“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I have said that the mind cannot be detected by your instruments at present. The mind does not take up space, and yet the mind is the value that gives power to the brain. The mind expands continuously, both in individual terms and in terms of the species as a whole, and yet (with amusement) the mind takes up neither more nor less space, whether it be the mind of a flea or a man.

If the dream world, the mind, and the inner universe do exist, but not in space, and if they do not exist basically in time, though they may be glimpsed through time, then your question will be: In what medium or in what manner do they exist, and without time, how can they be said to exist in duration? I am telling you that the basic universe exists behind all camouflage universes in the same manner, and taking up no space, that the mind exists behind the brain. The brain is a camouflage pattern. It takes up space. It exists in time, but the mind takes up no space and does not have its basic existence in time. Your camouflage universe, on the other hand, takes up space and exists in time.

Nevertheless the dream world, the mind, and the basic inner universe do exist … in what we will call the value climate of psychological reality. This is the medium. This takes the place of what you call space. It is a quality which makes all existences and consciousness possible. It is one of the most powerful principles behind or within the vitality that itself composes from itself all other phenomena.³

You may see what we are getting at here. Our third law is spontaneity, and despite all appearances of beginning and end, of death and decay, all consciousnesses exist in the spacious present, in a spontaneous manner, in simultaneous harmony; and yet within the spacious present there is also durability.

He [Darwin] spent his last years proving it, and yet it has no real validity. It has a validity within very limited perspectives only; for consciousness does, indeed, evolve form. Form does not evolve consciousness. It is according to when you come into the picture, and what you choose to observe … Consciousness did not come from atoms and molecules scattered by chance through the universe….

Within you, concepts and actions are one. You recognize this, but your mental lives are often built around concepts that, until recently, have been considered very modern and very “in,” such as the idea of evolution … In actuality, life bursts apart in all directions as consciousness does. There is no one steady stream of progress.

(To a student:) Now last week, when Ruburt [Jane] was speaking about the natives who are such expert dreamers, you asked: “But why are they not more progressive?” Yet I know you realize that your own progress as a civilization will, in your terms, come to a halt unless you advance in other directions. This is what your civilization is learning that you cannot rape your planet, that life did not begin as some isolated [substance] that in the great probabilities of existence met another [similar substance], and another, and then another, until a chain of molecules could be made and selves formed. Using an analogy, neither does consciousness exist as simple organisms separated by vast distances, but as a complicated gestalt.

A cat playfully killing a mouse and eating it is not evil. It suffers no guilt. On biological levels both animals understand. The consciousness of the mouse, under the innate knowledge of impending pain, leaves its body. The cat uses the warm flesh. The mouse itself has been hunter as well as prey, and both understand the terms in ways that are very difficult to explain.

At certain levels both cat and mouse understand the nature of the life-energy they share, and are not — in those terms — jealous for their own individuality … Man, pursuing his own way, chose to step outside of that framework — on a conscious level….

(Over a year later Jane supplemented such remarks by Seth with some trance material of her “own”; see Appendix 6 in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. According to her, if man didn’t emerge from the animals, there were certainly close relationships involved — a dance of probabilities between the two, as it were. As I noted at the beginning of this appendix, the Seth material is still incomplete, and new information requires constant correlation with what has come before. Jane’s own material — including whatever she comes up with in the future — ought to be integrated with Seth’s, also, and eventually we hope to find time to do this. Although she left Appendix 6 unfinished, it contains many ideas worth more study: “Some of the experiments with man-animals didn’t work out along our historic lines, but the ghost memories of those probabilities still linger in our biological structure … The growth of ego consciousness by itself set up both challenges and limitations … For many centuries there was no clear-cut differentiation between various aspects of man and animal … there were parallel developments in the emergence of physical man … there were innumerable species of man-in-the-making in your terms….” [I can add that just as Jane supplemented Seth’s material on early man, he in turn has added to hers in a kind of freewheeling exchange; his information is presented later in this appendix.]

