“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:10. Deliberately but intently:) Other quite-as-valid messages were ignored. They became, while present, biologically invisible. The cells still reacted to these otherwise neglected pulses, as they needed data from both the past and future to maintain the body’s balance in “the present.” The necessity for immediate conscious exterior action at a “definite” point of intersection with events was left to the emerging ego consciousness.

While the cells required future and past data, and used it to form from that invisible tension the body’s present corporal reality, the same kind of information could be a threat then to the ego consciousness, which could be overwhelmed. Within the corporal structure, however, there are indeed messages that leap too quickly or too slowly² from your viewpoint to allow for any physical response. In that way cellular comprehension is allowed its free flow; but the selectivity mentioned (in sessions 682–3) bypasses such information, so that it does not conflict with present sense data requiring physical action in time.

When man, speaking in your terms of history, began to experiment with memory, there were innumerable instances where the emerging ego consciousness did not distinguish clearly enough between the past and present, as you understand them.

The psyche knows itself and is aware of its parts. When ego consciousness reached a certain point of biological and mental competence, when experience in the present became extensive enough, then ego consciousness would be at the stage where it could begin to accept greater data. Indeed, it is now at that stage.

The ego specialized in expansions of space and its physical manipulation. It specialized with objects. As a result, now, a person in any given hour is aware of events happening at the other end of the world. No immediate physical response he or she can make seems adequate or pertinent on many occasions. Bodily physical action, then, to that extent, loses its immaculate precision in time. You cannot kick an “enemy” who does not live in your village or country; an enemy, furthermore, whom you do not even know personally. (Intently:) Again, to that extent instant physical action in time is not the same kind of life-and-death factor that it was when a man was faced with an enraged animal, or enemy, in close combat.

Recognized concepts of the self are the ego’s interpretation of selfhood. They are projected into concepts of God and the universe. They meet with a certain biological validity because of the selectivity earlier mentioned, whereby only one series of neurological pulses is accepted — and upon these rides the reality of the egotistical self. At one “time” a god interpreted in those terms served as a model for the egotistical behavior of one self toward another self.

(Intently:) At that point, consciousness in those terms could not handle focused concentration, the emergence of ego consciousness, and simultaneously experience powerful feelings of oneness with other large groups. It was struggling for individuation.

Individuation, however, was dependent upon the cooperation of individuals. As the ego learned to feel more secure, the cooperative tendencies broadened so that the growth of nations was possible. It was inevitable, however, that ego consciousness would produce a reality in which it would finally need, in those terms, to accept other data and information that in the beginning it had to ignore.