“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The Garden of Eden story in its most basic sense refers to man’s sudden realization that now he must act within time. His experiences must be neurologically structured. This immediately brought about the importance of choosing between one action and another, and made acts of decision highly important.

He has free will to make any decisions that he is able to make (intently). This means that his free will is contained, given meaning, focused, and framed by his neurological structure. He can only move, and he can only choose therefore to move, physically speaking, in certain directions in space and time. That time reference, however, gives (underlined) his free will meaning and a context in which to operate. We are speaking now of conscious decisions as you think of them.

(Long pause.) You can only make so many conscious decisions, or you would be swamped and caught in a constant dilemma of decision making. Time organizes the available choices that are to be made. The awakening mentioned earlier, then, found man rousing from his initial “dreaming condition,” faced suddenly with the need for action in a world of space and time, a world in which choices became inevitable, a world in which he must choose among probable actions—and from an infinite variety of those choose which events he would physically actualize. This would be an almost impossible situation were the species—meaning each species—not given its own avenues of expression and activity, so that it is easier for certain species to behave in certain manners. And each species has its own overall characteristics and propensities that further help it define the sphere of influence in which it will exert its ability to make choices.

The differences among all species are caused by this kind of organization, so that areas of choice are clearly drawn, and areas of free activity clearly specified. The entire gestalt of probable actions, therefore, is already focused to some degree in the species’ differentiations. In the vast structure of probable activity, however, far more differentiation was still necessary, and this is provided for through the inner passageways of reincarnational existence.

Each person, for example, is born with his or her uniquely individual set of characteristics and abilities, likes and dislikes. Those serve to organize individual action in a world where an infinite number of probable roads are open—and here again, private impulses are basically meant to guide each individual toward avenues of expression and probable activities suited best to his or her development. They are meant, therefore, as aids to help organize action (pause), and to set free will more effectively into motion. Otherwise, free will would be almost inoperable in practical terms: Individuals would be faced by so many choices that any decisions would be nearly impossible. Essentially, the individual would have no particular leaning toward any one action over any other (all with emphasis).

In time’s reference, the private purposes of each individual appear also in the larger historical context, so that each person forms his corner of his civilization—and all individuals within a given time period have private and overall purposes, challenges that are set, probable actions that they will try to place within history’s context.