“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Though we speak in definite terms of the inner self, the entity and the ego, neither the inner self, the entity or the ego are stationary and complete. We freeze them, so to speak, in order that we might hold them within our grasp, but we cannot, nor is there a time, as such, when they will be completed or finished.

They are forever in motion. They change constantly. As you cannot hold even the ego in the palm of your hand, so you cannot hold the inner self within the mind. They always escape in essence.

Neither, then, is the ego ever finished, nor the inner self, nor the entity. Each field of existence merges into every other, and yet each retains its own identity. The subconscious layers of the self dwell also in many realities, and here I speak of actual fields and not fantasies.

The idea that I want to portray is a difficult one, for as you know everything that is, is conscious. And everything that is, is also self-conscious, in degree according to its abilities; and everything that is therefore contains identity and separation, even while it is part of a large and complicated gestalt.

Direct experience alone will bring you such knowledge, and yet it will not be held by the conscious mind or by the ego, although flashes of the experience may be momentarily projected within these realms. Such knowledge indeed is communicated to the various levels of the self through dreams, as you should know.

It means that the word is nothing, and that it is merely a symbol for that which you can neither see nor feel nor touch. It is merely a symbol for that small particle of yourselves which you permit your consciousness to perceive. It is a symbol to express that portion of an unseeable self, that is brought most obviously into operation for purposes of manipulation of the physical image within a camouflage field.

The ego then, is only part of a much larger self, but because consciously you do not perceive the whole self you arbitrarily make a unit from a truly indivisible identity, and call this the “I.” This designation, this classification, in no way affects the nature of that indivisible self. It merely affects your own conscious attitudes. You succeed in cutting off, in theory, one portion of the self from the whole self.