“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Animals and Trees in the Interior Universe
Excerpts from Sessions 17 and 18

The interior universe had its influence even as far as pets were concerned! The whole concept fascinated me. Seth showed us in the next session that not only animals but all living things had their primary existence in this inner world. He also carried on with his discussion of the ego and health, giving an excellent analysis of the ego’s relationship to the personality as a whole. I took what he said to heart and found myself opening up, becoming more free and creative. In this session, he also spoke about the consciousness of trees in such a way that I was never able to look at the trees outside of my window with the same old detachment. Through the sessions, the whole world seemed to come alive.

As to Jane’s feeling about the tree having a certain consciousness, of course this is the case. What you have here is latent energy, vitality and capacity, with much of it withheld or suspended momentarily. The tree is dissociated in one manner. In some ways, its living forces and consciousness are kept to a minimum. It is in a state of drowsiness on the one hand; and on the other, it focuses the usable portion of its energy into being a tree.

The state of consciousness involved here is dull as compared to the highly differentiated human ability in many ways. However, in other ways, the experiences of the tree are extremely deep, dealing with the inner senses which are … also properties of treedom.

The inner senses of the tree have strong affinity with the properties of the earth itself. They feel their growing. They listen to their growing as you might listen to your own heartbeat. They experience this oneness with their own growth, and they also feel pain. The pain, while definite, unpleasant and sometimes agonizing, is not of an emotional nature in the same way that you experience pain. In some ways, it is even a deeper thing. The analogy may not be perfect, far from it, but it is as if your breath were to be suddenly cut off — in a manner, this somewhat approximates pain for a tree.

The tree makes adjustments just as you do. It listens to its growth up from the earth and to the murmer of the growth of its roots beneath. It adjusts each root ending according to what impediments might lie in its way. Without the conscious mind of man it nevertheless retains this inner consciousness of all its parts, above and below the ground, and manipulates them constantly.

The tree is also aware of its environment to an astonishing degree. It maintains constant awareness and the ability to adjust itself in two completely different worlds, so to speak — one in which it meets little resistance in growing upward and one composed of much heavier elements into which it must grow downward. Man needs artifical methods to operate effectively on land or in water, but the so-called unconscious tree manages nicely in two worlds as diverse, certainly, as land and water, and makes itself a part of each.

And as far as motion is concerned, the tree moves upward and downward. It is quite unfair to say that it cannot transport itself, since it does so to an amazing degree; the roots and limbs moving in all directions. The inner senses of all plant life are well attuned, alert and very vital. All of these fragments have consciousness to a rather high degree, considering that man holds them in such low repute.

The awareness is focused along certain lines. The tree lives through its inner senses, experiencing many sensations and reacting to many stimuli of which you are unaware. Minute earth tremors, even the motion of small ants about its lower trunk — these are recognized and experienced. Such invisibilities as humidity, radioactivity and all electrical values are felt as quite real things to your tree.

A tree knows a human being also … by the weight of a boy upon its branches … by the vibrations in the air as adults pass, which hit the tree’s trunk at varying distances, and even by voices. You must remember what I said earlier about mental enzymes and my remark that color can sometimes be heard … The tree recognizes a human being, though it does not see the human being in your terms. It does not build up the image of a man, but it builds up a composite sensation which represents, say, a given individual. And the tree will recognize the same man who passes it by each day.

As your own body senses temperature changes, it also senses the psychic charge, not only of other individuals, but of plant and vegetative matter. Your tree builds up a composite of sensations of this sort, sensing not the physical dimensions of a material object, whatever it is, but the vital psychic formation within and about it.

Size is sensed by a tree, however, perhaps because of its inherent concern with height. The table around which Ruburt walks senses Ruburt, even as he senses it. …

Man’s ego causes him to interpret everything else in light of himself. He loses much in this manner. The ego can be compared to the bark of a tree. The bark is flexible, vibrant, and grows with the growth beneath. It is a tree’s contact with the outer world, the tree’s interpreter and, to some degree, the tree’s companion. So should man’s ego be.

If, for example, our tree bark grew fearful of stormy weather and began to harden itself against the elements, in a well-meaning but distorted protective spirit, then the tree would die. This is what the ego does when it reacts too violently to purely physical data. As a result, it stiffens, and then you have, my well-meaning friend, the cold detachment with which you at one time faced the world.

Nevertheless, lest Ruburt thinks he is getting off scott free, let me remind him that the tree’s bark is quite necessary and cannot be dispensed with. But I will get into that, and into Ruburt, at a later time. Take a break, and then I will have more to say about the bark that barks too loudly.

The idea of dissociation could be likened to the slight distance between the bark and the inside of the tree. Here we do not have a rigid bark, as you should not have a rigid ego. We have instead a flexible bark, changing with the elements, protecting the inner tree (or inner self), but flexible, opening or closing in rhythmic motion. …

The inner tree can continue to grow because the bark is resilient. It bends with the wind. It does not bend when there is no wind, nor does it stiffen, stopping the flow of sap to the treetop for fear that the dumb tree, not knowing what it was up to, would bump its head against the sky.

Neither should the ego react so violently that it remembers and reacts to past storms in the midst of clear and sunny weather. You can understand the analogy, Joseph. You know that such a tree bark would be death to the tree. What you must still understand is that the same applies to any individual and the ego. It applies to you. And Ruburt must learn that it is equally ridiculous to act as if it is a summer day in the middle of wintertime. The tree has enough sense not to show blossoms in a blizzard.

The material on trees fascinated me, though. Vegetation was not just alive, but aware. And yet, in a strange way, the world was also in a trance. The session inspired the following poem that I wrote a few days later.

The Trees in the Forest

The trees in the forest
Stand secret and silent,
Their voices suspended
In lungs of leaves
That only can whisper
Of dreams held dormant,
That breathe only once
In a thousand years.