> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://www.isaacbowen.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://www.isaacbowen.com/2026/09/19/oversoul-seven-journeys-to-the-undersides-of-the-universe.md). # Oversoul Seven Journeys to the Undersides of the Universe Chapter 11 of "The Further Education of Oversoul Seven", Jane Roberts {% hint style="info" %} manually transcribed from print am reproducing this here because (2) it doesn't seem to exist elsewhere online as of this now and (1) this *is* what I experienced [20241216](/2024/12/17.md), when my mind "burned" {% endhint %} Seven went wandering through the universe. He wanted to get away from everything he knew, and since he knew more all the time, he had to go further to get away. To do this, he just let himself go unmoored in any given reality, unrelated to any ideas of himself. As always, some odd inner motion began to take hold, support him, and carry him along. When this started to happen he always worried a bit, but nothing like he used to, and then the journey really began. He felt like a seed on the wind, blowing through universes but never landing. Somewhere along the way he knew that this thoughts would start changing too, and he tried to catch this happening. First, it was like thinking backwards, and very confusing. Just when he seemed to get the knack of this, his thoughts turned around again, and it was like thinking sidewards. He was used to the fact that there really was no up or down to space. But now the up and down quality of his thoughts was gone too, and his sense of subjective direction. That is, thoughts just came — backwards, sidewards, from inside and outside — and none of them were particularly his or anyone else's. He tried to navigate in all this, because it seemed that there should be one thought of his own to use as a kind of measuring stick. But he'd already let himself go, or begun the process; and at this point he didn't know how to reverse what he'd started. The thoughts came all at once, not one before the other, and then suddenly Seven got scared — or the part of him that still held on got scared — because the thoughts began to mix with each other. One thought said, "This is the beginning," for example. The thought nearest to that one said, "This is the end," and the two sentences came simultaneously. Then the letters in one sentence mixed into those of the other one, and some part of Seven's mind went in and out, trying to keep track. But at the same time, all the other thoughts he heard started doing the same thing. And parts of Seven kept leaving him to follow those too, as they went jumbling and turning into completely different patterns. This wasn't Seven's idea of getting away from it at all, and something else happened that had never happened before. The sentences that he heard now came in different languages, so that "This is the beginning" came in every language at once, and so did lal the other sentences. He saw the letters mentally also. Before he got used to this — and the sentences switching to all of their language versions — the ltters themselves grew bleary and began to shift and break away from one another, turning into waves and particles of light. Now and then one would explode, and the light from that fragment would turn all of the other particles into waves. But in the next moment they'd be particles again, like mosaics, glimmering in hte universe, with darkness all around. Seven blinked: The darkness wasn't at all stationary, but ketp slivering off and falling into all of this particle and wave activity, until some of the ltters were made of a glowing, brilliant darkness. "There was light and there was darkness," Seven thought, or thought that he thought. How could there be light-darkness or darkness that was light? That would mean — But before he could finish, the light fragments and the dark-shining fragments changed places or turned into each other. Seven screamed with dismay and shouted with utter amazement all at once. Because suddenly he was on the other side of . . . what? His mind (or what was left of it), he thought (or tried to think), was different. He'd been travling far faster than the speed of light in usual terms, but now he discovered that once this happened, there was a sense of complete stillness that existed inside the incredible motion. He calmed down. He was lolling. When everything went so fast that you could hardly follow, there was a new quiet plateau within or above the speed — if that was the word. Because now all the letters and sentences that he'd heard before just went lolling about too, like clouds, only they were broad waves now, shining, separated, flowing past each other without a care in the world. Now who thought that last sentence, Seven wondered, and what world did it come from? He didn't recognize it as his own, or as anyone else's, for that matter. He was simply intrigued, watching all of the gentle motion, which he discovered had a slight sound, like the breaking of light into music or the notes that music comes from — and he sudenly felt himself doing just that. Some tiny part of himself rode piggyback on the rest of him, which was definitely breaking up or falling apart. Not that he had a physical form, because he didn't, but his being had an intangible form and this was gently falling off in bits and pieces, tumbling out into long waves that now and then bunched together in particles, and all of this kept extending outward into — well, whatever was there. In so doing, Seven's consciousness flowed through the lot; rising and falling in the waves, bouncing and gently snapping back — all very enjoyable. The waves and particles that were his kept flowing through others that weren't, though he didn't know who or what they belonged to. Only a strangeness flowed through him when this happened. It was "sometime later" before he realized that each time this happened, a bit of his consciousness mixed into those waves too, and a bit of the other streams most certainly flowed into him. How many others was he, then? Or how many others were him? How on earth could you tell? How on *what?