“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:35.) But if man felt suddenly alone and isolated, he was immediately struck by the grand variety of the world and its creatures. Each creature apart from himself was a new mystery. He was enchanted also by his own subjective reality, the body in which he found himself, and by the differences between himself and others like him, and the other creatures. He instantly began to explore (pause), to categorize, to point out and to name the other creatures of the earth as they came to his attention.

The Garden of Eden legend represents a distorted version of man’s awakening as a physical creature. He becomes fully operational in his physical body, and while awake can only sense the dream body that had earlier been so real to him. He now encounters his experience from within a body that must be fed, clothed, protected from the elements—a body that is subject to gravity and to earth’s laws. He must use physical muscles to walk from place to place. He sees himself suddenly, in a leap of comprehension, as existing for the first time not only apart from the environment, but apart from all of earth’s other creatures.

3. At first, as I typed this session from my notes a couple of days later, I thought that Seth had contradicted himself here, for earlier in the session he’d stated that “the other creatures of the earth actually awakened before man did, and relatively speaking, their dream bodies formed themselves into physical ones before man’s did.” Then I came to think that Seth actually meant that man has consciously separated himself from his dream body to a greater degree than other creatures have—that even though those other entities became “physically effective” before man did, they still retain a greater awareness of their dream bodies than man does. I’ll try to remember to ask Seth to elaborate upon this point, although I also think he alludes to it later in this session.

On the one hand, man did indeed feel that he had fallen from a high estate, because he remembered that earlier freedom of dream reality—a reality in which the other creatures were still to some degree (underlined) immersed.³ Man’s mind, incidentally, at that point had all the abilities that you now assign to it: the great capacity for contrast of imagination and intellect, the drive for objectivity and for subjectivity (softly), the full capacity for the development of language—a keen mind that was as brilliant in any caveman, say, as it is in any man on a modern street.

What was needed was a highly focused, precisely tuned physical self that could operate efficiently in a space and time scheme that was being formed along with physical creatures—a self, however, that in one way or another must be supported by realms of information and knowledge of a kind that was basically independent of time and space. [...]

[...] Earthly creatures must be able to react in a moment, yet the inner mechanisms that made such reactions possible were based upon calculations that could not be consciously kept in mind. [...]

[...] The body’s pattern came from the inner self, as all of the units of consciousness involved in this venture together formed this fabric of environment and creatures, each suited to the other.

At that level environment, creatures, and the elements of the natural world are all united—a point we will return to quite often. [...]

(With emphasis:) In a matter of speaking (underlined), the birds and the insects are indeed living portions of the earth flying, even as, again in a matter of speaking (in parentheses) (with a smile and again with an emphasis upon the word “matter”), bears and wolves and cows and cats represent the earth turning itself into creatures that live upon its own surface. And in a matter of speaking, again, man becomes the earth thinking, and thinking his own thoughts, man in his way specializes in the conscious work of the world—a work that is dependent upon the indispensable “unconscious” work of the rest of nature, a nature that sustains him (all very intently). And when he thinks, man thinks for the microbes, for the atoms and the molecules, for the smallest particles within his being, for the insects and for the rocks, for the creatures of the sky and the air and the oceans.

[...] They did not yet identify themselves to any great degree (underlined) as being themselves separate from either the environment or other creatures. [...]

[...] In the terms of this discussion the other creatures of the earth actually awakened before man did, and relatively speaking, their dream bodies formed themselves into physical ones before man’s did. [...]

Each creature is born proud of itself, and loving itself. That same self-approval is also experienced in varying ways not only by creatures as you think of them, but also by atoms and molecules, and by all orders of matter.

[...] (Long pause, then quite slowly:) All creatures are also born, then, with a keen sense of self-approval.

(Long pause at 4:16.) All creatures are basically of good intent; even when they commit the most dubious of acts, these are usually caused by a misdirected good intent. [...]

[...] While the experience was exhilarating, it could have turned into a “nightmare” had his conscious mind not clearly understood; had he walked outside, for example, and found himself encountering living creatures rising out of each rainy puddle; and if for the life of him he could not have turned the creatures back. [...]

(“With the puddle creature I saw both realities — the puddle in physical terms, and the creature in larger than physical terms — and could switch from one reality to the other if I wanted to, I think. [...]

