“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

If only the physically-oriented ego survived, very little indeed would survive at all. The physically-oriented ego is hardly aware of your experiences in their entirety. The physically-oriented ego, if it alone survived, would contain only your conscious memories. Even now, in physical existence, you operate on a much deeper and more complicated level than this. Events and experiences which are forgotten, or which escaped the physically-oriented ego, still affect your activities in this life, and if they did not your physical existence would be brief indeed. (Jane pounded the tabletop for emphasis, eyes wide and dark.) Any survival that was based upon the survival of the physically-oriented ego alone would be as shallow as a paper cutout. These things escape you. You take it for granted that the physically-oriented ego represents your own psychological identity, you see, and this is an illusion. It contains a portion of your psychological feeling of identity, but only that.

It is true however to say that the memories of the physically-oriented ego take their place with memories that were once subconscious. I am speaking now of the psychological makeup of the survival personality. The memories remain in physical existence. There is no real distinction between psychological reality and physical reality. The physically-oriented ego manufactures this distinction of necessity.

It is the prime identity of the whole present personality. In many cases it is the I of your dreams. It is definitely the I of your creative activity. It is the I, you see, which survives physical existence, and the physical, physically-oriented ego is only a part of it.

Feelings and sensations and memories that it knows nothing of have built up your psychological identity, and given you a sense of continuity. Of these this ego knows but little. Intimacy with your self and with your own identity, that is intimate knowledge of your own identity, resides in all portions of the self, and is not dependent upon a survival based upon the survival of the physically-oriented ego. This would represent a sham of a survival indeed.

[...] As a youngster particularly, he rebelled against male-oriented learning and orientation. This rebellion was psychological — that is, he maintained an acceptable male orientation in terms of sexual activity, but he would not restrain his mind and soul with such nonsense. [...]

What you think of as (underlined) male ego-oriented characteristics are simply those human attributes that the species encouraged, brought into the foreground, and stressed. [...]

In your present framework, because of the male-female specialization — the male orientation, the implication that the ego is male while the psyche is female — you force upon yourselves great divisions in which operationally the intellect seems separate from the intuitions, and you set up a situation in which opposites seem to apply where there are none. [...]

[...] Science has followed the male orientation and become its epitome. [...]

(9:36.) You should both to some extent have further experiences now in all areas of your life with the magical or natural kind of orientation to physical events. That orientation does indeed “tip the balance” in terms of probabilities on your behalf. [...]

Ruburt has indeed made excellent strides, of late, in dealing with beliefs, and in switching orientation, so that he is beginning to learn to use the magical approach—which is, again, the natural one. [...]

In your terms he would be in the alpha state, fluctuating, sometimes, between several states of consciousness and orientation. [...]

Remember again that the intellect can see only so far, and that it uses the cause-and-effect kind of logic, while magical events leapfrog that kind of orientation. [...]

Dictation: We will be discussing alternate methods of orientation that consciousness can take when allied with flesh, trying to give the reader some personal experience with such altered conditions, along with a brief history of some civilizations that utilized these unofficial orientations as their predominant method of focus.

(Pause, one of many, at 9:37.) While operating through the body structures, consciousnesses such as your own focus largely upon the three-dimensional orientation. [...]

[...] It cannot (intently) experience matter, however, in the same fashion as it can when it is physically oriented.

[...] In far-past historical times, different kinds of orientation were experimented with (as by the “sleepwalkers” described in the last session, for instance). Your own present private experience can give hints and clues about such other cultures, for those abilities reside within the natural framework, now, but are underdeveloped.

[...] The concept of reincarnation itself clearly shows the change of sexual orientation, and the existence of a self that is apart from its sexual orientation, even while it is also expressed through a given sexual stance. [...]

[...] In the same way you have attempted to force the expression of love into a purely — or exclusively — sexual orientation. [...]

[...] They may not be particularly sexually oriented. [...]

[...] In larger terms, however, each individual suffers whenever identity is defined primarily as a matter of sexual orientation.

[...] Since you are otherwise free to perform other kinds of activity that you think of as sexually oriented, in those areas the orientation is cultural.

[...] In the same manner, aggression is usually understood to be violent assertive action, male-oriented, while female elements are identified in terms of the nurturing principle.

(Pause at 9:38.) Biologically, the sexual orientation is the method chosen for continuation of the species. [...]

[...] It could have followed completely different paths, those tied strictly to biological orientation.

In Joseph’s dream, his brother’s features had an Oriental cast. Joseph knew that his brother lived as himself, and also as an Oriental, unknown to Joseph in his present life. If Joseph had seen two people — one his brother and one an Oriental — he would not have recognized the stranger, so in the dream his brother’s known appearance dominated, while the Oriental affiliation is merely suggested. [...]

[...] The brother was definitely himself, yet somehow altered in appearance, his features having an Oriental cast. [...]

[...] The main point is indeed the importance of accepting (underlined) a different kind of overall orientation — one that is indeed not any secondary adjunct, but a basic part of human nature. [...]

You have not really, either of you, been ready to drastically alter your orientations, but you are approaching that threshold. [...]

[...] If the proper creative and magical orientation is kept primarily in mind, other things will fall into place. [...]

