“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.