“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The girl Anna married the other younger brother of Dick’s, who also became prosperous in later years. The head of the family is also someone with whom you are acquainted, being in this life the husband of your present mother’s niece. That English existence had much to do with your family and its relationships in this life. New challenges were set for the personalities.

Lack of this last factor can cause a personality to be reborn more times on your plane than would be necessary if only the role requirement operated. This requirement for fullest use of capabilities has nothing to do with opportunity in the social sense, although of course the particular social framework will have much to do with the particular development of certain abilities.

The ability to do this is not predestined in any way, shape or manner, but it seems to be inherent, unpredictable; but one of the basic characteristics of any given fragment.

I have only begun to go into this, but this matter is extremely important. Everyone who has left your plane has developed as far as he can on your plane. But as in your life certain environments tend to encourage some people in the realization of their talents, and seem to hinder others in the development of their peculiar talents, so some personalities expand in their capabilities on your plane; and some who do rather poorly on your plane expand surprisingly on other planes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Without knowing what he was doing Ruburt has been developing his inner senses to an almost amazing degree, but naturally he did this unknowingly, pursuing other aims. In the past he was so bound to the conscious ego that in fiction he found it difficult to write anything that was not strictly autobiographical.

The poetry has always been the result of facility in use of the inner senses, but until lately he was unable to give this sufficient pattern in terms of unitary form. His efforts in the book The Physical World as Idea Construction represented a breakthrough on his part. He realized, I believe, from the beginning that the conscious critical mind had little to do with the initial conception.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Unless man learns to use this inner sense he may well lose whatever he has gained. I will say much more along these lines at a later date. I believe I will close the session. I do not want to keep you up too late, although as usual I could keep on for hours. I am extremely pleased that we could come together in this manner. A certain development on your part was absolutely necessary before such sessions between us could take place.

(I remember that I stood up and paced about for a few moments. Within a short time I forgot about it, until now. I recall that in a recent session Seth said that I had called for help. I had not left my full-time job at Artistic then, but was close to doing so, and at the time I had not been feeling well. Also, when I had the experience last Saturday, I was not feeling my best. As best I can remember, I did not tell Jane of the sensation I experienced at Artistic a year ago.