Sense Perceptions

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 6, Session 243

The physical body often and consistently acts upon subconscious knowledge, but in order to impress consciousness, such information must be carried by some kind of sense impression, whether this be a pseudosense impression, or a more normal one.

Some sense impressions fall beneath the threshold of consciousness, these impressions coming from the outside environment.  Some impressions however have their origin within inner reality, and the personality is receiving information not available to the egotistical self.  If such inner data is to become at all conscious, it must be translated into terms that the ego can recognize.  In other words, into sense data.

Sense data therefore may be the result of perception of outer and inner environment.  It is simpler to translate information from the outer environment into sense data.  It is more difficult to translate inner data in this manner.  There are frequent distortions but there are also frequent distortions in more ordinary sense perceptions.  Inner data so translated must be built up from scratch, so to speak.  There is in the physical world an illusion of continuity, against which sense data can be checked.  There is no like sense of continuity, as a rule, against which to check sense perceptions which are translations of inner data.

There is a significant similarity between sense perceptions that are translations of inner data, and the sense perceptions that take place in dreams, in that both are relatively fleeting.  Both are highly symbolic.  Both are methods of bringing deep knowledge closer to the realms of the egotistical self.

Both involve culminations formed by various levels of the self, and yet are impressed into the physical organism.  They must be registered by the physical self in one way or another, if the information is to become at all conscious.