“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“The fourth Inner Sense involves direct cognition of a concept in much more than intellectual terms. It involves experiencing a concept completely. Concepts have what we will call electrical and chemical composition [as thoughts do]. The molecules and ions of the consciousness change into [those of] the concept, which is then directly experienced. You cannot truly understand or appreciate any living thing unless you can become that thing.

“Concepts such as I am referring to reach beyond your ideas of time and space. If you become proficient in the use of the third Inner Sense [perception of past, present, and future] when cognition is more or less spontaneous, then you can utilize the conceptual sense with more freedom. Any true concept has its origins outside of your camouflage system and continues beyond it. Unless you use the Inner Senses in this manner, you will only receive a glimmering of a concept, regardless of its simplicity.”

I was using this sense, I believe, in the episode described in Chapter 17, experiencing a concept that could not be expressed adequately in words, when everything in the room seemed to grow to tremendous size.

[...] Not only is it difficult for you to conceive of a large concept for these reasons, but also it is well nigh impossible to communicate such a concept to you.

When and if you become proficient in the use of the third inner sense, then and only then will you be able to receive such concepts. When cognition is more or less spontaneous, then you can appreciate a concept on its own terms.

[...] Nevertheless, with your camouflage senses you perceive only that part of the concept that happens to fall within your box, and even then you receive and interpret such a concept with your outer senses, and therefore distort it out of all recognition.

[...] Now you think of a concept in terms of an idea, which you can only understand in intellectual terms. However, the fourth inner sense involves again direct cognition, only now of a concept in much more than you would call intellectual terms.

[...] You will perhaps recognize a certain similarity between this concept and the Christian concept of a Trinity, except that the Trinity concept, while hinting at diversity within prime unity, was nevertheless distorted by man’s own sense of his own adopted and unfortunate delusion of duality.

The Trinity concept in your terms was a masculine one, projecting to the one God concept the duality which all mankind feels, but because the theory originated with the male the duality is expressed in terms of the male viewpoint.

We shall have a session dealing almost entirely with the nature of energy gestalts, and you will see that while these pyramid energy gestalts do, on the one hand, achieve a unitary character and sublime intelligence, on the other hand they form only an approximation of humanity’s concept of a God. [...]

[...] When he attempted to further formulate his God concept he then projected upon it those mysteries of self.

[...] In concepts, I want you to play with them, go along with them, see where they lead you. And in practice in making concepts flesh in using them. [...] Simply go along with it and see what images or feelings or concepts it brings out in you. [...]

Concepts, however, must be put into living knowledge and into practice or they are not meaningful and so the concepts that are received will also be translated in such a way that you can use them and put them into daily practice so you will at sometime be able to speak your body with more effectiveness than you do now. [...]

(To Arnold) And some information that will be particularly of interest to you in terms of concepts and I thoroughly expect you to rise to the bait. [...]

[...] Therefore, you also project this distorted viewpoint upon your conception of the reality of the soul. You think of the soul, therefore, in the light of erroneous conceptions that you hold regarding even the nature of your mortal selves.

[...] The fact is that while you hold limited concepts of your own reality, then you cannot practically take advantage of many abilities that are your own; and while you have a limited concept of the soul, then to some extent you cut yourself off from the source of your own being and creativity.

What often happens is that your conception of reality is so limited that you take fright whenever you perceive any experience that does not fit into your conception. [...]

[...] Because the dimensions of your reality are so little understood, your concepts are bound to be limited. [...]

[...] But as the word evolution is the title for a fine tale with a little truth in it, and much distortion, so also, must the realities of consciousness sometimes be explained in terms that you can understand and in terms of your own time concepts. [...]

[...] I am trapped by the concept of time, but I had the idea of development in reality.”)

[...] What is the meaning of movement outside of the concept of time?”)

[...] And do not try, at this point, to intellectually understand the concepts for it will seem contradictory. [...]

When Ruburt left the Church, the concept of the Sinful Self was still there, but the methods that earlier served to relieve its pressures were no longer effectively present. The concept was shifted over to the flawed self of scientific vintage. [...]

