“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.

Your idea of space is some completely erroneous conception of an emptiness to be filled. Things — planets, stars, nebulae — come into being in this physical [camouflage] universe of yours, according to your latest theories, and this universe expands — pushed so that its sides bulge, so to speak the outer galaxies literally bursting into nowhere. True inner space is to the contrary vital energy, itself alive, possessing abilities of transformation, forming all existences, even the camouflage reality with which you are familiar, and which you attempt to probe so ineffectively.

(Seth material on evolution is presented twice in the 582nd session for Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks — not only in the session proper, but from an ESP class delivery given a few days later, on April 27, 1971. In class, Seth discussed Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution,⁷ and that material, some of which wasn’t published in the 582nd session is the source for my second group of excerpts:)

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….

(I think it more than a coincidence that in these excerpts from Seth Speaks, Seth mentions Darwin’s theory of evolution and the Biblical story of creation in the same sentence, for those systems of belief represent the two poles of the controversy over origins in our modern Western societies: the strictly Darwinistic, mechanistic view of evolution, in which the weakest of any species are ruthlessly eliminated through natural, predatory selection, and the views of the creationists, who hold that God made the earth and all of its creatures just as described in the Bible.

(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.

(But to some degree many scientists outside physics regard such esoteric particle relationships as being of theoretical interest mainly within that discipline; the concepts aren’t seen as posing any threat to biology, zoology, or geology, for instance, nor do they tinker with naïve realism. The biological sciences can cling to mechanistic theories of evolution by employing the conservative physics of cause and effect to support their conclusions while being aware, perhaps, of the tenets of particle physics. Such “causal analysis” then proves itself over and over again — a situation I wryly note, that’s akin to the criticism I’ve read wherein the theory of evolution is used to prove the theory of evolution. [I mentioned such circular reasoning near the beginning of this appendix.]

(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.

(Naïve realism, the philosophical concept that’s been mentioned a few times in this appendix, enters in here. It could, however, be considered at just about any time, since its proponents believe that it’s unconsciously involved in practically all of our daily activities. Simply put, naïve realism teaches that our visual and bodily senses reveal to us an external world as it really is — that we “see” actual physical objects, for instance. Disbelievers say that neurological evidence contradicts this theory; that from the neurological standpoint the events in our lives and within our bodies depend upon interpretation by the brain, that we can know nothing directly, but only experience transmitted through — and so “colored” by — the central nervous system. The perceptual time lag, caused by the limited speed of light, is also involved in objections to naïve realism. I merely want to remind the reader that in ordinary terms naïve realism, or some mind-brain idea very much like it, is habitually used whether we’re considering evolution within a time-oriented camouflage universe, painting a picture, or running a household. And after many centuries, the debate over the relationship between mind and brain continues, if first the existence of the mind is even agreed upon!

(Any role that consciousness might play in such biochemical processes isn’t considered, of course, nor is there any sort of mystical comprehension of what we’re up to as creatures. No matter how beautifully man works out a hypothesis or theory, he still does so without any thought of consciousness coming first. Through the habitual (and perhaps unwitting) use of naïve realism, he projects his own basic creativity outside of himself or any of his parts. He also projects upon cellular components like genes and DNA¹⁴ learned concepts of “protection” and “selfishness”: DNA is said to care only about its own survival and “knowledge,” and not whether its host is man, plant, or animal. Only man would think to burden such pervasive parts of his own being, and those of other entities, with such negative concepts! Jane and I don’t believe the allegations — in its own terms, how could the very stuff controlling inheritance not care about the nature of what it created? I’m only half joking (is there a gene for humor?) when I protest that DNA, for example, doesn’t deserve to be regarded in such a fashion, no matter how much we push it around through recombinant techniques.¹⁵

… in certain terms the theory of evolution, as it is conventionally held, has caused unfortunate beliefs. For how can you look at yourselves with self-respect, with dignity or with joy, if you believe that you are the end product of forces in which the fittest survive? Being the fittest implies those given most to what would appear to be murderous intent — for you must survive at the expense of your fellows, be you leaf, frog, plant, or animal.