[...] One night he stood at the kitchen window, and quite without drugs saw a rainy puddle below suddenly turn into an alive, beautifully fluid creature who stood up and walked while the rain slid off its liquid sides.

[...] He knew that in the physical world the puddle was flat, but that he was perceiving another just-as-solid reality; a larger one, in fact, in which that rain creature had its being.

[...] Those senses possess their own variances, so that without any word such as “now” or “then,” the creatures are able to know quite accurately how many living creatures are in the vicinity, how long they have been there (pause) — and their experience with time is one that follows the seasons in such a way that they have formed a wordless, fairly accurate picture of the world, including navigational direction.

[...] They are indeed amazingly swift creatures, and through scent alone they are aware of the presence of man when any member of your species is at all in the immediate area — standing, say, at least several miles away. [...]

These creatures do indeed remember, but their remembering operates extremely rapidly — a kind of almost instantaneous deduction that comes as sense data is interpreted. [...]

[...] With some territorial variation, such creatures reside in many of the world areas on your planet, though their overall population is very small — altogether, perhaps, several thousand. [...]

1. I am an excellent creature, a valuable part of the universe in which I exist.

Next: By nature I am a good deserving creature, and all of life’s elements and parts are also of good intent.

And next: All of my imperfections, and all of the imperfections of other creatures, are redeemed in the greater scheme of the universe in which I have my being.

[...] Infants are not born with an inbred fear of their environment, or of other creatures. [...]

[...] The seasons took on the rhythms best suited to the creatures in various locations. The environment and the creatures accommodated each other.

[...] Creatures relied upon inner senses while learning to operate the new, highly specific physical ones that pinpointed perception in time and place. [...]

Dream bodies became physical, and through the use of the senses tuned to physical frequencies—frequencies of such power and allure that they would reach all creatures of every kind, from microbe to elephant, holding them together in a cohesive web of space-and-time alignment.

(9:30.) Now (underlined): When he dreamed—when he dreamed (underlined)—man actually returned to a state prior to waking, from which his physical life itself had emerged—only now he was a new creature, a new kind of consciousness, and so were all of the other species. [...]

[...] To consume other creatures at your level of existence is natural. [...] To torture other creatures in the terms of this discussion is not at all “natural.” [...]

[...] It is good to eat, and each creature seeks food. [...]

In that framework, necessary death is meted out in such a manner that each creature understands that its own death serves a greater purpose—and further understands that there is no malice involved (whispering).

In your system of reality, the other creatures cannot help but act with good intent—even if their intent is to kill their prey. [...]

(9:13.) A child may think “We will go to sleep now”—meaning quite happily that (pause) its own single consciousness also participates in the conscious life and activities of everything else in its environment, so it and the creatures of the night, say, sleep together, and waken together to greet the dawn. In such a way the child actively participates in the consciousness of nature—and I am not speaking of an imaginative or symbolic participation alone, but of an awareness of the multiplicity within itself and of other creatures. [...]

[...] The child does not have to cry out or address or search for a particular kind of God, because it understands through such subjective behavior that its own precious singularity is also a part of the greater us-ness of all other creatures, and that its singularity is automatically assured, as is its own us-ness within that larger context. [...]

[...] Will you accept him as the emotional creature that he is, as you accept the intellectual creature that he is? [...]

[...] You are not only creatures of corporeal being, forming images of flesh and blood, embedded in a particular kind of space and time; you are also creatures rising out of a particularized dimension of probabilities, born from dimensions of actuality richly suited to your own development, enrichment and growth.

[...] It does not represent the entire lifetime of your species or the catalogue of physical activities, or begin to tell the story of physical creatures, their civilizations, wars, joys, technologies, or triumphs. [...]

[...] Now these serve as quite handy reference points, but basically speaking they in no way affect the natural experience of those various living creatures that you refer to as “other species.”

[...] It is perhaps difficult for you to realize that these are written and verbalized categories that in no real manner tell you anything about the actual experience of other creatures — but only note habits, tendencies, and separations of the most exterior nature.

If your purpose is to comprehend what other living creatures perceive, then the methods you are using are at the best shortsighted, and at the worst they completely defeat your purpose. [...]

