“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Consciousness is a way of perceiving the various dimensions of reality. Consciousness as you know it is highly specialized. The physical senses allow you to perceive the three-dimensional world, and yet by their very nature they can inhibit the perception of other equally valid dimensions. Most of you identify with your daily physically oriented self. You would not think of identifying with one portion of your body and ignoring all other parts, and yet you are doing the same thing (smile) when you imagine that the egotistical self carries the burden of your identity.

The “outer ego” and the inner ego operate together, the one to enable you to manipulate in the world that you know, the other to bring you those delicate inner perceptions without which physical existence could not be maintained.

The self that you know is but one fragment of your entire identity. These fragment selves are not strung together, however, like beads of a string. They are more like the various skins of an onion, or segments of an orange, all connected through the one vitality and growing out into various realities while springing from the same source.

Now: We will shortly be finished with our Chapter One, with very little more to go. (Amused): That is not for the book.

Now at times I will be using the term “camouflage,” referring to the physical world to which the outer ego relates, for physical form is one of the camouflages that reality adopts. The camouflage is real, and yet there is a much greater reality within it — the vitality that gave it form. Your physical senses then allow you to perceive this camouflage, for they are attuned to it in a highly specialized manner. But to sense the reality within the form requires a different sort of attention, and more delicate manipulations than the physical senses provide.

(11:35 P.M. The session was interrupted because Rooney, one of our two cats, wanted to go out for the night. Seth had been doing well. Jane left trance quickly. After I let the cat out she waited briefly, then decided to call it an evening before Seth could return. It doesn’t seem that Chapter One is quite finished.)