“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There were languages then long before your earliest evidence of them, and in written form. Your civilization is organized around science and technology, and generally speaking, now, the arts and other schools of knowledge have been largely subsidiary. Long before the time of the Egyptians, now, there were sophisticated societies, utilizing some technologies and advanced in the arts of writing. But these civilizations were not organized around technology, so that the technological advances, while highly sophisticated, were not pursued with the same diligence as in your time, and they were considered novelties—playthings for the wealthy, advanced toys, but not considered in a serious light.

There were electric batteries (as we’ve read lately; see my files). There were airplanes (files). There was not a technological organization however as you know it, so that the technological achievements were considered somewhat in a fashion that your society now considers fine art—esthetic, to be collected by the wealthy, delightful, good for collectors but not particularly practical. The aura of the mind of man simply had a different cast.

In a way mental organization itself was different—psychic priorities, if you prefer. Religious ideas of course held their own sway then as they do now. The earth was felt to be a more lively participator, it was personified. Some of this is impossible to explain. People felt that the sun and the moon would be offended if electric lights were used, for example, that in retaliation they might refuse to shine.

(10:04.) In one way or another, the race played with technology through the ages, in a subsidiary manner. Almost any of your modern inventions at one time or another existed on the face of the earth in the past, in your terms. Sometimes in a developed manner, or simply in plan form, but never in the same organized domineering fashion.

The poles at one time were reversed. The earth has formed and reformed and reformed. The inner psychic organizations always determine the kind of challenges and civilizations that emerge. There have been civilizations devoted mainly to art, in which all other endeavors were considered subsidiary, and the quality of workmanship was everything, no matter what the product. Mass production was inconceivable, because the originality of each piece of art, or furniture, or bowl, held its value in that manner, and the idea of producing a copy of anything would have been considered ludicrous, or considered an act without reason.

Give us a moment.... Beside all of that, there were cultures advanced enough for space travel, before the numbering of your geological ages. But even those did not organize life about technology in the way that you do. In the tangled areas of time, in one way or another, messages were left from one group of civilizations to another, whether they could be read at once, or not for centuries.