“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Yesterday and earlier today Jane had scribbled down notes she was picking up from Seth; she’d put them in the session notebook in case I had time to type them. [I didn’t.] Then later today she reread all of the material Seth has given on Dreams.)

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.

(Pause.) What was it like when man awakened from the dream world?

On the one hand, man did indeed feel that he had fallen from a high estate, because he remembered that earlier freedom of dream reality—a reality in which the other creatures were still to some degree (underlined) immersed.³ Man’s mind, incidentally, at that point had all the abilities that you now assign to it: the great capacity for contrast of imagination and intellect, the drive for objectivity and for subjectivity (softly), the full capacity for the development of language—a keen mind that was as brilliant in any caveman, say, as it is in any man on a modern street.

(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.

In a fashion (underlined), it was a great creative and yet cosmic game that consciousness played with itself, and it did represent a new kind of awareness, but I want to emphasize that each version of All That Is is unique. Each has its purpose, though that purpose cannot be easily defined in your terms. Many people ask, for example: “What is the purpose of my life?” Meaning: “What am I meant to do?” but the purpose of your life, and each life, is in its being (intently). That being may include certain actions, but the acts themselves are only important in that they spring out of the essence of your life, which simply by being is bound to fulfill its purposes.

They saw that the earth was simply changing its forms, but that the identity of each unit of consciousness survived—and so, although they saw the picture of death, they did not recognize it as the death that to many people now seems an inevitable end.

[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.

Basically, what made him feel good was good. He was gifted with strong clear instincts that were meant to lead him toward his own greatest development, to his own greatest fulfillment, in such a way that he also helped to bring about the highest potentials of all of the other species of consciousness (intently). His natural impulses were meant to provide inner directives that would guide him in just such a direction, so that he sought what was the best for himself and for others.