* Was that thought his? *Whose?* He'd gone to the other side of the universe, or to the other side of the inside of the universe, whatever that meant and whoever or whatever he was. *Was.* This was the strangest thought he'd ever had. Nothing, he knew, was. Everything *is*. But where was he in this everythingness? And how did somewhere come from nowhere, drifting as he was, spread out into all those waves and particles, each spreading both light and sound? The sound disappeared but was always present. And Seven realized then that he'd quite disappeared. He doubted even Cyprus could find him. He was . . . dispersed. He was hopscotching all over; or space was everywhere turning into what he was; or he was turning everywhere into what space was, and couldn't tell the difference. What would happen if — He shouted, "I am Oversoul Seven," and meant it? And he did. At once, or rather before all at once, all the waves and particles stopped, wherever they were, for some had vanished beyond the dimensions of his knowledge or attention, fallen over horizons of being that he couldn't fathom. Yet the stopping was so fast and involved such motion that, like a rubber band snapping, particles and waves all moved one into the other, contracted, imploded, shrank, moved faster than light into a different kind of light — and threw Seven back to the side of the universe he'd left earlier. "To say I was multidimensionally dizzy is an understatement," he said to Cyprus later, and as soon as he said the words he was struck with the meaning of "understatement." He had gone *under* statement; beneath it. He had unstated himself, at least briefly, and he said proudly to Cyprus, "I must have restated myself rather well, too, because here I am." "Are you?" Cyprus asked gently. Seven shook his head, figuratively speaking, and said "I've just been through enough without you trying to confuse me further." "All right," Cyprus replied. "I'll take pity on you and help you out. If instead of saying, 'Here I am,' you say, 'I am here,' and if you realize that *here* is a noun synonymous with *I*, then you've really learned something." Seven knew that he'd really learned something vital in his other-side-of-the-universe adventure. He knew that he knew, but he didn't know how to make the knowledge available. Still, he tried. He said. "You're trying to tell me that where I am is always here. No, that isn't it. You're trying to tell me that here is where I am, no matter where that is." His voice trailed off. "No matter *what* it is?" "No," Cyprus said. "You're making it hopelessly complicated." She paused, waiting. Seven felt as if she was drawing the knowledge out of him; as if she reached down into some invisible closet of wisdom he didn't even know he possessed, and was pulling this seed of knowledge upward. He felt very odd, as if he should go (down?) there and help her. So he did. Everything that he had felt and sensed in his other side of the universe experience was happening all over again, only the waves and particles that spread out into unknowable horizons were . . . forming *his* consciousness, and his thoughts were growing out and up and emerging as his words to Cyprus. "I am here," Seven shouted triumphantly. "Here always happens for me where I am. Or, here and I are one." "So if ████ decides to ████ ████, he takes his here with him," Cyprus said gently. "He turns into a new here, that then knows itself." "And if ████ doesn't decide to be ████ as ████? Or if she changes her mind?" Seven asked, and added, "Not that she *would*, of course." "That's enough questions for now," Cyprus said. For that matter I'd see just what ████ was up to if I were you. And ████. And —" "I'm going," Seven cried. {% hint style="info" %} redacting distracting references, things that lean more on the surrounding world than the thrust of my purpose here actually requires. .. which I guess means that my purpose for hiding them is *similar* to what some forums do for spoilers? still, I like lossless data relay, so - in case you need them, you can reassemble it yourself: redactions in order are "Will", "commit", "suicide", "Lydia", "reborn", "Tweety", "Lydia", "Josef" {% endhint %} --- # Agent Instructions This documentation is published with GitBook. GitBook is the documentation platform designed so that both humans and AI agents can read, navigate, and reason over technical content effectively. Learn more at gitbook.com. ## Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation by asking a question. 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