“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

However, aside from being in outright conflict with the theory of evolution [and the idea of an ancient universe], the beliefs of the creationists do pose a number of questions that are quite intriguing from our joint viewpoint. My statement doesn’t mean that Jane and I endorse creationism just because we question the doctrines of evolution. We think that either one of those belief systems is much too inadequate to explain reality in any sort of comprehensive way.

The very experience of passing moments belongs to your psychological rooms in the same way that clocks are attached to your walls. Whenever science or religion seeks the origin of the universe, they search for it in the past. The universe is being created now (underlined). Creation occurs in each moment, in your terms. The illusion of time itself is being created now. It is therefore somewhat futile to look for the origins of the universe by using a time scheme that is in itself, at the very least, highly relative.

Your now (underlined), or present moment, is a psychological platform. It seems that the universe began with an initial burst of energy of some kind (the “big bang”). Evolutionists cannot account for its cause. Many religious people believe that a god exists in a larger dimension of reality, and that he created the universe while being himself outside of it. He set it into motion. Many individuals, following either persuasion, believe that regardless of its source, the [universe]¹ must run out of energy. Established science is quite certain that no energy can now be created or destroyed, but only transformed (as stated in the first law of thermodynamics). Science sees energy and matter as being basically the same thing, appearing differently under varying circumstances.

(9:31.) In certain terms, science and religion are both dealing with the idea of an objectively created universe. Either God “made it,” or physical matter, in some unexplained manner, was formed after an initial explosion of energy, and consciousness emerged from that initially dead matter in a way yet to be explained.

If you have thought that the universe followed a mechanistic model, then you would have to say that each portion of this “cosmic machine” created itself, knowing its position in the entire “future construction.” You would have to say further that each portion came gladly out of its own source individually, neatly tailored to its position, while at the same time that individual source was also as intimately the source of each other individual portion.

(9:58.) Your finest aspirations can give you some dim clue as to the great creative thrust that is behind your own smallest act, for your own smallest act is possible only because your body has already been provided for in the physical world. Your life is given. In each moment it is renewed. So smoothly and effortlessly do you ride that thrust of life’s energy that you are sometimes scarcely aware of it. (Pause.) You are not equipped with a certain amount of energy that then wears out and dies. Instead you are, again, newly created in each moment.

But as I type this material two evenings later [on Friday], I can note that Jane didn’t paint at all. Instead she continued to work on her own God of Jane. She also finished reading the book on creationism, and at my request today wrote a page or so about her reactions to it. Her little essay is given as Note 2. Then see Note 3 for my own comments about evolution as I discussed that subject in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality.)

“Maybe between one and two thousand years after the Creation a worldwide flood destroyed practically everything, though some species, including man, survived. (No even approximate date for the flood is given in the book. Noah, the 10th male in descent from Adam—Noah and his family, and the divine command he received to build the Ark—aren’t even mentioned. But how could they be, in a book on scientific creationism?) There was no evolution. All species were created as they now appear. Oddly, if you postulate a god in that fashion, a personified one, then you wonder why he couldn’t—or didn’t choose to—maintain the perfection of his original creation. Why man’s sin, resulting in the catastrophic flood, to which all species fell victim? The regular theory of evolution doesn’t have to contend with such questions, of course, but in the book I just read no explanations for questions like that are given—I don’t even remember that they were raised.

I had finished Appendix 12 for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality by August 1977. I’d devoted the piece to a study of the establishment theory of evolution versus ideas Seth, Jane, and I have on that theme, and noted that I’d accumulated much information from a number of sources. I’ve amassed much more data by now, of course. Perhaps, I thought when putting together the Preface for Dreams, I just wanted to use some of our later material in the new book.