“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Action itself cannot be directly perceived. It cannot be seen nor touched. Its nature can never be examined from an objective viewpoint. The objective viewpoint will, at best, give but hints and signs. Action, to be examined in such a manner, would have to be stopped. You cannot tamper with action, not with the basic nature of action, because any such tampering causes it to change.

Action can be experienced directly, however, but only when no effort is made to tamper with it. It must be plunged into. Once more, action is not a function of structure. Action is inseparable from structure. Structure is action. Identities are action, as I have explained. Your idea of action as it occurs within dreams comes closer to the real nature of action than does your idea of muscular force. For in dreams the ego makes little attempt to impede action. Though in dreams you see or feel your arm move, your legs run, still the arm and the legs of the physical body may not move.

Here is an analogy. Imagine then the inner vitality being some cosmic sphere, but a sphere of more dimensions than you can imagine. Its motion could be called action, but this is deceptive because action is the basic nature of the sphere itself. Action is its composition. Action is that from which it is, therefore it moves, it acts outward. But all outwardness turns ultimately inward, and then again outward in all directions. And each inward action forms a new dimension that must, again, be thrust outward toward utilization.

Yet each outward thrust turns again inward; and of itself, because of the nature of action, is the creation of new action.

Because of its own nature it must act, yet no action can ever complete itself. The sphere would act in as many ways as were open to it, and every action changes that which is acted upon. Therefore each action would create a new reality. In such a manner are all fields activated.

A note now concerning thought, as it is a form of action with which all men are familiar. Here you can see that your ego accepts thoughts as a part of its identity. Thought’s actions are accepted by the ego, yet the ego seems to stand apart from them; and because of ego’s nature it fears to plunge into the action of a thought. For it, the ego, has but recently pried itself from action, and so perceives action now as if action were a province of the ego, and not the other way around.