“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The page proofs for Jane’s The World View of Paul Cézanne arrived in the mail from her publisher this morning, and she’s been busy correcting them most of the day since — checking the type for errors in spelling, punctuation, omission, and so forth.)

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.

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.

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.

In other terms, the world comes to know itself, to discover itself, for the Planner left room for divine surprise, and the plan was nowhere foreordained; nor is there anywhere within it anything that corresponds to your survival-of-the-fittest theories.

(10:35. Seth’s next material came through because of some angry comments I made during break. Because of news reports and my own negative thinking today, I was filled with rage, actually, about what appeared to be the generally chaotic state of the world of man. Before the session we’d read a couple of book reviews that also helped set me off now. One piece had been written by a brain “researcher” who, we thought, exhibited remarkably little understanding of the human condition. Almost in spite of myself, I thought it quite humorous that the reviewer himself had written books on the brain — that had in their turns been attacked by other reviewers.

(I’m sure that Jane tires of hearing me periodically rehash views that the species has engaged in at least three major wars in a little more than half a century, plus a number of “smaller” ones. Furthermore, I added, since in our “practical” world we generally renounce all belief in anything like reincarnation, or what I consider to be a true religious stance, we place all of life within each individual living “now.” To send our young to the battle field under those circumstances, then, to deprive individuals of the one life — the one priceless, irreplaceable attribute — seems the worst crime imaginable, I told Jane. I said more in a similar vein, while all the time a basic part of me knew that I was oversimplifying the human condition by far.

The historical and cultural world as you know it appears to be the only one objective world, of course, with its history already written, its present, and hopefully its probable future.

It seems also that the future must be built upon that one known species or world past. Often it may simply sound like a figure of speech when I talk about probabilities. In many ways it may indeed appear to be almost outrageous to consider the possibility that “there is more than one earth,” or that there are many earths, each similar enough to be recognizable, yet each different in the most vital respects.

This particular house exists. Yet you may open the door on any given day to a probable world from your immediate standpoint, and never know the difference. This happens all the time, and I mean all the time.

(To me:) Since your birth a probability has occurred that you could have followed, in which your wars did not happen. There is another probability in which the Second World War ended in nuclear destruction, and you did not enter that one either. You chose “this” probable reality in order to ask certain questions about the nature of man — seeing him where he wavered equally between creativity and destruction, knowledge and ignorance; but a point that contained potentials for the most auspicious kinds of development, in your eyes. The same applies to Ruburt.

In a way, man is trans-species at this point in probability. It is a time and a probability in which every bit of help is needed, and your talents, abilities, and prejudices made you both uniquely fitted for such a drama. At the same time, do not dwell too much upon that world situation, for a concentration upon your own nature and upon the physical nature of your world — the seasons, and so forth — allows you to refresh your own energy, and frees you to take advantage of that clear vision that is so necessary.

You each also became involved in this probability precisely to use it as a creative stimulus that would make you seek for a certain kind of understanding. There is always a creative give-and-take between the individual and his world. To some extent or another each of those involved in this probability chose it for their own reasons. Saying this, however, I also say that many leave this probability for another when they have learned and contributed.