“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I am sorry that your tree has vanished, yet we all know that the tree has not really vanished. And I hope that you will use your inner senses to create the tree in your mind for the painting that you have begun. Now it will be a better tree in the painting, for you will be able to create the essence of the tree.

(At 9:34 the service truck moved to the back of our house; we could see a man with a flashlight checking wires, etc., but no one knocked on our door. Jane resumed dictation at 9:35. And here again, her first few sentences answered the question in my own mind.)

The fact is that the whole self is constantly experiencing data from all of the inner senses. The inner ego is of course aware of this. The subconscious is sometimes aware of this, and the outer ego is aware of very little. I have explained the reasons for this in past sessions. The outer ego must concentrate much of its energy toward survival in and manipulation of the outer camouflage world. This world has already been created by the inner self, and its continuing existence is determined by the constant vigilance of the inner self.

This sort of experience will always be shielded from the outer ego of necessity. Even a watered-down version of a direct inner experience is a shock to the outer ego on your plane, since the ego imagines itself and its own perceptions to be supreme. You have no idea, even with what training you have, of how shattering such a complete experience would be to the outer ego, so we will take one inner-sense experience at a time.

Had you experienced the pain of the tree as directly and as immediately as you would sense another person’s pain through the ordinary senses you could not have stood it. It would be like the tearing away of your own limbs. Nor is this in any sense a distortion or an exaggeration.

Full use of the inner senses is not even for me yet. There is still a long way for me to go. We progress along these lines according to our capabilities and our own strengths. The conscious ego also develops in a strange manner through all this, as I will now attempt to explain.

Through experience in the various levels of existence the inner ego and the outer ego come closer and closer together. The subconscious eventually disappears, as it is no longer needed as a necessary buffer zone. At your stage of development the inner ego is by far the most self-conscious part of the whole self, and has the greatest ability for perception and organization. It alone is capable of experiencing inner and basic reality directly and immediately. It alone can cope with the tumultuous nature of such direct reality experience.

In the various levels of existence the inner and outer egos begin to merge. Gradually direct experience of inner reality is spoon-fed by the inner ego through the mouth of the subconscious to the outer ego. The division between the inner and outer egos is necessary for other reasons than the nature of direct experience itself. That is, the outer ego is shielded from direct experience of reality because it could not take the impact of such experience. But this is not the only reason.

The subconscious—to finish what I began—the subconscious cushions the outer ego really against the shock of true reality. If sometimes it seems to you that you are living in a dream world, in many respects you are. You are not strong enough yet to bear the brunt of basic reality, and you construct complicated dream worlds in order to find shelter from what would appear to you as savage, uncontrolled and undisciplined chaos.

Basic reality is not uncontrolled, savage, undisciplined or chaotic, but if you were suddenly confronted with it at your present state of development you would be like a straw in a hurricane. But because of your weakness, the various levels of existence merely prepare you and equip you for the experience of true reality, of which you have but a glimmering.

I do not mean to mislead you. Basic reality is not by nature terrifying. It is however vibrant and direct to the extreme, and you must be prepared before you experience such an ultrasonic action. A direct experience of reality involves complete use of all the inner senses to an integrated cognizance field. A very weak analogy can be found if you imagine at one time hearing the most exciting and moving music imaginable, while simultaneously smelling the strongest but not necessarily unpleasant odor, viewing the most emotionally-charged scene while feeling intense and vivid bodily sensations. In normal life you even turn down outer-sense stimuli for the sake of simplicity, and to enable you to focus upon those stimuli close at hand.

You would find it difficult to attend to or be aware of regular outer stimuli while you dealt with the ordinary function of daily life. Is it then any wonder that the outer ego leaves the inner data to the safekeeping of the inner ego? You are truly babes in the woods, having enough trouble getting along in your own universe. And do not get your feelings hurt, I am not referring to either of you in particular, as you should know by now.

As the intense experience of great joy or pain often blots out everything else, so would the direct experience of reality blot out, only completely, the outer ego who experienced it directly. At your level the sieve of the subconscious is a necessity and that is one of the main reasons why Ruburt dissociates during our sessions, even though his experience of inner reality is received secondhanded, so to speak, through me.

It is thinned out further by my own subconscious, because my inner and outer egos are not yet a complete unity, although I am, or my outer ego is, in direct contact with my inner ego on some occasions. Nevertheless my subconscious is not yet dispensed with but is still retained somewhat in the order of your archaic appendix.