These ideas Jane Roberts summarized in The Seth Material speak to various dimensions of intuition in the large. I was not aware of this when I first read them. Revisiting that material 25 years later, I saw how it helped me recognize the possibility of a kind of knowing that reached beyond my experience and education. Added emphasis appears in red, and my reactions are enclosed in a box: (Note 150)

"First, you must try to understand the nature of reality. To some small extent I have begun to explain this in the Seth Material. The five hundred and some odd sessions we have barely represent an outline, but they are enough to start with. The ideas, in themselves, will make you think. I have told you that there are Inner Senses as well as physical ones. These will enable you to perceive reality as it exists independently of the physical world. You must learn to recognize, develop, and use these Inner Senses. The methods are given in the material, But you cannot utilize the material until you understand it." . . .

How could there be a way of "seeing" that did not rely on the five senses? This was an intriguing possibility. Was not the sum total of reality in front of my eyes? The more I read, the more tantalizing the possibility of other realms of knowing. My academic colleagues considered this material fanciful although they were not that gracious in their description. No matter what they said what little we talked about these matters, my mind was intrigued by possibilities.

"You are an identity," he said. "Pretend that you hold a flashlight, and the flashlight is consciousness. You can turn this light in many directions, but instead you are in the habit of directing it along one certain path, and you have forgotten that there are other paths. All you have to do is swing the flashlight in other direction. While you shift it, the path upon which you have been focusing will momentarily appear dark, but other realities and images will become available to you, and there is nothing to prevent you from swinging the flashlight back to the earlier position." . . .

Reading Seth helped swing the flashlight of consciousness in directions my mind was not accustomed to. His ideas encouraged me to jump out of habitual patterns of thinking and seeing. I tried to keep an open yet skeptical attitude about these views. I did not swallow them hook, line and sinker, but I knew there was more than met the eye in what he said.

Seth insists that there is only one way to learn what consciousness is: by studying and exploring our own awareness, by changing the focus of our attention and using our own consciousness in as many ways as possible. He says: "When you look into yourself, the very effort involved extends the limitations of your consciousness, expands it, and allows the egotistical self to use abilities that it often does not realize it possesses."

Aside from occasional marijuana during the seventies, I did not opt for the drug route to help me use consciousness in as many ways as possible. More than anything else, this happened because my rational mind was too timid to yield control. I did the alcohol thing, but that obliterated rather than expanded my consciousness.

The Inner Senses are not important because they release clairvoyant or telepathic abilities, but because they reveal to us our own independence from physical matter, and let us recognize our unique, individual multidimensional identity. Properly utilized, they also show us the miracle of physical existence and our place in it. We can live a wiser, more productive, happier physical life because we begin to understand why we are here, individually and as a people.

I played fantasy games in my minds' eye wondering what the other parts of me were and what they were doing in other dimensions of reality. Closer to home, I wondered what other fragments of my soul were loose on the planet at the same time. Had I ever met part of myself and not known it? Had I ever dated myself? In the Eastern tradition, that happened every time I met anyone - That art thou! But that was a concept in my mind, not an experience in my body.

Inner Vibrational Touch

"Think of the Inner Senses as paths leading to an inner reality. The first sense involves perception of a direct nature - instant cognition through what I can only describe as inner vibrational touch. Imagine a man standing on a typical street of houses and grass and trees. . . . His consciousness would expand to contain the experience of what it is to be a tree - any or all of the trees. He would feel the experience of being anything he chose within his field of notice: people, insects, blades of grass. He would not lose consciousness of who he was, but would perceive these sensations somewhat in the same way that you now feel heat and cold." . . .

I tried to imagine what it felt like to be a cat. Watching a cat stalk an unwary creature in the grass, I sensed myself in the subtle slow sinewy movements of the animal. But I did not feel like I got into the essence of "catness." To this day similar images fascinate my mind. What would it feel like to be Pretty Kitty in the pose included with my Intuition poem in the Introduction? If I really knew how to be that, I would express pure intuitive flow.

Psychological Time

"Psychological Time is a natural pathway that was meant to give an easy route of access from the inner world to the outer, and back again, though you do not use it as such. . . . As you develop in your use of it, you will be able to rest within its framework while you are consciously awake. It adds duration to your normal time. From its framework you will see that physical time is as dreamlike as you once thought inner time was. You will discover your whole selves, peeping inward and outward simultaneously, and know that all divisions are illusion."

A Meditator in the World simultaneously peeps inward and outward with one foot planted solidly in external reality and the other as solidly in the internal world. From the vantage point of a witness that evolves from the observer, time stands still. When there is only the present moment, the past and future evaporate.

