“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The emotional identification with nature meant that man had a far greater and richer personal emotional reality. That love of nature, and appreciation, quickened and utilized inner biological capacities, also possessed by plants and animals, so that man was more consciously aware of his part in nature. He identified with natural events. It is almost impossible in your time to describe man’s reality when he was consciously aware that he would die and yet not die, and when he was everywhere surrounded by those inner data of his psyche.

Myths are far more powerful than any facts, and they carry with them the great sway of nature’s own emotional force as it is interpreted through man’s experience. Facts certainly seem to be provable in your world. Myths are generally considered to be distorted facts, interpreted by primitive minds, or the result of creative acts of the imagination. That power is little understood, much less its reasons.

At first, then, men perceived the Gods physically. These perceptions were different however than what you think of as ordinary ones. They appeared and disappeared as man perceived, and then did not perceive, these inner realities. These inner realities were “real.” These were what you might call vital, responding personages, born of emotions of creativity. Perhaps you could compare them to the natural psychic or emotional equivalent, the psychological equivalent, of nature’s clouds, sun, storms, or seasons.

They are quite as real in the emotional landscape of man’s psyche, as the elements of the skyscape are above his planet. Myths always weave in and out of historical context, even as dreams are related to daily life. Myths usually include, then, some “provable facts,” either of people historically known to have lived, or in terms of places or physical events of a natural kind. These are often taken then as proof that the myth is fact.

Historically speaking, the ancients understood man’s psychology, his psyche, far better than you do now, for they were far more aware of its context. Their identification with nature gave them a sense of man’s emotional power. They understood that dreams represented a reality as valid as the physical one, and they did not see the two worlds as separate. The early gods carried remnants of that grandeur.