“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

The plants awakened before the animals—and there are reasons for these varying degrees of “wakefulness” that have nothing to do basically with the differentiations of specieshood as defined by science from the outside, but have to do with the inner affiliations of consciousness, and with species or families of consciousness. Those affiliations fell into being as all of the consciousnesses that were embarked upon physical reality divided up (long pause) the almost unimaginable creative achievements that would be responsible for the physically effective world.

(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.

Man thinks as naturally as the birds fly. He looks at physical reality for the rest of physical reality: He is earth coming alive to view itself through conscious eyes—but that consciousness is graced to be because it is so intimately a part of earth’s framework.

(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.

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.