“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(In this session Jane displayed no voice effects of note. She did not smoke except at breaks and the hoarseness was minimized. To begin we sat at the board as usual, fingers on the pointer. Seth spelled out his greeting on the board but Jane began to receive him within immediately. Thus she dictated the entire session.

I will go into this more deeply also. I am merely presenting a brief outline of the direction in which this material will go in the future. If you will ignore the apparent distinction between inner and outer senses you will get along at a faster rate. Even though they are not different things I must speak of them differently because they appear so on your plane. This is caused of course by the typical camouflage distortion effect, which occurs on almost every plane to some extent.

(Jane later said that this phrase, camouflage distortion effect, was to be a very important one.)

The tree bark for example is not really divided from the rest of the tree, yet I must speak as if it were so divided because this is one of the apparent effects that you see, and I could not ignore what you insist was the evidence of your senses. The evidence of your senses is usually camouflage. Let that one sink in.

You cannot see a handful of air though your hands may be full of it. You know its effects, you breathe it constantly, but consciously you do not realize what you are doing. You do not know how air tastes unless you really think hard about it. It is fuel to your physical body and the idea of it comes very close to this fuel of the inner senses, which is not a camouflage effect and which is our vitality unsolidified, or the little wires which make up our imaginary universe. In other words these little wires move along constantly like little individual railway cars carrying fuel, and also are composed of the very fuel themselves.

Effects would seem to be evidence, and therefore when you probe into seemingly empty spaces you will receive effects which will be evidence. In concrete terms, if a tree branch blows you can take it for granted that something moves the branch. You know wind by its effects. No one has seen wind but since at times its effects are so observable it would be idiocy to say that wind did not exist. Therefore you will come up against the basic stuff of the universe and feel its effects, though your outer senses will not necessarily perceive it.

Granted, your camouflage is in itself an effect. If you look at the observable physical world in this life, you can, it is true, learn something about the basic rules of the universe, if you take into consideration camouflage distortion. There is so much to be said here, and you have so much to learn that sometimes I have to admit that I’m appalled.

It is not a matter of inventing new instruments any longer. It is a matter of using the invisible instruments that you have. These instruments may be known and even examined by their effects. This material itself is evidence. It is like the branch that moves so that you know wind by its effects; and a windbag like me by the billowing gale of my monologues.

Scientists realize that the atmosphere of the earth is a distortion, or has a distorting effect upon their instruments. What they do not understand is that their instruments themselves are bound to be distortive. This cannot be emphasized too strongly. Any material physical instrument will have built-in distortive effects. The one instrument which is more important than any other and which has given you, that is mankind, all its breakthroughs and advance is the brain. Or rather the mind which contains the brain, and which is the meeting place of the inner and outer senses.

Einstein used the miraculous aspects of his mind. Parts of the mind are almost completely undistorted. The mind is distributed throughout the whole physical body. The mind builds up about it the physical camouflages necessary for existence on your physical plane. The mind receives data from the inner senses and forms the camouflage necessary. The mind unconsciously or unself-consciously deals with the basic laws according to the camouflage effect that is vital for survival on your physical plane. The mind is the tool which must be used.

Mental enzymes have a chemical effect or reaction on your plane. That is they can be observed on your plane through their chemical effect in it. But the effect itself is a distortion. On other planes the distortion effect may not be chemical at all. I have spoken of your plane rather than of your planet because earth is one of the planets that contain many planes.