[...] The Sinful Self concept is a personal one for each who holds it, but it is also projected outward onto the entire species, of course, until the whole world seems tainted. [...]

[...] They were also bound to bring the entire concept into light, to bring the problem to the surface. [...]

(10:08.) The psychic abilities and the creative abilities—nearly impossible to separate—themselves provide all of the help that he requires, but the concept of the Sinful Self prevented him from using those abilities sufficiently—for how can the expressions of the Sinful Self be trusted? [...]

The trouble was that you wanted to hide in concepts, and so he brought you out of them so that you could acknowledge the self that deals in concepts, and then give you some relief and release. He leads you back into concepts again. There is nothing wrong with concepts at all as long as you do not use them as hiding places or as steps of security from which you will not leap, one into the other. [...] Within you concepts and actions are one, and you recognize this, and your inner lives are based upon it, but your mental lives are often based upon ideas, until recently, have been considered very modern and very in, such as the idea of evolution. [...]

I have one point before I close, and it does not deal with concepts except as emotion is concept. [...]

This is your reality, accept it or hide within all concepts. [...]

[...] Now, you are acquainted with those portions of self that you are ready to accept at any given time and he knows when you are ready to accept certain concepts, and when you are ready to accept certain experiences. [...]

My last remarks were meant to clear up if possible some of the misconceptions that you have concerning your own time concept. Keep in mind that the concept is only valid within your present circumstances,however.

[...] It is your concept of time that highly limits your idea of individuality.

[...] The time concept is but one example, and it is responsible for many of your most cherished misconceptions. [...]

When idea no longer needs physical materialization, then the time concept is useless. [...]

Now you are merged with a concept, now, of what you are. So merged that you cannot see your way clearly out of the concept, nor easily imagine reality from any other viewpoint but the self-structure that you presently imagine yourself to be. (Pause.) Another part of your whole identity is quite aware that you are delving into one concept of yourself. [...] You experience the concept fully. Your prime identity is quite aware of other self-concepts that are also being experienced. [...]

[...] As you understand, pure knowledge cannot be put into words, and for that matter it exists beyond your usual concept of thoughts.

[...] There is a merging with concepts, however. [...]

I will try in your future to explain basic systems of co-ordinates so that you will have some conception of how all creative and inspirational ideas always appear within your system; for only one portion of you appears isolated within it.

[...] However there is no rule, then, saying that the reincarnating personality must take over the new form prepared for it either at the point of conception, in the very earliest months of the fetus’s growth, or even at the point of birth.

[...] If there is a strong relationship between the parents and the child-to-be, then the personality may enter at the point of conception if he is extremely anxious to rejoin them. [...]

In these circumstances, when the personality attaches itself at conception, there is almost without exception strong past-life connections between parents and child, or there is an unceasing and almost obsessional desire to return to the earthly situation — either for a specific purpose, or because the reincarnating personality is presently obsessed with earthly existence. [...]

Some personalities are drawn to enter at conception as a result of seemingly less worthy motives — greed, for example, or an obsessional desire that is partially composed of unresolved problems. [...]

[...] Christ, historically speaking, had altered that concept enough so that at least God the Father was not quite as capricious as Jehovah. [...] The church, however — the Roman Catholic Church — still held a repository of religious ideas and concepts that served as a bank of probabilities from which the race could draw. [...] Religious concepts from the beginning kept tribes together, provided social structures, and insured physical survival and the protection that made descendants most probable.

[...] The god concept will operate as a psychic and spiritual blueprint just like the architect’s plan, only at a different level. [...]

[...] For now simply let me mention that any gods appearing among you must always be of your time, while expressing ideas and concepts that must shoot beyond your time into the future, and serve as psychic stimuli strong enough to effect future changes. [...]

[...] The ancient mother-goddess concept became “unconscious”; the male, purposely forgetting the great natural aggressive thrust of birth, took physical aggression and force as his prerogative — for this came to represent the quality of ego consciousness in its need to physically manipulate its environment.