You do not survive through cooperation, according to that theory, and nature is not given a kind or creative intent, but a murderous one. And if you see yourselves as the end result of such a species, then how can you expect goodness or merit or creativity from yourselves, or from others? How can you believe that you live in a safe universe when each species exists because it survives through claw, if it must hunt and kill out of murderous intent, as implied in the theories of evolution and of reality itself?

So when you think of your beliefs and who you are, you must also think of your species, and how you are told your species came to be. For your private beliefs are also based upon those theories, and the beliefs, culturally, of your times.

(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:)

There is a design and a designer, but they are so combined, the one within the other, the one within and the one without, that it is impossible to separate them. The creator is within its creations, and the creations themselves are gifted with creativity. The world comes to know itself, to discover itself, for the planner left room for divine surprise, and the plan was nowhere foreordained. Nor is there anywhere within it anything that corresponds to your “survival of the fittest” theories.

(Seth’s statement just given, that fully developed men coexisted with their supposed ancestors, led to our request that he follow through with more information on the subject. He’s done so to some extent, and here we’re presenting material from one of those later sessions to show his thinking. He continues to confound accepted evolutionary theory. As usual, however, Seth’s new data obviously imply new questions that we haven’t gone into yet. But at least, I told Jane, he’s said certain things that we can ask questions about, whether from the viewpoint of evolution, time, language, civilization, or whatever. The excerpts to follow, incidentally, are those I referred to earlier in this appendix, when I wrote that just as Jane had supplemented Seth’s material on early man with some of her own [as given in Appendix 6 in Volume 1], he in turn added to hers:)

(For some years now, organized religion as a whole has been suffering from a loss of faith and members, stripped of its mysteries by science, which, with the best of intentions, offers in religion’s place a secular humanism — the belief that one doesn’t need blind faith in a god in order to be morally concerned for the common welfare; paradoxically, however, this concern is most of the time expressed in religious terms, or with religious feeling. Yet science too has experienced many failures in theory and technology, and knows a new humility; at least partly because of these failures, anti-intellectualism has grown noticeably in recent years.

(Now we read late surveys that show an increase in religious faith, and statements to the effect that science does not claim to reveal absolute truth, that any scientific theory is valid only until a variance is shown. Jane and I certainly aren’t turned on to realize that a major religion, for instance, teaches the “facts” of man’s basically corrupt and sinful nature; surely a religion in the best sense can offer beliefs superior to those! At the same time, we take note of the latest efforts of biological researchers to explain how, millions of years ago, a primitive DNA molecule could begin to manufacture the protein upon which life “rides,” and thus get around the contradiction posed in Note 8: What made the protein that sustains the processes of life, before that life was present to make the protein? The scientists involved hope the new hypothesis will survive further tests and become “fact,” thus giving clues to the riddles of origins and evolution. But to briefly paraphrase material Jane came through with not long ago [and which, again, will eventually be published]: “How does one deal with new facts that undermine old facts, in whatever field of endeavor? Do you say that reality has changed? Upon examination, facts give.”

1. Over the years, my outside reading on evolution has covered many often conflicting viewpoints. Whether their beliefs are rooted in the tenets of conventional biology (Darwinism), for instance, or allied with those of the creationists (who hold that God made the earth and all of its creatures, just as described in the Book of Genesis), the advocates of rival theories have impressed me as having at least one thing in common: No matter how violently they may disagree, their arguments lack all sense of humor. This is serious stuff, world! Whatever happened to the spontaneity and joy in life? For surely, I found myself thinking as I read all of those antagonistic ideas, spontaneity and joy were the very ingredients that Seth would place uppermost in any theory or scheme of life’s “beginnings,” regardless of its philosophical stance.

