“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We shall tie these two subjects together. The book should make one point plain: Identity, despite all appearances to the contrary, does not reside primarily in the ego. Social identity may possibly there reside, but the basic identity does not.

The four faces of Eve all represented various ego manifestations of one inner identity. The course of the ego is a precarious one, and any number of potential egos exist within any identity. The Three Faces of Eve is an excellent title for the book, since the ego may quite legitimately be compared to the face that the identity turns toward objective reality, or the living mask that it dons.

But identity is much more than this, and basic identity, while using the perceptive abilities, is not that dependent upon them. It is true that the personality is a gestalt, and that every identity has any number of potential egos. It is also true that on occasion one potential ego will take over from another. But this is all highly simplified, for the ego structure is not one thing, but a changing, never constant, actually quite informal grouping of psychological patterns. Each ego uses and interprets the organism’s perceiving apparatus in a way that in the overall is characteristic and distinctive.

This characteristic way of interpreting perceived data, and of reacting to it, is not as constant as it appears to be however. The stability and illusion of permanence is highly misleading. The four manifestations of personality all belonged to one identity, and this is perhaps the main point missed. For if the authors say that oftentimes a subordinate or potential ego will take over control when necessary in order to insure the survival of the whole, then this implies a decision that has been made; and who has made it?

It has its own possibilities of development and achievement. This should not be forgotten, and all potential egos have, also, their own possibilities. The inner self or identity must express itself through its ego in order to manipulate within physical reality. The inner self is composed of all the potential egos that compose it, but it is more than the sum of these.

These potential egos at one time or another will have their chance, as dominant egos, in this existence or in another reincarnation. They represent the overall potentials of the whole identity in respect to physical existence. The identity has in other words latent abilities which it will not use within the physical system, but all of the latent ability ever available lies within the original identity.

(As is usually the case when we do not personally know a lot of intimate details connected with the envelope object, Jane and I found ourselves unable to check all of Seth’s data. We think of these occasions as being like those where strangers would furnish the object. We could make quite a few connections however, and Seth helps out a little.