“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Instinct is fairly accurate, for example, guiding the beasts to those territories in which proper conditions can be found; and even for them the well-being of the body represents physical evidence of their “being in the proper place at the proper time.” It reinforces the animals’ sense of grace, in terms mentioned earlier in this book. (See the 636th session in Chapter Nine.)

Man is so highly verbal that he finds it difficult to understand that other species work with idea-complexes (with a hyphen) of a different kind, in which of course thought as you consider it is not involved. But an equivalent exists; using an analogy, it is as if ideas are built up not through sentence structure reinforced by inner visual images, but by like “mental” patterns structured through touch and scent — in other words, thinking, but within a framework entirely different and alien to you.

Now: Man has a far greater leeway. He forms his reality according to his conscious beliefs, even while its basis lies in the deep unconscious nature of the earth in corporeal terms. Man’s “I am,” [seemingly] apart from nature — a characteristic necessary for the development of his kind of consciousness — led him into value judgments, and also necessitated some break with the deep inner certainties of other species.

In others, however, the old were honored for the wisdom that they had accumulated with age, and this became very practical in tribes where many did not survive. History was dependent upon the old with their memory of past events, and the group’s sense of continuity was also in the hands of its oldest members, who passed memories on to others.

(11:21.) The individuals alive at such a time will also have a hand in such decisions, however. Once more, because you are self-conscious beings your beliefs regulate your reality. An animal knows unconsciously that it is unique and has a place in the scheme of being. Its sense of grace is built-in. Your free will allows for the freedom of any belief, including one that says you are unworthy, with no right to your existence.

What you consider conscience is often an applied-from-without sense of right and wrong instilled in you in your youth. As a rule these ideas represent your parents’ conceptions of natural guilt, distorted by their own beliefs. (See the 619th session in Chapter Four, as well as the first session in this chapter.) You accepted those ideas for a reason, individually and en masse, for mankind at any given “time” has a strong idea of the particular sort of world experience it will create.

(Pause.) They attract you because of their instinctive knowledge, and they represent the inner freedom that man is in the process of objectifying on a conscious level. They also remind you of the deep certainty of your creaturehood, and by their flight evoke within you the knowledge that you are leaping from creaturehood into dimensions of actuality you only barely sense.