“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now: You cannot prove scientifically that [your] world was created (pause) by a god who set it into motion, but remained outside of its dominion. Nor can you prove scientifically that the creation of the world was the result of a chance occurrence—so you will not be able to prove what I am going to tell you either. Not in usual terms.

You live your lives through your own subjective knowing, to begin with, and I will try to arouse within your own consciousnesses memories of events with which your own inner psyches were intimately involved as the world was formed—and though these may appear to be past events, they are even now occurring.

Before the beginning of the universe, we will postulate the existence of an omnipotent, creative source. (Pause.) We will hope to show that this divine subjectivity is as present in the world of your experience as it was before the beginning of the universe. Again, I refer to this original subjectivity as All That Is. I am making an attempt to verbalize concepts that almost defy the edges of the intellect, unless that intellect is thoroughly reinforced by the intuition’s strength. So you will need to use your mind and your own intuitions as you read this book.

All That Is, before the beginning contained within itself the infinite thrust of all possible creations. All That Is possessed (pause) a creativity of such magnificence that its slightest imaginings, dreams, thoughts, feelings or moods attained a kind of reality, a vividness, an intensity, that almost demanded freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom to do what? Freedom to be what?

The experience, the subjective universe, the “mind” of All That Is, was so brilliant, so distinct, that All That Is almost became lost, mentally wandering within this ever-flourishing, ever-growing interior landscape. Each thought, feeling, dream, or mood was itself indelibly marked with all of the attributes of this infinite subjectivity. Each glowed and quivered with its own creativity, its own desire to create as it had been created.

All That Is knew of itself only. It was engrossed with its own subjective experiences, even divinely astonished as its own thoughts and imaginings attained their own vitality, and inherited the creativity of their subjective creator. [Those thoughts and imaginings] began to have a dialogue with their “Maker” (all very emphatically).

Thoughts of such magnificent vigor began to think their own thoughts—and their thoughts thought thoughts. As if in divine astonishment and surprise, All That Is began to listen, and began to respond to these “generations” of thoughts and dreams, for the thoughts and dreams related to each other also. There was no time, so all of this “was happening” simultaneously. The order of events is being simplified. In the meantime, then, in your terms, All That Is spontaneously thought new thoughts and dreamed new dreams, and became involved in new imaginings—and all of these also related to those now-infinite generations of interweaving and interrelating thoughts and dreams that “already” existed (with many gestures and much emphasis).

So beside this spontaneous creation, this simultaneous “stream” of divine rousing, All That Is began to watch the interactions that occurred among his own subjective progeny. (Pause.) He listened, began to respond and to answer a thought or a dream. He began to purposefully bring about those mental conditions that were requested by these generations of mental progeny. If he had been lonely before, he was no longer.

Your language causes some difficulty here, so please accept the pronoun “he” as innocuously as possible. “It” sounds too neutral for my purpose, and I want to reserve the pronoun “she” for some later differentiations. In basic terms, of course, All That Is is quite beyond any designations having to do with any one species or sex. All That Is, then, began to feel a growing sense of pressure as it¹ realized that its own ever-multiplying thoughts and dreams themselves yearned to enjoy those greater gifts of creativity with which they were innately endowed.

It is very difficult to try to assign anything like human motivation to All That Is. I can only say that it is possessed by “the need” to lovingly create from its own being; to lovingly transform its own reality in such a way that each most slight probable consciousness can come to be (long pause); and with the need to see that any and all possible orchestrations of consciousness have the chance to emerge, to perceive and to love.

All That Is, then, became aware of a kind of creative tumult as each of its superlative thoughts and dreams, moods and feelings, strained at the very edges of their beings, looking for some then-unknown, undiscovered, as of then unthought-of release. I am saying that this mental progeny included all of the consciousnesses that [have] ever appeared or will appear upon your earth—all tenderly couched: the first human being, the first insect—each with an inner knowledge of the possibilities of its development. All That Is, loving its own progeny, sought within itself the answer to this divine dilemma (all very intently, with eyes wide and dark, and with numerous gestures).

(Pause at 9:57.) When that answer came, it involved previously unimaginable leaps of divine inspiration, and it occurred thusly: All That Is searched through the truly infinite assortment of its incredible progeny to see what conditions were needed for this even more magnificent dream, this dream of a freedom of objectivity. What door could open to let physical reality emerge from such an inner realm? When All That Is, in your terms, put all of those conditions together it saw, of course, in a flash, the mental creation of those objective worlds that would be needed—and as it imagined those worlds, in your terms, they were physically created.

