“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] There have been experiments upon your earth (by consciousness) with both men and animals at a different level than just mentioned, but with that in mind — herds of animals, for example, with each animal quite aware of the joint knowledge of the herd, the dangers to be encountered in any individual territory, and a psychological structure in which the mass consciousness of the herd recognized the individual consciousness of each animal, and protected it.

2. In connection with Seth’s discussion of animals and men here, see his excellent material in Chapter 12 of Personal Reality. Summarizing parts of that chapter very simply: In Session 647 Seth goes into the challenges early man faced as he contended with his own burgeoning consciousness. In Session 648 he discusses animal instinct, health, illness, and suicide, and the eras during which men and animals mixed. For the same session Jane contributed impressions of her own on animal medicine men.

There was a constant give-and-take between the individual animal and the mass herd consciousness, so we are not speaking of a condition in which the individual animal was controlled.

[...] You view the fantastic variety of physical life — its animals, insects, birds, fish, man and all his works — with hardly a qualm; yet you must understand that the nature of consciousness itself is far more varied, and you must learn to think of an inner reality that is as infinite as the exterior one. [...]

[...] No matter what her feelings may have been before tonight’s session began, Jane’s pace and delivery had been much more animated and energetic than it usually has lately. [...] Evidently it had been inspired by our conversation after the last deleted session, about Seth’s material on animal-man and man-animal. Now I speculated about trying some drawings or paintings of man-animal, animal-man. [...]

3. Seth packed a lot of information into the short 689th session for Volume 1. He discussed the innumerable experiments of consciousness with animal-man and man-animal forms; the great communication between man and animal in ancient times, and the deep rapport of both with their natural heritage; psychic and biological blueprints and cellular precognition; the growth of man’s ego consciousness; the beginnings of our god concepts and mythology; and more.

The animals were also accepted in this natural philosophy of selfhood as the individual plainly saw the living quality of consciousness. The characteristics of the animals were understood to continue “life,” adding their qualities to the experience of the self in a new way.³ You had better put “life” in quotes in that last sentence.

[...] Some of his cells have been the cells of animals, and the animal knows he will look out through a man’s eyes.” [...]

[...] I suggest that the entire 634th session in Personal Reality be read with this appendix, for in it Seth explored some connections between animal and man — including the evolution [my emphasis] by man of “certain animal capacities to their utmost.” At practically the same time, in the 637th session for the following chapter [9], he could tell us: “Note: I did not say that man emerged from the animals.”

[...] According to her, if man didn’t emerge from the animals, there were certainly close relationships involved — a dance of probabilities between the two, as it were. [...] Although she left Appendix 6 unfinished, it contains many ideas worth more study: “Some of the experiments with man-animals didn’t work out along our historic lines, but the ghost memories of those probabilities still linger in our biological structure … The growth of ego consciousness by itself set up both challenges and limitations … For many centuries there was no clear-cut differentiation between various aspects of man and animal … there were parallel developments in the emergence of physical man … there were innumerable species of man-in-the-making in your terms….” [...]

There were animal-men. [...] In some species the animal-like tendencies predominated, in others the manlike tendencies did so: Some were more like men, some more like animals. [...]

Both the man-animals and the animal-men were born with stronger instincts. They did not need long periods of protection as infants, but in an animal fashion were physically more agile at younger ages than, say, the human infant.

Animals pick up the characteristics of their owners. [...] The cells and organs know that you do not trust them, even as animals do. [...]

(Amused:) An atom can take care of itself, but atoms themselves are somewhat like domesticated animals; joining in the biological family of the body, to some extent they become like friendly cats or dogs under your domain.

[...] I also asked Jane about the question of diseases in wild animals — even those who have never seen a human being. If we create our diseases through our thoughts and lifestyles, how about animals? There must be similar reasons for the same results to occur, which would mean we are even more closely related to animals than we suspect. Or there are different reasons for animal diseases — reasons that yield the same results we have to cope with. [...]