[...] You must look with your intuitions and creative instincts at the creatures about you, seeing them not as other species with certain habits, not as inferior properties of the earth, to be dissected, but as living examples of the nature of the universe, in constant being and transformation.

[...] Value fulfillment operates within microbes and nations, within individual creatures and entire species, and it unites all of life’s manifestations so that indeed creatures and their environments are united in an overall cooperative venture — a venture in which each segment almost seeks to go beyond itself in creativity, growth, and expression. [...]

[...] You should have respect, then, for the cells of your body, the thoughts of your mind (pause), and try to understand that even the smallest of creatures shares with you the emotional experience of life’s triumphs and vulnerabilities.

These ancient dreams were shared to some extent by each consciousness that was embarked upon the earthly venture, so that creatures and environment together formed great environmental realities. [...]

[...] And in an important fashion the coordination of the creature in its environment did not need to be as precise, since there was an elastic give-and-take of consciousness between the two.

This is a given characteristic of life, regardless of the beliefs that may lead you to misinterpret the actions of nature, casting some of its creatures in a reprehensible light.

(Pause.) In a fashion those ancient dreamers, through their immense creativity, dreamed all of life’s creatures in all of their pasts, presents, and futures—that is, their dreams opened up the doors of space and time to entities that otherwise would not have been released into actualization, even as, for example, the units of consciousness were once released from the mind of All That Is.

(Still slowly at 8:59:) Other creatures have their own kinds of mental activity, however. [...] Yet animals have their own “morality,” their own codes of honor, their own impeccable senses of balance with all other creatures. [...]

“All creatures of whatever degree have their own appreciation of esthetics. Many such creatures merge their arts so perfectly into their lives that it is impossible to separate the two: the spider’s web, for example, or the beaver’s dam—and there are endless other examples. [...]

I had the same feelings of limitation concerning the session for April 9. In it Seth dealt with the creation of art: not only by “natural man,” but by other creatures—and yes, also the flora—of the earth.¹

Animals also possess independent volition, and while I am emphasizing animals here, the same applies to any creature, large or small: insect, bird, fish, or worm; to plant life; to cells, atoms, or electrons. [...]

The birth of imagination initiated the largest possibilities, and at the same time put great strain upon the biological creature whose entire corporeal structure would now react not only to present objective situations, but imaginative ones. [...] Imagination helped because an individual could anticipate the behavior of other creatures.

[...] The woman being created from his rib symbolized the necessary emergence, even from the new creature, of the intuitive forces that will always come forth — for without that development the race would not have attained self-consciousness in your terms.

[...] Satan represents — in the terms of the story — the part of All That Is, or God, who stepped outside of Himself, so to speak, and became earthbound with His creatures, offering them the free will and choice that “previously” had not been available.

[...] However, when you examine animal behavior even in its most natural-seeming environment, for instance, you are not observing the basic behavior patterns of such creatures, because those relatively isolated areas exist in your world. Quite simply, you cannot have one or two or twenty officially-designated natural regions in which you observe animal activity, and expect to find anything more than the current adaptation of those creatures — an adaptation that is superimposed upon their “natural” reactions.

[...] The species developed its own kind of consciousness, as it found it necessary to isolate itself to some degree from its environment and the other creatures within it. [...] In its way science went along very nicely by postulating man in a mechanistic world, with each creature run by an impeccable machine of instinct, blind alike to pain or desire.

[...] As creatures you are born young and grow older. Yet the animals, as creatures, are not as limited in their experience in that regard. They have no beliefs in old age that automatically shut down their abilities; so left alone, while they do physically die as all creatures must in those terms, they do not deteriorate in the same way.

[...] In greater terms their relationship with you is natural, of course, but their innate realization that the creature’s point of power is in the present is to some degree undermined by their own receptivity and translation of your beliefs. [...]

The greater life of each creature exists in that framework that “originally” gave it birth, and in a greater manner of speaking each creature, regardless of its age, is indeed being constantly reborn. [...]

Give us a moment… Your world, then, is the result of a multidimensional creative venture, a work of art in terms almost impossible for you to presently understand, in which each person and creature, and each particle, plays a living part. [...]