“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

1. Seth is letting his material automatically answer my question about early man; See Appendix 6, as well as Note 7 for Session 688. According to our dictionary, the geologic time span he indicates in tonight’s session falls within the Tertiary Period of the Cenozoic Era. This period is further broken down into epochs. The important thing here (the dictionary notes) is that many kinds of mammals were about in those far days — including “manlike apes.”