I pushed Jane in her chair out on the porch, as close to the hemlock as we could get behind the floor-to-ceiling glass; we looked up at the chattering animal from only three feet away. [...] We couldn’t tell the animal’s sex. [...] He added that if we heard a loud thudding noise on the roof tonight, it meant that an animal had managed to dislodge the stone cap on the chimney. [...]

The comical series of events involving Floyd, one of his sons, and another helper had started this noon: “Hell, Rob, it’s a coon!” a surprised Floyd called down to me from the roof of the house, after the beam from his flashlight had illuminated the black mask across the animal’s face and made its eyes shine as it crouched at the base of the fireplace chimney. [...] Then while his two helpers stood guard to keep the raccoon in the tree, Floyd lugged a very heavy flat stone up the ladder and planted it across the chimney; he’s going to cement a wire mesh in place as a permanent seal against animals and birds.

[...] In their dream bodies men had watched the spectacle of animals “killing” other animals, and they saw the animals’ dream bodies emerge unscathed.

[...] They watched the drama of the “hunter” and the “prey,” seeing that each animal contributed so that the physical form of the earth could continue—but the rabbit eaten by the wolf survived in a dream body that men knew was its true form. When man “awakened” in his physical body, however, and specialized in the use of its senses, he no longer perceived the released dream body of the slain animal running away, still cavorting on the hillside. [...]

When you view the animal kingdom, you also do so through your specialized sexual beliefs, studying the behavior of the male and female, looking for patterns of aggressiveness, territorial jealousy, passivity, mothering instincts, or whatever. These specialties of interest make you blind to many larger dimensions of animal behavior. [...] Animals have close friendships, with or without sexual expression, with members of the same sex. [...]

[...] There were deities part human and part animal. [...]

[...] As the species divorced itself from nature, so the animal gods began to vanish. [...]

[...] In your terms it is the build up of natural anger; in animals, say, it would lead to a face-to-face encounter, of battle stances in which each creature’s body language, motion, and ritual would serve to communicate a dangerous position. One animal or the other would simply back down. [...]

[...] This type of animal encounter occurs infrequently, for the animals involved would have had to ignore or short-circuit many lesser preliminary anger or initiation encounters, each meant to make positions clear and to ward off violence.

[...] Symbolically it represented an animal showing its belly to an adversary. [...] Give us a moment… (Softly:) It would cleverly remind the attacker of the “old” communicative postures of the sane animals.

[...] They cannot communicate as, say, even animals can, with their fellow men as far as the expression of a disagreement is concerned.

[...] During the session Seth discussed Billy’s illness to some extent, while also giving the first “installment” of an answer to a longstanding question of mine: I was curious about the relationship between the host — whether human, animal, or plant — and a disease it might contract, one that was “caused,” say, by a virus. [...]

[...] Smallpox’s reappearance would undoubtedly be rationalized: It had lain hidden or dormant in some uninvestigated pocket of humanity; or it was a mutation, somehow “evolving” into smallpox from one of the closely related animal poxes.

(“The same applies of course to any animal or plant considered extinct. [...]

[...] Billy was a replacement for our previous cat, Willy (who’d died in November 1976 at the age of 16), and we’d found him at an animal shelter the next weekend after Willy’s death; as far as having a pet to love went, we’d thought ourselves “set” for a number of years. [...]

Again, the animal approves of himself, whether he is sick or well, slow or swift. The sick animal wants to get well. It does not disapprove of itself, however, or even think of itself as “a sick animal.” In those terms it might think of itself as an animal who was sick—a big difference—and even then no self-disapproval would be indicated.

You are different than animals, but in this case the same issues are involved. [...]

3. Nor was I quick enough to ask Seth if the material Jane delivered for him tonight constituted any kind of contradiction with that of the 689th session; for in that session he discussed man-animal and animal-man as existing within the Tertiary Period. [...] Was it possible that during the complicated rhythms of history, man could have been man (at least approximately as we know him) even before the Tertiary Period, then moved into a long cycle of animal-man forms before returning to being man again? [...]

[...] They are indeed connected with flora and fauna, but also with the animals and yourselves, and they are the “earth gods” that Ruburt imagined as a young person.

