“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Later you may be able to follow this inner self even while the physical ego operates in its normal manner, but this is much more difficult if overall personality balance is to be maintained. It should be fairly obvious that identity hardly resides exclusively within the physically-oriented ego. In one sense, identity is always a becoming, and it can never be a static, finished thing. For it knows itself through change, and that which is finished cannot change.

You do not know the self as it is within physical existence, and until you do you cannot hope to know what survives physical death, or what part of you is awake while the ego sleeps. When I refer to the ego I do so for simplicity’s sake, since the term has meaning to you. There are obviously portions of the self that never operate directly within physical reality.

Consider this analogy: The self as a moving circle, such as a Ferris wheel. A tree in front of the wheel will represent physical reality. The whole self, or the whole wheel, is composed of many selves in various positions, as the many people who sit on the Ferris wheel. As the wheel turns you call the person or the self who faces the tree the ego, simply because this is the portion that faces physical reality, represented by our tree. But the self who faces the tree one moment is not the self that faces it the next moment, and the operator of the wheel is never in evidence, you see.

The psychology of personality cannot be grasped unless reincarnation is taken into consideration, but even then this only represents energy operating within one system. The personality operates simultaneously within many systems. Projection represents practical application. Such experience allows you to unite various aspects of the self, and to bring the whole self into sharper focus. As a rule projection in some areas can only be achieved by those who are living their last earthly cycle.

However, the personality as it is manifested can never be understood if it is taken alone. There are sufficient hints and signs that do appear, to give evidence of these other portions of the self. Now there is one important point in particular in all this that should be emphasized, and I will repeat it: Certain portions of the self do not manifest themselves directly within physical reality. They do not operate directly within physical reality, and the word directly is significant.