“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

For now think of it as you usually do, in a time context. It has been fashionable in the past to believe that each species was oriented selfishly toward its own survival. Period. Each was seen in competition with all other species. In that framework cooperation was simply a by-product of a primary drive toward survival. One species might use another, for instance. Species were thought to change, and “mutants” form, because of a previous alteration in the environment, to which any given species had to adjust or disappear. The motivating power was always projected outside* (underlined).

All of this presented a quite erroneous picture. Physically speaking, earth itself has its own kind of gestalt consciousness. 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. Even then, remember that those kingdoms are not so separate after all. Each one is highly related to each of the others. Nothing happens in one such kingdom that does not affect the others. A great, gracious cooperation exists between those seemingly separate systems, however. If you will remember that even atoms and molecules have consciousness, then it will be easier for you to understand that there is indeed a certain kind of awareness that unites these kingdoms.

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.

(9:38.) To return to our main subject of the moment: The fact is that the so-called process of evolution is highly dependent upon the cooperative tendencies inherent in all properties of life and in all species. 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. The cells that have been a part of a human brain know this in their way. Those cells that now compose your own bodies have combined and discombined many times to form other portions of the natural environment.

[...] 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. [...] 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. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

You do not survive through cooperation, according to that theory, and nature is not given a kind or creative intent, but a murderous one. [...]

[...] Instead creativity emerges, and cooperatively the environment of the world is known and planned by all the species. [...]