In thinking in terms of consecutive time, however, evolution does not march from the past into the future. Instead, precognitively the species is aware of those changes it wants to make, and from the “future” it alters the “present” state of the chromosomes and genes (see Note 14) 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, as physically you manipulate matter.⁹

(Seth’s ideas aside for the moment, biologists faithful to Darwin’s theories don’t want to hear anything about the precognitive abilities of a species, nor do they see any evidence of it in their work. In evolutionary theory, such attributes violate not only the operation of chance mutation and the struggle for existence, but our ideas of consecutive time [which is associated with “naïve realism” — the belief that things are really as we perceive them to be]. Not that scientifically the concept of a far more flexible time — even a backward flow of time — is all that new. In atomic physics, for example, no special meaning or place is given to any particular moment, and fundamentally the past and future all but merge in the interactions of elementary particles — thus at least approaching Seth’s simultaneous time.¹⁰ At that level there’s change, or value fulfillment, but no evolution. To Jane’s and my way of thinking, if there’s value fulfillment there’s consciousness, expressed through CU’s, or units of consciousness.

(Naïve realism, the philosophical concept that’s been mentioned a few times in this appendix, enters in here. It could, however, be considered at just about any time, since its proponents believe that it’s unconsciously involved in practically all of our daily activities. Simply put, naïve realism teaches that our visual and bodily senses reveal to us an external world as it really is — that we “see” actual physical objects, for instance. Disbelievers say that neurological evidence contradicts this theory; that from the neurological standpoint the events in our lives and within our bodies depend upon interpretation by the brain, that we can know nothing directly, but only experience transmitted through — and so “colored” by — the central nervous system. The perceptual time lag, caused by the limited speed of light, is also involved in objections to naïve realism. I merely want to remind the reader that in ordinary terms naïve realism, or some mind-brain idea very much like it, is habitually used whether we’re considering evolution within a time-oriented camouflage universe, painting a picture, or running a household. And after many centuries, the debate over the relationship between mind and brain continues, if first the existence of the mind is even agreed upon!

(Any role that consciousness might play in such biochemical processes isn’t considered, of course, nor is there any sort of mystical comprehension of what we’re up to as creatures. No matter how beautifully man works out a hypothesis or theory, he still does so without any thought of consciousness coming first. Through the habitual (and perhaps unwitting) use of naïve realism, he projects his own basic creativity outside of himself or any of his parts. He also projects upon cellular components like genes and DNA¹⁴ learned concepts of “protection” and “selfishness”: DNA is said to care only about its own survival and “knowledge,” and not whether its host is man, plant, or animal. Only man would think to burden such pervasive parts of his own being, and those of other entities, with such negative concepts! Jane and I don’t believe the allegations — in its own terms, how could the very stuff controlling inheritance not care about the nature of what it created? I’m only half joking (is there a gene for humor?) when I protest that DNA, for example, doesn’t deserve to be regarded in such a fashion, no matter how much we push it around through recombinant techniques.¹⁵

(I’m projecting my own ideas here, but I think that in all of its complexity DNA has motives for its physical existence [as mediated through Seth’s CU’s, or units of consciousness] that considerably enlarge upon its assigned function as the “master molecule” of life as we know it. Deoxyribonucleic acid may exist within its host, whether man, plant, or animal — or bacteria or virus — in cooperative altruistic ventures with its carrier that are quite beside purely survival ones. Some of those goals, such as the exploration of concepts like the moment point [see Note 11], or probabilities [and reincarnation¹⁶], really defy our ordinary conscious perception. In terms we can more easily grasp, social relationships within and between species may be explored, starting at that biochemical level and working “upward.” Basically, then, an overall genetics of cooperation becomes a truer long-run concept than the postulated deadly struggle for survival of the fittest, whether between man and molecules, say, or among members of the same species. Once again we have consciousness seeking to know itself in as many ways as possible, while being aware all of the time, in those terms, of the forthcoming “death” of its medium of expression, DNA, and of DNA’s host, or “physical machine.”

