“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

ANIMALS AND REASONING. THINGS BEYOND ONE’S CONTROL.

(With many pauses:) Part of the difficulty arises from the current (pause) scientifically-oriented blend of rationalism. It lies in the way in which the individual is defined. As a species, you think of yourselves (pause) as the “pinnacle” end of an evolutionary scale, as if all other entities from the first cell onward somehow existed in a steady line of progression, culminating with animals, and finally with man the reasoning animal. (In parentheses: with all of that progress occurring of course by chance, incidentally.)

New sentence: In your historical past, when man identified his identity with the soul, he actually gave himself greater leeway in terms of psychological mobility, but eventually the concept of the soul as held resulted in a distrust of the intellect. (Pause.) That result was the inevitable follow-up of dogma. Period. Part of man’s latest over-identification with the intellect is, of course, an overreaction to those past historical events. Neither religion or science grant other creatures much subjective dimension, however: You like to think of yourselves, again, as the reasoning animal in terms of your species.

(9:01.) However, animals do reason. They do not reason in the same areas that you do (intently). In those areas in which they do reason, they understand cause and effect quite well. Their reasoning is applied, however, to levels of activity to which your own reasoning is not applied. Therefore, often animal reasoning is not apparent to you. Animals are curious. Their curiosity is applied to areas in which you seldom apply your own.

Ideally, however, children finally claim their feelings and their thoughts as their own. They identify naturally with both, finding each valid and vital. By the time you are an adult, however, you have been taught to disconnect your identity from your feelings as much as possible, and to think of your personhood in terms of your intellectual orientation. Your identity seems to be in your head. Your feelings and your mental activity therefore appear, often, quite contradictory. You try to solve all problems through the use of reasoning alone.

None of that is the intellect’s concern at an intellectual level. At a biological level, and at an electromagnetic level, the intellect, of course, performs feats that it cannot consciously know through the use of its reason (all intently). Spontaneously, with the process just mentioned, millions of pictures are being taken also of the probable actions that will — or may — be needed, in your terms, in the moment immediately following, from microscopic action to the motion of a muscle, the driving of a car, the reading of a book, or whatever.

One of the intellect’s main purposes is to give you a conscious choice in a world of probabilities. To do that properly the intellect is to make clear, concise decisions, on its level, of matters that are its concern, and therefore to present its own picture of reality to add to the entire construct. (Long pause.) On the one hand you have been told to identify yourselves almost completely with your intellects. On the other hand, you have been taught that the intellect, the “flower of consciousness,” is a frail, vulnerable adjunct — again, a chance creation, without meaning and without support — without support because you believe that “beneath it” lie “primitive, animalistic, bloody instincts,” against which reason must exert what strength it has.

He is not responsible for other people’s realities, but he is responsible for his own. Give us a moment … .(Pause, eyes closed). The ill woman’s reality does not threaten his own in any way. The situation, however, shows that he sometimes still thinks he should be able to solve all problems, and to know all the reasons for any given sorrow or tragedy. The intellect cannot handle that kind of information at that level.

The reason for the problem is a philosophical concern of Ruburt’s, and of yours, but it is one whose answer — or answers — will gradually unfold. All of this information I consider necessary, again, to provide an overall atmosphere of comprehension that will allow the release of your own vitalities and strengths in an effortless manner, in such a way that your own problems begin to dissolve.