“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There is much to be explained along many lines which we have only begun to touch upon, for all things are correlated; and there is indeed a correlation between our moment points of which we have spoken, the spacious present, and that portion of the whole self which you call the subconscious.

The subconscious, and in fact all portions of the self with the exception of the ego, are capable of assimilating a wider area, so to speak, of action. Therefore to these other portions of the self, time has a much different essence than it has for the ego. The ego is indeed many things. It can be defined in relationship to many other aspects of reality. In relationship to action, and moment points, the ego is indeed that portion of the self which stands at the apex of the moment point, and is limited by the moment point. The ego is in this context the portion of the self which is utterly focused upon, and imprisoned by, the moment point.

The ego is that portion of the self which experiences time as continuity, and to whom experience is a series of stimuli and responses carried on one after another. And yet this is in itself a division, so to speak, or a kind of value fulfillment, for the simultaneous nature of a given action is here experienced in slow motion, as a child must learn to walk before the child can run.

The subconscious, reaching outward, reaches also inward. For while there is no real past or present or future within the spacious present, there is indeed an infinity of inward and outward; and again, of actions within actions, and there is no end to these actions for they are self-generating. The other portions of the inner self reach then even further in all directions, and they therefore envelop many moment points. To many portions of the inner self then, what you would call a moment would correspond to an almost limitless number of moments, for even physical time has no meaning without experience without action.

Your whole concept of time is built about your own capacity for perceiving action; as this capacity for perceiving action grows, so indeed do the dimensions of time grow. Conceivably therefore one moment of your time would indeed be experienced by the whole self as centuries.

This should lead you to understand why physical time is basically meaningless to the subconscious, and why the inner self has at its command a knowledge of past lives and past endeavors; for the inner self, dear friends, these lives are not in the past, nor is the life of the ego necessarily present to the whole self.

For to the whole self all personalities that compose it exist simultaneously, and personalities that would appear to you as future personalities are experienced by the whole self in the same dimension as it experiences personalities that you would call past personalities. For all your ideas of time are illusion, not merely philosophical illusions, but delusions as far as any basic reality is concerned.

It is only the ego that steps from moment to moment, as a man who walks from puddle to puddle. It is only the ego who drowns in time. Therefore, since only the ego is momentarily imprisoned within the focus of your plane, it is only the ego who probes so slowly into simultaneous action, perceiving it bit by bit and sip by sip. So now you will see what I meant when I spoke about the limitless self, for the whole self is not so bound. The whole self could and does perceive a limitless number of such moment points simultaneously. And now hear this:

The whole self not only perceives these limitless moment points, but being a part of action, each whole self projects fragments and personalities from itself to all these points, creating therefore other egos, other intense focus points which are independent, which work out their own destinies and experiences, which in turn perceive any given moment point in slow motion.

It must be stressed that there are no sharp boundaries, however, between the various portions of the whole self.

There are shadings and variations and that is all. The inner ego is that part of the inner self which is closely allied with the outer ego, in that it is to some degree a director of function and activity. But it is not sharply focused. It looks inward. Here we run into some language difficulty.

The inner ego looks inward, yet in looking inward it looks outward toward those vast portions of the self. Because there is always action within action, and because of the three dilemmas of which we have spoken earlier, the new personalities projected outward into other fields of perception, or other moment points, these other personalities in turn create new ones, and the cycle is again repeated.

It is almost impossible to explain clearly, through the use of words, this massive complexity, for all fields of activity are self-generating. Even the dream field is self-generating. No consciousness can bring itself to destruction. It can only cease experiencing a certain portion of action. This is a rather important point.

The multiplicity of human experience would be impossible were it not for the inner self, and for the heritage that speaks through the cells of every human being. The perspectives and psychic relationships that make up the human personality simply could not have resulted through action within your field alone. It cannot be stressed too strongly that experience within the self can lead to at least some understanding of the nature of action in its pure form, for within your physical universe action is to some extent frozen, insofar as your perceptions of it are concerned.

There is a delicate connection here with the dream universe that is somewhat difficult to explain. The dream universe, however, pervades many other fields. It does not exist outside or apart from your own universe, but simultaneously with it. It appears, and is a reality, to all aspects or portions of the self, and often it is only within the dream universe that the personality can change focus easily or efficiently enough so that he can perceive the variety of roles that he himself has played.

I mentioned the chemical relationship between your universe and the dream universe. There are like relationships of one kind or another that tie together all fields and systems, from the largest to the most minute. The freedom of the inner self, then, is never determined by time as you know it. It is determined by time as you do not know it.