Consciousness
Seth/ Jane Roberts
Since we have mentioned animals, let me say here that they do possess a kind of consciousness that does not allow them as many freedoms as your own. Yet at the same time, they are not hampered in its use by certain characteristics that often impede the practical potential of the human consciousness.
Consciousness is a way of perceiving the various dimensions of reality. Consciousness as you know it is highly specialized. The physical senses allow you to perceive the three dimensional world, and yet by their very nature they can inhibit the perception of other equally valid dimensions. Most of you identify with your daily physically orientated self. You would not think of identifying with one portion of your body and ignoring all the other parts, and yet you are doing the same thing (smile) when you imagine that the egotistical self carries the burden of your identity.
I am telling you that you are not a cosmic bag of bones and flesh, thrown together through some mixture of chemicals and elements. I am telling you that your consciousness is not some fiery product, formed merely accidentally through the interworkings of chemical components.
You are not a forsaken offshoot of physical matter, nor is your consciousness meant to vanish like a puff of smoke. Instead, you form the physical body that you know at a deeply unconscious level with great discrimination, miraculous clarity, and intimate unconscious knowledge of each minute cell that composes it. This is not meant symbolically.
Now because your conscious mind, as you think of it, is not aware of these activities, you do not identify with this inner portion of yourselves. You prefer to identify with the part of you who watches television or who cooks or works-- the part you thinks knows what it is doing. But this seemingly unconscious portion of yourself is far more knowledgeable, and upon its smooth functioning your entire existence depends.
This portion is conscious, aware, alert. It is you, so focused in physical reality, who do not listen to its voice, who do not understand that it is the great psychological strength from which your physically oriented self springs.
I call this seemingly unconscious the "inner ego", for it directs inner activities. It correlates information that is perceived not through the physical senses, but through other inner channels. It is the inner perceiver of reality that exists beyond the three-dimensional. It carries within it the memory of each of your past existences. It looks into subjective dimensions that are Literally infinite, and from these subjective dimensions all objective realities flow.
All necessary information is given to you through these inner channels, and unbelievable inner activities take place before you can so much as lift a finger, flicker an eyelid, or read this sentence upon the page. This portion of your identity is quite natively clairvoyant and telepathic, so that you are warned of disasters long before they occur, whether or not you consciously accept the message, and all communication takes place long before a word is spoken.
The "outer ego" and the inner ego operate together , the one to enable you to manipulate in the world that you know, the other to bring you those delicate inner perceptions without which physical existence could not be maintained.
There is however a portion of you, the deeper identity who forms both the inner ego and the outer ego, who decided that you would be a physical being in this place and in this time. This is the core of your identity, the psychic seed from which you sprang, the multidimensional personality of which you are a part.
For those of you who wonder where I place the subconscious, as psychologists think of it, you can imagine it as a meeting place, so to speak, between the inner and outer egos. You must understand that there are no real divisions to the self, however, so we speak of various portions only to make the basic idea clear.
Since we are addressing individuals who identify with the "normal conscious self," I bring such matters up in this first chapter because I will be using the terms later in the book, and because I want to state the fact of multidimensional personality as soon as possible.
You cannot understand yourselves, and you cannot accept my independent existence, until you rid yourself of the notion that personality is a "here and now" attribute of consciousness. Now some of the things that I may say about physical reality in this book may startle you, but remember that I am viewing it from an entirely different standpoint.
You are presently focused entirely within it, wondering perhaps what else if anything there may be outside. I am outside, returning momentarily to a dimension that I know and loved. I am not in your terms a resident, however. While I have a psychic "passport", there are still some problems of translation, inconveniences of entry that I must contend with.
Many people, I hear, have lived for years within New York City and never taken a tour through the Empire State Building, while many foreigners are well acquainted with it. And so while you have a physical address, I may still be able to point out some very strange and miraculous psychic and psychological structures within your own system of reality that you have ignored.
I hope, quite frankly, to do far more than this. I hope to take you on a tour through the levels of reality that are available to you, and to guide you on a journey through the dimensions of your own psychological structure -- to open up whole areas of your own consciousness of which you have been relatively unaware. I hope, therefore, not only to explain the multidimensional aspects of personality, but to give each reader some glimpse of that greater identity that is his own.
The self that you know is but one fragment of your entire identity. These fragment selves are not strung together, however, like beads of a string. They are more like the various skins of an onion, or segments of an orange, all connected through one vitality and growing out into various realities while springing from the same source.
I am not comparing personality to an orange or an onion, but I want to emphasize that as these things grow from within outward, so does each fragment of the entire self. You observe the outside aspect of objects. Your physical senses permit you to perceive the exterior forms to which you then react, but your physical senses to some extent force you to perceive reality in this manner, and the inside vitality within matter and form is not so apparent.
But I can tell you, for example, that there is consciousness even within a nail, but few of my readers will take me seriously enough to stop in midsentence, and say good morning or good afternoon to the nearest nail they can find, stuck in a piece of wood.
Nevertheless, the atoms and molecules within the nail do possess their own kind of consciousness. The atoms and molecules that make up the pages in this book are also, within their own level, aware. Nothing exists-- neither rock, mineral, plant, animal, or air-- that is not filled with consciousness of its own kind. So you stand amid a constant vital commotion, a gestalt of aware energy, and you are yourselves physically composed of conscious cells that carry within themselves the realization of their own identity, that cooperate willingly to form the corporeal structure that is your physical body.