(I continue my projections by writing that to a molecule of DNA the conventional notion of evolution — could such an entity grasp that idea, or even want to — might be hilarious indeed, given its own enhanced time scheme.¹⁷ Actually it would be more to the point if perhaps with the aid of hypnosis and/or visualization, we tried from our giant-sized viewpoints to touch such minute consciousnesses with our own,¹⁸ and so extend our knowledge in unexpected ways. Some probable realities might be reached — potential conscious achievements that I think are already within the reach of certain gifted individuals, Jane among them.¹⁹ Jane and I would rather say that the variability among humans [or the members of any other species] at the molecular level is a reflection of Seth’s statement that we each create our own reality, with all that that implies.

(I want to add here that our real challenge in knowing our own species, and others, may lie in our cultivating the ability to understand the interacting consciousnesses involved, rather than to search only for physical relationships supposedly created through evolutionary processes. The challenge is profound. The consciousnesses of numerous other species may be so different from ours that we only approximately grasp the meanings inherent in some of them, and miss the essences of others entirely. To give just two examples, at this time we are surely opaque to the seemingly endless search for value fulfillment that consciousness displays through the “lowly” lung fish and the “unattractive” cockroach. Yet those entities are quite immune to our notions of evolution, and they explore time contexts in ways far beyond our current human comprehension. As far as science knows, both have existed with very little change for over 300 million years.

(Jane and I certainly do not hold creationist views [see Note 1]. As I wrote near the beginning of this appendix, to go very far into religious history would lead away from the subject matter I planned to cover; but to us science is as far away from Seth’s philosophy in one direction as religion is in the opposite direction. The species’ religious drives have been around a lot longer than its scientific ones, however, so I found myself looking for broad correlations between the two, in that under each value system the individual carries a very conscious sense of personal vulnerability. Before Darwinism, to use that concept as an example, man at least felt that God had put him on earth for certain purposes, no matter how much man distorted those purposes through ignorance and war. According to Judaism and Christianity, among many religions, man could seek forgiveness and salvation; he had a soul. After Darwin, he learned that even his physical presence on earth was an accident of nature. He was taught — he taught himself — that ideas of souls and gods were ridiculous. Either way, this very fallible creature found himself vulnerable to forces that consciously he couldn’t understand — even though, in Seth’s view, down through the millennia man had chosen all of his religious and antireligious experiences.

(Within such a gloomy framework, then, I think it legitimate to ask how the species can consciously stress its accidental presence in the cosmos, yet demand that its members be the most “moral” of creatures. If science insists that there was, and is, no design or planner behind man’s emergence, then how can man be expected to act as if there was, or is? Seth hasn’t said so yet, but I think such contradictions play an important negative role in present world conditions. The attitude that life is a godless thing is so pervasive — and not only in Western cultures — that in Seth’s terms it can be called an invisible mass core belief.

It is seldom that you really question your biological origins, what they mean, and how you interpret them. Are you physically composed of murderous cells, then, each spontaneously out to get the others? If so, your physical being is more miraculous a product than even I have ever told you! If your cells did not cooperate so well, you would not be listening to this voice, and it would make no sound. As you listen to me, the cooperative, creative adventure within your bodies continues, and in terms of continuity reaches back prehistorically and into the future. Because consciousness creates form with joy, there is no murder that you have not projected out of misunderstanding and ignorance of the nature of that consciousness.

Roots do not struggle to exist. One species does not fight against the others to live. Instead creativity emerges, and cooperatively the environment of the world is known and planned by all the species. What appears to be struggle and death to you at those levels is not, now, for the experience of consciousness itself is different there, as is the experience of your own cellular composition.

(Then soon afterward, Seth had this to say in a private session:) Your body knows how to walk. The knowledge is built in and acted upon. The body knows how to heal itself, how to use its nourishment, how to replace its tissues — yet in your terms the body itself has no access to the kind of information the mind possesses. Being so ignorant, how does it perform so well?

If it were scientifically inclined, the body would know that such spontaneous performance was impossible, for science cannot explain the reality of life itself in its present form, much less its origins. Consciousness within the body knows that its existence is within the body’s context, and apart from it at the same time.