5. According to my interpretation of this sentence, Seth stops short of telling us that in our reality all species — man, animals, and plant life (and viruses and bacteria too, for that matter) — developed from a single primordial living source. Evolutionary theory maintains that such a source spontaneously came into being, riding upon various protein molecules (or certain other kinds of molecules) that had themselves chemically — and miraculously — evolved out of nonliving matter, then demonstrated the ability to duplicate themselves. (When Seth came through with this 44th session, neither Jane nor I had enough background information about theories of evolution to ask him to be more specific. Proteins, for instance, are very complex chains of amino acids, and consist of nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and/or certain other elements. They exist in great variety in all animal and vegetable matter; in the body each protein supports a very definite function.) But the view that all life had a common origin, that by pure chance it originated on the earth — just once — without the aid of God, or any sort of designer, is today accepted by most scientists in biology and related disciplines. Such thinking stems from the work done in the 19th century by the English naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace.

It’s often been claimed that Darwin’s natural selection, while ruling out any question of design or a planner — God, say — behind living matter, leaves unexplained the same question relative to the structure of nonliving matter, which in those terms obviously preceded life. I’d rather approach that argument through another statement Seth made in Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks (in the 582nd session): “You are biologically connected, chemically connected with the Earth that you know….” How is it that as living creatures we’re made up of ingredients — atoms of iron, molecules of water, for instance — from a supposedly dead world? In the scientific view we’re utterly dependent upon that contradictory situation. No one denies the amazing structure or design of our physical universe, from the scale of subatomic particles on “up” (regardless of what cosmological theory is used to explain the universe’s beginning). The study of design as one of the links between “living” and “nonliving” systems would certainly be a difficult challenge — but a most rewarding one, I think — for science. I have little idea of how the work would be carried out. Evidently it would lead from biology through microbiology to physics with, ultimately, a search that at least approached Seth’s electromagnetic energy (EE) units and units of consciousness (CU’s). Yet according to Seth, both classes of “particles” are in actuality nonphysical; as best words can note, they have their realities on scales so minute that we cannot hope to detect them through our present technology….

Nor can solar energy be thought of as the agent that directly turned nonliving matter into its living counterpart; in those terms, life required its intermediate molecules, which sunlight is not able to construct. Life needs protein in order to “be,” and to sustain it through metabolism — then it can use solar energy! Darwin’s theory that life arose by chance poses a basic contradiction: What made the protein that sustains the processes of life, before that life was present to make the protein?

Evolutionary thinking is challenged not only by questions of protein synthesis, and energy/entropy (see Note 5), however. Equally insistent are the puzzles posed by the missing intermediate forms in the fossil record: Where are all the remnants of those creatures that linked birds, reptiles, cats, monkeys, and human beings? The hypothetical evolutionary tree of life demands that such in-between forms existed; it seems that by now paleontologists should have unearthed enough signs of them to make at least a modest case for their belief systems; the lack of scientific evidence is embarrassing. Since my mind works that way, I could make minutely detailed drawings of a graduated series of such entities (gradualism being a basic premise in Charles Darwin’s theory), but would the creatures shown have been viable? Could they actually have existed for the necessary millennia while evolving into the species whose fossil remains have been discovered, or that live today? As indicated in Note 5, evolutionists are serving goodly portions of speculation along with inadequate theory — or, really, hypothesis.

13. A note added much later: Sometimes things develop in unexpected ways: One might say that several years later Seth continued the material just presented. By the time he did so he’d been through with “Unknown” Reality for quite a while, but I was still working on the notes and appendixes for Volume 2. As I wrote Appendix 12 in particular I discussed with Jane the passages on naïve realism; soon afterward Seth began to refer to the subject during scheduled sessions, and one of them contained the excellent information below. (Only one part of that session is quoted, but eventually it will be published in its entirety as part of a Seth book.) Very evocative, to consider how consciousness chooses to manifest itself physically, in direct contradiction to the mechanistic beliefs held so tightly — and with so little humor — by those adhering to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. From Session 803:)