“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The distinctions formed by the outer senses therefore actually limit perception as a whole, while intensifying it into a small but vivid, seemingly enclosed radius of reality. When conceptual thought develops far enough, then it is imagined that all energy originates from what seems to be a closed system; and this misconception then colors all deductions made concerning the nature of energy itself.

Mental energy, indeed, is an attribute of personality; but personality survives the physical frame as it existed before the physical frame, and indeed created the physical frame. You can see therefore how unimaginative and basically unworkable the idea of a closed system is.

An idea, that cannot be scientifically observed in any of your laboratories, definitely exists. An idea is hardly a closed system, but the reality of an idea, its growth and potential, comes much closer to a description of the characteristics of the universe than any current theory.

The ego and the outer senses reinforce the belief in a closed system, and therefore close it. The inner senses, when the physical body is relaxed, will carry you through the imaginary boundaries, but a conscious focus upon the boundaries to be passed through will tend to reinforce them. Concentrate upon the goal rather than the means of attaining it, and you will attain it.

In such a state the personality is free from the limitations of a closed system concept. Identity is not really lost though you may seem to forget yourself, but the props of identity are lost. It is in this same sort of state that the most significant and beneficial inner sense experiments take place.

I am not minimizing the necessity or power of intellect, but any activity in which the individual momentarily forgets the props of identity, and immerses himself, such an activity allows him to dispense with the practical limitations inherent in a closed system, and refreshes his psychic ability.