“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

These ghost images provided stimuli for mental, spiritual, and physical experience. That answers your question, I believe.

(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.

(Slowly:) In a world in which individuals were confined in space in a tribe or clan (a one-minute pause), action was immediate. The environment presented a framework in which consciousness learned to deal with stimuli in a direct fashion. It learned how to focus. The necessary specialization meant that only so much data could be handled at once, emotionally or otherwise. The formation of different tribes allowed man to behave cooperatively, in small numbers. This meant that those on the outside were selectively ignored, considered strangers.

I am speaking so far in historic terms, as you understand them. History, however, is but your official line of accepted stimuli. Later in the book that will be made clear.