“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Do not simply say that the ant has a right to existence as you do. Either feel it and understand the reality of the ant or understand that you do not understand the reality of the ant. Do not play around with the concepts. Experience as directly as you can within yourselves your own living reality, then go from that, if you can, to other living realities. To life as it shows itself in many forms, not to the word life.

Now I will let our friend call his own class break, but I will be listening to your answers, and I expect you to encounter the question in both of its parts quite honestly. “How revelant is life? How revelant is your life?” and I will add a third portion. “Are you more revelant than an ant?” Than an ant.

To answer the questions you need to feel your reality at any given moment, to follow your own thoughts, but not only your thoughts, but your physical sensations, the sensations of physical life. And when you cut off as many of these physical sensations as you can then what remains? What physical sensations do you think that you feel that an ant does not? What can he feel that you cannot? You evaded the questions. Now I knew you would evade the questions, so that is all right and it was part of the lesson but you must encounter your own vitality.

If the ant spoke, what would he say? Would he step on you if he were as large as you are? Let yourselves go in feeling with these questions. You sit here feeling isolated within your skins and for no reason for you, yourselves, enclose yourselves.

(The matter of fire ants had come up when we watched the TV show, In Search Of at 2:30 this afternoon. It had featured the explosive growth of fire ants, up from Brazil in the 1930’s, and now threatening to spread over most of the United States. I had many questions, ranging from the consciousnesses of the ants involved, and their right to life, as opposed to the “destructive” view taken of them by farmers, scientists, and so forth in the conventional sense. I also saw correlations between the spread of the fire ants and the spread of the “killer bees” —also up into this country from Brazil—at the same time. [...]

[...] Is this in reference to the program we saw on TV this afternoon, about fire ants?”)

[...] It was; an ant. A few minutes later, another ant, plus the noises.

[...] I admit that I am stretching our ant tale here, but imagine further that our little fellow becomes familiar with everyone in, say, an apartment house, learning to recognize all of the footsteps that go up and down the stairs. Our philosopher keeps in touch with the other ants, until with time and work and patience, a chart is made and calculations drawn. An ant born at three o’clock in the afternoon, when Miss X comes home with her boyfriend, is apt to have a hard time of it — for the couple runs about exuberantly, shaking all of the establishment, and tumbling the dust in the inner crevices.

An imaginary ant, a philosophical one, might sit and in its own way contemplate how often you walked the floor in a period that might seem like a year to it. It might try to calculate your next passage ahead of time, so that — prudent ant! [...]

I am not comparing astrologers with ants. I am, however, trying to show you that you are not ruled by the stars — and that when you behave as if you are, then you are showing as little comprehension of your true position as our ant did. [...]

[...] This perspective cannot “work” at your usual level of consciousness, any more than the artist’s perspective will work for the ant’s — though there is much you could learn from an ant’s consciousness (intently). [...]

[...] An ant crawling upon such a canvas would hasten across just another flat surface, and be quite unaware of the inviting avenue and any painted fields or mountains.

[...] Even ants and honeybees play. Their sociability is not just a matter of constant work within a hive or an ant mound. [...]

[...] He is also connected with any ant in the backyard in the same way. Yet I retain my identity, the ant retains its identity, and Ruburt retains his.¹² But one could not exist without the other two — for in greater terms the reality of any one of the three presupposes the existence of the others.

(“Right now I think I’m getting that everything on the face of the earth is related — that your consciousness is in an ant, or a rock⁸ or a tree, but that we’re not used to thinking that way. [...]

[...] They will form people or ants or blades of grass, yet in each of these ventures they will also retain their own sense of identity. [...]

Physically speaking, and generally, your body is composed of grasses and ants and rocks and beasts and birds, for in one way or another all biological matter is related.⁹ In certain terms, through your experience, birds and rocks speak alphabets — and certain portions of your own being fly or creep as birds or insects,¹⁰ forming the great gestalt of physical experience. [...]

or an ant

[...] The feet are not aware of the ants they crush. They may feel the grass or sidewalk or the road, but the peculiar individual sensate life of the grass itself, or of the ant, escapes the feet, which are involved in their own reality and concerned with these other things only in their relationship to feethood.

The mind can interpret the experiences that the legs and the feet have, however, and by imaginatively using that sensual data can perceive the ant’s reality to some extent. [...]

[...] Because for example bees or ants tend to act in a like manner as far as other bees and ants are concerned, because it appears that their actions are as predictable and almost predetermined, man takes it for granted that certain reflexes are absolutes in particular species, and that in any given situation a member of such a species will always react in a certain manner because he cannot help it.

[...] An ant on the ground may see that the petal is way above the root and stem, but ants are too wise to think that the petal must be better than the root.

[...] There is no need to compare one type of personality with another than there is to compare a toad to a bird, or an ant to an elephant.

[...] I saw a large black winged ant crawling on the back of Jane’s rocker, close to her head. [...]

It is therefore theoretically possible for you to see the world through a frog’s eye, or a bird’s or an ant’s. We are speaking here of physical senses. [...]

[...] So is an idiot and a genius, a glass and an ant. [...]

[...] If you purposefully, now, or with malice, step upon an ant, then to the extent of your malice you step upon yourself all unknowing. [...]

[...] But in all cases you must come to grips with such unnecessary ideas, face the reality of your creaturehood, and see that you certainly have as much of a place in the universe as a squirrel, an ant or a leaf. [...]

[...] And when you kill so much as an ant, so do you kill part of Him in most practical terms.

[...] Minute earth tremors, even the motion of small ants about its lower trunk — these are recognized and experienced. [...]

[...] Minute earth tremors, even the motion of small ants about its lower trunk, are recognized and experienced by tree consciousness. [...]