“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

When you speak of evolution, and when your friend asked the question, you think in terms of human evolution, of course.

This is in itself an expression of the dualism of which I have spoken. Evolution does not of course apply only to the human species, and as I have said consciousness on your plane exists in all things. When your friend asked his question he was, I believe, referring to the point at which self-consciousness entered into so-called inert form.

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

You are either conscious of self or you are not. On your plane self-consciousness exists as a rule. A tree is conscious of itself as a tree. It does not think of itself as a rock. A dog knows it is not a cat. What I am trying to point out to you 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 exaltation and cry “I am a man.” There was no such point and this, if you will forgive my pun, is my point.

The beginnings of human consciousness, on the other hand, began as soon as multicellular groupings began to form in field patterns of a certain complexity. While there was no specific point of entry as far as human consciousness was concerned, there was a point before which human consciousness as such did not exist. Self-consciousness did exist. The consciousness of being human in your terms was fully developed in the caveman, but—and I cannot emphasize this enough—the human conception was alive in the fish.

All this involved an idea of, and I hesitate to say advancement, but an idea of change along certain lines. 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 constructed, that is in constructed form, for a long period of physical time however, and we have discussed psychological time as being part of what I will call for now an inner time sense.

This human self-consciousness existed in psychological time and in inner time long before you as a species constructed it in terms of your particular camouflage patterns. For your friend’s sake I will simplify this, saying that human consciousness was inherent and latent from the beginning of your physical universe.

I do become impatient, though I shouldn’t, with this 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 is the human ego, and this is at times a poisoning blossom indeed. As I have said before, there is nothing wrong with the ego. The point however remains that man became so fascinated with the conscious ego that he ignored the part of himself that made the ego possible, and ignored the part of himself that gives to the ego the very powers of which he is so consciously proud.