“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

They are the dreams that warn of famines or of wars. Such dreams, however, can also be triggered often, as in your own times, when the conscious mind is convinced that the survival of the species is threatened—and in such cases the dreams then actually represent man’s fears. Overanxiety, then, can confuse the genetic system, and in a variety of ways. The existence of each of the species is dependent upon trust, indeed a biological optimism, in which each species feels the freedom to develop the potentials of its members in relative safety, within the natural frameworks of existence. Each species comes into being not merely feeling a natural built-in trust in its own validity, but is literally propelled by exuberance in its ability to cope with its environment. It knows that it is uniquely suited to its place within life’s framework. The young of all species exhibit an unquenchable rambunctiousness. That rambunctiousness is built in.

(With emphasis, while Billy slept curled up against my left elbow as I sat on the couch writing down Seth’s material:) Animals know that their own lives spell out life’s meaning. They feel their relationship with all other forms of life. They know that their existences are vitally important in the framework of planetary existence. Beyond that, they identify themselves with the spirit of life within them so fully and so completely that to question its meaning would be inconceivable. Not inconceivable because such creatures cannot think, but because life’s meaning is so self-evident to them.

(Long pause.) Whenever man believes that life is meaningless, whenever he feels that value fulfillment is impossible, or indeed nonexistent, then he undermines his genetic heritage. He separates himself from life’s meaning. He feels vacant inside. Man for centuries attached faith, hope, and charity to the beliefs of established religions. Instead, these are genetic attributes, inspired and promoted by the inseparable unity of spirit in flesh. (Pause.) The animals are quite as familiar with faith, hope, and charity as you are, and often exemplify it in their own frameworks of existence to a better extent. Any philosophy that promotes the idea that life is meaningless is biologically dangerous. It promotes feelings of despair that directly hamper genetic activity. Such philosophies are extremely disadvantageous creatively, since they dampen the emotional spirits and exuberance, and sense of play, from which creativity itself emerges.

Such philosophies are also deadening on an intellectual basis, for they must of necessity close out man’s great curiosity about the subjective matters that are his main concern. If life has no meaning, then nothing else really makes any difference, and intellectual curiosity itself also ends up withering on the vine.

Value fulfillment always implies the search for excellence—not perfection, but excellence. Excellence (pause) in any given area—emotional, physical, intellectual, intuitional, scientific—is reflected in other areas, and by its mere existence serves as a model for achievement. This kind of excellence need not be structured, then, into any one aspect of life, though it may appear in any aspect, and wherever it appears it is an echo of a spiritual and biological directive, so to speak. There are different historical periods, in your terms, where the species has showed what it can do—and what is possible in certain specific directions when the genetic and reincarnational triggers are touched and opened full blast, so that certain characteristics appear in their clearest, most spectacular light, to serve as individual models and as models for the species as a whole.

“The other day Jane and I were talking about people who maintain that the universe is an accident, or that it has no meaning, or that there’s no such thing as life after death, or that psychic abilities don’t exist—that sort of thing. People who call themselves skeptics, who seem to have a very rigid focus only within what they call physical reality. Those attitudes are very common. Some people have built careers around negative beliefs like that, and Jane and I were wondering how they react after physical death, when they discover that they still live—that they may have spent their professional lives maintaining belief systems which after death they begin to understand are quite wrong. How do they react? Are those individuals even aware of their earlier beliefs? Do they care what they used to think? Are they shocked, do they have feelings of regret or embarrassment, or what? Or is there such a variety of responses possible that you can’t answer the question simply? And how do such people react after death when they start to get glimmerings about the workings of reincarnation,³ for example?”

The variations are endless. On the whole, in the vast scheme of reincarnational reality, a belief in life’s meaning is by far the rule, and other excursions are indeed eccentric variations. Specifically, however, such life episodes will of course involve their “moments” of after-death realization—dismay, shock, or what have you.

1. There isn’t any such word as incalculatable, of course, but that’s what Jane came through with as she spoke for Seth. She obviously meant to say “incalculable.” Seldom indeed does she make such slips while delivering the Seth material—much less often than any of us may do in daily life.

If there is no life after life,
then what cosmic spendthrift formed
the universe,
for Chance alone can’t be
that prolific, or fake an order in which
an accident of such proportions
as the creation of a world
seems so inevitable,
each random element
falling pat, into place,
and each consciousness promptly appearing
with body parts all neatly assembled—
only to be squandered,
falling apart, dissolving into nothingness
while Chance grinds out newer odds.

If there is no life after life,
then what a lack
of cosmic economy,
for nature strings one molecule
on to another so craftily
that each seed can grow a tree,
and contains the properties
of an entire forest,
while multiplications
are hidden everywhere.