a rather rambunctious and creative activity that your specifications of time and place physically preclude. The unconscious, so-called, is — and I have said this before2 — quite conscious, but in another realm of activity. There must be a psychological chamber between these two portions of the self, however — these seemingly undifferentiated areas, in which back-and-forth translations can occur. Dream periods provide that service, of course, so that in dreams the two egos can meet and merge to some extent, comparing notes like strangers who perhaps meet on a train at night, and are amazed to discover, after some conversation, that they are indeed close relatives, each embarked upon the same journey though seemingly they traveled alone.

In those terms the undifferentiated area is actually filled with motion as psychological transitions and translations are made, until in dreams the two egos often merge into each other — so that sometimes you waken briefly with a sense of elation, or a feeling that in dreams you have met an old and valued friend.

Your world is populated by individuals concentrating upon physical activities, dealing with events that are "finished products" — at least in usual terms. Your inner egos populate Framework 2, and deal with the actual creation of those events that are then objectified. Since "the rules" of Framework 2 are different, that reality is not at all bound by your physical assumptions. It contains, therefore, the inner ego of each individual who has lived or will ever live upon the earth.

There is a great give-and-take between the two frameworks — your regular working one, Framework 1, and this other more comprehensive reality.

You will ignore as information certain stimuli that another person, for example, will latch on to immediately. Even in your own world, then, your interests and desires serve as organizational processes that screen out certain information. The information available in Framework 2 is in your terms infinite.

It is the source of your world, so therefore it contains not only all knowledge physically available, but far more. You think of course of the life that you know as LIFE, in capitals. It is, however, only the manifestation of what in those terms can only be called the greater life out of which your life springs. This is not to compare the reality that you know in derogative terms to the other-source existence, either, for your own world contains, as each other world does, a uniqueness and an originality that in those terms exists nowhere else — for no world of existence is like any other.

The inner ego is a portion of the self, for example — is the portion of your self — that is aware of your reincarnational activities. It is the part of you that exists outside of time, yet simultaneously lives in time. You form your own reality. The ego that you are aware of obviously could not form your body for you, however, or grow your bones. It knows how to assess the conditions of the world. It makes deductions. Your reasoning is highly important, yet alone it cannot pump your blood or tell your eyes how to see.

The inner ego does the actual work that brings about the events you have decided upon. In very simple terms, if you want to pick up a book, and then do so, you experience that event consciously, though you are quite unaware of all of the inner events that occurred to bring the motion about. The inner ego directs those activities.

If you want to change your job, and hold that desire, a new job will come into your experience in precisely the same fashion, in that the inner events will be arranged by the inner ego. A body event involves the working of numerous muscles and joints and so forth. An event involving a job change concerns motion on the part of many people, and implies a network of communication on the part of all of the inner egos involved. Obviously, then, a mass physical event implies an inner system of communications of proportions that would put your technological communications to shame.

You may then, again, unknowingly acquire an illness and recover, never aware of your malady, being healed because of a series of events that would seemingly have nothing to do with the illness itself — because in Framework 2 the inner ego, knowing both the reason for the illness, and its cure, brought about those precise situations that remedied the condition. Such events happen automatically, when nothing hampers recovery at your end.

The communication between the inner and outer egos should obviously be as clear and open as possible. As a general rule, the inner ego depends upon your assessment of physical events. Your involvement in the private aspects of your living, and your participation in mass events, has much to do with your estimation of the physical situation, and with your beliefs and desires regarding it.

The inner ego is perfect as a term to suit my purposes. Let me stress again that the "unconscious" is indeed conscious — and by conscious I mean that its reasoning is not irrational. Its methods are not chaotic, and its characteristics are not only equal to those of the known ego, but indeed are more resilient and knowledgeable.

Frameworks 1 and 2 obviously represent not only different kinds of reality in normal terms, but two different kinds of consciousness. To make this discussion as simple as possible for now, at least, think of these two frameworks or states of consciousness as being connected by "undifferentiated areas" in which sleep, dreaming, and certain trance states have their activity. Those undifferentiated areas are involved in the constant translation of one kind of consciousness into the other, and with energy transferences. You constantly process those data that come to you in your private life, and that information includes bulletins from all over the world, through your news broadcasts and so forth.

The inner ego has access, again, to a much vaster amount of knowledge. It is aware not only of its own private position, as you are of yours, but it is also familiar with the mass events of its reality. It is intimately involved in the creation of your own private experience.

