“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In a fashion—in a fashion—the [universe] began in the same way that Ruburt’s story this evening began: with the desire to create—out of joy, not from a sense of responsibility.

However, if objective proof of that nature is considered the priority for facts, then as you know science cannot prove its version of the [universe’s] origin either. It only sets up an hypothesis, which collects about it all data that agree, and again ignores what does not fit. Moreover, science’s thesis meets with no answering affirmation in the human heart—and in fact arouses the deepest antipathy, for in his heart man well knows his own worth, and realizes that his own consciousness is no accident.⁵ The psyche, then, possesses within itself an inner affirmation, an affirmation that provides the impetus for physical emergence, an affirmation that keeps man from being completely blinded by his own mental edifices (all with much emphasis and fast delivery.

There is a part of man that Knows, with a capital K. That is the portion of him, of course, that is born and grows to maturity even while the lungs or digestive processes do not read learned treatises on the body’s “machinery,” ⁶ so in our book we will hope to arouse within the reader, of whatever persuasion, a kind of subjective evidence, a resonance between ideas and being. Many people write, saying that they feel as if somehow they have always been acquainted with our material—and of course they have, for it represents the inner knowing within each individual. (Pause.) In a fashion, creative play is your human version of far greater characteristics from which your universe itself was formed. There are all kinds of definite, even specific, subjective evidence for the nature of your own reality—evidence that is readily apparent once you really begin to look for it, particularly by comparing the world of your dreams with your daily life.

When all of summer’s
splendid leafery is gone
then space seems to surround
us everywhere, far and close.
The immense vault of the universe
turns intimate,
reaches to our chimneytops
in shining swirls of sudden openness
just outside of our back doors.
Space from the galaxies
rushes in to fill the new emptiness
where a million million leaves were,
and the valleys hold
natural cupfuls of space,
filled to their transparent brims.

5. By now, a number of the world’s leading scientists in the physical disciplines have publicly stated their beliefs that basically consciousness plays the primary role in our world and/or universe. For reasons too complicated to go into here, this attitude prevails even with some mathematicians who seek to penetrate to the core of our reality as they understand it.

Aside from anything Seth has said or ever may say about other probable realities, or even about human origins here on earth, I think it most risky at this stage in history for anyone—scientist or not—to dogmatically state that life has no meaning, or is a farce, or that attributes of our reality of which we can only mentally conceive at this time do not really exist. Discoveries in the “future” are quite apt to prove such limited viewpoints wrong. The history of science itself contains many examples of theories and “facts” gone awry. Moreover, why would our species want to depend upon as fragile a conception as epiphenomenalism through which to comprehend our reality? Or better yet, why does it in large part? Truly, our individual and collective ignorance of just our own probable reality is most profound at this time in our linear history (in those terms). Jane and I wouldn’t be surprised if ultimately, as a result of mankind’s restless search for meaning, we didn’t end up returning in a new official way to our ancient concepts of spirit within everything, animate and inanimate. Such an updated animistic/vitalistic view would take into account discoveries ranging from subnuclear events to the largest imaginable astronomical processes in our observable universe. Human beings do know their own worth, as Seth stated in this session.

“There is no doubt that we need to believe that life has meaning. That belief may well be a biological imperative. If we were as science maintains—only creatures formed by elements combining mindlessly in a universe itself created by chance, surrounded everywhere by chaos—then how could we even conceive of the idea of meaning or order?