“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Originally I planned this appendix on evolution to contain just three widely separated excerpts from Seth’s material: an early unpublished session, a few passages in Seth Speaks, and one in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. The appendix, however kept growing as I worked on it; I found myself adding quotations from other sessions, along with comments derived from my own reading and from conversations Jane and I had on the subject.

(I learned that “evolution” can mean many things.¹ Like variations on a theme, it can be progressive or relatively sudden, convergent or divergent. I also learned that once I began to study it, a great amount of material presented itself seemingly without effort on my part, the information ranged all the way from paleontological studies to current biological research on recombinant DNA, and I found it in newspapers, scientific journals and popular magazines, in books and even on television. [I’m sure others have had similar experiences: Once a subject is focused upon, data relative to it seem to leap out from the background welter of daily events and “facts” surrounding one’s life.] Almost automatically, many of the notes for this appendix came to deal with the scientific thinking about evolution, and I realized that I wanted them to show the differences [as well as any similarities that might emerge] between Seth’s concepts and those “official” views prevailing in our physical reality.

(I found some of the excerpts, notes, and comments very difficult to assemble and interpret, and others easy to do. The Seth material is incomplete, of course; new information “intrudes” constantly, and in so doing often takes off from a given subject in fresh directions. Some of this process has to do with Jane’s own character: She likes new things, new ideas. Yet in her own way she — and Seth as well — eventually returns to earlier material. Interpretation of old and new together calls for a system of constant correlations, then, and I use that approach as often as I can.

(This kind of material from Seth is deceptively simple, but upon reflection it can be seen to offer much. Jane and I think its implications are often missed by many who write us with questions about the pain and suffering in the world. Undoubtedly Seth has much more to say on the subject, and we hope to eventually obtain that information. Certainly individual and mass beliefs will be involved [along with the natural and unnatural guilt Seth discussed in the sessions making up Chapter 8 of Personal Reality]. I’d say that just understanding the complicated relationships between mass beliefs and illness alone, for example, will require much material from Seth and much time invested upon our parts.

(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. [...]

[...] After delivering material on several other subjects, Seth said good night at 11:20 P.M.)