“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In far greater terms, the goals set consciously by your species also set into operation the same kind of inner biological activity. The goals of the species do not exist apart from individual goals. As you go about your life, therefore, you are very effectively taking part in the “future” developments of your species. Period. Let us look for a moment at the private psyche.

(9:48.) The “private psyche” sounds like a fine term, but it is meaningless unless you apply it to your psyche. A small amount of self-examination should show you that in a very simple way you are always thinking about probabilities. You are always making choices between probable actions and alternate courses. A choice presupposes probable acts, each possible, each capable of actualization within your system of reality. Your private experience is far more filled with such decisions than you usually realize. There are tiny innocuous instances that come up daily: “Shall I go to the movies, or bowling?” “Shall I brush my teeth now or later?” “Should I write to my friend today or tomorrow?” There are also more pertinent questions having to do with careers, ways of life, or other deeper involvements. In your terms, each decision you make alters the reality that you know to one degree or another.

You can literally choose between health and illness; between a concentration upon the mental more than the physical, or upon the physical more than the mental. Such private decisions affect the genetic heritage of the species. Your intent is all-important — for you can alter your own genetic messages³ within certain limits. You can cause a cell, or a group of cells, to change their self-image, for example; and again, you do this often — as you healed yourselves of diseases because of your intent to become well. The intent will be conscious, though the means may not be. Period. In such a case, however, the self-healing qualities of the cells are reinforced, and the self-healing abilities of the species are also strengthened.

Now. Your private psyche is intimately concerned with your earthly existence, and in your dream state you deal with probable actions, and often work out in that condition the solutions to problems or questions that arise having to do with probable sequences of events.⁴

On many occasions then you set yourself a problem — “Shall I do this or that?” — and form a dream in which you follow through the probable futures that would “result” from the courses available. While you are sleeping and dreaming, your chemical and hormonal activity faithfully follows the courses of the dreams. Even in your accepted reality, then, to that extent in such a dream you react to probable events as well as to the events chosen for waking physical experience. Your daily life is affected, because in such a dream you deal with probable predictabilities. You are hardly alone, however, so each individual alive also has his and her private dreams, and these help form the accepted probability sequence of the following day, and of “time to come.” The personal decisions all add up to the global happenings on any given day.

Give us a moment … (Long pause, eyes closed.) There are lands of the mind.⁵ That is, the mind has its own “civilizations,” its own personal culture and geography, its own history and inclinations. But the mind is connected with the physical brain, and so hidden in its [the brain’s] folds there is an archaeological memory. To some extent what you know now is dependent upon what will be known, and what has been known, in your terms. The “past” races of men live to that extent within your Now, as do those who will seemingly come after. So, ideally speaking, the history of your species can be discovered quite clearly within the psyche; and true archaeological events are found not only by uncovering rocks and relics, but by bringing to light, so to speak, the memories that dwell within the psyche.

(10:45. Next, Seth came through with a page of information for Jane and me. In it were these lines: “I believe, incidentally, that I cleared up your question for you. Cells, as entities, do not drop off [the physical form] like apples. I was using, I suppose, a kind of shorthand I believed was clear in the context given.”