“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

All of the probabilities practically possible in human development are therefore present to some extent or another in each individual. Any biological or spiritual advancement that you might imagine will of course not come from any outside agency, but from within the heritage of consciousness made flesh. Generally, those alive in this century chose a particular kind of orientation. The species chose to specialize in certain kinds of physical manipulation, to devote its energies in certain directions. Those directions have brought forth a reality unique in its own fashion. Man has not driven himself down a blind alley, in other words. He has been studying the nature of his consciousness — using it as if it were apart from the rest of nature, and therefore seeing nature and the world in a particular light.⁶ That light has finally made him feel isolated, alone, and to some extent relatively powerless (intently).

I am speaking in your historical terms because before the historical system that you recognize, man had indeed experimented with these other directions, and with some success. This does not mean that man in the present has fallen from some higher spiritual achievement to his current state.

(Pause at 9:16.) There are cycles in which consciousness forms earthly experience, and maps out historical sequences. So there have been other species of mankind beside your own, each handling physical data in its own way. Some have taken other directions, therefore, than the one that you have chosen. Even those paths are latent or secondary, however, within your own private and mass experience. They reside within you, presenting you with alternate realities⁷ that you may or may not choose privately or en masse, as you prefer.

Each system, of course, brings forth its own culture, “technology,” art, and science. The physical body is basically equipped to maintain itself as a healthy long-living organism far beyond your present understanding, medically speaking. The cellular comprehension⁸ provides all kinds of inner therapeutics that operate quite naturally. There is a physical give-and-take between the body and environment beyond that which you recognize; an inner dynamics here that escapes you, that unites the health of plants, animals, and men. In the most simple and mundane of examples, if you are living in a fairly well-balanced, healthy environment, your houseplants and your animals will also be well. You form your environment and you are a part of it. You react to it, often forgetting that relationship. Ideally, the body has the capacity to keep itself in excellent health — but beyond that, to maintain itself at the highest levels of physical achievement. The exploits of your greatest athletes give you a hint of the body’s true capacity. In your system of beliefs, however, those athletes must train and focus all of their attention in that direction, often at the expense of other portions of their own experience. But their performances show you what the body is capable of.

The unknown reality: Much of that reality is unknown simply because your beliefs close you off from your own knowledge. The reaches of your own consciousness are not limited. Because you accept the idea of a straight-line movement of time, you cannot see before or after what you think of as your birth or death,* yet your greater consciousness is quite aware of such experience. Ideally it is possible not only to remember “past” lives, but to plan future ones now. In greater terms, all such lives happen at once. Your present neurological structure makes this seem impossible, yet your inner consciousness is not so impeded.

In larger terms there are other entire lives, which for you are forgotten essentially as yesterday is. These too, however, are a secondary series of activities, riding beneath your present primary concern. They are as unconsciously a part of your present, and as connected with it, as yesterday is.

Imagine vividly what you will do tomorrow, and in detail plan a probable day that will rise naturally from your present experience, behavior, and purposes. Follow through as you did with the first part of the exercise. (Pause.) That day’s reality is already anticipated by your cells. Your body has prepared for it, all of its functions precognitively projecting their own existences into it. Your “future” life exists in the same manner, and in your terms grows as much out of your present as tomorrow grows out of your today.

In addition, the reader might review Seth’s information on ancient civilizations, as presented in Chapter 15 of Seth Speaks.