“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You carry within you, however, the deep knowledge of experience that in your terms would be prior, yet in your cells and your own deeper mind such information is current.

Give us a moment … Selfhood overspills with great luxurious outcroppings, yet you jealously guard against such creativity. To a certain extent you do carry the knowledge of your forefathers within your [cells’] chromosomes,¹ which present a pattern that is not rigid but flexible — one that in codified fashion endows you with the subjective living experience of those who, in your terms, have gone before. As Ruburt recently suspected, some very old cultures have been aware of this.² Period. While being independent individuals their members also identified with their ancestors to some extent, accepting them as portions of their selfhoods. This does not mean that the individual self was less, but was more aware of its own reality. A completely different kind of focus was presented, in which the ancestors were understood to contribute to the “new” experience of the living; one in which the physically focused consciousness clearly saw itself as perceiving the world for itself, but also for all of those who had gone before — (gradually louder for emphasis:) while realizing that in those terms he or she would contribute as well as the generations past.

(With emphasis:) I am not saying, for example, that the living consciousness of each individual returned to the earth literally, but that the physical material permeated and stamped with that consciousness did, and does. Again, even the cells retain knowledge of all of their affiliations. In physical terms the consciousness that you understand is based upon this.

Each leaf seeks to express its leafhood as fully as possible. Leaves take in sun, which helps the plant itself grow (through photosynthesis). The development of the leaves, then, is very important to the plant’s own existence. The cells of the plant are kept in contact with the environment through the leaves’ experiences, and future probabilities are always taken into consideration. The smallest calculations involving light and dark are known. The life of the plant and its leaves cannot be separated.

1. As defined in Note 9 for Session 682, in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality: “Chromosomes are microscopic bodies into which the protoplasmic substance of a cell nucleus separates during cell division. They carry the genes, the factors or units — ‘blueprints’ — that determine hereditary characteristics.”

4. In Volume 1, see the 687th session at 10:45, when Seth said: “Biologically the man knows he has come from the earth. Some of his cells have been the cells of animals, and the animal knows he will look out through a man’s eyes.” Then see Note 3 for that session — especially Jane’s poem, Illumination.