“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I have said that the mind cannot be detected by your instruments at present. The mind does not take up space, and yet the mind is the value that gives power to the brain. The mind expands continuously, both in individual terms and in terms of the species as a whole, and yet (with amusement) the mind takes up neither more nor less space, whether it be the mind of a flea or a man.

This basic universe of which I speak expands constantly in terms of intensity and quality and value, in a way that has nothing to do with your idea of space. The basic universe beneath all camouflage does not have an existence in space at all, as you envision it. Space is a camouflage … This tinge of time is an attribute of the physical camouflage form only, and even then the relationship between time and ideas, and time and dreams, is a nebulous one … although in some instances parts of the inner universe may be glimpsed from the camouflage perspective of time; only, however, a small portion.

Nevertheless the dream world, the mind, and the basic inner universe do exist … in what we will call the value climate of psychological reality. This is the medium. This takes the place of what you call space. It is a quality which makes all existences and consciousness possible. It is one of the most powerful principles behind or within the vitality that itself composes from itself all other phenomena.³

One of the main attributes of this value climate is spontaneity, which shows itself in the existence of the only sort of time that has any real meaning — that of the spacious present.

Growth in your camouflage universe often involves the taking up of more space. Actually, in our inner universe … growth exists in terms of the value or quality expansion of which I have spoken, and does not — I repeat — does not imply any sort of space expansion. Nor does it imply, as growth does in your camouflage universe, a sort of projection into time.

I am giving it [this material] to you in as simple terms as possible. If growth is one of the most necessary laws of your camouflage universe, value fulfillment corresponds to it in the inner-reality universe.⁴

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.

Durability is our fourth law. Durability within the framework of the spacious present would not exist were it not for the laws of value fulfillment and energy transformation. These make duration within the spacious present not only possible but necessary….

(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.]

(The third excerpt I’d originally planned to use is from the 690th session in Volume 1, and shows that even when Seth talks of evolution in our terms of ordinary time, he means something quite different from that conventional definition of linear change: Precognition is one of the attributes of the growth through value fulfillment that he described in the [already quoted] 44th session. I also want to use this material to lead into short discussions of “naïve realism,” and evolution at the level of molecular biology. Seth:)

(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 want to add here that our real challenge in knowing our own species, and others, may lie in our cultivating the ability to understand the interacting consciousnesses involved, rather than to search only for physical relationships supposedly created through evolutionary processes. The challenge is profound. The consciousnesses of numerous other species may be so different from ours that we only approximately grasp the meanings inherent in some of them, and miss the essences of others entirely. To give just two examples, at this time we are surely opaque to the seemingly endless search for value fulfillment that consciousness displays through the “lowly” lung fish and the “unattractive” cockroach. Yet those entities are quite immune to our notions of evolution, and they explore time contexts in ways far beyond our current human comprehension. As far as science knows, both have existed with very little change for over 300 million years.

(But, I asked Jane recently, why do our sciences and religions take it all so seriously? I wasn’t really too earnest. If we truly owe our physical existence to the chance conglomeration of certain atoms and molecules in the thickening scum of a primordial pond or ocean [to discuss only mankind here], then certainly we’ll never come this way again in the universe; and moreover, our emotional and intellectual attributes must rest upon the same dubious beginning. Aside from the lack of evidence to back up such “scientific” speculations, what thinking or feeling values, I wonder, can make such a belief system so attractive? Surely very limited ones in linear terms, fated to never get beyond those incessant questions about what came before the beginning. To paraphrase some other material Jane wrote not long ago: “But the earth and all upon it are given. To imagine that such an entire environment is an accident is intellectually outrageous and emotionally sterile.”

(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.

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.

4. This paragraph and the preceding one were used as a footnote for the 637th session in Chapter 9 of Personal Reality. That session, held 18 months ago, contains material appropriate to this appendix: As an analogy, Seth compares the “evolution” of souls in terms of value fulfillment to cellular growth in our physical reality.