“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now, in continuation: When you ask about the beginning of a universe, you are speaking of a visible universe.

There is consciousness within each conceivable hypothetical point within the universe. There is therefore “an invisible universe” out of which the visible or objective universe springs.

Give us a moment… Your universe did not emerge at any one point, therefore, or with any one initial cell — but everywhere it began to exist at once, as the inner pulsations of the invisible universe reached certain intensities that “impregnated” the entire physical system simultaneously.

In this case, first of all light appeared. At the same time EE (electromagnetic energy) units became manifest, impinging from the invisible universe into definition. Again, because of the psychological strength of preconceived notions, I have to work my way around many of your concepts. Yet in much of my material I have definitely implied what I am saying now, but the implications must have passed you by.

I have said, for example, that the universe expands as an idea does, and so the visible universe sprang into being in the same manner. The whole affair is quite complicated since — again as I have intimated — the world freshly springs into new creativity at each moment. No matter what your version of creativity, or the creation of the world, you are stuck with questions of where such energy came from, for it seems that unimaginable energy was released more or less at one time, and that this energy must then run out.

The same energy, however, still gives birth anew to the universe. In those terms, it is still being created. The EE units, impressing a probable physical field, contain within them the latent knowledge of all of the various species that can emerge under those conditions. The groupings “begin” in the invisible universe. You can say that it took untold centuries for the EE units “initially” to combine, form classifications of matter and various species; or you can say that this process happened at once. It is according to your relative position, but the physical universe was everywhere seeded, impregnated, simultaneously. On the other hand, this still happens, and there is no real “coming-in” point.

(9:53.) Give us a moment… You distinguish between consciousness and your own version, which you consider consciousness of self. When I speak of atoms and molecules having consciousness, I mean that they possess a consciousness of themselves as identities. I do not mean that they love or hate, in your terms, but that they are aware of their own separateness, and aware of the ways in which that separateness cooperates to form other organizations.

They are innately aware, in fact, of all such probable cooperative ventures, and imbued with the “drive” for value fulfillment. Every known species was inherently “present” with the overall impregnation of the visible universe, then.

If the universe were a painting, for example, the painter would not have first painted darkness, then an explosion, then a cell, then the joining together of groups of cells into a simple organism, then that organism’s multiplication into others like it, or traced a pattern from an amoeba or a paramecium on upward — but he or she would have instead begun with a panel of light, an underpainting, in which all of the world’s organisms were included, though not in detail. Then in a creativity that came from the painting itself the colors would grow rich, the species attain their delineations, the winds blow and the seas move with the tides.

The motion and energy of the universe still come from within. I certainly realize that this is hardly a scientific statement — yet the moment that All That Is conceived of a physical universe it was invisibly created, endowed with creativity, and bound to emerge.

Because each hypothetical, conceivable portion of the universe is conscious, the Planner is within the plan itself in the greatest of terms — perhaps basically inconceivable to you. There is of course no “outside” into which the invisible universe materialized, since all does indeed exist in a mental, psychic, or spiritual realm quite impossible to describe. To you your universe seems, now, objective and real, and it seems to you that at one time at least this was not the case, so you ask about its creation and the evolution of the species. My answer has been couched in the terms in which the question is generally asked.

While you believe in and experience the passage of time, then such questions will naturally occur to you, and in that fashion. Within that framework they make sense. When you begin to question the nature of time itself, then the “when” of the universe is beside the point.

Almost anyone will agree, I should hope, that the universe is a most splendid example of creativity. Few would agree, however, that you can learn more about the nature of the universe by examining your own creativity than you can by examining the world through instruments — and here is exquisite irony, for you create the instruments of creativity, even while at the same time you often spout theories that deny to man all but the most mechanical of reactions.

These are creative distortions on your part, directly related to specializations of consciousness that cut you off from the greater concourse existing at other levels between the species and the land. Again, consciousness everywhere pervades the universe, and is aware of all conditions. The balance of nature upon your planet is no chance occurrence, but the result of constant, instant computations on the part of each most minute consciousness, whether it forms part of a rock, a person, an animal, a plant. Each invisibly “holds space together,” whatever its station. This is a cooperative venture. Your own consciousness has its particular unique qualities, in that like other comparatively long-lived species, you associate your identity with your form far more rigidly. Other kinds of consciousness “leap in and out of forms” with greatest leeway. There is a biological understanding that exists, for example, when one animal kills another one for food. The consciousness of the prey leaves its body under the impetus of a kind of stimulus unknown to you.