(I repeat that when Seth discusses evolution his meaning differs considerably from the scientific one — which, with various modifications, is even accepted by a number of religious thinkers. As I show at the end of this appendix, Seth allows for a much greater range of simultaneous origins; in our reality these imply growth and development out of that “basic” group of species for the most part, with multidimensional purposes operating inside an enhanced time scheme that includes probabilities, reincarnation, counterparts,²² precognition, and other concepts, meanings, and beliefs. All of these qualities are manifestations of All That Is, or consciousness, or energy, or whatever. Probabilities aside, when Seth talks about cells [or their components] recombining as parts of plant or animal forms, as he does in the 705th session, Jane and I don’t take that to mean the evolution, or alteration, of one species into another — but that a unity of consciousness pervades all elements in our environment, whether “alive” or “dead.” With the concept of probabilities in mind, however, much of the “thrust for development and change” that Seth also mentions as existing inside all organisms, could just as well take place in those other realities. Early in this appendix, I described how Seth continually built upon material that he’d given before, and that processes of correlation between old and new resulted. At this time, my ideas here represent a correlation between Seth’s material on evolution in the 705th session [which led to this appendix], and his later statements on origins, referred to above. We hope to learn much more about the whole business of evolution. And behind all, Seth insists upon the condition that each of us chose to experience this camouflage reality within this historical context.

There are verbal difficulties having to do with the definition of life. Because of the psychological strength of preconceived notions, I have to work around many of your concepts. Your own kind of conscious mind is splendid and unique. It causes you, however, to interpret all other kinds of life according to your own specifications and experiences.

If we must speak in terms of continuity, which I regret, then in those terms you could say that life in the physical universe, on your planet, “began” spontaneously in a given number of species at the same time. Words do nearly forsake me, the semantic differences are so vast. In those terms there was a point where consciousness, through intent, impressed itself into matter. That “breakthrough” cannot be logically explained, but only compared to, say, an illumination — that is, a light occurring everywhere at once, that became a medium for life as you define it. It had nothing to do with the propensity of certain kinds of cells to reproduce — [all cells are] imbued with the “drive” for value fulfillment — but with an overall illumination that set the conditions in which life was possible as you think of it; and at that imaginary, hypothetical point, all species became latent. The inner pulsations of the invisible universe reached certain intensities that “impregnated” the entire physical system simultaneously. That illumination was everywhere then at every point aware of itself, and of the conditions formed by its presence.

(My position after writing this appendix is that in scientific and religious terms we know little about our world [and universe], its origins, and its amazing variety of forms, both “living” and “nonliving.” Our own limitations may have something to do with our attitudes here, yet Jane and I have become very careful about believing science or religion when either one tells us it can explain our world, for each of those disciplines ignores too much. No matter what the source of this camouflage reality may be, our conscious lack of knowledge and understanding as we manipulate within it, through naïve realism or any other system of belief or perception, ought to make us humble indeed; all arrogance should be transcended as we become more and more aware of the limitless beauty, complexity, and mystery that surrounds us, and of which we are part. Jane and I just don’t think it all came about through chance! The mind can ask too many questions to be satisfied with mechanistic explanations, and nurturing that characteristic of dissatisfaction alone may be one of the most valuable contributions the Seth material can make.

(The search, then, is on for new unities and meanings; a convergence, one might say, of the realities of science, nature, religion — and, of course, mysticism. By mysticism I mean simply the intuitional penetration of our camouflage reality to achieve deeper understandings relative to our physical and mental environments — and such comprehensions are what Jane seeks to accomplish through her expression of the Seth material.²⁵ In that sense, it isn’t necessary here to discuss attaining “ultimate” knowledge — it will be enough to note that as one person Jane can use her abilities to help unify a number of viewpoints. She can also bring to consciousness the idea that no matter what our individual orientations may be, collectively we do have overall purposes in the world we’ve created. This realization alone can be a transforming one; as I show in the Introductory Notes for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, it can be a most useful one in practical, everyday life as well. Within that sort of framework, the evolution referred to by Seth — in whatever way it may concern the development of ideas, planets, creatures, or anything else — makes sense.)

In Volume 1, Seth carried this material a step further through his description of his CU’s, or “units” of consciousness. “I do not want you to think of these units as particles,” he said in the 682nd session (given in February 1974). “There is a basic unit of consciousness that, expressed, will not be broken down….” Also see sessions 683–84.

