“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Man grants rich psychological activity to his own species but denies it in others. There are as many luxuriant and diverse kinds of psychological movement as there are species, however. The cycles of health and disease are felt as rhythms of the body by the large variety of animals, and even with them illness or disease has life-saving qualities on another level.

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.)

(This was one of those times when she was consciously aware that several channels of information were available from Seth. We had but to decide which subject we wanted material on after break:

(2. The use of animals — rats, say — in experiments involving injections, before giving them to human beings. [Man’s psychological reality is so sweepingly different from that of the animals, Jane added now, that he would inevitably show a wide variety of reactions.]

Illness therefore was experienced as “bad.” An entire tribe could be endangered by one sick member. At the same time, as the mind developed, cunning and memory became highly effective survival tools. In some societies or tribes, the old or infirm were killed lest their care take too much attention from the able-bodied and endanger the group.

In certain eras, the lines between the species were not completely drawn, and there were long periods where men and animals mixed and learned from each other. Man’s imagination made him a great maker of myths. Myths as you know them represent bridges of psychological activity, and point quite clearly to patterns of perception and behavior through which, in your terms, the race passed as it traveled to its present state. Mythology bridges the gap between instinctive knowledge and the individualization of idea.

(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.

In order for consciousness to develop in your terms, there must be freedom for the exploration of all ideas individually and en masse. Each of you are living entities, growing toward your own development. Each of your beliefs, therefore, has its own unique origin and feeling patterns, so you must for yourself travel back through your beliefs and your own feelings until intellectually and emotionally you realize your rightness, your completely original existence in time and space as you know it.

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.

Now, I could continue for some time.