“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane paused, eyes closed, often seeming to grope for words while in trance.) This is, again, difficult to explain, but free will operates in all units of consciousness, regardless of their degree—but (whispering) it operates within the framework of that degree. Man possesses free will, but that free will operates only within man’s degree—that is, his free will is somewhat contained by the frameworks of time and space.

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.