I think it obvious that by “energy transformation” Seth doesn’t mean that the energy (or consciousness, to my way of thinking) in our system is inevitably decreasing. I can best express it intuitively: In physics, that well-known second law of thermodynamics may usually be so reliable for us, distorted as it is, just because of our limited physical interpretation as mediated by the central nervous system.

Any biologist who is a true Darwinist would find these statements of Seth’s to be anathema: “Psychic and religious ideas, then, despite many drawbacks … are far more important in terms of ‘evolution’ than is recognized.” And: “I am telling you that so-called evolution and religion are closely connected.” (From the 690th session, in Volume 1.) Such a scientist would have the same reaction to Seth’s statement that “Consciousness always creates form, and not the other way around.” (From the 513th session, in Chapter 2 of Seth Speaks.)

It’s often been claimed that Darwin’s natural selection, while ruling out any question of design or a planner — God, say — behind living matter, leaves unexplained the same question relative to the structure of nonliving matter, which in those terms obviously preceded life. I’d rather approach that argument through another statement Seth made in Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks (in the 582nd session): “You are biologically connected, chemically connected with the Earth that you know….” How is it that as living creatures we’re made up of ingredients — atoms of iron, molecules of water, for instance — from a supposedly dead world? In the scientific view we’re utterly dependent upon that contradictory situation. No one denies the amazing structure or design of our physical universe, from the scale of subatomic particles on “up” (regardless of what cosmological theory is used to explain the universe’s beginning). The study of design as one of the links between “living” and “nonliving” systems would certainly be a difficult challenge — but a most rewarding one, I think — for science. I have little idea of how the work would be carried out. Evidently it would lead from biology through microbiology to physics with, ultimately, a search that at least approached Seth’s electromagnetic energy (EE) units and units of consciousness (CU’s). Yet according to Seth, both classes of “particles” are in actuality nonphysical; as best words can note, they have their realities on scales so minute that we cannot hope to detect them through our present technology….

Yet here we run into irony and paradox: Any scientist who considered the existence of Seth’s EE units and CU’s would be called a heretic by his more conventional colleagues, for he would be acknowledging the possibility that all matter, being made up of such conscious entities, was living. From that viewpoint, at least, there would be no link through design to be discovered.

In connection with material in this note, I think it quite interesting and revealing that several millennia before Darwin, man himself began playing the role of a designer within the framework of nature, through his selective breeding of animals and his hybridization of plants. These activities certainly represent evolution through conscious intent, guided by the same creature who insists that no sort of consciousness could have been responsible for the origin or development of “life,” let alone the “dead” matter of his planet. Not only that: We read that even now in his laboratories man is trying hard to create some of that life itself. This is always done, of course, with the idea that the right combination of simple ingredients (water, methane, ammonia, et al.) in the test tube, stimulated by the right kind of energy under just the right conditions, will automatically produce life. It’s confidently predicted that eventually at least one such experiment will succeed. I have yet to see in those accounts anything about the role consciousness will play in this truly miraculous conversion of dead matter into that of the living. Perhaps those involved in the experiments fear that the idea of consciousness will impugn the scientific “purity” of their work.

Evolutionary thinking is challenged not only by questions of protein synthesis, and energy/entropy (see Note 5), however. Equally insistent are the puzzles posed by the missing intermediate forms in the fossil record: Where are all the remnants of those creatures that linked birds, reptiles, cats, monkeys, and human beings? The hypothetical evolutionary tree of life demands that such in-between forms existed; it seems that by now paleontologists should have unearthed enough signs of them to make at least a modest case for their belief systems; the lack of scientific evidence is embarrassing. Since my mind works that way, I could make minutely detailed drawings of a graduated series of such entities (gradualism being a basic premise in Charles Darwin’s theory), but would the creatures shown have been viable? Could they actually have existed for the necessary millennia while evolving into the species whose fossil remains have been discovered, or that live today? As indicated in Note 5, evolutionists are serving goodly portions of speculation along with inadequate theory — or, really, hypothesis.

