“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

So-called human consciousness did not suddenly appear. Our poor maligned friend, the ape, did not suddenly beat his hairy chest in exultation and cry, ‘I am a man.’ The beginnings of human consciousness, on the other hand, began as soon as multi-cellular groupings began to form in field patterns of a certain complexity.

While there was no specific entry point as far as human consciousness was concerned, there was a point (in your terms) where it did not seem to exist. The consciousness of being human was fully developed in the caveman, of course, but the human conception was alive in the fish.

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.

I become impatient, though I shouldn’t, with this continued implied insistence that evolution involves merely the human species — or, rather, that all evolution must be considered some gigantic tree with humanity as the supreme blossom.

Humanity’s so-called supreme blossom seems to be the ego, which can be, at times, a poisoning blossom, indeed. There is nothing wrong with the ego. The point remains, however, that man became so fascinated with it that he has ignored the parts of himself that make the ego possible, and he ignores those portions of himself that give to the ego the very powers of which he is so consciously proud. …