“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“Dimly, through what you would call history, hardly remembered, there was such a state. It was a state of agony in which the powers of creativity and existence were known, but the ways to produce them were not known.

“This is the lesson that All That Is had to learn, and that could not be taught. This is the agony from which creativity originally was drawn, and its reflection is still seen.”

“Yet the agony itself was used as a means, and the agony itself served as an impetus, strong enough so that All That Is initiated within Itself the means to be.

“The first state of agonized search for expression may have represented the birth throes of All That Is as we know It. Pretend, then, that you possessed within yourself the knowledge of all the world’s masterpieces in sculpture and art, that they pulsed as realities within you, but that you had no physical apparatus, no knowledge of how to achieve them, that there was neither rock nor pigment nor source of any of these, and you ached with the yearning to produce them. This, on an infinitesimally small scale, will perhaps give you, as an artist [this was addressed to Rob, of course], some idea of the agony and impetus that was felt.

“Desire, wish, and expectation rule all actions and are the basis for all realities. Within All That Is, therefore, the wish, desire, and expectation of creativity existed before all other actuality. The strength and vitality of these desires and expectations then became in your terms so insupportable that All That Is was driven to find the means to produce them.

“In other words, All That Is existed in a state of being, but without the means to find expression for Its being. This was the state of agony of which I spoke. Yet it is doubtful that without this ‘period’ of contracted yearning, All That Is could concentrate Its energy sufficiently enough to create the realities that existed in probable suspension within It.

“The agony and the desire to create represented Its proof of Its own reality. The feelings, in other words, were adequate proof to All That Is that It was.

“It then purposely gave them more and more detail, and yearned toward this diversity and grew to love that which was not yet separate from itself. It gave consciousness and imagination to personalities while they still were but within Its dreams. They also yearned to be actual.

“In Its massive imagination, It understood the cosmic multiplication of consciousness that could not occur within that framework. Actuality was necessary if these probabilities were to be given birth. All That Is saw, then, an infinity of probable, conscious individuals, and foresaw all possible developments, but they were locked within It until It found the means.

“This was in your terms a primary cosmic dilemma, and one with which It wrestled until All That It Was was completely involved and enveloped within that cosmic problem.

“To do so would give them actuality. However, it also meant ‘losing’ a portion of Its own consciousness, for it was within that portion that they were held in bondage. All That Is had to let go. While It thought of these individuals as Its creations, It held them as a part of Itself and refused them actuality.

“To let them go was to ‘lose’ that portion of Itself that had created them. Already It could scarcely keep up with the myriad probabilities that began to emerge from each separate consciousness. With love and longing It let go that portion of Itself, and they were free. The psychic energy exploded in a flash of creation.

“There were three men whose lives became confused in history and merged, and whose composite history became known as the life of Christ. … Each was highly gifted psychically, knew of his role, and accepted it willingly. The three men were a part of one entity, gaining physical existence in one time. They were not born on the same date, however. There are reasons why the entity did not return as one person. For one thing, the full consciousness of an entity would be too strong for one physical vehicle. For another, the entity wanted a more diversified environment than could otherwise be provided.

“The entity was born once as John the Baptist, and then he was born in two other forms. One of these contained the personality that most stories of Christ refer to. … I will tell you about the other personality at a later time. There was constant communication between these three portions of one entity, though they were born and buried at different dates. The race called up these personalities from its own psychic bank, from the pool of individualized consciousness that was available to it.”

“You have been given free will. Within you there are blueprints; you know what you are to achieve as individuals and as people, as a race, as a species. You can choose to ignore the blueprints. Now: Using your free will, you have made physical reality something quite different than what was intended. You have allowed the ego to become overly developed and overly specialized. In many respects, you are in a dream. It is you who have made the dream too vivid. You were to work out problems and challenges, but you were always to be aware of your own inner reality, and of your nonphysical existence. To a large extent you have lost contact with this. You have focused so strongly upon physical reality that it becomes the only reality that you know.

“In the dawn of physical existence, in the dawn before history began, men knew that death was merely a change of form. No God created the crime of murder, and no God created sorrow or pain. … Again, because you believe that you can murder a man and end his consciousness forever, then murder exists within your reality and must be dealt with. … The assassin of Dr. King believes that he has blotted out a living consciousness for all eternity. … But your errors and mistakes, luckily enough, are not real and do not affect reality, for Dr. King still lives.”