“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

All of the inner senses are not utilized to the same degree on any plane. Many planes are given over to the training in the use of one or two of the most important inner senses. I liked the analogy of the spider and his web because it is such a simple and uncomplicated example of camouflage construction, divorced from intermediaries such as ego or tools.

Inherent, and I repeat inherent in the spider as in man, is the complete comprehension, or rather comprehension through direct experience, of the universe as a whole. In its particular existence the spider is not aware of all this knowledge, but it uses what is necessary of it to construct its web. It experiences directly. There is of course no “I” consciousness, but there is direct consciousness, nevertheless, of the most intimate kind.

Give the spider an ego and an intellect and you will see then how the picture would change. These would enable him to enlarge upon his scope of awareness and activity, but at the same time impediments would be placed so that the web construction would no longer appear either as direct as far as its source is concerned, nor as spontaneous.

You construct your own camouflage existence as the spider constructs his web, but you are not aware of the threads. You do not understand that they originate within yourself, although it is very simple to smile as the lowly spider weaves its web. The spider’s construction is severely limited to one plane, but this is not the case with your constructions, which may have reality on many planes at once, and in ways with which you are not familiar.

It should be obvious that although an idea is born in time, after its conception it is free from time in a way that a spider’s web can never be free from time. To the extent that a construction exists as camouflage, to that extent it is bound by and vulnerable to physical laws.

If energy is imprisoned or focused into the physical construction to the extent that a construction appears on your plane, while still not fully constructed, left incomplete in some aspects, to that extent the idea behind the construction is not bound by physical laws.

The tissue capsule of which I have spoken earlier surrounds every living consciousness. To some extent it could be compared to an extra layer of skin surrounding the physical body, except that it is not constructed in the same manner upon your plane, and is invisible to you under ordinary circumstances.

The capsule of course is not a solid on any plane. To some inhabitants of other planes that have access to your plane, all that can be seen of you is this tissue capsule, since such inhabitants have had no experience in your particular type of camouflage construction. Therefore your camouflage patterns are invisible to them, but the tissue capsules are not.

These capsules can be seen by you under certain circumstances, and have been called astral bodies—a term which does not meet with my pleasure. I would like to repeat again the fact that in many instances, and with exceptions, ideas not fully constructed on your plane not only have great force but are also freer from the effects of physical laws. The idea has at its command then greater and varied methods of expression, and from it varieties of construction can be attempted. I have mentioned the advantages of a painting over a piece of sculpture, and an idea not fully captured will find further expression.

The portrait that you sent to the gallery is evocative. It continues to grow. It is not completely at the mercy of a completed camouflage. The whole self is never completely constructed on your plane. At best it finds expression now and then. A camouflage plane, merely by being what it is, makes it impossible for the whole self to find expression. There is almost hypnotic focus of energy for a particular time for a particular reason.

Now this does not mean that a stationary body of any kind cannot materialize itself upon another plane. And if it does, it of necessity must in some manner surround itself with the constructions or camouflage of the particular plane which it attempts to enter. This takes a high level of inner development.

The inhabitants of the flying saucers are not of your own plane. I have mentioned the struggle of form involved. You will have to remember in any of the discussions along these lines that your physical constructions simply do not exist except on your own plane. Other constructions exist simultaneously with your own, of an entirely different nature, also however on what you may call a horizontal plane. But you will never find them in a spaceship.