“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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?