“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This process continues beneath conscious and even subconscious awareness. It is not dependent upon the ego, but predates it. These are the first and the last images. The individual cells are the first animals possessing innate awareness of their environment with rudimentary sense mechanisms, to your way of thinking.

The other, older perceptive mechanisms still linger on however. The ego does not and cannot make use of them. Indeed the ego is almost entirely formed by the physical senses method of perception. Other layers of the self biologically respond to the older, more generalized but less limited perceptive mechanisms.

In time, you see, the (smile) various ego memories will become part of these. As such, incidentally, they can also be activated. (Long pause.) The ego is not snuffed out, however. Now in some cases it continues to operate, though in a slightly different fashion, at its own levels, closely connected to but apart from, physical existence. I am speaking now of survival situations.

This incidentally is the least acceptable survival pattern. The ego may be strong enough to insist upon its old prerogatives of control, yet too inflexible to adjust to the new conditions. It may accept the challenge of great change on the other hand, and allow a reorganization of psychological processes, in which case identity is not only saved but renewed. The ego is then in command after some struggle of generic frameworks, in a way not possible to it earlier.