“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This (precognitive ability) steers the cell through mazes of probabilities, while allowing it to retain knowledge of its own greatest fulfillment — the idea of itself, which is always alive in any given period of your time. On a different kind of scale, then, each individual has the same sort of idealized version of the self, and so does each species. Here I mean each species, and I am not simply referring to mankind. Obviously these are not apparent to the physical senses, yet they are strong energy centers that to some degree do stimulate the physical senses toward activity. To that degree, then, there are indeed “tree gods,” gods of the forest, and “gods of being” connected with each person.

At one time there were also species of birds, however, with high intelligence — this before the period mentioned earlier.² They were not humanoid; not, for example, people with wings. They were large birds, with the capacity for dealing with concepts. They were social, could swim well (pause), and for some time could live on the water. They had songs of great beauty, and a most extensive vocabulary. They had talons. (Her eyes wide and dark, Jane held up her hands, fingers bent as though ready to grasp — or claw.) When he was a cave dweller,³ man saw these birds often, particularly in cliffs by water. Many times the birds saved children from falling. Man identified with their easy flight up the cliffsides, and followed the sounds of their songs to safe clearings. These memories turned into the angel images. In each case in those times there was the greatest cooperation, on a global scale, between species. The inner impetus toward development, however, came from the innate comprehension of future probabilities. In that picture all species alive at any time joined. This included plants and fauna. Those who cooperated survived, but they did not think in terms of the survival of their own species alone — but, in time terms, of a greater living picture, or world inviolate, in which all survived.

There are various orders of existence even within your system itself. You merely focus upon the one to which you are oriented. There are, then, “spirits” of all natural things — but unfortunately, even when you consider such possibilities you project your own religious ideas of good and evil upon them. You may simply dismiss such concepts as silly, for they seem intellectually scandalous to many. If you do entertain such ideas yourself, you must often personify such spirits, projecting upon them your own ideas of personhood. Instead, you should think of them as different kinds or orders of species that are connected with all natural living things.

(Pause.) Because you are people, you personify what you perceive — “peopleize” it. You imagine such “spirits” to be small people, endowed with your own kind of characteristics. Instead there are simply species of consciousness, entirely different from your own, not usually perceived physically under most conditions. They are indeed connected with flora and fauna, but also with the animals and yourselves, and they are the “earth gods” that Ruburt imagined as a young person.