“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He felt bewildered in a world of opposites. Conflicting beliefs were uncritically accepted. (Pause.) The conscious mind will always attempt to make sense out of its beliefs, to form them into patterns and sequences. It will usually organize ideas in as rational a way as possible, and dispense with those that seem to contradict the overall system of its beliefs.

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.

As time went on the number of unexamined, frightening beliefs began to accumulate. Ideas and beliefs do feed upon themselves. There is within them a built-in impetus toward growth, development and fulfillment. Over the years two opposing systems of beliefs built up strongly, vying for Augustus’s attention. He believed that he was utterly powerless as an individual, that despite all his efforts he would come to nothing, go unnoticed. He felt completely unloved. He did not feel worthy of love. At the same time he let his conscious mind wander, and to compensate saw himself as all-powerful, contemptuous of his fellow human beings, and able to work greater vengeance upon them for their misunderstanding of him. In this line of beliefs he was able to do anything — cure mankind’s ills if he chose, or withhold such knowledge from the world to punish it. Period.

Now all of these ideas were quite conscious, but he held each group separately. The conscious mind, again, tries to obtain overall integrity and unity, lining up its beliefs into some kind of consistent system. When opposing beliefs that directly contradict each other are held for any length of time, and little attempt is made to reconcile them, then a “battle” begins within the conscious mind itself.

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.

Augustus One’s moods of course were a direct result of the ideas he was entertaining. It was this unceasing swing from high states of exaltation and power to low ones of powerlessness and depression that the body could not tolerate, because of the vast alterations entailed. For the greater periods of time Augustus One predominates, since his ideas of worthlessness, in your terms, were adopted earlier; and worse — are only reinforced by the contrast between him and Augustus Two. Augustus Two comes on sometimes for as long as a week at a time.

His nature is protective. The basic ideas and beliefs that have been personified into his being, that became his being, were formed to protect Augustus One from the destructive ideas given to him in his childhood, to combat the beliefs in powerlessness and futility. To that degree they were added onto the original ideas, but still at an early age; so it was from the child’s concept of a powerful being that Augustus Two sprang.

For the body of Augustus is once again under the sway of beliefs about himself that are highly contradictory. Before, he was physically powerful when he was Augustus Two, and weak when he was Augustus One. Now as Augustus he is alternately strong and weak, and the body stresses are apparent. As Augustus Two he could stay up night and day and perform physical tasks quite difficult for the normal human being to do, for he operated under the indivisible idea of power and strength.

Here then is a case where directly opposing beliefs dominated the conscious mind at various times, each operating the body in its own manner. Physically the body has the same capacity for strength regardless of which group of ideas were dominant; but practically speaking, Augustus One was incapable of performing the feats of Augustus Two.