“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Mankind’s consciousness, however, experimented along time-specific lines. As he developed along those lines, various biological and mental methods of selectivity and discrimination were utilized. When in historic terms mankind became aware of memory, and recalled his past as a past in your terms, it was possible for him to confuse past and present. Vivid memories, out of context but given immediate neurological validity, could compete with the brilliant focus necessary in his present.¹

Though the past is actually quite as immediate, alive, and creative as the present is, man made certain adjustments, on several layers, that would focus definite distinctions and set past and present experience apart. While your particular kind of consciousness was developing, it began to intensify selectivity, to concentrate specifically in a small area of activity while blocking out other data. This was necessary because the particular kind of physical manipulation of corporal existence required instant physical response to immediately present stimuli.

(9:55.) Such selectivity and specialization therefore represented a pertinent method, as consciousness familiarized itself with earthly experience. Hunters had to respond at once to the present situation. In time terms, the “present” animal had to be killed for food — not the “past” animal. That animal — the past one — existed as surely as the one presently perceived, yet in man’s context, physical action had to be directed to a highly specific area, for physical survival depended upon it.

(Pause, and slowly:) The cells’ basic innocence of time discrimination had to be bypassed. At deeply unconscious levels the neurological structure is more highly adaptable than it appears. Adjustments were made, therefore. Basically, the neurological structure responds to both past and future data. Biologically, then, such activity is built-in. The specialized “new” kind of consciousness in one body had to respond pinpoint fast. Therefore it focused upon only one series of neurological messages.

(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 past, in the present, would appear so brilliantly that man could not react adequately in circumstances of time that he had himself created. The future was blocked, practically speaking (long pause), to preserve freedom of action and to encourage physical exploration, curiosity, and creativity. With memory, however, mental projections into the future were of course also possible so that man could plan his activities in time, and foresee probable results: “Ghost images” of the future probabilities always acted as mental stimuli for physical explorations in all areas, and of all kinds.

(Pause at 10:37.) Its focus in the present is now secure. That focus finally brought about, in your terms, an expansion of consciousness, and one that early man did not have to handle. In your terms, time now includes more space, and hence more experience and stimuli. Again speaking historically, in the past the private person in any given hour was aware at once only of those events happening in his immediate environment. He could respond instantly. Events were, to that extent now, manageable. And rest your hand if you want to.

Now: In the past in the same way, love could be immediately expressed. In historic terms, early man, using here your theories about the race — early man — was in intimate contact with his family, clan, or tribe. With the developing expansion of space, however, loved ones often dwell far apart, and sudden bodily response cannot be expressed at once, at a particular point of immediate contact.

(10:57.) These developments, with others, are already triggering changes in man’s behavior, and inspiring him toward further alterations of consciousness. He now needs a more expansive viewpoint of past and future in order to help him deal with the ramifications of the present as it has evolved through experience.

The child was himself in the past on the one hand, and yet he was a probable future self in that past. (Pause.) From the standpoint of Ruburt’s official mental focus, and from the standpoint of the neurologically accepted present, that past environment had to remain off-center, or blurred. He could experience it only by sidestepping officially accepted neurological activity. He visited a store that is not at that location “anymore,” and here the sense data were somewhat clearer. He had no conscious memories of the store’s interior, yet it was instantly apparent to him — the dark oiled floor, spread with sawdust. Even the odors were present.

The school and the store were not in the infant’s experience, for in that probability the family moved away. The blur of activity earlier was the result of neurological confusion, and Ruburt switched over unknowingly to an environment still in the same physical block that was meaningful to him, but not shared by the future experience of that infant. You must understand that your own past exists as vitally as does your present — but your probable pasts and presents exist in the same manner. You simply do not accept them in the strands of experience that “you” recognize.⁵

4. In Seth Speaks alone there is much material on probabilities that I could cite in connection with this session. One of my favorite sessions, however, is the 566th in Chapter 16, where Seth discusses the “profound psychological interconnections” involving probable pasts and futures, dreams, telepathy, present abilities, suggestion, and related subjects. He also produces lines like, “As you sit reading this book in your present moment of time, you are positioned in the center of a cosmic web of probabilities that is affected by your slightest mental or emotional act.”