“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Dictation. (Pause.) While men had their dream bodies alone they enjoyed a remarkable freedom, of course, for those bodies did not have to be fed or clothed. They did not have to operate under the law of gravity. Men could wander as they wished about the landscape. They did not yet identify themselves to any great degree (underlined) as being themselves separate from either the environment or other creatures. They knew themselves to be themselves, but their identities were not as closely allied with their forms as is now the case.

The dream world was bound to waken, however, for that was the course it had set itself upon. This awakening, again, happened spontaneously, and yet with its own order. In the terms of this discussion the other creatures of the earth actually awakened before man did, and relatively speaking, their dream bodies formed themselves into physical ones before man’s did. The animals became physically effective, therefore, while to some degree man still lingered in that dream reality.

(9:04.) Again, the environment as you think of it is composed of living consciousness. Ancient religions, for example, speak of nature’s spirits, and such terms represent memories dating from prehistory. Part of consciousness, then, transformed itself into what you think of as nature—the vast sweep of the continents, the oceans and the rivers, the mountains and the valleys, the body of the land. The creative thrust of the physical world must rise from that living structure.

THE “GARDEN OF EDEN.”
MAN “LOSES” HIS DREAM BODY
AND GAINS A “SOUL”

(9:15.) Chapter Five: “The ‘Garden of Eden.’ Man ‘Loses’ His Dream Body, and Gains a ‘Soul.’ ”

The Garden of Eden legend represents a distorted version of man’s awakening as a physical creature. He becomes fully operational in his physical body, and while awake can only sense the dream body that had earlier been so real to him. He now encounters his experience from within a body that must be fed, clothed, protected from the elements—a body that is subject to gravity and to earth’s laws. He must use physical muscles to walk from place to place. He sees himself suddenly, in a leap of comprehension, as existing for the first time not only apart from the environment, but apart from all of earth’s other creatures.

But man looked out and felt himself suddenly separate and amazed at the aloneness. Now he must find food, where before his dream body did not need physical nourishment. Before, man had been neither male nor female, combining the characteristics of each, but now the physical bodies also specialized in terms of sexuality. Man has to physically procreate. Some lost ancient legends emphasized in a clearer fashion this sudden sexual division. By the time the Biblical legend came into being, however, historical events and social beliefs were transformed into the Adam and Eve version of events.

(9:35.) But if man felt suddenly alone and isolated, he was immediately struck by the grand variety of the world and its creatures. Each creature apart from himself was a new mystery. He was enchanted also by his own subjective reality, the body in which he found himself, and by the differences between himself and others like him, and the other creatures. He instantly began to explore (pause), to categorize, to point out and to name the other creatures of the earth as they came to his attention.

(Long pause in a steady, rather fast delivery.) Man’s dream body is still with him, of course, but the physical body now obscures it. The dream body cannot be harmed while the physical one can—as man quickly found out as he transformed his experience largely from one to the other. In the dream body man feared nothing. The dream body does not die. It exists before and after physical death. In their dream bodies men had watched the spectacle of animals “killing” other animals, and they saw the animals’ dream bodies emerge unscathed.

[Men] saw that there must be an exchange of physical energy for the world to continue. They watched the drama of the “hunter” and the “prey,” seeing that each animal contributed so that the physical form of the earth could continue—but the rabbit eaten by the wolf survived in a dream body that men knew was its true form. When man “awakened” in his physical body, however, and specialized in the use of its senses, he no longer perceived the released dream body of the slain animal running away, still cavorting on the hillside. He retained memory of his earlier knowledge, and for a considerable period he could now and then recapture that knowledge. He became more and more aware of his physical senses, however: Some things were definitely pleasant and some were not. Some stimuli were to be sought out, and others avoided, and so over a period of time he translated the pleasant and the unpleasant into rough versions of good and evil.

3. At first, as I typed this session from my notes a couple of days later, I thought that Seth had contradicted himself here, for earlier in the session he’d stated that “the other creatures of the earth actually awakened before man did, and relatively speaking, their dream bodies formed themselves into physical ones before man’s did.” Then I came to think that Seth actually meant that man has consciously separated himself from his dream body to a greater degree than other creatures have—that even though those other entities became “physically effective” before man did, they still retain a greater awareness of their dream bodies than man does. I’ll try to remember to ask Seth to elaborate upon this point, although I also think he alludes to it later in this session.