“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane took a long pause in trance at 9:10.) Give us a moment…. (Long pause.) They provide the power that allows you to form a belief system to begin with.

(Pause.) Now: While you believe that consciousness somehow emerges from dead matter, you will never understand yourselves, and you will always be looking for the point at which life took on form. You will always have to wonder about a kind of mechanical birth of the universe—and it will indeed seem as if your own world was made up of the spare parts that somehow fell together in just such a fashion so that life later emerged.

You are filled with questions about when and where the various species appeared, and how the rocks were formed, when some reptiles grew wings, when some fish emerged from the oceans and learned to breathe air, and you are bound to wonder what happened in the times in between.

How many reptiles tried for wings, for example, and failed, or could not fly—or how many millions of reptiles did it take, and how many trials, before the first triumphant bird flew above the landscape? How many fish died with only half-formed lungs, who were too far from the water’s edge to dip again beneath the waves? (More intently now:) Or how many fish flopped backward to the water, finding themselves in such an in-between stage that they could no longer live in the water nor breathe the air?

I never want any of my remarks to be construed in such a fashion that it seems I am in any way negating the fullness, validity, and magnificence of physical existence. I do want to point out, however, that a state you usually call dreaming is but a dim indication of an inner reality of events (intently), an inner order of events from which the physical world emerges. I hope to show how the nature of dreams has helped shape man’s consciousness. I hope to show that consciousness forms the environment, and not the other way around (with many gestures).

1. Recently, I bought two books written by “scientific creationists.” The authors strongly disagree with ideas of evolution. I’ve read halfway through one of the books, and have discussed it with Jane to some extent. After the session I suggested that she start reading it also, in order to acquaint herself with theories radically different from the “ordinary” scientific ones espoused by evolutionists. Very briefly: The creationists believe that God created the universe (including the earth, obviously) around 10,000 years ago. They maintain that all of the earth’s living forms have remained essentially unchanged since that prime creative event; they can account for the disappearance of the dinosaurs, for example, and the vast number of other life forms we no longer see around us. On the other hand, evolutionary science believes that the universe came into being between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago; that the earth itself is about 4.6 billion years old, and that according to the fossil record and other evidence, its living organisms first arose and began evolving at least 3.5 billion years ago. Science also believes, however, that the study of a “first cause” involves not scientific but philosophical and theological questions. For instance, why did the universe we think we know so well come into existence at all, and what was the cause of that beginning?