And Seth, in Session 683: “All kinds of time — backward and forward — emerge from the basic unpredictable nature of consciousness, and are due to ‘series’ of significances.”

12. I’m not sure how something like naïve realism fits in with out-of-body travel (or “projection”), however. I’ve read nothing about the two together, nor have I yet asked Seth for what will surely be some very interesting material on such a possible relationship. Paradoxically, our perceptions while out-of-body can be more tenuously connected to temporal reality than usual, yet more acute at the same time. I was aware of the accustomed physical world during a projection that’s described in Seth Speaks (see the 583rd session in Chapter 20), and in some other dream-connected out-of-body situations. However, our use of naïve realism must often govern what we allow ourselves to experience while consciousness is separated from the body. I also think that some out-of-body travels, apparently to “alien” nonphysical realities, may actually be based instead upon interior bodily states or events. But there are times when the projecting consciousness, free of frameworks like naïve realism, at least approaches truly different realities, or probabilities. Jane has had some success here; in Chapter 6 of Adventures, see her projection experience involving “Dr. Sam’s house.”

13. A note added much later: Sometimes things develop in unexpected ways: One might say that several years later Seth continued the material just presented. By the time he did so he’d been through with “Unknown” Reality for quite a while, but I was still working on the notes and appendixes for Volume 2. As I wrote Appendix 12 in particular I discussed with Jane the passages on naïve realism; soon afterward Seth began to refer to the subject during scheduled sessions, and one of them contained the excellent information below. (Only one part of that session is quoted, but eventually it will be published in its entirety as part of a Seth book.) Very evocative, to consider how consciousness chooses to manifest itself physically, in direct contradiction to the mechanistic beliefs held so tightly — and with so little humor — by those adhering to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. From Session 803:)

“The physical world that you recognize is made up of invisible patterns. These patterns are ‘plastic,’ in that while they exist, their final form is a matter of probabilities directed by consciousness. Your senses perceive these patterns in their own way. The patterns themselves can be ‘activated’ in innumerable fashions. (Humorously:) There is something out there to observe.

Once again, however, it’s obvious that as a whole, science is far removed from Seth’s idea that each of us — whether that “us” is a human being or a molecule of DNA — creates our own reality. And what if we can learn to assemble sections of DNA from various life forms into new forms? To at least some extent such basic genetic substances would cooperate in the efforts at recombination: for no matter what kind of life developed, it would represent a gestalt of myriad consciousnesses, embarking upon unique explorations.

In Note 7 (also see Note 5), I wrote that for centuries now — most of them obviously preceding Darwin — man himself has been playing the role of a designer through his creation of certain breeds of animals and hybrid plants. But we see now that man is no longer content to bring about changes within species, as in cattle, for instance: With vast excitement he faces the challenge of “engineering” new kinds of life. Those urges are creative even when, as a designer, he goes against his own Darwinian concepts that there is no conscious plan involved in the design of his world.

17. These excerpts from Seth’s material in the 690th session, for Volume 1, furnish a close analogy to the sort of “time” available to molecular consciousness: “… biological precognition is firmly based in the chromosomes and genes, and reflected in the cells … The cells’ practically felt ‘Now’ includes, then, what you 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.’”

18. See the information on “the true mental physicist” in Session 701 for Volume 1. Seth discussed how in our future such a scientist will be able to allow “his consciousness to flow into the many open doors (or inner realities) that can be found with no instrument, but with the mind.” And Seth commented in the same session: “Ruburt has at times been able to throw his consciousness into small physical instruments (computer components, for instance), and to perceive their inner activity at the level of, say, electrons.”

19. Jane described one of her adventures with probable realities in Appendix 4 for Volume 1: She tuned in to her own “sidepools of consciousness,” her own “probable neurological materializations….” (My personal opinion is that although many may think it difficult reading, Appendix 4 contains some of the most important information in Volume 1.)

20. I remind the reader that an agnostic (as I think Charles Darwin was) is one who believes the mind can know only physical phenomena, and not whether there are final realities, causes, or gods. An atheist believes there is no God.