“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Practically speaking you see, if you were aware of the constant barrage of telepathic communications that do impinge upon you, it would be most difficult to retain identity. Identity would suffer if it were forced to perceive more impressions than it could effectively handle. Shared dreams are therefore well beneath awareness.

Identity could be called a strong organizing characteristic that perceives impressions in definite ordered form. As identity is strengthened through experience then it automatically expands itself to add further realities which it is now able to manipulate.

You understand that the radio stars are merely the projection of something else. That is, your scientists with their instruments perceive only the appearance that these structures take when they fall within the physical system. This has nothing to do with the nature of their own reality, for you cannot perceive that in any direct manner.

You cannot for that matter perceive yourselves directly, but only through the sense apparatus which has been adopted by the self. You perceive directly psychological experiences, but you do not perceive these in their undiluted form. You protect yourselves and automatically sift out what is too vivid or intense at any given time.

You do not even perceive sense data with a third of the vividness of which you are capable. This has to do again with the self-protection used. The self does not perceive any impressions, you see, which are so vivid that it could be overwhelmed. As the self learns then it allows greater and more intense impressions.

In most instances the full and uninhibited use, even of the outer senses, could sweep an insecure self into fragments. The strength and intensity of any impression cannot be stronger or more intense than the perceiver.

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.