“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

These experiences and others that you both will have cannot be willed. Use of the ego along that line will hold back such progress. There is a feeling with which Ruburt is all too familiar which is important here. Before one of our regular sessions as you know Ruburt often becomes nervous. I have mentioned that the sensation is something akin to the feeling of an inexperienced diver standing upon a high board. The best way is just to let go and dive.

What happened was this. When the conscious ego desires information, and when the outer ego is in full control, then the information is sought from the outer senses. When the outer ego is caught unawares and information is requested, the subconscious often delivers it through the use of the inner senses. You will see that this was the case.

When the ego becomes a mere observer rather than a controller, and momentarily suspends its rigid judgments, then inner direct experience is given some freedom and yet the ego is still aware of it. When the ego is completely or nearly completely subjugated, as in sleep, then there is direct experience through the inner senses, but no conscious awareness of it.

The reason that direct inner experience is often cut off and rarely sustained is that the ego almost immediately clamps down to examine the phenomena; and, Joseph, the bulk of the sessions is somewhat shorter for two reasons. For one thing I am getting the data through to Ruburt in a clearer, more concise fashion, and thereby dispensing with many unnecessary phrases. Also, I do not have to backtrack as frequently. I have given you some shorter sessions, though not many, because of your own changed schedule, and because I work through your energies, your combined energies, in a way that I have yet to explain.

I wanted, then, to make another point about Ruburt’s experience last night in connection with the inner senses. Ruburt was quite capable as far as ability was concerned, to know what time it was without the addition of the vision of the clock. This was secondary. It seems that on your plane there is almost always the temptation to translate inner data in terms that the ego can understand and interpret.

If many of the inner senses behave as if your conception of time and space do not exist, then the obvious reason is of course that they do not. You are merely allowing yourself a momentary release from the limitations of camouflage ideas, and release of these ideas brings a corresponding release from the physical camouflage patterns themselves. There is a breaking through. Now this breaking through is a release of the inner self from the camouflage, and the resulting camouflage laws of any particular plane. The barriers to such experiences are mainly those set up by the ego. The sort of experience Ruburt had last night is one of the simplest along these lines.

More difficult to achieve is an experience in which the ego becomes more alert in self defense. The ego, for example, did not have to worry about Ruburt’s physical survival as he lay in bed and “saw” (in quotes) the clock in the other room. When the ego’s instinct for self-protection is aroused, then of course it rises up in arms. This is one of the reasons why the experience of levitation is so seldom achieved.

For one thing levitation as such has little value. However the ego instantly stiffens its control when it feels that any physical law is being disobeyed, because the ego is concerned with your physical universe, and your existence upon your plane is definitely determined by your recognition and obedience to camouflage necessities.