The concepts of God that you have, have gone hand-in-hand with the development of your consciousness. [...] Often nations acted as group egos — each with its own god-picturing, its own concepts of power. Whenever a tribe or a group or a nation decided to embark upon a war, it always used the concept of its god to lead it on.

(Faster at 10:45:) The god concept then was an aid, and an important one, to man’s emerging ego. [...] In terms of ego consciousness, however, there were stages of growth; and the god concepts that spoke of oneness with nature were not those that served the ego’s purposes in the line of development as you understand it (deliberately).

(Pause at 10:01.) This exercise is a mental and biological doorway that can expand both your concepts of yourself and reality. [...]

[...] Your conscious concepts must enlarge so that the conscious self can understand its true nature. [...]

[...] The conventional Christian concept of God has been in many ways a convenient one, and it carries with it many truths. [...]

[...] The personality of God, as it is generally conceived is again a one-dimensional concept based upon man’s small knowledge of his own psychology.

[...] And it has nothing to do with the God concept.

[...] All or most concepts of a god deal with a static god and herein lies the main theological difficulties. [...]

[...] The fact is that religions have been the carriers of some of the best ideas that man has entertained — but it has also held most stubbornly to the most troublesome concepts that have plagued mankind.

(3:37.) Such ideas are bound to color any of their followers’ ideas about other subjects also: sexuality, economics, and certainly concepts of war and peace.

[...] The entire concept of a soul, life after death, or even life from one generation to the next, becomes largely doubtful, to say the least. [...]

As mentioned earlier, those concepts can have a hand in the development of would-be suicides, particularly of a young age, for they seem to effectively block a future.

(To Arnold.) Concepts will not shield you and true concepts will lead you toward feeling, and the feeling will lead you to intuitional truths that have no need for concepts. [...]

(To Arnold.) You have been hiding in concepts but amoeba-like. [...] The concepts are important but the emotional realities are the basis of your existence and you cannot deny them. [...]

([Arnold:] “I have been stressing the concepts far too much, haven’t I?”)

[...] Not of words, not of concepts, not of trial and error, but the point of existence within you that is now present and of which you are all aware. [...]

You do not understand how revolutionary the concept is, and yet it is the only concept that will enable the race not only to fulfill its potential, but to continue its existence.

Until an individual gains enough confidence in the concept of a safe universe, he or she will hang on to many of those attitudes. [...]

[...] I could have said that one mind had many variations, but then you would still try to understand the concept using your old ideas about identity itself. [...]

[...] Individual life, religion, culture, politics, were each vastly different in each period, the concept of the self profoundly different in one era and another. [...]

[...] You are used to dealing with concepts, so that your thinking is not restricted, for example, to the mental naming of an object—but you also inquire as to its origin, its meaning, its class. [...]

At that time you acquire the language of your people, and you learn to use mental concepts in a rather specialized way, and to further designate objects more specifically. [...]

[...] There you deal with ideas and concepts in a far different context, if you prefer, one that deals with similarities, complementary relationships, unities. [...]

(10:05.) Those processes, however, contain the basic mental structures from which ideas and concepts as you understand them come, and they are also responsible for the inner mental and psychological processes, individually and worldwide, that form private and mass physical reality.

The concept of the survival of the fittest has had a considerably detrimental effect in many areas of human activity — particularly in the realm of medical ideology and practice.

[...] The survival of the fittest concept, however, has been exaggerated far above those of cooperation.

[...] All such concepts appear in one form or another at most official levels of thought and education. [...]

[...] Sexual, economic, social and even religious behavior became tinged by these concepts. [...]

[...] The ideas of manliness in your society, particularly in past years, were directly tied in with Darwinian concepts and Freudian theory. [...]

[...] It would not be hampered by remnants of Darwinian or Freudian concepts. [...]

[...] The teeth business has to do also with Darwinian concepts of age, with thought of the animal not surviving, and in your world that is ridiculous. [...]