“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.

These ancient dreams were shared to some extent by each consciousness that was embarked upon the earthly venture, so that creatures and environment together formed great environmental realities. Valleys and mountains, and their inhabitants, together dreamed themselves into being and coexistence.

The species—from your viewpoint (underlined)—lived at a much slower pace in those terms. The blood, for example, did not need to course so quickly through the veins [and arteries], the heart did not need to beat as fast. And in an important fashion the coordination of the creature in its environment did not need to be as precise, since there was an elastic give-and-take of consciousness between the two.

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.

Man dreamed his languages. He dreamed how to use his tongue to form the words. In his dreams he practiced stringing the words together to form their meanings, so that finally he could consciously begin a sentence without actually knowing how it was begun, yet in the faith that he could and would complete it.

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.

“Yes, I was really going to town.” Even though her delivery had been on the quiet side, still at times Seth had come through with considerable power. “In the winter I like to start sessions earlier,” Jane said, “so I can finish sooner and watch TV for half an hour—it’s relaxing and cozy, especially when we’re alone…. I think the rest of the session will be about me.”

She was right. Beginning at 9:34, Seth returned with a good amount of material for her,¹ then ended the session at 9:58 P.M.)

(“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.”