“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Man, staying within the core of his arbitrarily designated selfhood, can in truth be compared to early physical man, cowering within his cave. You have learned to venture forth into the physical universe. You have not learned to venture forth from an arbitrarily designated selfhood, into an extended environment that knows no space or time. Such a possibility, such a future development in no way involves a denial of self, a dissolving or sweeping away of self, an annihilation of self. Many cavemen doubtlessly feared for their personal survival when they ventured forth upon the earth in daylight.

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 isolated self, as you know it, can indeed be well compared to man’s early caves. In terms of value fulfillment the species expanded its potential tremendously when it left the caves; and so will man also experience the fulfillment of still unglimpsed potentialities when he walks forth from the cave of the arbitrarily limited self.

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.

The various species and the multitudinous varieties of life in your universe could with much validity be compared to cells, organs, or limbs of some gigantic creature. There is no reason to feel that man is insignificant, or that the individual is impotent or at the mercy of forces he can neither perceive nor comprehend. To the contrary, the individual, any individual, is supremely important, necessary; and his, or even its, ability to use its energy constructively, but most of all to expand in terms of value fulfillment, is more vital than I can say.