“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It is of course necessary at this stage of your development that selectivity be used, and that some standards be drawn that will effectively define apparent limitations and boundaries. The area within these limitations and boundaries you call the self. The self expands as your ability grows, as you learn to retain identity in the midst of diversity.

Full and uninhibited use of even the outer senses would lead you to inner reality. Usually only a strong and disciplined self, a well-structured identity, can perceive in this manner, and then only occasionally. Full operation of inner and outer senses, you see, in your present stage of development as a race, would be blinding, as you can see in your reading of drug experiences.

An occurrence only remotely approaching this can be disastrous. Not because it is basically undesirable, for such an experience has the greatest potentials for development of the self. Such experiences can be disastrous simply because the self structure is not yet strong enough to assimilate and contain the intensity of the experience. In many cases dream experiences, as I have mentioned, are much more vivid and intense than waking experience. You do not even remember the majority of these. But the inner self is more flexible, you see, than the ego, and it can therefore contain greater intensities without undue alarm.