“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Our beliefs and intents cause us to pick “from an unpredictable group of actions,” or probabilities, those that we want to happen, as Seth tells us in the 681st session in Volume 1; therefore, from my physically oriented probability the considerable work I’ve put into this paper is an examination of evolution in connection with a number of Seth’s concepts. Religious questions connected with evolution aren’t stressed as much as some might like, although they aren’t ignored either — but to go very far into religious history would lead away from the focus I’ve chosen.

(I find it very interesting, then, to consider that the theory of evolution is a creature of our coarser world of “physical” construction. Our ordinary, chosen sensual perceptions move us forward, within “the time system that the species adopted,” as Seth commented in Chapter 8 of Personal Reality. And Seth’s explanation of the moment point¹¹ encompasses the seeming paradox through which consecutive time can be allowed expression within simultaneous time.

(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.