“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now I wish to make another point along these lines. No one, I am sure, denies the existence of air because ordinarily you do not see it. No one denies the existence of air because they do not understand the method by which their own lungs breathe. Yet they know that they breathe, and they know that without breath death is inevitable. To deny the existence of air would seem ridiculous. It is just as ridiculous to deny this vitality because it is usually unseen, or because you do not understand how you use it.

Therefore, with such an unnatural division it seems to man that he does not know himself. He says “I breathe, but who breathes, since consciously I cannot tell myself to breathe or not to breathe?” He says “I dream, but who dreams? I cannot tell myself to dream or not to dream.” He cuts himself in half, then wonders why he is not whole. Even in my own lifetimes on your plane I sensed this basic contradiction. Man has consistently admitted to the evidence only those things he could see, smell, touch or hear, and in so doing he could only appreciate half of himself. And when I say half of himself I exaggerate. He is aware of only a third of himself, because two-thirds of himself exists in that realm to which he will not admit.

If man does not know who breathes within him, and if man does not know who dreams within him, it is not because there is one who acts in the physical world and one completely separate who dreams and breathes. It is because he has buried the part of himself which breathes and dreams. If these functions seem so automatic as to be performed by someone completely divorced from himself, it is because he has done the divorcing. This is not the case on all planes. It is not even the case on planes that you might consider lower than your own, nor is it the case with some portions of life that you consider beneath you on your own plane.

Because you know that somehow you breathe, without consciously being aware of the actual mechanics being involved, you are forced despite your inclinations to admit that you do do your own breathing. When you cross a room you are forced to admit that you have caused yourself to cross the room, even though consciously you have no idea of willing the muscles to move or of stimulating one muscle or another; and yet even there, though you admit these things, you do not believe them. In your quiet unguarded moments you still say who breathes, who dreams, and even who moves? How much easier it would be to admit freely and wholeheartedly the simple fact that you are not consciously aware of important vital parts of yourself, and that you are more than you know you are.

But since it is so difficult for man to even recognize the self that moves his own muscles and breathes his own breath, then I suppose it should not be startling that he cannot realize that this whole self also forms the camouflage world of physical appearance, in almost the same manner that he forms a pattern with his breath upon a glass pane.

The book was a first attempt in forming a definite pattern of the material that he was receiving from the inner senses. He was beginning to recognize the whole self. The only reason the whole self is not much more conscious and accessible is your own stubborn refusal to admit it. I cannot emphasize this more strongly. The camouflage pattern world is formed by the mind, and I am using this now in its true term as a part of the inner world. Energy is received by the mind through the inner senses and transformed by use of mental enzymes into camouflage patterns.

The fact is, he sees although no one taught him how to see. And the part of himself that did teach him to see still guides his movements, still moves the muscles of his eyes, still becomes conscious despite him when he sleeps, still breathes for him without thanks, without recognition, and still carries on his task of transforming energy from an inner reality to an outer camouflage.

He becomes trapped by his own artificially-divided self. He looks for gods, anything at all, to explain perfectly natural functions that belong to him. This beautifully absolves him in his own eyes from all responsibility, but it does not. I have been speaking here only, if you will believe it, of personalities in their particular lives as they operate on your plane, and I have much to say.

Another thing. It is in some ways convenient that you are not consciously aware of each breath that you take. But it is sheer stupidity to ignore the inner self which does the breathing, and is aware of the mechanics involved. What you almost get here is that some little unknown self performs these necessary functions, and that is not the case. I have said that the mind is a part of the inner world, but you have access to your own minds which you ignore, and this access would lead you inevitably to the truths about the physical world. Working inward you could understand the outward so much more clearly.

Because I say that you actually create the typical camouflage patterns of your own physical universe yourselves, by use of the inner vitality of the universe in the same manner that you form a pattern with your breath on a glass pane, I do not necessarily mean that you are the creators of the universe. I merely am saying that you are the creators of the physical world as you know it—and herein, my beloved friends, lies a vast tale.

Nor do I know all the answers. It is however a fact that even mankind, in his blundering manner, will discover that he himself creates his own physical universe, and that the mechanisms of the physical body have more functions and varieties than he knows. Nor in the sleeping state are these functions stilled. They continue in an even more direct form than they do when he is awake. He creates when he dreams in a truer and less distorted fashion, and his physical world is much more the product of his dreaming self than it is of his waking state.

The intellect is extremely important in the manipulation of camouflage patterns once they are created. You have made your world, and your intellect should help you deal with what you have created. It has other vital functions which I shall enumerate at a later date. However, I cannot say this too often: You are more than your conscious mind, much more, and the self which you do not admit happens to be the portion of yourself which not only insures your own survival in the physical universe which it has made, but which is also the connective portion of yourself with inner reality. Which is, when all is said and done, the only basic reality; and which also continually enables you to create these camouflage patterns, and which contains knowledge and intuitions and memories which you need in a most desperate manner if you are ever to understand yourselves, and if the race of mankind is ever to evolve to its fullest.