“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Aside from her sympathetic response, Jane found the letter evocative of some of her own psychic experiences, and asked me to put it in our Seth notebook for an answer — we felt that Seth’s reply would be of interest to many. For the same reason, at the end of the session [in Chapter Twelve] we’re including a local resident’s experience with a certain set of beliefs.

(11:55.) The concept itself existed long before Christianity’s initiation, and was told in various forms throughout the centuries and in all civilizations. On the side of consciousness, it is a tale symbolically representing the birth of the conscious mind in the species as a whole, and the emergence of self-responsibility. It also stands for the separation of the self who perceives — and therefore judges and values — from the object which is perceived and evaluated. It represents the emergence of the conscious mind and of the strongly oriented individual self from that ground of being from which all consciousness comes.

It portrays the new consciousness seeing itself unique and separate, evolving from the tree of life and therefore able to examine its fruits, to see itself for the first time as different from others, like the serpent who crawled upon the surface of the earth. Man came forth as a creature of distinctions. In so doing he quite purposefully detached himself, in your terms now, from the body of his planet in a new way. A part of him very naturally yearned for that primeval (louder) knowing unknowingness that had to be abandoned, in which all things were given — no judgments or distinctions were necessary, and all responsibilities were biologically foreordained.

With the birth of this consciousness came conscious responsibility for the fruits of the planet. Man became the caretaker.