“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(For the most part Seth’s ideas are far away from thoughts of replicating genes or the second law of thermodynamics. Through Jane, he grapples with the mysteries of existence in emotional terms, rather than through the impersonal, “scientific,” and really unproven concepts that life originated by accident [more than 3.4 billion years ago,⁸ to give a late estimate], and perpetuates itself through chance mutations. Darwin’s objective thinking, then, cut him off from such comprehensions as Seth advocates. The same was true for many scientists and theistic thinkers in succeeding generations, and in my opinion this holds today. I suggest that the entire 634th session in Personal Reality be read with this appendix, for in it Seth explored some connections between animal and man — including the evolution [my emphasis] by man of “certain animal capacities to their utmost.” At practically the same time, in the 637th session for the following chapter [9], he could tell us: “Note: I did not say that man emerged from the animals.”

(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.]

There were animal-men. The terms are for your convenience. In some species the animal-like tendencies predominated, in others the manlike tendencies did so: Some were more like men, some more like animals. The Russian steppes had a particular giant-sized species. Some also I believe in Spain — that area.

Both the man-animals and the animal-men were born with stronger instincts. They did not need long periods of protection as infants, but in an animal fashion were physically more agile at younger ages than, say, the human infant.

[...] There is no transmigration of souls, in which the entire personality of a person “comes back” as an animal. Yet in the physical framework there is a constant intermixing, so that the cells of a man or a woman may become the cells of a plant or an animal,⁴ and of course vice versa. [...]

[...] If you must, then think of that earth consciousness as grading (spelled) upward in great slopes of awareness from relatively “inert” particles of dust and stone through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

4. Jane and I understand Seth’s point when he tells us that “the cells of a man or woman may become the cells of a plant or an animal.” [...]