“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

When you think of reincarnation, you suppose a series of progressions. Instead the various lives grow out of what your inner self is. They are not thrust upon you by some outside agency. They are a material development, as your consciousness opens up and expresses itself in as many ways as possible. It is not restricted to one three-dimensional lifetime, nor is it restricted to three-dimensional existence alone.

Entities or souls, in other words, send out portions of themselves to open up avenues of reality that would not exist otherwise. (Long pause at 9:39.) The three-dimensional selves, in existing within these realities, must focus their attention there completely. An inner awareness gives them a source of energy and strength. They must, however, come to understand their roles as actors, “finally” from their roles, and through another act of comprehension, return to the entity.

(10:07.) Since you all have a hand in forming this physical setting, and since you are ensconced yourself in a physical form, then using the physical senses you will only perceive this fantastic setting. The reality that exists both within it and beyond it will elude you. Even the actor is not entirely three-dimensional, however. He is a part of a multidimensional self.

Within him there are methods of perception that allow him to see through the camouflage settings, to see beyond the stage. He uses these inner senses constantly, though the actor part of himself is so intent upon the play that this escapes him. In a large manner, the physical senses actually form the physical reality they seem to only perceive. They are themselves part of the camouflage, but they are like lenses over your natural inner perceptions that force you to “see” an available field of activity as physical matter; and so they can be relied upon only to tell you what is happening in a superficial manner. You can tell the position of the other actors for example, or time by clock, but these physical senses will not tell you that time is itself a camouflage, or that consciousness forms the other actors, or that realities that you cannot see exist over and beyond the physical matter that is so apparent.

You can, however, using your inner senses, perceive reality as it exists apart from the play and your role in it. In order to do this you must, of course, momentarily at least turn your attention away from the constant activity that is taking place — turn off the physical senses, as it were — and switch your attention to those events that have escaped you earlier.

(10:20.) Highly simplified indeed, the effect would be something like changing one set of glasses for another, for the physical senses are as artificial, basically speaking, to the inner self, as a set of glasses or a hearing aid is to the physical self. The inner senses, therefore, are but rarely used completely consciously.

You would be more than disoriented, for example, but quite terrified, if between one moment and the next your familiar environment as you knew it disappeared to be replaced by other sets of data that you were not ready to understand, so much information from the inner senses must be translated in terms that you can comprehend. Such information must somehow make sense to you as three-dimensional selves, in other words.

Your particular set of camouflages is not the only set, you see. Other realities have entirely different systems, but all personalities have inner senses that are attributes of consciousness, and through these inner senses communications are maintained about which the normally conscious self knows little. Part of my purpose is to make some of these communications known.

The inner senses will allow you to perceive the reality that is independent of physical form. I will ask you all to momentarily forsake your roles therefore, and to try this simple exercise.

Everything is dark. Be quiet. Imagine as vividly as you can the existence of inner senses. For now pretend that they correspond to your physical ones. Clear from your mind all thoughts and worries. Be receptive. Very gently listen, not to physical sounds but to sounds that come through the inner senses.

Images may begin to appear. Accept them as sights quite as valid as those you see physically. Pretend that there is an inner world, and that it will be revealed to you as you learn to perceive it with these inner senses.

(10:58.) Pretend that you have been blind to this world all your life, and are now slowly gaining sight within it. Do not judge the whole inner world by the disjointed images that you may at first perceive, or by the sounds that you may at first hear, for you will still be using your inner senses quite imperfectly.

Do this simple exercise for a few moments before sleep or in the resting state. It may also be done even in the midst of an ordinary task that does not take all of your attention.

Ten minutes a day to begin with is quite sufficient. Now the information in this book is being directed to some extent through the inner senses of the woman who is in trance as I write it. Such endeavor is the result of highly organized inner precision, and of training. Ruburt could not receive the information from me, it could not be translated nor interpreted while she was focused intensely in the physical environment. So the inner senses are channels that provide communication between various dimensions of existence. Yet even here the information must be distorted to some extent as it is translated into physical terms. Otherwise it would not be perceived at all.