“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now give us a moment… Dictation: The serpent is the symbol of the deepest knowledge within creaturehood; it also contains the impetus to rise above or beyond itself in certain respects. Eve, rather than Adam, for example, eats of the apple first because it was the intuitive elements of the race, portrayed in the story as female, that would bring about this initiation; only afterward could the ego, symbolized by Adam, attain its new birth and its necessary alienation. The tree of knowledge, then, did indeed offer its fruits — and “good and bad” — because this was the first time there were any kinds of choices available, and free will.

Good and evil then simply represented the birth of choices, initially in terms of survival, where earlier instinct alone had provided all that was needed. In deeper terms, there is still another meaning that mirrors all of those apparent divisions that occur as All That Is seemingly separates portions of itself from itself, scattering its omnipotence into new patterns of being that, in your terms, remember their source and look back to it longingly, while still glorying in the unique individuality that is their own.

(10:06. Jane was very intent in her delivery.) The story of the fall, the rebellious angels, and the leader Satan who becomes the devil — all of this refers to the same phenomena on a different level. Satan represents — in the terms of the story — the part of All That Is, or God, who stepped outside of Himself, so to speak, and became earthbound with His creatures, offering them the free will and choice that “previously” had not been available.

(Pause.) Hence you have the majestic elements given to Satan, and the power. The earthly characteristics often appear as he is depicted in animal form, for he was also of course connected with the intuitive terrestrial attributes from which the new human consciousness would spring.

Now: This new kind of consciousness brought with it the open mirror of memory in which past joy and pain could be recalled, and so the realization of mortal death became more immediate than it was with the animals.

An association could trigger the clear memory of a past agony in the bewildered new mind. At first, there was a difficulty in separating the remembered image from the moment in the present. Man’s mind then struggled to contain many images — past, present, and future imagined ones — and was forced to correlate these in any given moment of time. A vast acceleration took place.

It was only natural that certain experiences would seem better than others, but the species’ new abilities made it necessary that sharp distinctions be made. Good and evil, the desirable and the less so, were invaluable aids then in helping form the basis for such separations.

(10:41.) In another way, animals also possess an “unconscious” anticipation, but they do not have to come to terms with it on an aware basis as the new consciousness did. Again, good and evil and the freedom of choice came to the species’ aid. The evil animal was the natural predator, for example. It would help here if the reader remembers what has been said about natural guilt earlier in this book. It would aid in understanding the later myths and the variations that came from them. (See the 634th session in Chapter Eight, among others.)

The acceleration continues, however. Ideas of right and wrong are always guidelines that are then individually interpreted. Because of the connection with survival mentioned earlier (in the last session), there is a great charge here. Initially the child had to be impressed with the fact, for example, that a predator animal was “bad” because it could kill. Today a mother might unwittingly say the same thing about a car.

(10:55. Seth referred to the personal material he’d given for us before book work, so I read it to Jane now. It concerned ways by which we could increase our feelings of freedom on a daily basis, and, I thought, was excellent. Resume at 11:23.)

(11:57. I told Jane that it was all right with me if she wanted to end the session. She chose to wait and see. Resume at 12:12.)