The inner ego reasons, but its reasoning is not restricted to the cause-and-effect limitations that you apply to the reasoning process. The action of the inner ego within the wider sphere of Framework 2 explains many events and seeming coincidences that otherwise seem to make no sense within your world.

On any given day the events of your private lives fit within the larger pattern of world events, in which they have their context. On any given night the intimate events of your dream lives also exist in the greater context of the world's dreams — in which they have their reality.

Reality as Framework 2 is organized in a different fashion than it is in the Framework 1 world, and the processes of reasoning are far quicker. In Framework 1 the reasoning processes work largely by deduction, and they must constantly check their own results against the seemingly concrete experience of physical events. The reasoning of the inner ego is involved with the creative invention of those experiences. It is involved with events in a context of a different kind, for it deals intimately with probabilities.

Each of you, with your beliefs and intents, tell the inner ego which of an infinite number of probable events you want to encounter. In the dream state events from both frameworks are processed. The dream state involves not only a state of consciousness that exists between the two frameworks of reality, but also involves, in those terms, a connecting reality of its own.

What appears to you as chance or coincidence, however, is actually the result of the amazing organizations and communications active in the psychological reality of Framework 2.

Framework 2 will not be a dry, intellectual exploration, because the intent itself will begin to trigger within your lives the emergence of hints and clues as to your own immersion in Framework 2's creativity.

Without the particular plants, animals, people, or even individual cells or viruses, nature has no meaning. Your physical universe, then, had a nonphysical origin, in which it is still couched. In the same manner your individual consciousness has an origin in which it is still couched.

Framework 2 represents the inner sphere of reality, the inner dimensions of existence, that gives your world its own characteristics. The energy and power that keeps you alive, that fuels your thoughts — and also the energy that lights your cities — all have their origins in Framework 2.

Children however know quite well, automatically, that they have a strong hand in the creation of the events that then seem to happen to them.

The child in you sensed more, of course: It sensed its own greater reality in another framework entirely, from which it had only lately emerged — yet with which it was intimately connected.

The child knew "that it came from somewhere else" — not by chance but by design.

Children experiment constantly in an effort to discover not only the effect of their thoughts and intents and wishes upon others, but the degree to which others influence their own behavior. To that extent, they deal rather directly with probabilities in a way quite foreign to adult behavior.

Children understand the importance of symbols, and they use them constantly to protect themselves — not from their own reality but from the adult world.

The origin of your universe is nonphysical, and each event, however grand or minute, has its birth in the Framework 2 environment. Your physical universe arose from that inner framework, then, and continues to do so.

You were born with the impetus toward growth built in — automatically provided with the inner blueprints that would lead to a developed adult form. Not only the cells, but the atoms and molecules that compose them contained a positive intent to cooperate in a bodily formation, to fulfill themselves, and they were then predisposed not only toward survival, but with an idealization leading toward the best possible development and maturity.

All of those characteristics have their sources in Framework 2, for the psychological medium in Framework 2 is automatically conducive to creativity. It is not simply a neutral dimension, therefore, but contains within itself an automatic predisposition toward the fulfillment of all patterns inherent within it.

Reasoning by itself can only deal with deductions made about the known world. It cannot accept knowledge that comes from "elsewhere," for such information will not fit in reason's categories, and confounds its cause-and-effect patterning. The power to reason comes from Framework 2.

The mother could not consciously control the bodily processes that lead to birth. In the truest sense, the birth magically happens, as miraculous in those terms as the so-called initial emergence of life upon the planet itself. Scientific analysis of the brain will tell you nothing about the power that moves your thoughts, or hint at the source of the brain's abilities. However, the constant activity between Frameworks 1 and 2 is constantly apparent in the very existence of your world, and in the relationships involving your imagination, feelings, and beliefs, and those private and shared events that compose your experience.

The coincidences that seem to happen, the chance encounters, the unexpected events — all of these come into your experience because in one way or another you have attracted them, even though their occurrences might seem to have insurmountable odds against them. Those odds — those impediments — do not exist in Framework 2.

Your Framework 1 existence is immersed in Framework 2. Again, your body itself is constantly replenished in Framework 1 because of its simultaneous reality in Framework 2. Framework 2 is ever exteriorizing itself, appearing in your experience as Framework 1. You concentrate so thoroughly upon exterior reality, however, that you often ignore the quite apparent deeper sources of your own physical existence. As a result you deal with methods of division and categorization so completely that you lose sight of associative organizations, even though you use them constantly in your own most intimate thought processes.

