“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I did suggest that for the present you trust Ruburt’s intuitions in the matter of your parents while you caught up with the technique of dissociation. There is no need for you to follow Ruburt’s lead in all directions. I merely want you to examine your own ideas as to what is practical, because often your ideas have been practical for the short term only, and in many cases though not all Ruburt’s seemingly unpractical notions have been based on very practical psychological knowledge.

Because Ruburt’s background in this life was particularly bizarre in a way and certainly unpleasant, he became beautifully efficient as far as sensing the approach of psychic storms is concerned and very adept at sensing moods, and also amazingly efficient in learning self-protective devices. It is true that Ruburt can also be trapped by his own capacity for protection. In his case this amounts to a stubborn refusal to see what he does not want to see. However this mechanism seldom actually goes haywire in this manner. This represents merely a possibility that could occur.

(Break at 9:25. I had done my yoga exercises at 8:30 and felt very relaxed and light-headed. My handwriting was very fluid. Smoking a cigarette during break, Jane received the words “—and as far as mediums are concerned—” but told Seth to wait until she had finished. She also admitted that she had been somewhat upset with Seth because of what he had told me the last two sessions; this I had not known. Jane resumed dictating at 9:30.)

Your so-called mediums are simply people who know more about what they are doing. You are learning step by step how to gain access to abilities that you have always enjoyed, always used to some extent, and which have helped mold the exterior circumstances of your life and given your personality much of its meaning. You will learn more. You can use these abilities in a practical manner and you have already begun to do so to some extent. I have given you enough personal data for a time but I will add to this material as I see fit.

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.

The inner senses deal with what actually is. The inner senses are the carriers of our fuel, that is, they can be likened to the various cars of our imaginary train. It takes some doing to be aware of this fuel, since it is so instantly transformed by the outer senses into the stuff of camouflage. The process involved is subconscious. You can hardly catch yourself at it, and yet with training you will be able to catch yourself in the act.

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.

Your scientists are correct in supposing that the universe is composed of the same elements that can be found on your plane. However, what they know as elements are of course particular camouflage patterns that may show themselves in a completely different form somewhere else.

It is only the inner senses which will give you any evidence at all of the basic nature of life itself. Since very often the vitality or stuff of the universe seems as innocuous as air might seem to you, then look for what you do not see. Explore places that appear empty, for they are full. Look between events. What you see clearly with your outer senses is camouflage. I am not suggesting that you take everything on faith, nothing of the sort. I am saying that what seems vacant lacks camouflage, and therefore if this is explored it will yield evidence. I hope I have not carried you too far too fast.

Your scientists can count their elements. While they are on the wrong track they will discover more and more elements. That is, they will create more and discover more until they are ready to go out of their minds. Because what will happen is, they will always create camouflages of the real thing. And while they create instruments to deal with smaller and smaller particular particles, they will actually see smaller and smaller particles, seemingly without end.

As their instruments reach further into the universe they will “see,” and I suggest that you put the word see into quotes, they will “see” further and further but they will automatically subconsciously transform what they apparently see into the camouflage pattern with which they are familiar.

I do not want to get too involved. However by certain means the instruments will themselves transform data from terms that you cannot understand into terms that you can understand. Scientists do this all the time. However what this involves is a watering down of data, a simplification that distorts all out of shape, the original is hardly discernible when you are done. You are destroying the meaning in the translation.

The instruments themselves do this transforming, transforming say the idea of time or light years into sound patterns, radio waves and such. You lose too much in this process. What you get is so distorted that you have absolutely no near perception of the original. I will go into this much more deeply, as there is much more to be said on a technical level. But when you decipher one phenomena in terms of another you always lose sight of whatever glimmer of understanding may have reached you.

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.

Physical tools may be used to force the imagination to move along in terms of its owner’s personal memories, but it cannot be forced to move along the lines of conceptual thought, because the imagination is in reality a connective fiber between the physical individual and the nonphysical entity.

I will go into this sort of development at a later time. The mind however determines which mental enzymes will be utilized and to what degree, and also determines the strength, type, and validity of camouflages necessary to physical survival.