“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I want to reply to your friend’s question. … When he asked it, he was referring to the point at which self-consciousness entered into so-called inert form. You know, now, that all form has consciousness, and so there was no point at which self-consciousness entered with the sound of trumpets, so to speak. Consciousness was inherent in the first materialization upon your plane.

Self-consciousness entered in very shortly after but not what you are pleased to call human self-consciousness. I do not like to wound your egos in this manner, and I can hear you yell ‘foul,’ but there is no actual differentiation between the various kinds of consciousness.

You are either conscious of self or you are not. A tree is conscious of itself as a tree. It does not consider itself as a rock. A dog knows it is not a cat. What I am trying to point out here is this supreme egotistical presumption that self-consciousness must of necessity involve humanity per se. It does not.

We have spoken of mental genes. These are more or less psychic blueprints for physical matter, and in these mental genes existed the pattern for your human type of self-consciousness. It did not appear in constructed form for a long period. …

Human self-consciousness existed in psychological time, and in inner ‘time’ long before you, as a species, constructed it. For your friend’s sake, I will say this as simply as possible: Human consciousness was inherent and latent from the beginning of your physical universe. I suggest a brief break, and do not crack up into pieces. I give you this slight evidence of my humor, Joseph, simply to show you that I am not, after all, one to carry grudges.

Indeed like you, my dear Joseph, Seth said. In your case, as I have told you, you overcompensate now for past fleshiness by a most unnecessary self-punishing attitude. Phillip, on the other hand, is performing no such compensations, except for one instance of choosing a good-looking wife and therefore permitting himself to treat her kindly.

But the letter made me cautious, too. Quite unknowingly, I set one side of myself — the intellectual — as a watchdog against the intuitive portions of the self. The tendency had always been present, but now I determined to go ahead — often by double-checking my every step. Later, I would have to learn to relax with myself again.

The entity itself does not have to keep constant track of its personalities because each one possesses an inner self-conscious part that knows its origin. This part, for now, I will call the self-conscious beyond the subconscious. … I mentioned that some part of you knows exactly how much oxygen the lungs breathe, and this is the part of which I spoke. It also receives all inner data.

This portion of the personality translates inner data and sifts it through the subconscious, which is a barrier and also a threshold to the present personality. I told you also that the topmost layers of the subconscious contain personal memories and beneath — racial memory. The personality is not actually layered, of course, but continuing with the necessary analogy, beneath the racial memories you look out upon another dimension of reality with the face of this other self-conscious part of you.

This portion is ‘turned toward’ the entity. When such abilities as telepathy are used, this function is carried on continually by this other self-conscious part of you. But as a rule, you act upon such data without the knowledge of the ordinary conscious self.

There is also a corresponding, but ‘lesser’ self-consciousness that connects your present personalities with the dream world, which is aware of its origin and communicates data from you to dream reality. …