“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A mountain exists. It is composed of rocks and trees, grass and hills, and in your terms of time you can look at it, see it as such, give it a name, and ignore its equally independent parts. Without those parts the mountain would not exist. It is not invaded by the trees or rocks that compose it, and while trees grow and die the mountain itself, at least in your terms of time, exists despite the changes. It is also dependent upon the changes. In a manner of speaking, your own identities as you think of them are dependent upon the same kinds of living organizations of consciousness.

(10:21.) Let us look at it differently. People who read so-called “occult” literature may consider me “an old soul,” like a mountain. Period. In grand ancient fashion above other more homey village-like souls, I have my own identity. Yet that identity is composed of other identities, each independent, as the mountain is composed of its rocks and could not exist without them, even while it rises up so grandly above the plain. My understanding rests upon what I am, as the mountain’s height rests upon what it is. I do not feel invaded by the selves or identities that compose me, nor do they feel invaded by me — any more than the trees, rocks, and grass would resent the mountain shape (intently) into which they have grown.

Your thinking mind, as you consider it, is the top of your mountain. In certain terms you can see “more” than your cells can, though they are also conscious of their realities. Were it not for their lives you would not be at the top of your psychological mountain. Even the trees at the highest tip of the hillside send sturdy roots into the ground, and receive from it nourishment and vitality — and there is a great give-and-take between the smallest sapling in the foothills and the most ancient pine. No single blade of grass dies but that it affects the entire mountain. The energy within the grass sinks into the earth, and in your terms is again reborn. Trees, rocks, and grass constantly exchange places as energy changes form (very forcefully, leaning forward, eyes wide and dark).

(Long pause.) Because a tree is physical, physical properties will be involved, and the seeds will mature following certain general principles or characteristics. Atoms and molecules will sometimes form trees; sometimes they will become parts of couches. They will form people or ants or blades of grass, yet in each of these ventures they will also retain their own sense of identity. They combine to form cells and organs, and through all of these events they obtain different kinds of experience.

Physically speaking, and generally, your body is composed of grasses and ants and rocks and beasts and birds, for in one way or another all biological matter is related.⁹ In certain terms, through your experience, birds and rocks speak alphabets — and certain portions of your own being fly or creep as birds or insects,¹⁰ forming the great gestalt of physical experience. It is fashionable to say: “You are what you eat” semicolon; that, for example, “You must not eat meat because you are killing the animals, and this is wrong.” But in deeper terms, physically and biologically, the animals are born from the body of the earth, which is composed of the corpses of men and women as much as it is of other matter. The animals consume you, then, as often as you consume them, and they are as much a part of your humanity as you are a part of their so called animal nature.