“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A species that senses a lack of this quality can in one way or another destroy its offspring — not because they could not survive otherwise, but because the quality of that survival would bring about vast suffering, for example, so distorting the nature of life as to almost make a mockery of it. Each species seeks for the development of its abilities and capacities in a framework in which safety is a medium for action. Danger in that context exists under certain conditions clearly known to the animals, clearly defined: The prey is known, for example, as is the hunter. But even the natural prey of another animal does not fear the “hunter” when the hunter animal is full of belly, nor will the hunter then attack.

[...] In the world of nature you say there is a hunter and prey, and yet in that natural world “hunter and prey” are peculiarly suited to each other. The hunter is naturally equipped to kill in such and such a manner. [...]

Despite all of your knowledge about the animals, it has not really been suspected that the natural hunter-animal kills most mercifully. [...]

[...] They are not triggered as easily under conditions alien to the mouse’s understanding of its and the hunter’s biological natures.

[...] If a hunter literally knows his relationship with an animal, he cannot kill it. [...] The slain beast is tomorrow’s hunter. [...]

[...] The mouse itself has been hunter as well as prey, and both understand the terms in ways that are very difficult to explain.

The hunter, freed more or less from animal courtesy, would be forced to emotionally identify with his prey. [...]

[...] Hunters in primitive groups know how to hunt. [...]

[...] In using the animal’s flesh, then, the hunter believed that he was giving the animal a new focus of existence. [...]

[...] You were what is called a “chief hunter.” [...]

The questioner is obviously the hunter. [...]

[...] They watched the drama of the “hunter” and the “prey,” seeing that each animal contributed so that the physical form of the earth could continue—but the rabbit eaten by the wolf survived in a dream body that men knew was its true form. [...]

Now: You have heard of ghost hunters. [...]

[...] Not as hunter and prey, but as individual participants in deeper processes. [...]

Native cultures, believing that the courage or fleetness of an eaten animal became part of the hunter’s mental and physical acquisition, handled the body in entirely different terms, and did very well. [...]

[...] Both as a method of ending their lives, in a quiet manner, for they killed them easily when they were too old to run from jungle animals or from hunters or from warriors from other tribes. [...]

It is no coincidence that man the hunter seems, at least, to destroy. [...]

[...] You had for centuries, then, speaking in your limited terms, a situation in which men and animals were both hunters and prey. [...]

On your plane the hunter and the prey system is at this time a necessary one but it will not always be this way. [...]

[...] Hunters had to respond at once to the present situation. [...]

[...] (Louder.) My heartiest regards, you house hunters, you.

[...] The mouse itself has been hunter as well as prey, and both understand the terms in ways that are very difficult to explain.