“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Natural guilt is also highly connected with memory, and arose hand in hand with mankind’s excursion into the experience of past, present and future. Natural guilt was meant as a preventive measure. It needed the existence of a sophisticated memory system in which new situations and experiences could be judged against recalled ones, and evaluations made in an in-between moment of reflection.

It does not carry with it any built-in connection with punishment as you think of it. Once more, it was meant as a preventive measure. Any violation against nature would bring about a feeling of guilt so that when a like situation was encountered in the future, man would, in that moment of reflection, not repeat the same action.

I have used the phrase “moment of reflection” several times because it is another attribute peculiar to the conscious mind and, again in your terms, is largely denied to the rest of creaturehood. Without that pause — in which man can remember past in the present, and envisage a future — natural guilt would have no meaning. Man would not be able to recall past acts, judge them against the present situation, or imagine the future sense of guilt that might result.

Thou shalt not violate. Again, the injunction had to be flexible enough to cover any situations in which the conscious species could become involved. The animals’ instincts and their natural situations kept their numbers in bounds; and with unconscious, unknowing courtesy they made room for all others.

You may have two children, one of whom, generally speaking, behaves like Augustus One, and one who acts like Augustus Two. Because one seems so compliant and docile and one is so violent and unruly, you may never see the connections between their behavior, thinking them so obviously different. Yet if being “good,” polite, and compliant is not the usual state of normal children, neither is incessant violent activity. In such cases what you usually have is a situation in which one child is acting out unfaced aggressive behavior for the whole family. Such unreconciled patterns of activity also mean that love is not being freely expressed.