“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

To begin with, Augustus was brought up to believe that the inner self was dangerous, that individuals reacted because of inner conflicts over which they had little conscious control. (Gesturing:) He believed that the individual personality was relatively powerless to understand itself and that it stood precariously alone and undefended, with a chasm of evil beneath and with an unattainable, cold, just, but not compassionate Good (with a capital “G”) above.

Augustus had been taught to fear his own thoughts, to avoid self-examination. Beliefs or ideas that frightened him were not faced, therefore, but initially shoved into corners of the conscious mind, where they lay relatively harmlessly in the beginning.

Because like ideas do attract like, both electromagnetically and emotionally, the conscious mind found itself with two complete contradictory systems of belief, and two self-images. (Pause.) To protect the integrity of the physical structure, Augustus’s conscious mind neatly divided itself up. No longer were the minute-to-minute messages to the body scrambled.

(Slowly:) The part of Augustus who felt powerful and alien became personified. When Augustus felt threatened then the conscious mind switched over, accepting as operating procedure the system of beliefs in which Augustus saw himself as all-powerful, secure — but as alien. This part of his beliefs, therefore, and this particular self-image, took over his conscious mind and became what we will here call Augustus Two. When Augustus Two assumed leadership then the physical body itself was not only strong and powerful, but capable of physical feats far surpassing those of Augustus One.

Now this is a split of the conscious mind. It does not originate within the inner self. When Augustus Two takes over he is quite conscious. He simply views physical reality through an undeviating system of beliefs. The messages sent to the body are not in the least contradictory. The body is under excellent control.

The beliefs whose energy generated this “alternate self image” then appeared in the daylight, acting out their natural results in physical reality. Augustus One, now in manhood, was forced to perceive the nature of these beliefs to some extent, yet when he was here visiting Ruburt he still would not examine them.

It was only because the childlike characteristics of Augustus Two finally appeared so blatantly that Augustus Two had to be dispensed with. Augustus’s wife made the difference, for it was obvious that she did not have the same opinion of this “friend” that her husband had. Her beliefs then became the new foundation, the one point of change that allowed Augustus to view this alternate self-image with any kind of detachment at all.