“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We have, I believe, used the analogy of air, comparing it to the vitality of the universe in one of our previous sessions. As air is dispelled from the lungs in various forms and used and reused without any loss of power, strength or quantity, so is the vitality of which we speak used in different manners. So does it enter as one thing many times, and so does it emerge as something different many times; and so does it change shape and content, and so does it show many faces and yet never disappears. And as air seems invisible so does this vitality seem invisible, and yet like air this vitality gives shape to every object that you see, and so does it form every camouflage. Without it all camouflage would vanish. And so the ability to use this vitality well is as necessary to life as is the necessity to use air for breathing.

Some part of the individual is aware of the most minute portions of breath, some part of the individual knows immediately of the most minute particle of oxygen and components that enters the lung. The thinking mind, or I had better say the thinking brain, does not know. Your all-important “I” does not know.

In actuality, my dear friends, the all-important “I” does know. You do not know the all-important “I”, and therein lies your difficulty. It is fashionable in your time to consider man, or man’s “I”, as the product of the brain and an isolated bit of the subconscious, with a few odds and ends thrown in for good measure.

It is not in any manner inevitable or a law of the universe. Far from it. For some reason mankind as a species on your plane has become much more attached to its camouflage patterns than most other kinds of consciousness. And with some important exceptions, all types of consciousness do have their peculiar camouflage patterns to which they more or less adhere.

It is on your part more than anything else, a simple refusal to admit into existence anything that is not a camouflage pattern. Camouflage patterns are of course, with again some exceptions, essentials on any plane, since each type represents the actual form of the plane and the various characteristics within it. Nevertheless it is possible, and actually much more efficient and simple, to accept this fact and also realize and admit the inner vitality behind the camouflage.

You would most probably not even admit that you breathed at all if you did not have tangible evidence before your eyes, and yet you have the evidence of the camouflage world of physical appearance before your eyes; you accept it and make up farfetched fantasies to explain its existence rather than face the facts.

The facts are simply that you yourselves form these camouflage patterns, and I repeat this simple statement: You form the camouflage world of appearances with the same part of you that breathes. You do not admit the breather as really being a part of yourselves, nor do you admit the creator of the camouflaged physical world as being part of yourselves.

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.

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.

Time is one of your most obvious camouflages, and the study of time will lead you in a fairly direct manner from the camouflaged physical self to the inner self, which you ignore. Even now your psychologists speak of the difference between physical time, by which you set your clocks, and psychological time.

Outer physical time is a complete camouflage, unnecessary basically on your plane; but you have made it seem necessary because of your refusal to admit the inner self as part of your whole personality, and therefore you have not been able to utilize psychological time to its fullest advantage on your plane. Psychological time as I have said is a natural pathway, part of an inner sense, that was meant as an easy access from the inner to the outer world and back again. You do not use it as such.

This is one of the reasons why breathing seems automatic, and why dreaming seems to confound your physical camouflage idea of time. It is perfectly within your present capabilities to understand that time, to your dreaming self, is very much like time to your waking inner self. But you must first disconnect the physical concept of time and watches.

This concept is one of the easiest to explore, since as I have said your clock time is one of the most artificial of your camouflages. The time concept in dreams may seem far different than your conception of time in the waking state, when you have your eyes on a clock and are concerned with getting to some destination by, say, 12:15. But it is not so different from time in the waking state when you are sitting alone in a room with your thoughts, and with no particular need to get anywhere.

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.