Personality Structures, Psychedelic Drugs and Ego

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 7, Session 306

Personality Structures

Ruburt has been reading about drugs that induce the so-called psychedelic experience.

Now I have been speaking about psychological structures that are far more complicated than those with which you are familiar.  We can tie these two subjects together very nicely, dear friends.  For in a very dim manner, the psychedelic experience can give you some glimmerings as to the nature of these more advanced psychological structures.

As I have mentioned many times, at present you focus your attentions and consciousness within the physical system.  This alone can be compared to what Leary calls imprinting.  Existence within any system will necessitate some imprinting.  The imprinting simply involves an adjustment whereby consciousness is attuned to a particular station, so to speak.

The consciousness so attuned however is only a small portion of the individual’s total consciousness.  In your system it is now fashionable to refer to this as the ego.  The psychological structures are indeed so imprinted.  However they are also aware and conscious of huge portions of themselves that are not so imprinted.  They are aware of themselves simultaneously as individuals imprinted so as to react within several systems.

They maintain overall identity however, and follow through, or keep track of, these individuals which are themselves.  A very small case in point would be an individual who is as aware simultaneously, of all his incarnations within your system, aware of them happening at once, and yet aware of himself as the whole who experiences these existences.

The separate incarnated personalities however are still separate identities.  This is no contradiction at all.  The personality structures of which I am speaking are far more advanced than this example.  They are aware of many existences within many systems.  They organize the basic ground reality into many patterns, and then operate and manipulate within them.

You are as a rule aware of one system only and not generally conscious of yourself as anything but a creature of that system.  I refer here to humanity at this time.  These psychological structures through value fulfillment, ever enlarge their abilities to form new realities and to act within them.  It should not be forgotten that these environmental systems are directly created by those who dwell within them, and this includes your own.

Basic reality is not a chaos.  It is a raw material.  All diversity implies a whole, and if you theorize a whole then you must also imply diversity.  These personality structures are like you a portion of basic reality, or All That Is.  They are simply able to use and express and act within a larger framework of it.

Your idea of a god, in fact any concept held by humanity, represents at best a very small and insignificant idea, based upon the root assumptions of your own system.  This does not mean such ideas are not legitimate as far as they go.  Simply taking your own physical system and its physical universe, all intelligent life is simply not humanoid.  Even in this limited conception of yours then, the concept of a human god is almost meaningless, and there are many other systems in which the word humanoid would have no real meaning at all.

This does not mean that the word indeed would have no meaning.  Psychological frameworks and psychic gestalts form the basis for individual reality regardless of system.  All of these do imply a whole, but the very term whole would again be meaningless if the whole, through self-conscious individual parts, were not conscious of itself.

Psychedelic Drugs

Now.  Your LSD and similar drugs do to some extent lift the imprinting process, though never completely.

In some personalities they will lead to what you call a mystic experience.  They will carry the personality into new realms of perception.  They will momentarily break up usual patterned organizations of perception.  You will see with new inner eyes.  To some extent you will view some aspects of reality apart from the usual physical structures that you impose upon it as a whole.  There is therefore a freedom for the inner self.

There may be a strong feeling of oneness with All That Is.  This is of course much to those who have been primarily ego oriented, and it represents a meaningful breakthrough that can indeed provide the opportunity and impetus for a far more fulfilling earthly existence.

Of itself, however, it will not carry you further than this.  Of itself, it will not give you insight into past lives or future existences.  Of itself it will not lift you out of the framework of the physical system, but merely allow you to see that system as it is.  It will allow you to experience your relationship with the system, and the system’s relationship with the whole.

It will not of itself transport you to other systems.  Your friend’s seminars (Gene Bernard’s) are within this system, in that they are composed of personalities who have been, and may again be, connected with it.

Of itself such an experience will not give you psychological mobility through other portions that compose your own becoming psychological structure.  I say here “of itself” because certain personalities will be advanced enough to use such an experience as a springboard into precisely these discoveries.

The Ego And Inner Experience

The ego indeed is a fiction, but a highly useful one.  It is an artificial division, indeed ever changing, and yet the illusion of its existence must be maintained while you are in this existence.  It need not be inflexible, with training.  With training it will be willing to grant you much more freedom, and yet it will remain intact.

The psychedelic experience is a most fruitful one.  Drugs are not a prerequisite however.  In an experience without drugs, the ego loses its substantial quality momentarily.  It remains however as a protection.  In all our work we have been allowing the nonphysical self more and more freedom.  We have been and we are expanding consciousness, and this consciousness includes the ego.

We are bringing the ego inward, so to speak.  It is partaking of this consciousness expansion.  It has ruled the roost.  This does not mean that the changing pendulum must now attempt to eliminate the ego.  Any expansion of consciousness must also include this portion of the self.

Now.  Another point.  The ego will act as a translator of inner experience for you.  If such translations contain distortions, they are better than no translations at all, and intuition will allow you to see through the distortions.

These will also be sifted of course through the layers of personal subconscious.  The experience will still be meaningful without the ego, but it will not be as meaningful, and you will not be able to utilize in efficient manners.  It must become a part of the organization of the whole present identity, you see.

It is precisely because the ego is excluded from the experience with drugs that difficulties are encountered afterward.  Given the opportunity the ego can and does merge with other portions of the self, and yet loosely maintains a psychological framework within which the experience can be translated in your terms.

The psychedelic experience under these circumstances transforms the ego also in beneficial ways.  Otherwise the ego is left behind, unable to perform, as a rule now, its primary functions.  The ego can organize the old data when it undergoes a psychedelic experience as a part of the whole self.  Then it can also organize the new data.

A trained and flexible ego will be able to momentarily relinquish its dominancy during the experience itself.  We will have more to say here in connection with these advanced psychological structures, and what is called the psychedelic experience.  At our next session, I will begin also to answer Ruburt’s questions concerning such an experience without drugs.  You have many hints, and I will give you further instruction.