“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He is indeed as blessed as the animals, however, and his failures are the results of his lack of understanding. He is directly faced with a far more complex conscious world than the other animals are, dealing particularly with symbols and ideas that are then projected outward into reality, where they are to be tested. If they could be tested mentally in your context, there would be no need for physical human existence.

To some extent, these are all unique and creative ponderings that on the part of the animals alone would be considered the most curious and enlightening intellectual achievements. The animals must relate to the earth, and so must man. As the animal must play, mate, hunt his prey or eat his berries within the physical context of sun, ground, trees, snow, hail and wind, so in a different way man must pursue his ideas by clothing them in the elemental realities of earth, by perceiving them as events.

One animal chasing and killing its prey serves the greater purpose of preserving the balance of nature, whether or not the animal is aware of this — and again, the animal’s intent is not evil. Man consumes ideas. In so doing he contributes to a different kind of balance, of which he is usually unaware. But no man truly acts out of the pure intent to do wrong, or to be vicious. Storms rend the summer sky, sending forth thunder and lightning. Earthquakes may ravage the countryside. You may deeply regret the havoc worked, knowing that neither the storm nor the earthquake is evil. Not only did they have no wrong intent, but the overall condition corrected the earth’s balance.

It is shared by all of the other animals. Each animal knows that under certain conditions the other may fight or posture aggressively, or defend its nest. Each animal knows that in time of hunger it might be hunted by another. Except for those situations, however, the animals are not afraid of each other. They know that each other animal is of good intent.

In your terms, while you live, and in the most pertinent terms of intimate sensation, your reality must be what you perceive in the framework of your time, and what you create within that framework as it is experienced. Therefore, I entreat you not to behave as if man will destroy himself in some future — not to behave as if man is an imbecile, doomed to extinction, a dimwitted, half-crazy animal with a brain gone amuck.