“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Beneath these, so to speak, the CU’s (or units of consciousness) are aware of the different kinds of consciousness of which they are part. By their nature certain kinds of organization, behavior, and experimentation exclude other quite-as-valid but different approaches. The CU’s, in their freewheeling nature beneath all matter, are acquainted with all such organizations, so that some of the lessons learned by one species are indeed transferred to another.

(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.

In thinking in terms of consecutive time, however, evolution does not march from the past into the future. Instead, the species is precognitively aware of those changes it wants to make, and from the “future” it alters the “present” state of the chromosomes and genes² to bring about in the probable future the specific changes it desires. Both above and below your usual conscious focus, then, time is experienced in an entirely different fashion, and is constantly manipulated,³ as physically you manipulate matter.

The CU’s, forming the structure later in its entirety, form all the atoms, molecules, cells, and organs that make up your world. Land changes and alterations of species are conditions brought about in line with overall patterns that involve all species, or land and water masses, at any given “time.” There is a great organization of consciousness involved on such occasions — sometimes creative cataclysms, in which, again from its own precognitive information, nature brings about those situations best suited to its needs. Such biological precognition is firmly based in the chromosomes and genes, and reflected in the cells. As mentioned earlier (in the 684tb session), the present corporal structure of any physical body of any kind is maintained only because of the cells’ innate precognitive abilities. To the self the future, of course, is not experienced as future. It is simply one of the emerging conditions of an experienced Now (you had better capitalize that). The cells’ practically felt “Now” includes, then, what you would think of as past and future, as simple conditions of Nowness. They maintain the body’s structure in your poised time only by manipulating themselves in a rich medium of probabilities. There is a constant give-and-take of communication between the cell as you know it in present time, and the cell as it “was” in the past, or “will be.”

(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.

Because you dwell in time, however, the god image will also reflect the state of your consciousness as it “is,” as well as point toward the future state desired. The god concept will operate as a psychic and spiritual blueprint just like the architect’s plan, only at a different level. Each species has within it such blueprints to varying degrees, and these are important, for they carry within them the idealized probabilities. They are valid, again, psychically and biologically. They will serve as biological patterns to the cells, as well as psychic stimuli in terms of consciousness.

The church ignored Christ’s physical birth, for example, and made his mother an immaculate virgin, which meant that the consciousness of the species would for a longer time ignore its relationship with nature and its feminine aspects. I am speaking now of mainline Western civilization. God the Father would be recognized and the Earth Goddess forgotten. There would be feudal lords, therefore, not seeresses. Period. Man would believe he did indeed have dominion over the earth as a separate species, for God the Father had given it to him.

Rising ego consciousness then would have its religious reasons for domination and control. The pope became God the Father personified, but that god had indeed changed from the old Jewish Jehovah. Christ, historically speaking, had altered that concept enough so that at least God the Father was not quite as capricious as Jehovah. (Pause.) Some mercy came to the forefront. Growing ego consciousness could not run rampant over nature. On the other hand, holy wars and ignorance would keep the population down. The church, however — the Roman Catholic Church — still held a repository of religious ideas and concepts that served as a bank of probabilities from which the race could draw. The religious ideas served as social organization, much needed, and many of the monks managed to preserve old manuscripts and knowledge underground. Those who were allied with religious principles, now, mainly survived, and brought forth communities and descendants who were protected. Psychic and religious ideas, then, despite many drawbacks, served as a method of species organization. They are far more important in terms of “evolution” than is recognized. Religious concepts from the beginning kept tribes together, provided social structures, and insured physical survival and the protection that made descendants most probable.

(Then we wondered whether Seth had referred to aspects of Christ’s philosophy that were truly buried — quite unknown today. Almost always I refrain from interrupting the flow of session material with questions, but now I wished I’d asked Seth about that. Jane and I also liked the idea that from their earliest times, religious forces had been operating in the development of the species; this seemed to be a very sensible concept — and quite obvious once it was mentioned.

(Long pause.) Other democratic societies had existed in the past, but in them democracy was still based on one religious precept, though it might be expressed in different ways — as, for example, in the Greek city-states (in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.). The Holy Roman Empire united a civilization under one religious idea, but the true brotherhood of man can be expressed only by allowing the freedom of man’s thought under the banner of cooperation; and only this will result in the fulfillment of the species, with developments of consciousness that in your terms were latent from the beginning.

Many of the species that share your world bear within themselves latent abilities that are even now developing. Men and animals will again meet upon the earth, with the old understanding in yet a new situation.⁷ There are no closed systems, and in deep biological orders each species knows what another is doing, and its place in the overall scheme that has been chosen by each. You are perceived in one way or another by all those inhabitants of earth you may consider beneath you. Probable man is emerging now, but also in relationship with his entire natural environment, in which cooperation is a main force. You are cooperating with nature whether or not you realize it, for you are a part of it.