“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause, one of many in a much slower delivery.) I do not want to become involved in a confusion of terms. The mind’s powers are far greater than those generally assigned to rational thought alone, as per our last (private) sessions. Rational reasoning, overdone, can for example actually limit practical use of the intellect’s faculties, and therefore serve to dim some of the mind’s scope. In a fashion, again, Helper represents the true capacity of the mind’s functioning, the kind of instant comprehension that is behind both the intuitions and the intellect’s activities. You are dealing, then, with the spacious intellect, the knower.

Dreams have always served as such a connective. You know more about your life than you think you do—and far more about your life and society than you are intellectually aware of. Early man was in that same position, and his inventions—his tools, his artistry, and so forth—came into being from the inner, ever-present realm of the mind, triggered by his unconscious but quite real estimation of his position within the universe at large, and in regard to his own environment.

Man automatically began to form culture. He did not start with the rudiments of culture, as is thought. He did not learn (pause) through trial and error to think clear thoughts. He thought quite clearly from the beginning. He did learn through trial and error various ways of best translating those thoughts into physical action. The first cultures were as rich as your own. In your terms, reading and writing are great advantages, but it is also true that in the past the mind was also used to record information, and transmit it with an artistry that you do not now use.

Memory was so perfected that men at one time were indeed living histories, and carried within their minds their genealogies and backgrounds and the knowledge of their peoples, which were then passed on to their children. It is true that reading and writing have certain advantages over such procedures, but it is also true that knowledge possessed in that old fashion became a part of a man, and a society, in a much more personal, meaningful manner. It was, of course, a different kind of knowing. At its best it did not lead to rote renditions of remembered material, but to dramatic renderings of it through music, poetry, dancing. In other words, its rendition was accompanied by creative physical expression. It is true that, practically speaking, a man’s mind, or a woman’s, could not hold all of the information available now in your world—but much of that information does not deal with basic knowledge about the universe or man’s place within it. It is a kind of secondary information—interesting, but not life-giving.