“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

(The first quotes I’ve put together, then, are from the 44th session for April 15, 1964. In that session Seth gave us his interpretations of some of the basic laws or attributes of the inner universe, but it will be quickly seen that he was really discussing space and time,² as those qualities are perceived in his reality and in ours. In our world, of course, space and time form the environment in which conventional ideas of evolution exist. For that matter, all of the material in this appendix shows the interrelationship between our ideas of serial time and Seth’s simultaneous time. Connected here also is the philosophical concept known as “naïve realism,” which will be discussed briefly later.

The spacious present does not contradict the existence of a future as you conceive it. Now this may appear contradictory, but later I hope that you will understand this more clearly. The spacious present, while existing spontaneously, while happening simultaneously, still contains within it qualities of duration.

These fundamental laws are followed on many levels in your own universe. So far I have given you but one, which is value fulfillment. In your physical universe this rule is followed as physical growth. The entity follows it through the cycle of [simultaneous] reincarnations. The species of mankind, and all other species in your universe on your particular horizontal plane, follow this law [value fulfillment] under the auspices of evolution (my emphasis).⁵ In other camouflage realities, this law is carried through in different manners, but it is never ignored.

The second law of the inner universe is energy transformation.⁶ This occurs constantly. Energy transformation and value fulfillment, both existing within the spacious present [or at once], add up to a durability that is at the same time spontaneous … and simultaneous.

You may see what we are getting at here. Our third law is spontaneity, and despite all appearances of beginning and end, of death and decay, all consciousnesses exist in the spacious present, in a spontaneous manner, in simultaneous harmony; and yet within the spacious present there is also durability.

(The “value climate of psychological reality” first mentioned in the [44th] session just quoted, is also dealt with through analogy in the 45th session. Portions of that material are given as Appendix 8 in Volume 1; in that session also Seth stated that “value expansion becomes reincarnation, and evolution and growth.” [Seth’s own kind of simultaneous time, of course, easily accommodates all three concepts, although this appendix isn’t concerned with reincarnation.]

Now, if you had all been really paying attention to what I have been saying for some time about the simultaneous nature of time and existence, then you would have known that the theory of evolution is as beautiful a tale as the theory of Biblical creation. Both are quite handy, and both are methods of telling stories, and both might seem to agree within their own systems, and yet, in larger respects they cannot be realities….

(Seth’s ideas aside for the moment, biologists faithful to Darwin’s theories don’t want to hear anything about the precognitive abilities of a species, nor do they see any evidence of it in their work. In evolutionary theory, such attributes violate not only the operation of chance mutation and the struggle for existence, but our ideas of consecutive time [which is associated with “naïve realism” — the belief that things are really as we perceive them to be]. Not that scientifically the concept of a far more flexible time — even a backward flow of time — is all that new. In atomic physics, for example, no special meaning or place is given to any particular moment, and fundamentally the past and future all but merge in the interactions of elementary particles — thus at least approaching Seth’s simultaneous time.¹⁰ At that level there’s change, or value fulfillment, but no evolution. To Jane’s and my way of thinking, if there’s value fulfillment there’s consciousness, expressed through CU’s, or units of consciousness.

(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.

(I repeat that when Seth discusses evolution his meaning differs considerably from the scientific one — which, with various modifications, is even accepted by a number of religious thinkers. As I show at the end of this appendix, Seth allows for a much greater range of simultaneous origins; in our reality these imply growth and development out of that “basic” group of species for the most part, with multidimensional purposes operating inside an enhanced time scheme that includes probabilities, reincarnation, counterparts,²² precognition, and other concepts, meanings, and beliefs. All of these qualities are manifestations of All That Is, or consciousness, or energy, or whatever. Probabilities aside, when Seth talks about cells [or their components] recombining as parts of plant or animal forms, as he does in the 705th session, Jane and I don’t take that to mean the evolution, or alteration, of one species into another — but that a unity of consciousness pervades all elements in our environment, whether “alive” or “dead.” With the concept of probabilities in mind, however, much of the “thrust for development and change” that Seth also mentions as existing inside all organisms, could just as well take place in those other realities. Early in this appendix, I described how Seth continually built upon material that he’d given before, and that processes of correlation between old and new resulted. At this time, my ideas here represent a correlation between Seth’s material on evolution in the 705th session [which led to this appendix], and his later statements on origins, referred to above. We hope to learn much more about the whole business of evolution. And behind all, Seth insists upon the condition that each of us chose to experience this camouflage reality within this historical context.

(My thought is that because of that choosing, common denominators must lie beneath the clashing beliefs about evolution, and that a good place to start looking for such unifying factors is within the theory, or the framework or idea, of simultaneous time — however one wants to try to express such a quality within serial terms. The search would be a complicated one. At the same time, I admit that ideas like this always remind me of Seth’s comments in the class session for June 23, 1970, as excerpted in the Appendix for Seth Speaks:)

If we must speak in terms of continuity, which I regret, then in those terms you could say that life in the physical universe, on your planet, “began” spontaneously in a given number of species at the same time. Words do nearly forsake me, the semantic differences are so vast. In those terms there was a point where consciousness, through intent, impressed itself into matter. That “breakthrough” cannot be logically explained, but only compared to, say, an illumination — that is, a light occurring everywhere at once, that became a medium for life as you define it. It had nothing to do with the propensity of certain kinds of cells to reproduce — [all cells are] imbued with the “drive” for value fulfillment — but with an overall illumination that set the conditions in which life was possible as you think of it; and at that imaginary, hypothetical point, all species became latent. The inner pulsations of the invisible universe reached certain intensities that “impregnated” the entire physical system simultaneously. That illumination was everywhere then at every point aware of itself, and of the conditions formed by its presence.

2. As I wrote in the Introductory Notes for Volume I of “Unknown” Reality, “I think it important to periodically remind the reader of certain of Seth’s basic ideas throughout both volumes….” His simultaneous time, or spacious present, is certainly such a concept. Yet in the next paragraph I added that in my opinion, “Seth’s concept of simultaneous time will always elude us to some extent as long as we’re physical creatures….” To me the challenge of confronting that idea is well worthwhile, however, for to grasp it even partially is bound to enlarge one’s view of reality.