“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The Personality: Dissociation and Possession
The Inner Senses and Mental Enzymes
Seth Looks out the Window

(This morning at breakfast I announced suddenly, to Jane’s surprise and my own, that light was a mental enzyme … We started tonight’s session sitting at the board as usual, without asking questions.)

Light is a mental enzyme.

As far as light being a mental enzyme, this is true. I’m pleased that you came forward with this yourself. Mental enzymes create senses on the physical plane in order that they may be recognized and appreciated by the physical being. The mental enzymes are the same, basically, throughout the universe, but their materializations on any particular plane are determined by the properties inherent in the plane itself.

The quality called light on this plane could just as well appear as sound in another; and for that matter, even on this plane, light can be changed into sound, and sound into light. It is always interaction which is important. Even the mental enzymes themselves are interchangeable, as far as the principle behind them is concerned, though for practical purposes they maintain separate and distinct qualities in their materializations in one plane.

That is why it is possible for some human beings to experience sound as color or to see color as sound. Granted, this is not a characteristic experience, but if the mental enzymes were not interchangeable in principle, then the experience would not be possible. Light would never be heard, for example, and sound would never be seen.

In practical terms, these mental enzymes must — and do — give a predictable, more or less dependable, result. The thing to remember, though, is that this interchangeability can occur, and is, therefore, a property of mental enzymes in general. … On your plane, the action of these mental enzymes appear to be more or less inflexible, static, irreversible and permanent. Of course, this is not the case. …

Because mental enzymes seem to give the same effects most of the time in your system, your scientists blithely label these as laws of nature; that is, the apparent laws of cause and effect. If you’ll forgive a pun, because a certain cause will usually give a certain effect in your physical universe, you may be justified in saying that the apparent results are laws that operate within your system. But stay in your own back yard.

What these wires are, then, that seem to divide our planes and appear so differently in one plane than they do in another, is solidified vitality, whose camouflaging action is determined by mental enzymes. Now, perhaps, you will understand why I said earlier that sound can be seen and color can be heard. There are many diverse examples along this line.

If you’ll forgive me, Joseph, I would like to repeat: Mental enzymes allow the solidified vitality to change form. Your ‘light is a mental enzyme’ tipped me off that you were ready for this discussion. Needless to say, mental enzymes and solidified vitality are dependent upon each other in many ways. The enzyme part of our little equation permits vitality to operate successfully under diverse mental and physical situations and forms the basis for each particular system of existence.

The inner senses are actually the channels through which the entire composition of any plane is appreciated and maintained. The mental enzymes act upon the vitality, which is, as I told you, the structure of the universe itself. The inner senses, then, are the means. The mental enzymes are the tools, and the vitality is the actual material that forms the universe as a whole, the apparent divisions within it, the apparent boundaries between the systems and the diverse materials within each division. These diverse materials, again, are only camouflage formed by the inner senses upon the ‘material’ itself.