“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:22. Jane said her trance hadn’t been good. “I was inhibited by all kinds of things — noises, mostly. I hope they didn’t make me interfere with the material. Was there more noise than usual?”

(She has excellent hearing, so if her trance hadn’t been as deep as usual, for whatever reasons, then even ordinary sounds might disrupt her. I told Jane that Seth’s information was as penetrating as ever. I also reminded her that the house was actually quieter than it usually is. A wet snow had started after supper and we’d shut our windows, thus cutting down on the rumble and clatter of automobile traffic.

In a way, the one-line kind of consciousness that you have developed can be correlated with your use of any one language. Experience is programmed, highly specialized, and attains a seemingly tight organization only because (intently) it limits so much of reality. In those terms, if you are bilingual you are somewhat better off, for your thoughts have a choice of two paths. Biologically, you are physically capable of speaking any language now in use on the face of the earth. You would consider it an achievement if you learned to speak many languages. You would not find it frightening or unnatural, though you would take it for granted that some training was involved. In the same way, your one-line kind of consciousness is but one of many “languages.” The others are as native, as natural, as biologically feasible.

Many theories have been advanced throughout history to explain the origins of speech. Prior to the 17th century, extensive searches and studies were made for a “natural” or Adamic language, a basic form of human communication that was supposed to underlie all racial languages; no such universal protolanguage was ever isolated. As science now reaches back into human beginnings, the already scanty evidence gradually disappears, until finally it seems highly unlikely that the species will ever really know how or when its language and/or speech started.

Present linguistic thinking assigns the burgeoning of a “modern” language ability to late Neanderthal man, who existed across southern Europe and other lands in the Eastern Hemisphere during part of the last Ice Age glaciation (from about 70,000 to 10,000 years ago). Some 40,000 years ago, in Europe at least, Neanderthal man either evolved into or was supplanted by Cro-Magnon man (Homo sapiens sapiens) our immediate predecessor.

6. Reading backward is something I’ve casually indulged in for many years. I don’t think those actions inspired Seth’s advice here, although my unconscious motivations for such a practice may coincide with it. I developed the habit as a teenager, reading signs and automobile license plates aloud and backward when my father would take my mother, my two younger brothers, and myself for Sunday rides in his 1932 Chevrolet. I found it to be great fun. I also taught myself to read upside-down print — an equally fascinating endeavor. In later years, working with others on a daily basis, I’d occasionally talk backward in a joking manner (ekil siht). The interesting thing here was that after a while my co-workers not only came to understand what I was saying, but joined in the game.