“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Give us a moment … You identify a highly evolved self-consciousness with your own species development, and with your own kind of perceptive mechanisms. You apply these as rules or conditions whenever you examine any other kind of life. In your system of probabilities there are no reptilian men or women, yet in other probabilities they do indeed exist. I mention this only to show you that the evolutionary system you recognize is but one such system. (Intently:) The physical basis rests latently within your own cellular structure, however. You think that evolution is finished. Its impetus, however, comes from within the nature of consciousness itself. It always has. In some quarters it is fashionable these days to say that man’s consciousness is now an element in a new kind of evolution — but that “new consciousness” has always been inherent. You are only now beginning to recognize its existence. Every consciousness is aware of itself as itself.⁵ Each consciousness, then, is self-aware. It may not be self-aware in the same way that you are. It may not reflect upon its own condition. On the other hand, it may have no need to.

In your terms, consciousness of self did not develop because of any exterior circumstances in which your species won out, so to speak. In fact, that consciousness of self in any person is dependent upon the constant, miraculous cooperations that exist between the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds.³ The inner intent always forms any exterior alteration. This applies on any scale you use. Consciousness forms the environment. The environment itself is conscious (forcefully). Atoms and molecules themselves operate in their own fields of probabilities. In their own ways, they “yearn” toward all probable developments. When they form living creatures they become a physical basis for species alteration. The body’s adaptability is not simply an adjusting mechanism or quality. The cells have inner capabilities that you have not discovered. They contain within themselves memory of all the “previous” forms they have been a part of.

(One of the events we’ve been preparing for is the visit tomorrow of Tam Mossman, Jane’s editor at Prentice-Hall, Inc. He plans to attend ESP class tomorrow night, then stay over Wednesday to read and discuss the two works Jane has in progress, Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology, and “Unknown” Reality. Tam will also look at my first rough sketches for Jane’s book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time.¹ Then on Wednesday night he’ll witness the scheduled 706th session. If Seth comes through with material for “Unknown” Reality, Tam will be the first “outsider” to sit in on a session for this work. Almost always Jane dictates book material without witnesses other than myself and uses the framework of ESP class for emotional interactions involving herself, Seth, and others. That rather formal division in her trance activities suits us well; we enjoy doing most of our work by ourselves, no matter what kind it may be.

It is true that on a conscious level you do not as yet operate outside of time, but are bound by it. When you learn to free yourselves from those dimensions to some extent, you are not simply duplicating or “returning” to some vaster condition, but adding a new element to that condition. The kind of self-awareness you have is unique, but all kinds are unique. Each triumph you make as an individual is reflected in your species and in its cellular knowledge.

[...] The brain’s great creative neocortex is held especially accountable for problems that may lead to humanity’s self-destruction. [...]

[...] For how can you look at yourselves with self-respect, with dignity or with joy, if you believe that you are the end product of forces in which the fittest survive? [...]

[...] As Seth himself told us in the 683rd session for Volume 1 of this work: “Reincarnation simply represents probabilities in a time context — portions of the self that are materialized in historical contexts.”