“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Give us a moment…. For what would seem to you to be eons, according to your time scale, men were in the dreaming state far more than they were in the waking one. They slept long hours, as did the animals—awakening, so to speak, to exercise their bodies, obtain sustenance, and, later, to mate. It was indeed a dreamlike world, but a highly charming and vital one, in which dreaming imaginations played rambunctiously with all the probabilities entailed in this new venture: imagining the various forms of language and communication possible, spinning great dream tales of future civilizations replete with their own built-in histories—building, because they were now allied with time, mental edifices that automatically created pasts as well as futures.

In ways almost impossible to describe, the ground rules were not as yet firmly established. Gravity itself did not carry its all-pervasive sway, so that the air was more buoyant. Man was aware of its support in a luxurious, intimate fashion. He was aware of himself in a different way, so that, for example, his identification with the self did not stop where his skin stopped: He could follow it outward into the space about his form, and feel it merge with the atmosphere with a primal sense-experience that you have forgotten.

(8:58.) During this period, incidentally, mental activity of the highest, most original variety was the strongest dream characteristic, and the knowledge [man] gained was imprinted upon the physical brain: what is now completely unconscious activity involving the functions of the body, its relationship with the environment, its balance and temperature, its constant inner alterations. All of these highly intricate activities were learned and practiced in the dream state as the CU’s translated their inner knowledge through the state of dreaming into the physical form.

All languages have as their basis the language that was spoken in dreams. The need for language arose, however, as man became less a dreamer and more immersed in the specifics of space and time, for in the dream state his communications with his fellows and other species was instantaneous. Language arose to take the place of that inner communication, then. There is a great underlying unity in all of man’s so-called early cultures—cave drawings and religions—because they were all fed by that common source, as man tried to transpose inner knowledge into physical actuality.

The body learned to maintain its stability, its strength and agility, to achieve a state of balance in complementary response to the weather and elements, to dream computations that the conscious mind alone could not hold. The body learned to heal itself in sleep in its dreams—and at certain levels in that state even now each portion of consciousness contributes to the health and stability of all other portions. Far from the claw-and-dagger universe, you have one whose very foundation is based upon the loving cooperation of all of its parts. That is given—the gift of life brings along with it the actualization of that cooperation, for the body’s parts exist as a unit because of inner relationships of a cooperative nature; and those exist at your birth (most emphatically), when you are innocent of any cultural beliefs that may be to the contrary.

(9:14.) If it were not for this most basic, initial loving cooperation, that is a given quality in life itself, life would not have continued. Each individual of each species takes that initial zest and joy of life as its own yardstick. Each individual of whatever species, and each consciousness, whatever its degree, automatically seeks to enhance the quality of life itself—not only for itself but for all of reality as well.

(Pause.) In a fashion those ancient dreamers, through their immense creativity, dreamed all of life’s creatures in all of their pasts, presents, and futures—that is, their dreams opened up the doors of space and time to entities that otherwise would not have been released into actualization, even as, for example, the units of consciousness were once released from the mind of All That Is.

All possible entities that can ever be actualized always exist. They [have] always existed and they always will exist. All That Is must, by its characteristics, be all that it can ever be, and so there can be no end to existence—and, in those terms, no beginning. But in terms of your world the units of consciousness, acting both as forces and as psychological entities of massive power, planted the seeds of your world in a dimension of imaginative power that gave birth to physical form. In your terms those entities are your ancestors—and yet [they are] not yours alone, but the ancestors of all the consciousnesses that make up your world.

“They are done for you in Framework 2—and further discussions of Framework 2, incidentally, will be interwound throughout our present book. Your beliefs often tell you that life is hard, however, that living is difficult, that the universe, again, is unsafe, and that you must use all of your resources—not to meet [life] with anything like joyful abandon, of course, but to protect yourself against its implied threats; threats that you have been taught to expect.

(“Well, for someone who wasn’t with it too much, I did okay,” Jane said when the session was over. She was rejuvenated to a degree. Both of us were impressed anew by Seth’s present and potential creativity. “If it weren’t for all that mail we get, I’d try at least three sessions a week,” she added. “But you don’t have the time to type any more, with all you’re doing now.”