“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Thusly, your classifications of various species appear to you as the only logical kinds of divisions that could be made among living things. Quite the contrary is the case, however. That particular overall method of separation leads to such questions as: “Which species came first, and which came later, and how did the various species emerge — one from the other?” Those questions are further brought about by your time classifications, without which they would be meaningless.

The subjective feeling of your being, your intimate experience from moment-to moment — these possess the same mysterious quality that it seems to you the universe possesses. You are mortal, and everywhere encounter evidence of that mortality, and yet within its framework your feelings and thoughts have a reality to you personally that transcends all such classifications. You know that physically you will die, yet each person at one time or another is secretly sure that he or she will not meet such a fate, and that life is somehow eternal.

In a larger level of actuality, then, there is no beginning or end to the universe, and at that level there are no contradictions. There is no beginning or end to the psyche, either. You may say: “Granted,” yet persist, saying: “In our terms, however, when did the world begin, and in what manner?” Yet the very attempt to place such an origin in time makes almost any answer distorted.

Consciousness within the body knows that its existence is within the body’s context, and apart from it at the same time. In ordinary life during the day consciousness often takes a recess, so to speak — it daydreams, or otherwise experiences itself as somewhat apart from the body’s reality. At night, in sleep, the self’s consciousness takes longer, freer recesses from physical reality, and does this as spontaneously as the body itself walks. These experiences are not hypothetical. They happen to each person. On such occasions, each person is to some extent aware of a kind of comprehension that is not dependent upon the accumulation of data, but of a deeper kind of experience and direct encounter with the reality from which the world emerges.