“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In the Preface I also wrote about how I thought the great blossomings of religious consciousness and scientific consciousness engendered by the events at Three Mile Island and Jonestown/Iran would continue to grow, once born, seemingly with lives of their own. Jane and I have watched these effects steadily increase since we held the 885th session. Now, our country’s initial concern over the accident at TMI has grown to include deep questions about why we’ve built so many nuclear energy generating plants near large population centers; carrying out a mass evacuation in case of a serious accident at any of those sites seems to present a series of insurmountable challenges.

This may hardly be original thinking here, but these proliferations of consciousness imply some pretty fantastic abilities on the part of we humans—for such developments show that even though we live as small creatures within the incredible richness of an overall consciousness, or All That Is, still our actions can result in that great consciousness exploring new areas of itself. Quite awesome creative abilities on our part, I’d say, and ones that unknowingly we take for granted. We do this all of the time, of course, individually and collectively.

In the beginning there was instead, once more, a divine psychological gestalt—and by that I mean a being whose reality escapes the definition of the word “being,” since it is the source from which all being emerges. That being exists in a psychological dimension (long pause), a spacious present, in which everything that was or is or will be (in your terms) is kept in immediate attention, poised in a divine context that is characterized (long pause, eyes closed) by such a brilliant concentration that the grandest and the lowliest, the largest and the smallest, are equally held in a multiloving constant focus.

(9:34.) The conscious mind sees with a spectacular but limited scope. It lacks all peripheral vision. I use the term “conscious mind” as you define it, for you allow it to accept as evidence only those physical data available for the five senses—while the five senses, of course, represent only a relatively flat² view of reality, that deals with the most apparent surface.

The universe is the natural extension of divine creativity and intent, lovingly formed from the inside out (underlined)—so there was consciousness before there was matter, and not the other way around.

In certain basic and vital ways, your own consciousness is a portion of that divine gestalt. In the terms of your earthly experience, it is a metaphysical, a scientific, and a creative error to separate matter from consciousness, for consciousness materializes itself as matter in physical life.

(Long pause.) Your consciousness will survive your body’s death, but it will also take on another kind of form—a form that is itself composed of “units of consciousness.” You have a propensity for wanting to think in terms of hierarchies of consciousness, with humanity at the top of the list, in global terms. The Bible, for example, says that man is put in dominion over the animals, and it seems as if upgrading the consciousnesses of animals must somehow degrade your own. The divine gestalt, however, is expressed in such a way that its quality (pause) is undiluted. It cannot be watered down, so that in basic terms one portion of existence is somehow up or down the scale from another. It is all Grade A (with amusement).

You limit the capacity of your conscious mind by refusing to allow it to use a larger scope of attention, so that you have remained closed and ignorant about the different, varied, but rich experiences of other species: They do appear beneath you. You have allowed a certain stubborn literal-mindedness to provide you with definitions that served to categorize rather than illuminate other realities beside your own.

(Long pause at 9:55.) In the beginning, then, there was a subjective world that became objective. Matter was not yet permanent, in your terms, for consciousness was not yet as stable there. In the beginning, then, there was a dream world, in which consciousness formed a dream of physical reality, and gradually became awake within that world.

Mountains rose and tumbled. Oceans filled. Tidal waves thundered. Islands appeared. The seasons themselves were not stable. In your terms the magnetic fields themselves fluctuated—but all of the species were there at the beginning, though in the same fashion, for as the dream world broke through into physical reality there was all of the tumultuous excitement and confusion with which a mass creative event is achieved. There was much greater plasticity, motion, variety, give-and-take, as consciousness experimented with its own forms. The species and environment together formed themselves in concert, in glorious combination, so that each fulfilled the requirements of its own existence while adding to the fulfillment of all other portions of physical reality (all very intently, and with many gestures).

That kind of an event simply cannot fit into your concepts of “the beginning of the world,” with consciousness arising out of matter almost as a second thought, or with an exteriorized God initiating a divine but mechanistic natural world.

I have a purpose in this book—for this is dictation—and that purpose is to change your ideas of yourselves, by showing you a truer picture of your history both in terms of your immortal consciousness and your physical heritage.