“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:57.) Give us a moment.... At one point Ruburt saw the ape still male, and then a portion of himself sitting at the library table, for in your position it is the animal instincts themselves that propel you to search for answers, to write books, to explore in your particular way. The ape was at home in the library, and his face was compassionate. Identification with the instinct brings compassion, and that compassion and wonder spark the creative instincts. Ruburt’s idea was still one of controlling those instincts and his “animal” abilities. On another level, because the ape was in the library, compassionate and understanding, Ruburt was seeing symbolically the force of his own physical nature, quite at home with itself, and at home in the psychic library of the mind.

The ape on one level represented the animal instincts feared by Ruburt’s mother and grandfather as well, so Ruburt learned to look upon them askance. These instincts are the earthly doors of the soul’s energy. Who closes those doors does so at some peril.

To some extent Ruburt has identified with him. He was after all Ruburt’s mother’s father, and therefore the source out of which Ruburt’s mother came—the higher power, so to speak. The ape emotionally represented the instincts in true light, as dependable, supportive, and as the basis for earthly existence. Ruburt as an infant, then, experienced the strength of the earthly source. This means that he is to trust his instincts as far as letters are concerned, or healing, or whatever. At the same time the ape male and female represents the sexual quality of the earth, male and female being simply other versions of each other. This automatically helps resolve certain conflicts Ruburt had involving male-female identifications. In other terms the past was altered, in that Ruburt now experienced the yearned-for mother love that was warm in its animal female understanding, supportive and strong enough to easily bear a child’s small ragings and hatreds.

(Most intently:) When this happens, the species by default must fall back upon vestiges of old instincts — that were not geared to operate in conjunction with a conscious reasoning mind, and do not comprehend your experience; that finds your “moment of reflection” an impertinent denial of impulse. So man loses full use of the animals’ regulated, graceful instinct, and yet denies the conscious and emotional discrimination given him instead.

(10:52.) The messages sent as a result are so highly contradictory that you are caught in a position where true instinct cannot reign, nor can reason prevail. Instead a distorted version of instinct results, along with a bastard use of sense as the species tries desperately to regulate its course.

[...] Because of the multitudinous courses open to the species, not only did the highly specific nature of many kinds of animalistic instinct no longer apply, but a curious balance had to be maintained. [...]

(Pause.) Your dog dream (of March 31, 1979) also somewhat symbolizes that dilemma: do you go with your head, forcing a conscious decision, or do you go with your instincts, symbolized by the dog’s form? The question itself causes the dilemma of the dream—that is, the separation of the two in your mind, instinct and reason, causes the uneasy confrontation. There is no separation, of course, only a seeming one, for again, the mind’s conscious processes are spontaneous, and the body’s instincts are highly disciplined, so there is no need to vacillate between one side of the question or the other.

Instinct is fairly accurate, for example, guiding the beasts to those territories in which proper conditions can be found; and even for them the well-being of the body represents physical evidence of their “being in the proper place at the proper time.” [...]

(Intently:) They understand the beneficial teaching quality of disease, and follow their own instinctive ways of treating it. [...]

Such “thinking” exists, using the analogy, within the framework of instinct, whereas your own verbalized thoughts can also intrude outside of that framework. [...]

[...] You can compare this sense with instinct, as you think of it, although it is concerned with the innate knowledge of the entire universe. [...]

[...] Now your physical perceptions operating alone are often responsible for these doubts for you think you are all that you can see of yourselves, or you think your life is all that you presently perceive of it, and so if you trust in your physical senses alone then you must, indeed, be filled with doubts for you know, instinctively, that you are more than the self that you are presently able to materialize or to give expression to. If you judge yourself according to the physical self that you know, then you must be filled again by doubts because again instinctively, you know that you are more. [...]

[...] You have been brought up to accept that as a criteria for existence and yet each of you instinctively knows that you are far more than this, and those of you here realize it quite well and so you are driven to other than physical means. [...]

When you view the animal kingdom, you also do so through your specialized sexual beliefs, studying the behavior of the male and female, looking for patterns of aggressiveness, territorial jealousy, passivity, mothering instincts, or whatever. [...] To some degree, the so-called mothering instinct belongs to male and female alike in any species that can be so designated. [...]

Good and evil then simply represented the birth of choices, initially in terms of survival, where earlier instinct alone had provided all that was needed. [...]

In terms of simple biological function, you now had a species no longer completely dependent upon instinct, yet still with all the natural built-in desires for survival, and the appearance within it of a mind able to make decisions and distinctions.

Man does have an instinct and a desire to live, and he has an instinct and a desire to die. [...]

[...] It is not that your race has an instinct for destruction, although it does have what can really be called an instinct for manipulation. What seems to be a destructive instinct is instead an inability to control emotional energy, and to discharge it in a most effective manner.

[...] His true instincts lead him spontaneously toward the desire to better the quality of his own life and that of others. [...]

[...] Your beliefs, for example, cause you to deny the existence of emotions in animals, and any instances of love among them are assigned to “blind” instinct.

[...] 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.

[...] Scientists like to say that animals operate through simple instinctive behavior, without will or volition: It is no accomplishment for a spider to make its web, a beaver its dam, a bird its nest, because according to such reasoning, such creatures cannot perform otherwise. [...]

Some pessimistic scientists would say: “Of course,” for man and animal alike are driven by their instincts, and man’s claim to free will is no more than an illusion.

[...] Therefore much of their knowledge was instinctive with them, and this particular group then went through what you would call the various technological stages very rapidly.

[...] With them, the desire for peace was almost what you would call an instinct. [...]

The approach that you use in the production of art is instinctively “magical.” [...]

[...] They do not have conscious memory, again, but the instinctive memory of the cells and organs sustains them. [...]

[...] It nestles safely within the confines of its instincts while exploring other aspects of awareness with which man is not so intimately familiar. [...]

[...] The person is taught to mistrust the most the abilities he or she instinctively trusts the most. [...]

This does not mean that anyone consciously decides to get such-and-such a disease, but it does mean that some people instinctively realize that their own individual development and fulfillment does now demand another new framework of existence.

[...] They cannot be patterned upon other people’s. (Long pause.) He has his own way of dealing with details—an instinctive manner. [...]

[...] He does, however, possess excellent instincts in certain directions that automatically bring money to you and insures the publication of his books and so forth. [...]

[...] Instinctively I reached out to touch the foot as she explained what had happened to me, and she cried out even louder. [...]