[All That Is] did not separate itself from those worlds, however, for they were created from its thoughts, and each one has divine content. The worlds are all created by that divine content, so that while they are on the one hand exterior, they are on the other also made of divine stuff, and each hypothetical point in your universe (pause) is in direct contact with All That Is in the most basic terms. The knowledge of the whole is within all of its parts—and yet All That Is is more than its parts.

Divine subjectivity is indeed infinite. It can never be entirely objectified. When the worlds, yours and others, were thus created, there was indeed an explosion of unimaginable proportions, as the divine spark of inspiration exploded into objectivity.

The first “object” was an almost unendurable mass, though it had no weight, and it exploded, instantaneously beginning processes that formed the universe—but no time was involved. The process that you might imagine took up eons occurred in the twinkling of an eye, and the initial objective materialization of the massive thought of All That Is burst into reality. In your terms this was a physical explosion—but in the terms of the consciousnesses involved in that breakthrough, this was experienced as a triumphant “first” inspirational frenzy, a breakthrough into another kind of being (most intently).

But in your terms this was still largely a dream world, though it was fully fashioned. It had, generally speaking, all of the species that you now know. These all correlated with the multitudinous kinds of consciousnesses that had clamored for release, and those consciousnesses were spontaneously endowed by All That Is with those forms that fit their requirements. You had the birth of individualized consciousness as you think of it into physical context. Those consciousnesses were individualized before the beginning, but not manifest. But individualized consciousness was not quite all that bold. It did not attach itself completely to its earthly forms at the start, but rested often within its “ancient” divine heritage. In your terms, it is as if the earth and all of its creatures were partially dreaming, and not as focused within physical reality as they are now.

(10:08.) For one thing, while individualized consciousness was within the massive subjectivity of All That Is, it enjoyed, beside its own uniqueness, a feeling of supporting unity, a comforting knowledge that it was one with its source. So in the beginning of [your] world, consciousness fluctuated greatly, focusing gently at the start, but not quite as willing to be as fully independent as its first intent might seem.

So how do Seth’s own ideas of probable universes and probable earths fit in with his material tonight—as I’m sure they do? I quickly saw that my questions could go on and on. Seth’s book is young, I told myself. Wait. Wait….

2. Seth first discussed the “sleepwalkers” in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality—see Session 708 for September 30, 1974. Here’s a much-condensed version of what he told us that night after break ended at 9:56:

“Imagine a body with a fully operating body consciousness, not diseased or defective, but without the overriding ego-directed consciousness that you have. The sleepwalkers’ physical abilities surpassed yours. They were as agile as animals, their purpose simply to be. Their main points of consciousness were elsewhere, their primary focuses scarcely aware of the bodies they had created. Yet they learned ‘through experience,’ and began to ‘awaken,’ to become aware of themselves, to discover time, or to create it.

“They were not asleep to themselves, only from your viewpoint. There were several such races of human beings. To them the real was the dream life, which contained the highest stimuli. This is the other side of your own experience. Such races left the physical earth much as they found it. In what you would call the physical waking state, these individuals slept, yet they behaved with great natural physical grace. They did not saddle the body with negative beliefs of disease or limitation. They did not age to the extent that you do.”

In “Unknown” Reality, then, Seth’s material on the sleepwalkers heralded one of the main themes of Dreams, which he began five years later. Dreams was unsuspected by us then, of course; so what books to come will have their genesis in this one?

(I’ll add that Jane and I have received several thousand letters since the publication of Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality. As best I can remember, however, not a single writer has mentioned the sleepwalkers—one of Seth’s most intriguing concepts.)

In ordinary terms, she knows practically nothing concerning several other less prominent theories regarding the beginning of the universe. I haven’t discussed these with her. One of them is the “inflationary model,” which may become much better known. It incorporates many of the features of the big-bang theory, and actually may answer certain questions in a better scientific fashion. One of the big differences between the two is that in the big-bang theory all of the matter in the universe was already present, though existing in an extremely dense state which then began to expand; the inflationary model suggests that the universe was created out of nothing, or out of just about nothing—meaning that through unforeseeable rhythms subatomic particles spontaneously came into being, with sufficient energy behind them to enable them to persist as matter. A fantastic, inflationary expansion then began. Yet this creation of matter out of nothing, so to speak, violates at least some of the laws of conservation—laws that are indeed among the most basic and cherished tenets of physics.