“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You may refer here to past sessions dealing with the mechanisms involved. Existence within any field of reality necessitates intensive focus within that field. It involves something like a sleight of hand trick, played by one part of the whole self upon another part. As an actor in a drama goes along with certain acts and gestures that make the play necessary, while at the same time he realizes that the play is a play, he must still focus his attention upon the lines spoken, and use the props available.

In much the same manner, existence within the physical universe involves the most intense self-hypnotic trance, where attention becomes riveted and focused along certain lines while other realities are of necessity closed out of one’s perception and comprehension for a certain while.

By adulthood the trance, the intense focus, is most strongly upon him. It is after this period that the trance little by little weakens its hold. By the period you call old age the inner attention is already escaping. The strong focus of psychic energy needed to maintain the splendid physical image-organization is no longer given. The conscious ego with which you are familiar cries out its bewilderment, for has it not always sensed immortality?

This accounts for the disintegration. There is much more that must be said along these lines, and in time we will go into further discussion. However, the main focus of the whole self has already begun to stray, and the energies used in necessary pattern organization for the physical plane are already being returned, taken from their attention to physical matters, and becoming more attuned to the whole self from which they were originally delegated.