“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

The animals were also accepted in this natural philosophy of selfhood as the individual plainly saw the living quality of consciousness. The characteristics of the animals were understood to continue “life,” adding their qualities to the experience of the self in a new way.³ You had better put “life” in quotes in that last sentence.

(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.

Give us a moment … Those intimate realizations, however, had to be counterbalanced in line with certain purposes set by your species, and even for that matter momentarily set aside so that other abilities and characteristics could emerge. The species’ sense of curiosity would not allow it to stay in any home territory for long,⁶ and so the sense of intimacy was purposely broken. It would become highly important again, however, when the planet was populated extensively, as it is now — only the original feeling of home area has to be extended over the face of the earth. The “absent” portions of the self are ready to emerge. The other, to you probable, lines of consciousness can now come into play.

In those terms, neutral data are not transferred through the chromosomes. Consciousness passes on information through “living” vehicles. Whether physically materialized or not, knowledge is possessed by consciousness. It is always “individualized” (pause), though not necessarily in your terms.⁸

The larger self, then, seeds itself in time. In this process no identity is lost and no identity is the same, yet all are interrelated. So you can theoretically expand your consciousness to include the knowledge of your past lives, though those lives were yours and not yours. They have a common root, as next year’s leaves have a common root with the leaves now of this plant (pointing again to the begonia).

3. Seth packed a lot of information into the short 689th session for Volume 1. He discussed the innumerable experiments of consciousness with animal-man and man-animal forms; the great communication between man and animal in ancient times, and the deep rapport of both with their natural heritage; psychic and biological blueprints and cellular precognition; the growth of man’s ego consciousness; the beginnings of our god concepts and mythology; and more.

7. Seth evidently referred to the material he gave on the conscious attributes of information for Chapter 3 of Personal Reality. Note 1 for Session 697, in Volume 1, contains quotations from those comments, as well as a few other references.

Actually, Seth has been describing in various ways the indissoluble relationship between consciousness and information (or consciousness and anything else), ever since Jane began holding the sessions over a decade ago. I tried a little experiment. From the more than 64 three-ring binders, or volumes, as we call them, that hold the typed transcripts of our sessions, I picked out the second binder. Within it were sessions 16 to 23 inclusive, covering the period from January 15 to February 5, 1964. Five of the eight sessions contained material applicable to this note. Seth, in the 18th session, for example:

“As you have probably supposed by now, there is consciousness in everything. Visible or invisible to you, each fragment of the universe has a consciousness of its own. Pain and pleasure, the strongest aspects of all consciousnesses, are experienced by every fragment, according to its degree. Differentiation is of course various, and it is in the degree of differentiation that consciousnesses are different.”

10. Besides quoting from the 18th session in Note 7, above, I presented excepts on tree consciousness from the same session in Note 7 for Session 727. Let me briefly continue that early Seth material here: “In drawing up his list of so-called natural laws, I have said (in the 16th session) that man decided that what appeared to be cause and effect to him was, therefore, a natural law of the universe. Not only do these so-called laws, which are not laws, vary according to where you are in the universe, they also vary according to what you are in the universe. Therefore, your tree recognizes a human being, though it does not see the human being in your terms. To a tree the laws are simply different. And if a tree wrote its laws of the universe, then you would know how different they are.”