“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

— and dictation … To be effective within your system of reality, consciousness must of course deal with specializations.

(Long pause.) One particular experiment in consciousness may be pursued by one species, for example, and that knowledge given to another, or transferred to another, where it appears as “instinct.” Here it will be used as a basis for a different kind of behavior, exploration, or experiment. I have said that evolution does not exist as you think of it, in any kind of one-line, ape-to-man time sequence.^l No other species developed in that manner, either. Instead there are parallel developments. Your time perception shows you but one slice of the whole cake, for instance.

The cell’s comprehension leaps its present form. The reality, the physical reality of a given cell, is the focused result of its existence before and after itself in time; and from its knowledge of past and future it receives its present structure.

(Long pause.) In a larger sense the same applies to any given species. You are your selves in time, then, because of the selves that exist before and after you in time. On a cellular basis this is true. In psychic terms it is also true. Your thoughts and feelings are quite as real as your cells. They also form organizations. Your desires go out from you in time, but in all directions. On the one hand as a species your present forms your future, but in even deeper terms your precognitive awareness of your own possibilities from the future helps to form the present that will then make that probable future your reality.

The spiritual and the biological cannot be separated. Their purposes and reality merge. Give us a moment … (Long pause at 10:19.) I will have much more to say concerning this later in the book. For now simply let me mention that any gods appearing among you must always be of your time, while expressing ideas and concepts that must shoot beyond your time into the future, and serve as psychic stimuli strong enough to effect future changes. When, in historic terms, the race was in the process of adopting a necessary artificial separation of itself from the rest of nature; when it needed to be assured of its abilities to do so; when it took upon itself the task of a particular kind of specialization and individual focus, it needed a religion that would assure it of its abilities.

1. In the 582nd session in Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks, I quoted Seth during a 1971 ESP class: “All consciousness does, indeed, exist at once, and therefore it did not evolve in those terms … the theory of evolution is as beautiful a tale as the theory of Biblical creation … both might seem to exist within their own systems, and yet, in larger respects they cannot be realities….”

3. And Seth joins in the action. As early as the 14th session, for January 8, 1964, he told us: “To me, time can be manipulated, used at leisure and examined. It is a vehicle … it is therefore still a reality of some kind to me….”