“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

9
The Inner Senses — Rob’s Turn

I also sensed, or felt, a great chute or trough or pathway of some kind that reached down into me from above me, or at least from outside of me. At this point, I definitely was apprehensive. The sensation in my chest was very strong. I even thought that perhaps I was having some sort of physical attack, though I felt no pain.

She is always slightly dubious and doubtful before a session … since she is the one through whom I speak. The inner senses are not accustomed to operating so freely, and this sometimes upsets the all-present ego. Usually in our sessions, one inner sense is in strong operation. … Often, just beforehand Ruburt does not have a thought in his head … and then my ‘excellent’ dissertations begin, if you will forgive a touch of egoism on my part. He wants to know where the words are coming from and still wonders if I am a part of his subconscious; and I must admit that I find such an idea appalling. He wants his answers given to him in a way that his conscious mind can understand. This is our twenty-fourth session, and I am still trying to give you the answers.

This last was given with rich mock humor. Seth went on to explain that great dimension would be given to the sessions as we progressed. He began to go into the inner senses more thoroughly and Rob really pricked up his ears, hoping that Seth would mention his three recent experiences. Were they the results of his fumbling attempts to use the inner senses?

There is an inner sense, Joseph, that, in a vague manner, corresponds to your own inner images. That is, you use this inner sense quite inadvertently in your visions, except that because of your lack of consistent training, you see these only dimly.

The inner senses, however, give much stronger impressions than those given by the outer ones. You should, in the future, be able to achieve the counterparts of sight, sound, smell and touch, embellished by inner counterparts of width and existence, using the inner senses. You have trouble now with the duration of your inner visions because you are trying to transpose them according to physical time — and this is going about it in the wrong way. As I mentioned earlier, you have at your command, even now, an inroad, a relatively accessible one, in what is termed psychological time.

This is closely related to the second inner sense, and it is upon psychological time that you must try to transpose your inner visions. You can see how handicapped we both are because of the difficulties involved in trying to explain inner data in terms of outer data. For instance, when I tell you that the second inner sense is like your sense of time, this does give you some understanding of what psychological time is like, but you are apt to compare the two too closely.

Any communications coming through the inner senses will exist in your psychological time. Psychological time operates during sleep and quiet hours of consciousness. Now, in dreams you may have the feeling of experiencing many hours or even days. These days or hours of psychological experience are not recorded by the physical body and are outside of the physical time camouflage. If, in a dream, you experience a period of three days, physically you do not age for these days. Do you see?

Psychological time is so a part of inner reality that even though the inner self is still connected to the body, you are, in the dream framework, free of some very important physical effects. Now, as dreams seem to involve you in duration that is independent of clock time, so can you achieve the actual experience of duration as far as your inner visions are concerned.

But the minute — the physical minute — you try to transpose these visions upon the physical minute, then you lose them. Many times, in so-called daydreaming, you have lost track of clock time, and this experience of inner duration has entered in.

Originally, psychological time allowed man to live in the inner and outer worlds with relative ease … and man felt much closer to his environment. In prehistoric times, mankind evolved the ego to help him deal with camouflage patterns that he had, himself, created. This is no contradiction, as will be explained later. He did the job so well that even when he had things well under control, he was not satisfied. He developed at a lopsided level. The inner senses led him into a reality he could not manipulate as easily as he could physical camouflage, and he feared what he thought of as a loss of mastery.

Now if you’re ready, I have a few words to say about your beautiful, if haphazard, experience with the inner senses the other evening.

The first time this happened, you were calling for help. Like many others, you feared the inner world so strongly, even though you were somewhat acquainted with it through your art, that nothing but panic would force you to try that invisible knob. This time, there was a remembrance of panic but that was all. Actually you opened the door out of desire, stimulated by our sessions and out of curiosity, but you were still frightened.

What you experienced is rather difficult to explain until we have a thorough discussion of the inner senses, but I will give you a simple explanation for now. You felt an onrush — or should I say an onslaught? — of data in its pure form, rushing through the inner senses like a wind in a kaleidoscope because you did not know how to control or disentangle it.

For this reason, you attempted a rather hilarious feat. You tried to switch over and pick up inside data with the outer senses, and then project this inward. For a beginner, it was quite a performance. … It was a defect on the receiving end that caused fear on your part. You felt sound. But, because you did not hear sound with your ears, you panicked and formed the image of mouths that could not speak. This was a projection of your inability and should not be taken as any condition of helplessness existing in the inner world, as I am afraid you interpreted the image.

Your feeling of a door or funnel is quite legitimate, however, and if you felt attacked because of the onrush of data that seemed to crash down upon you, it was only because of your inability to control the volume, so to speak. You switched yourself off automatically because the experience frightened you, but the whole affair was beneficial since it gave you some first-hand experience with pure inner sensory data. It was unfortunate that it was so uncontrolled, but I’m afraid this can often be expected in the beginning. If possible, try to relax if the experience happens again, and the data will slow itself up.

At this stage you will do what you can to encourage it, without my telling you, just as you initiated the event to begin with. Your own innate inner knowledge will aid you. I suggest a brief break, and this time my dear Joseph, do copy your strolling wife and move about.

It is a natural connective to the inner world. As you can experience days or hours within its framework in the dream state and not age for the comparable amount of physical time, so as you develop, you will be able to rest and be refreshed within psychological time even when you are awake. This will aid your mental and physical state to an amazing degree. You will discover an added vitality and a decreased need to sleep. Within any given five minutes of clock time, for example, you may find an hour of resting which is independent of clock time.

You can look through psychological time at clock time and even use clock time then to your greater advantage; but without the initial recognition of psychological time, clock time becomes a prison. … A proper use of psychological time will not only lead you to inner reality but will prevent you from being rushed in the physical world. It provides quiet and peacefulness.

From its framework you will see that clock time is as dreamlike as you once thought inner time was. You will discover that ‘inner time’ is as much a reality as you once considered outer time to be. In other words, peeping inwards and outwards at the same ‘time’ you will find that all divisions are illusion and all time is one time. …

Since you are both tired, I will end the session. Don’t say that I didn’t lead you a merry chase tonight, for when you reread the material, you will see that it must be studied carefully. One point, however: conscious fear is usually the main hindrance as far as inner data is concerned. Therefore, a realization that these senses belong to you and that they are quite natural, will help you avoid the closing off of such data by the conscious mind.

If you remember this, inner data will come through much more easily, and you will be able to control it. It is never of itself overpowering. You can train yourself in the recognition of such data, its utilization and control. Within the framework of psychological time you can also lengthen such experiences.