I am not saying, of course, that there is no such thing as dead matter. There is no object that was not formed by consciousness, and each consciousness, regardless of its degree, rejoices in sensation and creativity. You cannot understand what you are unless you understand such matters.
For convenience's sake, you close out the multitudinous inner communications that leap between the tiniest parts of your flesh, yet even as physical creatures, you are to a certain a portion of other consciousnesses. There are no limitations to the self. There are no limitations to its potentials. You can adopt artificial limitations through your own ignorance, however. You can identify, for example, with your outer ego alone, and cut yourself off from abilities that are a part of you. You can deny, but you cannot change, the facts. The personality is multidimensional, even though many people hide their heads, figuratively speaking, in the sand of three-dimensional existence and pretend there is nothing more.
I do not mean to underestimate the outer ego. You simply over-estimated it. Nor has its true nature been recognized.
We will have more to say concerning this point, but for now it is enough to realize that your sense of identity and continuity is not dependent upon the ego.
Now at times I will be using the term "camouflage," referring to the physical world to which the outer ego relates, for physical form is one of the camouflages that reality adopts. The camouflage is real, and yet there is much greater reality within it-the vitality that gave it form. Your physical senses then allow you to perceive this camouflage, for they are attuned to it in a highly specialized manner. But to sense the reality within the form requires a different sort of attention, and more delicate manipulations than the physical senses provide.
The ego is a jealous god, and it wants its interests served. It does not want to admit the reality of any dimensions except those within which it feels comfortable and can understand. It was meant to be an aid but it has been allowed to become a tyrant. Even so, it is not as natively as rigid as it seems. Its curiosity can be of great value.
If you have a limited conception of the nature of reality, then your ego will do its best to keep you in the small enclosed area of your accepted reality. If on the other hand, your intuitions and creative interests are allowed freedom, then they communicate some knowledge of greater dimensions to this most physically orientated portion of you personality.
The fact of this book is proof that the ego does not have the whole personality to itself, for there is no doubt that it is being produced by some other personality than that of the writer known as Jane Roberts. Since that Jane Roberts has no abilities that are not inherent in the species as a whole, then at the very least it must be admitted that the human personality has many more attributes than those usually ascribed to it. I hope to explain what these abilities are, and point out the ways that each individual can use to release these potentials.
Personality is a gestalt of ever-changing perception. It is the part of the identity which perceives. I do not force my perceptions upon the women through whom I speak, nor is her consciousness blotted out during our communications. Instead there is an expansion of her consciousness and a projection of energy that is directed away from three-dimensional reality.
This concentration away from the physical system may make it appear as if her consciousness is blotted out. Instead, more is added to it. Now from my own field of reality I focus my attention toward the woman, but the words that she speaks- these words upon the pages- are not initially verbal at all.
In the first place, language as you know it is a slow affair; letter by letter strung out to make a word, and words to make a sentence, the result of a linear thought pattern. Language as you know it, is partially and grammatically the end product of your physical time sequences. You can only focus on so many things at one time, and your language structure is not given to the communication of intricate, simultaneous experience.
I am aware of a different kind of experience, not linear, and can focus upon and react to an infinite variety of simultaneous events. Ruburt(Jane Roberts)could not express them, and so they must be leveled out into the linear expression if they are to be communicated. This ability to perceive and react to unlimited simultaneous events is a basic characteristic of each whole self or entity. Therefore, I do not claim it as some feat that is exclusively my own.
Each reader, being presently ensconced within a physical form, I presume(humorously), knows only a small portion of himself—as I mentioned earlier. The entity is the overall identity of which his personality is one manifestation—an independent and eternally valid portion. In these communications, therefore Ruburt’s consciousness expands, and yet focuses in a different dimension, a dimension between his reality and mine, a field relatively free from distraction. Here I impress certain concepts upon him, with his permission and consent. They are not neutral, in that all knowledge or information bears the stamp of the personality who holds it or passes it on.
Ruburt makes his verbal knowledge available for our use, and quite automatically the two of us cause various words that will be spoken. Distractions can occur, as any information can be distorted. We are used to working together now, however, and the distortions are very few.
Some of my energy is also projected through Ruburt, and his energy and mine activate his physical form during our sessions, and now as I speak these sentences. There are many other ramifications that I will discuss later.
I am not therefore, a product of Ruburt’s subconscious, anymore than he is a product of my subconscious mind. Nor am I a secondary personality, cleverly trying to undermine a precarious ego. I have seen to it in fact that all portions of Ruburt’s personality are benefited, and their integrity maintained and honored.
There is within his personality a rather unique facility that makes our communications possible. I will try to put this a simply as possible: There is within his psyche what amounts to a transparent dimensional warp that serves almost like an open window through which other realities can be perceived, a multidimensional opening that has to some extent escaped being clouded over by the shade of physical focus.
The physical senses usually blind you to these open channels, for they perceive reality only in their own image. To some extent, then, I enter your reality through a psychological warp in your space and time. In a matter of speaking, such an open channel serves much as a pathway between Ruburt’s personality and my own, so that communication is possible between. Such psychological and psychic warps between dimensions of existence are not infrequent. They are merely recognized as such infrequently and utilized even less so.
I will try to give you some idea of my own nonphysical existence. Let it serve to remind you that you own basic identity is as nonphysical as my own.
That is the end of chapter one.
Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of
The Soul
Amber-Allen Publishing ISBN 1-878424-07-6