“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In the first place this vitality is self-generating and limitless, and we shall go into origins, reasons and so forth all in due time. Nevertheless as you do not deprive another of breath as you breathe, so you do not deprive another of the vitality of the universe simply by the act of using it yourself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The part of you who dreams is the “I” as much as the part of you that operates in any other manner. The part of you who dreams is the part of you who breathes. And this part is certainly as legitimate and actually more necessary to you as a whole unit, as far as survival on your physical plane is concerned, than the part that also plays bridge or Scrabble. It would seem ludicrous to suppose that such a vital matter as breathing would be left to a subordinate and almost completely divorced poor-relative sort of a lesser personality.

As breathing is carried on in a manner that seems automatic to the conscious mind, so this important function of transforming the vitality of the universe into pattern units also seems to be carried on automatically. But this transformation is not as apparent to the one part of yourself that you are pleased to recognize, and therefore it seems as if this transformation is carried on by someone even more distant and alien than the unrecognized part of yourself that breathes.

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.

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.

There is no reason why mankind cannot be aware of this transformation, if once he admits into existence the whole self which makes this possible. As I mentioned earlier the process of breathing seems automatic, and yet some part of you is aware of the most minute portions of air that inflate the lungs.

You, or the part of you that you are pleased to call yourself, refuse to admit as part of yourself the “I” that is aware of every breath you breathe, every move you make, and every dream that you dream. In other words breathing and dreaming are not automatic, nor do they operate without your knowledge. Mankind simply refuses to admit the breather and the dreamer.

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.

It is true that as a rule you are not aware of your whole entity, which as a rule does not reside within your boundaries. But there is no reason why you must be blind to the whole self of your present personality, which is part of your entity, and which can be glimpsed on your plane in terms of the breathing and dreaming self of which I have spoken.

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.

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.