You must understand that in a manner of speaking, Framework 2 is on the one hand an invisible version of the physical universe. On the other hand, however, it is far more than that, for it contains within it probable variations of that universe — from the most cosmic scale, say, down to probable versions of the most minute events of any given physical day.

Your body has an invisible counterpart in Frame-work 2. During life that counterpart is so connected with your own physical tissues, however, that it can be misleading to say that the two — the visible and invisible bodies — are separate.

In the same way that your thoughts have a reality in Framework 2, and only for the sake of a meaningful analogy, thoughts could be said to be the equivalent, now, of objects; for in Framework 2 thoughts and feelings are far more important even than objects are in physical reality.

You possess a unique kind of consciousness, in which each individual has a hand in the overall formation of a world reality, and you are participating at a level of existence in which you are learning how to transform the imaginative realm of probabilities into a more or less specific, physically experienced world.

In a way you choose from an infinite, endless, uncomputable number of ideas, and sculpt these into the physical fragments that compose normal experience. You do this in such a way that the timeless events are experienced in time, and so that they mix and merge to conform to the dimensions of your reality.

I try to strongly state the pristine uniqueness of the individual. I also say that there are no limitations to the self.

Each person forms his or her own reality, and yet that personal reality must also be shared with others, and must be affected by the reality of others . ...

Man has free will within the framework of his existence, and that all other species do also within the frameworks of their existences.

I would like to reinforce the fact that life is indeed a cooperative venture, and that all the steps taken toward the ideal must of themselves be life-promoting. For a start you will acknowledge your existence in the framework of nature, and to do that you must recognize the vast cooperative processes that connect each species with each other one. Every time you affirm the Tightness of your own existence, you help others. Your mental states are part of the planet's psychic atmosphere.

The inner self, which is the source of your present being, speaks through your impulses. They provide in-built spiritual and biological impetuses toward your most ideal development (underlined). You must trust the self that you are, now.

If you would know yourself in deepest terms, you must start with your own feelings, emotions, desires, intents and impulses. Spiritual knowledge and psychic wisdom are the natural result of a sense of self-unity.

Again, impulses are inherently good, both spiritually and biologically. They emerge from Framework 2, from the inner self, and they are based on the great inner webwork of communication that exists among all species on your planet. (Pause.) Impulses also provide the natural impetus toward those patterns of behavior that serve you best, so that while certain impulses may bunch up toward physical activity, say, others, seemingly contradictory, will lead toward quiet contemplation, so that overall certain balances are maintained.

The patterns for the earth and for its creatures were as real before their physical appearances, and far more real than, say, the plan for a painting that you might have in your mind.

Your conscious mind can only accept a certain sequence of probabilities as recognized experience. As I have said, the choices among probabilities go on constantly, both on conscious and unconscious levels. Events that you do not perceive as conscious experience are (pause) a part of your unconscious experience, however, to some extent. This applies to the individual, and of course en masse the same applies to world events. Each action seeks all of its own possible fulfillments. All That Is seeks all possible experience, but in such a larger framework in this case that questions of, say, pain or death simply do not apply, though [certainly] they do on the physical level.

You want something, you dwell upon it consciously for a while, you consciously imagine it coming to the forefront of probabilities, closer to your actuality. Then you drop it like a pebble into Framework 2, forget about it as much as possible for a fortnight, and do this in a certain rhythm.

The universe was created in the same fashion that your own thoughts and dreams happen: spontaneously and yet with a built-in amazing order, and an inner organization. You think your thoughts and you dream your dreams without any clear knowledge of the incredible processes involved therein, yet those processes are the very ones that are behind the existence of the universe itself.

You are the unique creative manifestations of a divine intelligence whose creativity is responsible for all realities, which are themselves endowed with creative abilities of their own, with the potential and desire for fulfillment—inheritors indeed of the divine processes themselves. Spontaneity knows its own order.

The world's parts come spontaneously together, with an order that basically defies the smaller laws of cause and effect, or before and afterward. In that regard, again, your dreaming state presents you with many clues about the source of your own lives and that of your world.

An inner (pause) "psychological" universe, from which your own emerges, and that inner universe is also the source of Framework 2 as well. It is responsible for all physical effects, and is behind all physical "laws."

Now in the greater framework of reincarnational existences you choose your roles, or your lives, but the lines that you speak, the situations that you meet, are not predetermined. "You" live or exist in a larger framework of activity even while you live your life, and there is a rambunctious interplay between the yous in time and the you outside of time.