“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

My dear Joseph, there are indeed balances that operate. You need not fear that subconsciously you are going to invite hordes into your home, nor that Ruburt will subconsciously do so.

There is also something you forget. You are your subconscious self, and oftentimes what makes no sense to the ego makes good sense to the overall personality. Still, there are psychological balances that always operate when the overall personality gestalt is operating effectively, as it is in both of your cases.

Now. This inner ego can also operate within the dream state, and in certain awake-seeming dreams it is the portion that realizes that the personality is not in its normal waking condition. It is this portion of the self that is with you in the most excellent projections. The inner ego is the part of the personality that contains the highest aspirations and capabilities. It has been called by psychologists the subliminal self.

When in such dreams your perceptions seem exceedingly clear, you can be certain that the inner ego is operating. Now all portions of the personality, of the present personality, belong to this inner ego. It functions constantly, and yet it is always in a state of becoming. It is more than what you are at any given moment in your time. It contains, and is, the psychological blueprint containing the full potential of the present personality within any given incarnation.

It dabbles in both your future and your past, speaking now in your terms. As you create a painting, and the painting is still an aspect of yourself, so it creates the whole personality, which is an aspect of itself. It operates in both the waking and the dream state. It often forms the content of each. It is more knowledgeable than any one aspect of the personality. It is more knowledgeable than all other aspects of the personality, for it forms them together into a cohesive whole.

If only the physically-oriented ego survived, very little indeed would survive at all. The physically-oriented ego is hardly aware of your experiences in their entirety. The physically-oriented ego, if it alone survived, would contain only your conscious memories. Even now, in physical existence, you operate on a much deeper and more complicated level than this. Events and experiences which are forgotten, or which escaped the physically-oriented ego, still affect your activities in this life, and if they did not your physical existence would be brief indeed. (Jane pounded the tabletop for emphasis, eyes wide and dark.) Any survival that was based upon the survival of the physically-oriented ego alone would be as shallow as a paper cutout. These things escape you. You take it for granted that the physically-oriented ego represents your own psychological identity, you see, and this is an illusion. It contains a portion of your psychological feeling of identity, but only that.

There is a basic difference you see between a survival personality, and the personality as you know it. The individual in physical life shows his surface face, so to speak, outward. Inner psychological realities are hidden beneath the physically-oriented ego simply because it cannot afford to deal with them. Its one main purpose is simply to allow the personality to operate effectively within its physical environment.