“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Dictation: In the terms of our discussion, Framework 2 is the medium in which your world exists. It represents the vaster psychological reality in which your own subjective life resides.

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, however, as I use it, a term meant to express the ordinarily conscious directive portion of the self. It is your conscious version of what you are — an excellent description, if I do say so myself (with amusement). 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 that it does not itself possess.

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 travelled alone.

(10:14.) 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.

I am speaking of that framework now only as it applies to your world — not in its relationship to other realities. Earlier in his own experience Ruburt described that framework (in Psychic Politics) as the heroic dimension. He saw quite correctly that there was a great give-and-take between the two frameworks — your regular working one, Framework 1, and this other more comprehensive reality. He did not thoroughly understand, however, the creative ramifications involved, for it did not occur to him at the time that the prime work of your world was actually done by you in that other wider aspect of your existence.

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 idea of the ether, or something like it, had been around since the time of the ancient Greeks. By the last decades of the 19th century, and in line with Newtonian physics, the ether was postulated as an invisible, tasteless, odorless substance that pervaded all unoccupied space, and served as the medium for the passage of electromagnetic waves of light and other kinds of radiant energy, like heat — just as the earth itself serves as the medium for the transmission of seismic waves, for instance.