“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

8
Some Experiences with the Inner Senses

Rob’s vision was spontaneous. When he typed up Seth’s material on the first inner sense, though, he tried a simple deliberate experiment. It is one that I now use with my beginning students though then, of course, it was new to us. Here are Rob’s notes:

Then, last night, I stood at the window and looked out across the Walnut Street Bridge. I visualized myself walking across it and felt the wooden flooring beneath my feet. I felt myself walk beneath the signal light at the far end of the bridge and let myself continue on along the street. Finally I tried to reach out and envelop the feeling of the houses and trees on either side of me — to sense them as if by inner touch, as I passed each one by.

In the next session, Seth told Rob that he was doing well and should try the exercise often. The session, the twenty-second, was one of our first spontaneous sessions. (At times, I knew I could have a session, for example, but mentally refused. Two sessions a week were more than sufficient, I thought — I was afraid of going into trance at the drop of a hat.)

I was not trying to reach Ruburt in her sleep. Even I am not so bold as that. A woman’s slumber is, after all, a private and sacred thing. Seth said this with a dry sense of humor, then added, See how prim that last sentence would sound without the lively inflection I managed to give to Ruburt’s voice? In any case, the inner senses were wide open as she went to sleep. The material was coming through from her own entity.

It is true that Joseph receives much more data through inner visions. In the past, he has more or less translated this data automatically, without realizing it, into paintings, with no memory of any vision at all. You can learn to use the other inner senses as well, Joseph, and I will tell you more about them.

Because Ruburt deals in words, it is easy for me to communicate in this way. He automatically translates inner data given by me into coherent, valid and faithful camouflage patterns. The data that I give is not actually sound on my part. Its transference is automatic and instantaneous on Ruburt’s part, and is performed through the inner workings of the mind, the inner senses and the brain.

Since you are more sensitive to inner visual data, Joseph, the pictures that you would get in this manner would need interpretation. It just happens that Ruburt’s ability lies along the easiest route for us. That is, both of you have pursued separate abilities because of the bent of your particular personalities.

The problem is not only to receive data through the inner senses in an undistorted, coherent manner, but also to translate this into the particular camouflage patterns with which you are familiar. …

The fact is that although no one taught him to see, he sees. The part of himself that did ‘teach’ him to see still guides his movements, still moves the muscles of his eyes, still becomes conscious despite him when he sleeps, still breathes for him without thanks or recognition and still carries on his task of transforming energy from an inner reality into an outer one. Man becomes trapped by his own artifically divided self.

It is convenient not to be consciously aware of each breath you take, but it is sheer stupidity to ignore the inner self which does the breathing and is aware of the mechanics involved. I have said that the mind is a part of the inner world, but you have access to your own minds, which you ignore; and this access would lead you inevitably to truths about the outer world. Working inward, you could understand the outward more clearly.

Then, just as Rob was about to ask how we could really perceive the inner realities, Seth began to discuss the second inner sense, giving us a valuable tool for our subjective dissections. We later discovered, of course, the “inner senses” and “psychological time” had been discussed under different names in many ancient manuscripts. Rob was really impatient to get the session typed up so that he could study the material and put it to use.

Psychological time belongs to the inner self, that is, to the mind. It is, however, a connective, a portion of the inner senses which we will call, for convenience, the second inner sense … It is a natural pathway, meant to give easy access from the inner to the outer world and back again.

Time to your dreaming self is much like ‘time’ to your waking inner self. The time concept in dreams may seem far different than your conception of time in the waking state when you have your eyes on the clock and are concerned with getting to some destination by, say, 12:15. But it is not so different from time in the waking state when you are sitting alone with your thoughts. Then, I am sure, you will see the similarity between this alone sort of inner psychological time, experienced often in waking hours, and the sense of time experienced often in a dream. …

I cannot say this too often — you are far more than the conscious mind, and the self which you do not admit is the portion that not only insures your own physical survival in the physical universe which it has made, but which is also the connective between yourself and inner reality. … It is only through the recognition of the inner self that the race of man will ever use its potential.

The outer senses will not help man achieve the inner purpose that drives him. Unless he uses the inner senses, he may lose whatever he has gained. …

When Rob typed up the session and I read it, I went around in a daze of wonder. Like many other people, I’d distrusted the “inner” self to a considerable degree, believing that it held only repressed primitive emotions and buried, unsavory characteristics. But without it, we couldn’t even get out of bed in the morning or breathe, much less walk across the floor. Now this seems so obvious that it is almost impossible to remember what a revelation it seemed at the time. The next day, the session inspired me to write the following poem.

If the twenty-third session roused me to write the poem, it also impressed Rob deeply enough so that he tried a rather complicated experiment with the inner senses — without letting his conscious mind know what he was up to.