“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I wanted to say more concerning the third inner sense in connection with concepts.

With your clock time it is very difficult for you to conceive of large concepts to begin with. You are forced to think using word symbols strung one before the other, and therefore you are imprisoned by a camouflage of continuity.

You find difficulty in escaping from time, as a rule, and therefore you are also imprisoned by past, present and future, in such a way that they appear to be walls which never can be climbed. Not only is it difficult for you to conceive of a large concept for these reasons, but also it is well nigh impossible to communicate such a concept to you.

You insist upon a continuity and a seeming cause and effect because of the erected wall barrier that you yourselves have constructed. Concepts such as those I am referring to reach beyond your ideas of time and space.

When and if you become proficient in the use of the third inner sense, then and only then will you be able to receive such concepts. When cognition is more or less spontaneous, then you can appreciate a concept on its own terms.

When cognition is spontaneous or nearly so, then the idea can have freedom. You are bounded by your cause and effect theories. You believe in your ideas of time, and depend upon them to such a degree that it is impossible at this stage for you to conceive of a concept that has nothing to do with space or time.

As an analogy, you live in a self-constructed box with certain self-constructed senses to enable you to perceive the boxworld that you yourself have created. Any true concept has its origins outside your box, and continues beyond it.

It also riddles your box through. Nevertheless, with your camouflage senses you perceive only that part of the concept that happens to fall within your box, and even then you receive and interpret such a concept with your outer senses, and therefore distort it out of all recognition.

Unless you use the inner senses in the manner that I have and will prescribe, you will always receive but a glimmering of any true concept, regardless of its simplicity.

The third inner sense, as I have told you, will enable you to some extent to free yourselves from the constructions of past, present and future, and will permit in theory instant cognition. As far as practice is concerned you will never achieve such instant cognition, but you will be able to set aside now and then the boundaries of time, and you will be able at least to glimmer the reality and the concepts of which I speak.

No concepts can be boxed in. The reality with which we are concerned flows through your camouflage world, forms the material with which you build your constructions, permeates every atom and molecule in your world, but does not originate in your world. That is, it does not originate in your camouflage world.

I went into the connection between the third inner sense and concepts for a reason, and this will now be an introduction into the fourth inner sense. And I am appalled: Getting this through Ruburt’s subconscious should be quite a trick.

The fourth inner sense is the conceptual sense. Now you think of a concept in terms of an idea, which you can only understand in intellectual terms. However, the fourth inner sense involves again direct cognition, only now of a concept in much more than you would call intellectual terms.

It involves experiencing a concept completely, to the extent of being a concept completely; and already I hear shouts of dissent. No, you do not leave what you are pleased to call yourself behind. You merely change what you are into a different pattern.

Concepts have what we will term for now electrical and chemical composition. Nothing exists in any universe or on any plane that does not have form of one sort or another. You may not be able to perceive the form but it always exists. Direct experience of a concept therefore involves the transformation of one pattern into another.

The consciousness that directs this transformation knows what it is doing. The molecules and ions change into the concept, which is thereby directly experienced.

I will also go into this more deeply. You should be able to see now why a concept such as I refer to is difficult to achieve on your plane. You cannot focus upon it thoroughly. When the fourth inner sense is exercised, and I will outline exercises and all three of you would certainly benefit by following my suggestions, you will discover what an idea really is.

You will discover this by experiencing the idea directly, and you can best achieve some approximation of accomplishment by using psychological time. Your idea of experiencing a concept is doubtlessly to follow it through from beginning to end. Sweet tootsies, there is no beginning or end, and this idea of yours is the result of a complete and utter concentration upon camouflage time.

Nor does the evolution of either an idea or a species involve time. It merely involves time in your universe. You insist upon labeling as laws of absolutes what is actually your distorted and limited vision of concepts as they seem to appear to you. Using psychological time, sit in a quiet room; and I hope this is not impossible, when an idea comes to you, and I presume it will, do not play with it intellectually. You can dissect it to your heart’s content after the experience.

(Break at 10:35. Jane was dissociated as usual. During break John wondered about the practicality of idea-concept application in the camouflage world. He was interested because he said he had been considering, lately, his own approach to certain problems in the business world. He is a drug salesman.