Perception of Past, Present, and Future

"If you will remember our imaginary man as he stands upon a street, you will recall that I spoke of his feeling all of the unitary essences of each living thing within his range, using the first Inner Sense. Using this third sense, this experience would be expanded. If he so chose, he would also feel the past and future essence of each living thing within his range." . . .

In the fullness of the present moment, the totality of myself opens. So perception of past and future were just as natural as the present. From that perspective, I would not experience myself as a moving picture of moments, but as the present completeness of all that I was.

The Conceptual Sense

"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. The molecules and ions of the consciousness change into the concept, which is then directly experienced. You cannot truly understand or appreciate any living thing unless you can become that thing." . . .

Unless I became intuition, I would not understand intuition. And once I had become it, I would know it! However I would not be able to tell someone else about it since they would have to have their own experience. This dilemmna challenged me. How could I get people to know what intuition was? I had to create circumstances in which they experienced it. Then they would know!

Cognition of Knowledgeable Essence

"All entities are in one way or another enclosed within themselves, yet also connected to others. Using this sense, you penetrate through the capsule that encloses the self. This Inner Sense, like all others, is being used constantly by the inner self, but very little of the data received is sifted through to the subconscious or ego. Without the use of this sense, however, no man would ever come close to understanding, another." . . .

I came closest to such experience in an epiphany. Watching a sunset, listening to the surf, walking among the redwoods or watching a child try to catch a butterfly, a sense of wholeness overcame me. For my subpersonalities, this was often too much to bear. It was as if I might fill up and explode with the fullness of everything. That frightened parts of me.

Innate knowledge of Basic Reality

"This is an extremely rudimentary sense. It is concerned with the entity's innate working knowledge of the basic vitality of the universe, without which no manipulations of vitality would be possible - as, for example, you could not stand up straight without first having an innate sense of balance. Without this sixth sense and its constant use by the inner self, you could not construct the physical camouflage universe. You can compare this sense with instinct, as you think of it, although it is concerned with the innate knowledge of the entire universe." . . .

Was not that fullness of everything innate knowledge of the entire universe? Perhaps it was, but that sense disappeared as suddenly as it came. The occasional taste was enough to keep my curiosity alive to the possibility of something more than my self. In the momentary compass of the universe, perhaps the self became the Self and that Self was all there was to all that is. The more intimate I became with the Self, the closer I came to living the source.

Expansion or Contraction of the Tissue Capsule

"This sense operates in two ways. It can be an enlargement of the self, a widening of its boundaries and of conscious comprehension. It can also be a pulling together of the self into an ever smaller capsule that enables the self to enter other systems of reality. The tissue capsule surrounds each consciousness and is actually an energy field boundary, keeping the inner self's energy from seeping away." . . .

When my self became the Self, I disappeared for a brief moment. There was no boundary between this and that, you and I. In that place, we were one - Namaste! The child trying to catch the butterfly knew it could since it was the butterfly. But having become part of bounded consciousness, the child learned it would need a net to catch the butterfly. By acquiring the mantle of physical reality, the essence of butterfly had disappeared.

Disentanglement from Camouflage

"When Psychological Time is utilized to its fullest extent, then camouflage is lessened to an astounding degree. With disentanglement, the inner self disengages itself from one particular camouflage before it either adopts another set smoothly or dispenses with camouflage entirely. This is accomplished through what you might call a changing of frequencies or vibrations: a transformation of vitality from one particular pattern or aspect to another." . . .

The more I held onto this or that whether a relationship, a job title, old family pictures or anything else, the more I was locked into knowing only from experience acquired through contact with physical reality. The more attached, the less able I was to reach beyond my self to knowing from the larger realm of reality.

Why the Inner Senses?

"Even if you discover, through psychoanalysis, where your neuroses lie, you are in very shallow water. You are still exploring the topmost levels of your personality, and you do not have the benefit of those altered states of consciousness that occur when you look into yourself in the manner I have prescribed. There is a condition of consciousness that is more awake than any you have ever known - a condition in which you are aware of your own waking and dreaming selves simultaneously. You can become fully awake while the body sleeps. You can extend the present limitations of your awareness."

Beyond everyday physical experience, perhaps there was a Soul, a Self, an Intuitive Self. My struggle to comprehend was prolonged by keeping ideas and experiences in neat boxes distinctly separated from each other. This emasculation of life by language hindered my journey. Were not Soul, Self and The Intuitive Self different ways of capturing the same effervescent essence? If I were The Intuitive Self, perhaps I would awaken for the first time.

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