[...] It gathers all of experience together and transforms it, so many of your problems have been caused by applying the wrong kind of orientation to your lives and activities.

The symptoms of such a semitrance state include the sleepiness and drugged feeling with which he was afflicted; though these were only mildly disagreeable, they should be taken as signs that orientation is inefficient. [...] That is, these symptoms, noticed when the individual is supposed to be going about his normal physically-oriented day, can then be taken as a sign that the personality does not have all of his energies properly directed for the case at hand.

A combination of circumstances has momentarily disrupted his orientation. [...]

[...] He was neither wholly oriented to the inner world nor to the outer, and therefore was not efficient in either.

Beyond this there are experiences but seldom recalled, in which the usual identification of your consciousness with physical-life orientation is gone. [...] In those conditions you come close to an understanding of what your consciousness is when it is not physically oriented at all.

The orientation is that of sense data lived most vividly, and yet, again, at an opaque angle. [...]

In periods of stress, the physically attuned consciousness will often momentarily forsake its usual orientation and let itself fall back, as it were, into the source of its own being, where it knows it will be regenerated and indeed reborn.

[...] Because you are space-time oriented, her realizations, accepted momentarily as physical reality, cause gaps in what you think of as normal experience.

(Pause.) With Ruburt: The new orientation is bringing results, and the results do appear effortlessly.² The affair with Mitzi (one of our cats) did involve action at other levels — a magical orientation. [...]

(With many pauses:) Part of the difficulty arises from the current (pause) scientifically-oriented blend of rationalism. [...]

[...] By the time you are an adult, however, you have been taught to disconnect your identity from your feelings as much as possible, and to think of your personhood in terms of your intellectual orientation. [...]

The kind of orientation I am speaking of represents the truest picture I can give you of man’s natural relationship with himself and the world. [...]

[...] I reminded her of the Oriental woman and daughter in the dream, since Seth hadn’t mentioned them. [...] Anyhow, on her own she said that the Oriental women further represented to Joe Bumbalo his ideas that son John’s abilities weren’t American—that, indeed, they were unAmerican, foreign to male sexuality, feminine. [...]

[...] In the dream also were an Oriental-looking mother, not too old, with a nice-looking daughter who had beautiful slanting eyes and a very quiet demeanor. [...]

Suddenly I had a whole bunch of thoughts that I wanted to write up regarding this … “magical orientation” Rob was speaking of. [...] The magical orientation to reality would include intellectual activity. [...]

[...] The magical orientation might be in direct conflict with our training in this and most present cultures. [...] But I thought there would be things in each person’s life that could be used as guideposts, to a magical kind of orientation. [...]

[...] The inner ego is quite familiar with the existence of the physically-oriented ego, but the physically-oriented ego is not usually familiar with its inner counterpart.

[...] The whole self as it exists at any given time can be glimpsed through studying the actions of the physically-oriented ego, as seen in physical manipulation, and in studying the activities of the inner ego as seen in dream experiences. [...]

[...] It should be fairly obvious that identity hardly resides exclusively within the physically-oriented ego. [...]

[...] The ego, the physically-oriented ego, is a convenient figurehead. [...]

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF FRAMEWORK 2. A CREATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE MEDIUM IN WHICH PHYSICALLY-ORIENTED CONSCIOUSNESS RESIDES, AND THE SOURCE OF EVENTS

[...] (Long pause.) “A Creative Analysis of the Medium in Which Physically-Oriented Consciousness Resides, and the Source of Events.”

There were several such civilizations, some mainly agriculturally oriented, and in those technology was applied, but generally only for that purpose—to increase agricultural yield. Some were religiously oriented. Some were socially oriented, enjoying a kind of comradeship that would find, for example, television’s impersonal communications a mockery of the give-and-take that they enjoyed in personal contacts.

[...] Your physical subjective experience is so involved with word thinking, however, that it is almost impossible for you to conceive of an experience that is not thought-word oriented.

Now, each event of which you are aware is already a translation of an inner event, a psychic or mental event that is perceived by the soul directly, but translated by the physically oriented portions of the self into physical sense terms.

[...] It is true that dreams allow the physically oriented self to digest current experience, but it is also true that the experience is then returned to its initial components. [...]

[...] On an inner level it meant, however, progressing slowly—probing the abilities, learning his way, while having a constant touch with the body, unpleasant or not, that would keep him physically oriented.

(Pause at 11:51.) He grew up in your culture, so it seemed wrong to him, for example, not to orient physically in those terms, but to dream in the afternoon, have an out-of-body experience, and so forth. [...]

He is still dealing with physically oriented symbols, however. [...]

[...] Consciousness is less and less physically oriented. [...]

[...] It seems to you that without symbols there would be nonbeing, but this is a natural enough deduction since you are so symbol-oriented.

[...] You are still physically oriented. [...]

Your scientists are generally, now, intellectually oriented, believing in reason above the intuitions, taking it for granted that those qualities are opposites. [...]

[...] It is a universe endowed with male characteristics as these appear in the male-female orientations of your history. [...]

In those terms, the male-oriented intellect wants to order the universe, name its parts, and so forth. [...]