“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Man’s consciousness, and to some extent that of the animals, is more specifically identified with form, however. In order to develop his own kind of individualized awareness, man had to consciously ignore for a while his own place within the structure of the earth. His experience of time would seem to be the experience of his identity. His consciousness would not seem to flow into his body before birth, and out of it after death. He would “forget” there was a time to die. He would forget that death meant new life. A natural message had to replace the old knowledge.

Give us a moment … In the body certain cells “kill” others, and in so doing the body’s living integrity is maintained. The cells do each other that service (with gestures). In the exterior world certain animals “kill” others. You had for centuries, then, speaking in your limited terms, a situation in which men and animals were both hunters and prey. In those misty eras⁷ — from your standpoint — these activities were carried on with the deepest, most sacred comprehension. Again, the slain animal knew that it would “later” look out through its slayer’s eyes⁸ — attaining a newer, different kind of consciousness. The man, the slayer, understood the great sense of harmony that existed even in the slaying, and knew that in turn the physical material of his body would be used by the earth to replenish the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

Even when you lost sight — as you knew you would — of those deep connections, they would continue to operate until, in its own way, man’s consciousness could rediscover the knowledge and put it to use — deliberately and willfully, thereby bringing that consciousness to flower. In your terms this would represent a great leap, for the egotistically aware individual would fully comprehend unconscious knowledge and act on his own, out of choice. He would become a conscious co-creator. Obviously, this has not as yet occurred.

Then, for some early quotes from Seth about his own ability to move among certain systems of reality, see Note 4 for the 680th session in this volume.

And added later: Also in that session, Seth describes how he must “disentangle concepts” from their patterns in order to relate them through Jane. His material on this will be given in an appendix for Session 711, in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality. In that appendix I assemble from various sessions information on the complex relationships involving Jane-Ruburt-Seth (and also Rob-Joseph).

4. A typical black hole, according to predictions made by Einstein in his theory of gravity, is thought to be the collapsed remnants of a giant star that’s used up all of its nuclear energy. Its density is unimaginably great, its gravity so powerful that not even light can escape from it. Hence, such an object is invisible, forming a “hole” in space.

7. Just a week ago, in the 686th session, I asked Seth to comment on our ancient origins, but without getting an answer. At this writing, then, we still don’t know what period in our past he’s referring to. Evidently it’s a very long time ago; even in conventional paleontological terms, recent discoveries in East Africa place a toolmaking man in action 3 million years ago, with a lineage possibly going back 14 million years. Now we plan to ask Seth to develop his man-animal material soon, adding more specifics and including the probabilities involved.

9. At once Seth’s material reminded me of a novel about dolphins that Jane worked on in 1963. Her first book-length fiction, The Rebellers, had been published (as a paperback) that summer, and she was experimenting with several new ideas. A couple of months before these sessions began in late November of that year, she wrote an outline and five chapters for a novel about the development of communications between mankind and cetaceans, and called it To Hear A Dolphin. We hadn’t realized it at the time, of course, but it embodied some of the ideas Seth was to enlarge upon in his own material. Jane had time to show her manuscript to one publisher — who rejected it — before the Seth material got under way. To Hear A Dolphin was then laid aside, evidently for good. We still talk about it every so often; we still think its basic premises are good ones. Yet were she to do the book now, Jane says, she’d have to rewrite it completely.