“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause at 9:17. Once again, as it often has since she began dictating this book, Jane’s delivery for Seth had taken on a charged and inspired cast. The words in paragraphs like the one above rolled out of her in a strong and almost grand manner. It was easy to tell that she enjoyed working on Dreams—that she gave permission to be carried away if need be. Perhaps her method of presentation was in keeping with Seth’s own pronouncement at the beginning of his Preface, almost three months ago: “This book will be my most ambitious project thus far. Period.”)

One mind alone could not come into being from chance alone; one thought could not leap from an infinite number of nerve ends, if matter itself was not initially alive with consciousness, packed with the intent to be. A man who believes life has little meaning quickly leaves life—and a meaningless existence could never produce life (intently). Nor was the universe created for one species alone, by a God who is simply a supervision of the same species—as willful and destructive as man at his worst.

(Long pause.) In your terms of time, however, we will speak of a beginning, and in that beginning it was early man’s dreams that allowed him to cope with physical reality. The dream world was his original learning ground. In times of drought he would dream of the location of water. In times of famine he would dream of the location of food. That is, his dreaming allowed him to clairvoyantly view the body of land. He would not waste time in the trial-and-error procedures that you now take for granted. In dreams his consciousness operated as a wave.

In those early times all species shared their dreams in a way that is now quite unconscious for your kind, so that in dreams man inquired of the animals also—long before he learned to follow the animal tracks, for example. Where is there food or water? What is the lay of the land? Man explored the planet because his dreams told him that the land was there.

People were not nearly as isolated as it now appears, for in their dreams early men communicated their various locations, the symbols of their cultures and understanding, the nature of their arts. All of the inventions that you often think now happened quite by chance—the discovery of anything from the first tool to the importance of fire, or the coming of the Iron Age or whatever—all of that inventiveness was the result of the inspiration and communication of the dream world. Man dreamed his world and then created it, and the units of consciousness first dreamed man and all of the other species that you know.

The perspective from which you watch world events is vital, and it is true that communication now brings to the conscious mind a far greater barrage than before. But it is also a barrage that makes man see his own activities, and even with the growth of the new nationalism in the Third World, those nations begin from a new perspective, in which the eyes of the world are indeed upon them.

The results of fanaticism are also out in the open. Never before, in your terms, has the private person been able to see a picture of the mass world in such a way, or been forced to identify with the policies of his or her government. That in itself is a creative achievement, and means that man is not closing his eyes to the inequities of his world.

1. Later, I asked Seth to comment upon his most intriguing statement. His answer was brief, for insertion here, and as much as I wanted to I didn’t ask him to enlarge upon it. However, I’m sure that the subject of “other kinds of matter” is one with almost endless ramifications. Seth:

“Units of consciousness do help form different kinds of physical realities—as indeed Ruburt has himself hinted in some of his poetry. There are many dimensions that are as physical, so to speak, as your own world, but if you are not focused in them you would not at all be aware of their existence, but perceive only empty space.