“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

At certain levels the brain can handle simultaneous material, of course, even though you may be conscious of only a smattering of it. The body is aware of multitudinous simultaneous stimuli that consciously escape you, and is able to act on the information. This includes all kinds of sense data that are not consciously pertinent. (Intently:) Because of the particular kind of ego-orientation that the race decided upon, however, many probabilities of development inherent in the species have been latent. Inherently the physical brain is capable of dealing with more than one main line of consciousness. This does not mean the development of dual personality, by the way. It means the further expansion of the concept of identity: “You” would not only be aware of the you that you have always known, in the same way that you are now, but a deeper sense of identity would also arise.

I am not speaking of you personally, Joseph, so much as I am emphasizing that the race at present identifies its individual being with highly limited concepts of the self. Those ideas are vigorously protected, and indeed must be understood and given honor even while attempts are made to expand them. Period. Certainly the quality of consciousness has changed through the centuries in many different ways, and sometimes in what would appear to be contradictory ones; but in your present you have nothing against which to compare your current consciousness of experience.

(11:08.) There are even now in your species a number of different kinds of consciousness; different in that the physical life-situation is qualitatively experienced in ways that are not native to you in your culture; different in that the entire fabric of meaning, interpretation, experience, and life itself is “alien” to the kind of experience with which you are familiar. This does not mean that such differences occur as the result of cultural backgrounds or situations, for some such individuals exist within your own culture, and some with your kind of consciousness exist in cultures where they are a minority. I am simply saying that on your earth now there are species of consciousness, though that is probably not the best term. You have been so obsessed with exterior differences, especially of color and nationality, that you have completely ignored these other far more important variations in the form that consciousness takes in relation to physical life within your race — the race of man.