“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Consciousness predates physical forms. Consciousness predates the physical universe. (Long pause.) Consciousness predates all of its manifestations.

The impulse to be, in any terms that you can understand, is without beginning or end. What you have in your physical species are the manifestations of inner species of being, or creative groupings originated by consciousness as material patterns into which consciousness then flows. In those terms, the world came into being and the species appeared in a completely different framework of activity than is imagined, and one that cannot be scientifically established — particularly within those boundaries with which science has protected itself.

(Pause.) I am not pleased with those analogies, but sometimes they are all I can use to express issues so outside of normal channels of knowledge. It is as if, then, the earth, with all of its species, existed in complete form as a fully dimensioned cosmic underpainting, which gradually came alive all at once. Birds did not come from reptiles. They were always birds. They expressed a certain kind of consciousness that sought a certain kind of form (all intently). Physically the species appeared — all species appeared — in the same way that you might imagine all of the elements of a highly complicated dream suddenly coming alive with physical properties. Mental images — in those terms, now — existed that “in a flash of cosmic inspiration” were suddenly endowed with full physical manifestation.