“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

As specified,² ego consciousness grew. These inner patterns, native to the psyche of any species, turned into concepts, mental images — intuitive projections that were all meant to give conscious direction. The gods served, then, as stimulators of development. Seemingly outside of the self, they were meant to lead the self into its greatest area of fulfillment. The god images would change as consciousness did. The various god concepts that have fallen by the wayside, so to speak, represent areas of development that were not chosen, in your terms, but they are still latent. The totem pole, for example, is a remnant from an era where there was much greater communication between man and the animals — when, in fact, men went to the animals to learn, and from them first acquired knowledge of herbs and corrective medicinal behavior.³

(Long pause.) Historically, it seems to you that mankind was born from an animal’s undifferentiated kind of consciousness into egotistical self-awareness. Instead, many types of consciousness existed in the period of which I am speaking. The animals chose to develop their own kind of consciousness, as you chose your own. Animal awareness may seem undifferentiated to you. It is however highly specific, poised in the moment, but so completely that in your terms past and future are largely meaningless.

(Long pause.) From approximately 50 million to 30 million years ago¹ there were innumerable species that would now seem to you to be mutated forms. The distinction between man-animal and animal-man was not as clear as it is in your time. In some ways consciousness was more mobile, less centered, and more experimental. That early rapport, that early mixture, would later be remembered in myths of gods in animal form. Such a variety existed long before your paleontologists realize that it did. There were many toolmaking animal species, some predating man’s toolmaking facility. Consciousness knows all of the probabilities of fulfillment open to it. Each species carries in its individual and mass psyche the blueprints of such probable actualities. These blueprints are biologically valid — that is, they allow the cells precognitive knowledge, upon which present behavior is based. This applies not only individually, so that the cell knows its future pattern, for example; but in the same way, an entire species will unconsciously have the knowledge of its own “ideal” fulfillment in its overall world environment.

(A one-minute pause at 10:28.) In one way or another all mythology contains descriptions of other species existing on the earth in various forms. This includes stories of fairies and giants, for example. Mythology tells you about the archaeology of your race psychically as well as physically. There were, then, smaller and larger species of men,⁴ with varying conscious connections with the rest of nature. The larger experiments involved the production of a species that would be a part of the earth, and yet become aware co-creators of it. There were innumerable considerations, innumerable experiments, with size, brain capacity, neurological structure, and with a kind of consciousness flexible enough to change with its environment, and also vigorous enough to explore and alter that environment. Do you have that?

[...] Nor do I. Perhaps, even knowing Jane’s unique creative abilities as well as we do, we’re each somewhat daunted by the thought that consciously we might not be able to concentrate enough on two such projects at once. [...] Right now she’s working on the final draft of Chapter 5 of her own theoretical work on psychic matters, Adventures in Consciousness.

The Present Development of Ego Consciousness, and Why We’re at This State
The connections with health and illness.

[...] Yes, she had been in an altered state of consciousness during her reception of The Way Toward Health “on a real high” — both while the outline for it was coming through and while she wrote her description of the process. [...]