“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.

(Even so, as I worked on this appendix I wondered again and again why I was investing so much time in it. The answers proved to be simple once I understood. Then I ended up shocked to discover how little real evidence there is to back up the idea of evolution, and fascinated by the limits of scientific thinking. I was quite surprised at my reactions. Somehow Jane and I always understood, to make an analogy, that Seth’s kind of “simultaneous” reincarnation [or anyone else’s kind, for that matter] wasn’t acceptable in our Western societies at this time in history; we could trace out many reasons why this is so. But some time passed before I realized that our ruling intellectual establishments were advancing notions about evolution that were not proven in scientific terms — then teaching these “facts” to succeeding generations. Finally, the humor of the whole situation got through to me: As some have very clearly noted, in the biological and earth sciences especially, circular reasoning often predominates: The theory of evolution is used to prove the theory of evolution.

(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.

In your terms of history, man appeared in several different ages — not from an animal ancestor in the way generally supposed. There were men-animals, but they were not your stock. They did not “lead” to anything. They were species in their own right.²³

I should add that the passages on science and scientists in Appendix 12 aren’t intended to add up to any general indictment of what are very powerful cultural forces, but to give insights into “where we’re at” at this time in linear history. Many scientists are agnostic or atheistic. However, Jane and I feel that if science represents the “search for truth,” as it so often reminds us, then eventually it will contend with the kind of gifts she demonstrates. Subjective and objective abilities, working together, can create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. A number of scientists, representing various disciplines, have written Jane about the Seth material, and many of them have expressed such views.