“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The boundaries, limitations, extent and vistas of the self are merely arbitrary. In a very true sense each self is infinite, unbounded, connected in a most intimate way to all other things in the universe on your plane; and through the inner senses and the inner ego connected also in a most intimate way to the unknown and unseen inner universe.

Here we run into something that will be difficult for me to explain to you. Any particular self theoretically could expand his consciousness to contain the universe and everything in it. The closed-in, solitary, isolated self of which you are so proud is, as I have said, an arbitrary formation, containing the core of identity; and you seem to prefer, psychically speaking, to stay at home.

This arbitrary limitation set upon the individual self is put upon it by its reliance upon the outer senses, as a method of perceiving reality. The outer senses are excellent tools of perception for limited circumstances. However, man has relied upon them so long, and with such cringing dependence, that now they threaten to hamper his own growth and development.

The expanding self, ideally, would reach out beyond the arbitrary boundaries it has placed upon itself. Again, there just is not any particular boundary between what is self and what is not self. There are gradations, and that is all. The skin is as much, if not more, a necessary connective as it is a boundary.

—even when your own technological advancements prove beyond doubt that in many cases the evidence of your own outer senses is wrong, and does not represent reality, but represents an arbitrary pattern forced upon reality. Through the outer senses you must always see reality in arbitrary, really unchanging terms; and reality can simply not be held within such boundaries.

This extension of self will occur in some degree before any really effective brotherhood of man is accomplished. This is unfortunate but true. The self begins learning its arbitrary limitations at the same time that it tries expansion in childhood. If the cultural limitations were lifted this would at least be of some benefit.