“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Through it all each one of us felt a penetrating nostalgia for those vanished classes, for they’d been truly unique; I don’t think it would be possible to recapture their particular, innocent, lasting sense of excitement and exploration. As might be expected, I appreciate Jane’s accomplishments in them much more now than I did during the nearly seven years they were underway.

Almost three weeks ago I wrote in the Preface for Dreams that we were waiting to receive the first published copies of Jane’s Emir’s Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers. Today the books arrived. Eleanor Friede, Jane’s editor at Delacorte Press, has done a fine job of supervising the illustration and production of a handsome little volume. All of us hope Emir does well in the marketplace.

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.

(Pause at 9:31.) All That Is contained within itself the knowledge of all existences, with their infinite probabilities, and “as soon as” All That Is imagined those numberless circumstances, they existed in what I will call divine fact.

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.

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.

(“I don’t want to lose it,” Jane said. She went quickly back into trance. Purring and rubbing, Mitzi began to climb all over me as I tried to take notes. Resume at 10:30.)

All of the species began by emphasizing a great subjective orientation that was most necessary as they learned to manipulate within the new physical environment.

“I got some of it before the session—about the initial ones before the earth was formed—you could call them nonphysical entities. But it sounds dumb when you say it now: Physical entities couldn’t hold all that much consciousness. I didn’t know it was that definite until the end of the session, though…. Boy, that was a really good state,” she said with satisfaction. “I really enjoyed it….”

But I had to admit that I was also surprised. Seth had come through so rapidly and emphatically that while taking notes I’d hardly had time to think about questions. What’s he trying to do, I asked Jane—combine something like science’s theoretical “big-bang” origin of the universe, all of those billions of years ago, with creationism’s theory of a recent spontaneous, divine creation of that same universe? Has our earth and all of its creatures “evolved,” or not? Could you have simultaneous evolution? [Here we go again, I speculated, back to struggling with that contradictory notion of “simultaneous time.”] How does Seth’s instantaneous “beginning processes that formed the universe”—with no time involved—square with fossils in the earth? Isn’t he saying that the universe grew/evolved through a series of dream states?

1. Seth was evidently experimenting here, for right away he went back to using “it,” instead of “he,” when referring to All That Is. “It” may not be entirely satisfactory either, but Jane and I didn’t question Seth about it: We prefer that designation because it encompasses any kind of sexual orientation and/or function within All That Is. (When Seth used “he” while talking about All That Is a couple of times later in the session, I substituted “it” in my notes and let it go at that.)

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.

From my reading of Seth’s ideas of “in the beginning,” however, I’m sure he couldn’t agree with either the big-bang or inflationary models of the creation of the universe, even though his material may be evocative of portions of both theories. In physics, we’re asked to believe that this “extremely dense state” which began to expand was in actuality many billions of times smaller than a proton. (Protons are subatomic components of the nuclei of atoms.) Matter is a form of energy. Even so, I have trouble conceptualizing the idea that all matter in our universe, out to the farthest-away galaxy of billions of stars, grew from this unimaginably small and dense, unimaginably hot “original” state or area of being. I can see how such a concept can be postulated mathematically—but could it ever have really happened in ordinary terms?