[...] That world has its own kind of rich complication, that is as unknown to the animals as is much of their acute realization unknown to you. [...]

[...] These units of which we spoke earlier are basically animations rising from consciousness.

[...] They are emitted by the cells, for example, in plants, animals, rocks, and so forth.

[...] (Pace animated and emphatic; yet with pauses.)

[...] Clumps of them—(Jane gestured; her delivery was quite emphatic and animated,) will be drawn together, literally sealed, only to drop away and disperse once more. [...]

[...] Many animals for example literally see through the sense of smell. They quite literally perceive what you would call the sight of another animal, through the use of the sense of smell.

The scent image built up by the animal is every bit as real as the visual image. [...]

[...] They have, as you know, a chemical reaction which is sniffed by other animals.

From your odor, an animal instantly builds up an image of the state of your psychological condition.

(Long pause at 9:56.) So controls were needed lest the conscious mind, denied full use of the animals’ innate taboos, run away with itself. [...]

[...] The animals’ instincts and their natural situations kept their numbers in bounds; and with unconscious, unknowing courtesy they made room for all others.

[...] So man loses full use of the animals’ regulated, graceful instinct, and yet denies the conscious and emotional discrimination given him instead.

[...] Natural guilt is a creative mechanism, meant to serve as a conscious spur in the solving of problems that, in your terms, no other animals ever had. [...]

[...] In the same manner, say, the ideal is to protect human life, and in the pursuit of that ideal you give generations of various animals deadly diseases, and sacrifice their lives.³ Your justification may be that people have souls and animals do not, or that the quality of life is less in the animals, but regardless of those arguments this is fanaticism — and the quality of human life itself suffers as a result, for those who sacrifice any kind of life along the way lose some respect for all life, human life included. [...]

[...] It would mean that you did not kill animals in experiments, taking their lives in order to protect the sacredness of human life. [...]

Small amounts of radiation are still leaking from the plant, and Pennsylvania and federal health agencies have announced long-range studies of its effects upon the human and animal populations living nearby. [...]

3. Seth referred to the way mice, rats, rabbits, and other animals are raised in laboratory captivity, to be sold to scientific researchers who conduct experiments with them that would be considered “unethical” to do in human beings. [...]

For that matter, there is far greater leeway in the behavior of animals than you understand, for you interpret animal behavior according to your own beliefs. [...]

[...] Often after childbirth, women immediately joined the hunting expeditions, and the fathers made clothing from animals’ hides at home. [...]

Even the animals, however, understand without words or language the importance of their sexual behavior. [...]

[...] Left alone, animal species do the same thing. [...]

“As Floyd and I cut across the court I saw that the Brenner’s lawn was despoiled with a mixture of animal and industrial waste, like pollution. [...] Then to my amazement I saw that the supposed animal was actually the broken remnants of a hollow, life-sized metal statue of a deer that had stood for years in the front yard of a house on Harrison Street, in Sayre, at the other end of town. [...]

[...] The statue of the deer, an inanimate animal, contrasts with the waste left by a living animal. [...]

“Floyd Waterman represents someone who has a connection with living animals in the present [on his farm], and connects the times in the dream, since he also is in the construction business and does carpentry work —and the man who owned the deer was a carpenter. Rob’s also had other dreams involving Floyd and animals. [...]

[...] You saw your old neighborhood (on June 10, 1980)¹ — the Brenner’s place, with animal and industrial waste all over the yard. [...]

Animal consciousness is different than your own. [...] (Long pause.) All of mankind’s developments however are latent in the animal brain, and many attributes of which you are unaware are latent in your own. [...]

Animals follow their own natural waking-sleeping schedules, and in their way derive far greater benefits from both states than you, and use them with greater effectiveness — particularly along the lines of the body’s built-in system of therapy. [...]

[...] In natural circumstances the animals, while sleeping at night, are still partially alert against predators and danger. [...]

(Pause.) Mammals have also changed their habits to accommodate those conditions you have thrust upon them, so the behavior studied in laboratories is not necessarily that shown by the same animals in their natural state.