“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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 driver of our wheel in this case never appears in the seat that faces physical reality. He is in a strange position, in that he is an overall self, composed in part of the sum of these other selves, and yet more than the sum.

The selves who ride the wheel therefore also provide some of the power that runs the wheel. It is only because you stress similarities rather than differences that you do not realize that the self that you call the ego is but the appearance, in one particular perspective, of many quite different aspects of the personality.

Perhaps if you imagine a spotlight directed on the seat in front of the tree, you will see this more clearly. You cannot see the other selves on the wheel, you only see the one spot that is lit, and the light is that of physical perception. There are different lights, however. If others watched and saw only that portion of the self that was clear in their perspective, then they would imagine that they saw the primary self also.

The inner ego is the self who drives the wheel with purpose; at the same time there are many other wheels and many spokes… Our moment point analogy will also help you here. The sleeping self will of course be considered the primary self from the standpoint of its own reality. I cannot emphasize too strongly the fact that all of these portions are self-conscious. They may not be conscious of the other selves however. The inner senses connect all the selves, and the movements of consciousness are far more complicated than that of a Ferris wheel.