“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane has been reading Jung for the last few days. This afternoon she told me she thought Seth might talk about the self-conscious inner ego. As session time approached she had no idea of what her procedure would be—whether she would sit, stand, pace, open or close her eyes, etc. She was still worried also about the time element when her eyes were closed, and we agreed that I would ask for breaks if it seemed the monologues might carry past the customary half-hour limit.

Jane’s animus is indeed quite a different sort of chap from myself, much more omnipotent to Jane’s subconscious. I will indeed speak concerning the inner ego, which is the organizing principle within the subconscious, but which looks into other worlds; toward worlds in which it has its origin, and does not have awareness of itself or possess self-consciousness within the physical universe. Its attention and focus is, rather, directed elsewhere, so that it appears to be dormant. But it is not.

It is the ego or directive consciousness behind all personified aspects of the subconscious; in dormant fashion however, and contrary to Jung’s propositions, within the subconscious and in those personified aspects of it will be found remnant memory personalities of past reincarnated selves. They may be called shadows and yet they are not powerless. The inner ego, the directive organizer of the subconscious, also is the part of the self which is familiar with activities and methods of which the outer ego is ignorant. It is this organizer who directs not only the movements of the physical body from within, but directs from within those intimate survival mechanisms, without which the physical body could not exist, and upon which the existence of the outer ego is so dependent.

It is this inner director who maintains all of these functions, and who is responsible for the physical health. It is this director to whom you must communicate when health fails. There are ways of doing this which we will discuss at a later date. It is this inner director who chooses the dream symbols in such a way that they will be meaningful to all layers or areas of the subconscious, and who is responsible for the amount, rate and type of subconscious data which is given to the outer ego by means of the intuitions.

If the outer ego would be content to work on an equal basis with its inner counterpart, then many severe difficulties would be sidestepped.

The outer ego, being of later development, is jealous of its position and would have all knowledge at its fingertips. This is impossible. It cannot stand to have anything hidden, but the very mechanism of its own behavior is hidden from itself, and it knows only the feel of its own surfaces.

In many respects it is a reflector, the surface of the self looking outward. While this is necessary, the whole remainder of the self could not be left to an organizer or caretaker who did not focus his attentions within the depths but sat, as it were, on the front porch of the house, leaving the inner workings unattended. The outer ego does not want to meet the inner ego. The outer ego does not want to admit the existence of the inner ego. As the eye cannot see its own pupil without a mirror, so the outer ego could not even see itself, were it not that the inner ego hides in the depths of all reflections.

When the outer ego, from the surface of its consciousness, reflects the outer world, it sees reflections of the inner ego which are the images within its own eye; and as the self creates matter subconsciously within its own eye, and as the self creates matter subconsciously and not consciously, and as the self creates matter in line with inner and not outer expectations, so then does the ego, in viewing the material universe, come face to face with the face of its own inner ego; and the outer ego cannot escape from this inner self.

The subconscious is not a cellar piled high with explosives, rocking at the foundations of the ego. The subconscious contains a collection of diverse, varied and vital personalities who represent the losers when the time arrived to send one of them to the topmost level, or to the surface of the self.

The choice was made and is always made by the inner ego, who does this appointing according to his knowledge, or its knowledge, of the personality’s qualities. Any of these subconscious personalities could have learned in some fashion to cope with the outside world as well as the present dominant ego, but for various reasons of inner development they could not be so trusted.

These subpersonalities are not unconscious to themselves. They are conscious of themselves, but they are not conscious of themselves in relation to other selves. They are conscious of needs and drives, and of their existence. They are different from the inner ego or director in that the inner ego is conscious not only of itself, but of the outer ego, and is aware of the existence of the outer world, although not too much concerned with it unless the whole self becomes jeopardized through the actions of the outer ego.

The inner ego knows when to apply safety valves, and is aware of the danger before the outer ego is alerted. The inner ego is concerned with maintaining the foundations and balance, which is very important, of the whole self, and it is open to messages from the overall entity. The inner ego receives messages through the inner senses, and is aware of realities which the outer ego cannot afford to recognize because of its specialization. In some important aspects the outer ego is supposed to represent to some degree the subdominant personalities who still dwell in the subconscious. When the outer ego is narrow, and poorly represents these subdominant personalities then they rise up in arms, and when conditions are favorable attempt to express themselves through a momentary weakness on the part of the dominant ego. But without even doing this they may momentarily take over or express themselves through a single function, such as speech or motion, while the outer ego is blissfully unaware.

The consciousness had its origin in the subconscious, from which it sprang. The consciousness was not at one time the center of the subconscious. However, the inner ego was always the center of the subconscious.

The center of consciousness, that is the center of outward consciousness, the outer ego, is finally chosen by the inner ego after certain portions of the inner self show greater tendencies for objectification; these portions of course grouped around one of the subconscious subpersonalities which then wins out to become the outer ego, the manipulator for and the spokesman for the whole self.

At death on your plane the ego merely changes the focus of its awareness. We have come through very well this evening, and I will here end our session. My fondest wishes to you both. We will take up the question of transubstantiation, as asked by our friend, at a not distant date.

(Jane said she now believes her traditional pacing about has become a distraction largely; she thinks she no longer wishes to pace, except when she feels brief periods of resistance at the ego’s surrender on this point. On the whole she feels there is much less resistance to delivering the material while less active physically. She receives the data clearer this way. She is also not so aware of outside distractions, such as traffic passing the house, people in the hall outside our door, etc.