“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] Jane got herself back into position across the coffee table from me while I described what I’d learned lately about Cro-Magnon man, who had lived in Europe some 35,000 years ago. The Cro-Magnon are of the same species, Homo sapiens, as modern man. [...] Next we talked about early man in Palestine, before 3000 B.C.

[...] It is true that reading and writing have certain advantages over such procedures, but it is also true that knowledge possessed in that old fashion became a part of a man, and a society, in a much more personal, meaningful manner. [...] It is true that, practically speaking, a man’s mind, or a woman’s, could not hold all of the information available now in your world—but much of that information does not deal with basic knowledge about the universe or man’s place within it. [...]

[...] It’s an excellent point, I said, that in her ability to tap into a seemingly endless amount of Seth material, she strikes a parallel with early man and his capacity to carry all personal, cultural, and historical information within himself. As early man functioned on his own, without writing or any of the other modern conveniences of communication that we have, so does Jane function through Seth. [...]

[...] Early man was in that same position, and his inventions—his tools, his artistry, and so forth—came into being from the inner, ever-present realm of the mind, triggered by his unconscious but quite real estimation of his position within the universe at large, and in regard to his own environment.

In your terms of time, man has always projected unassimilated psychological elements of his own personality outward, but in much earlier times he did this using a multitudinous variety of images, personifications, gods, goddesses, demons and devils, good spirits and bad. Before the Roman gods were fully formalized, there was a spectacular range of good and bad deities, with all gradations [among them], that more or less “democratically” represented the unknown but sensed, splendid and tumultuous characteristics of the human soul, and have stood for those sensed but unknown glimpses of his own reality that man was in one way or another determined to explore.

[...] It is as if (pause) man could not understand his own potentials unless he projected them outward into a godhead, where he could see them in a kind of isolated pure form, recognize them for what they are, and then accept them—the potentials—as a part of his own psychological reality (all very intently). As a species, however, you have not taken the last step. [...] I am not speaking of evil possibilities, but that man must realize that he is responsible for his acts, whether they are called good or evil.

2. Jane’s mention of reincarnation came from my idle speculations at our evening meal, after we’d been told about how a local man and woman had embarked upon a radically new joint life-style, to the consternation of many in our area. [...]

[...] Such cultural models are present in society to begin with, because in one way or another they express in an exaggerated form certain portions of man’s psychological reality that he does not as yet understand. [...]

[...] Now man is obviously part of nature, so you may say: “But those changes wrought by him are natural.” When he studies such animal behavior, however, and sometimes uses the sexual patterns of the animals to make certain points about human sexuality, then man does not take this into consideration, but speaks as if the present observed animal behavior is the indication of a prime or basic nature inherent in their biology.

[...] As a result, the religions preached that only man had a soul and was dignified by emotional feelings. 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.

[...] In larger terms, it is as natural for a man to love a man, and for a woman to love a woman, as it is to show love for the opposite sex. [...]

[...] Heterosexuality, however, rests upon the bisexual basis, and (intently) without man’s bisexual nature, the larger frameworks of the family — the clan, tribe, government, civilization — would be impossible.

Now: Man has a far greater leeway. [...] Man’s “I am,” [seemingly] apart from nature — a characteristic necessary for the development of his kind of consciousness — led him into value judgments, and also necessitated some break with the deep inner certainties of other species.

Man grants rich psychological activity to his own species but denies it in others. [...]

Man is so highly verbal that he finds it difficult to understand that other species work with idea-complexes (with a hyphen) of a different kind, in which of course thought as you consider it is not involved. [...]

[...] With the emergence of man’s particular kind of consciousness, other issues become involved. [...]

[...] Man always does best, or his best, when he sees himself in heroic terms. While the Roman Catholic Church gave him a powerful, cohesive belief system (pause), for many reasons those beliefs shifted so that the division between man and God became too great. (Pause.) Man the sinner took over from man the child of God. As a result, one you see in art particularly, man became a heroic figure, then a natural one. [...] Man’s sense of inquiry led him, then, to begin to paint more natural portraits and images. [...] As it occurred, however, [man] began to make great distinctions between the world of the imagination and the world of nature, until finally he became convinced that the physical world was real and the imaginative world was not. [...]

The main issue, however, in that particular era, was a shared belief system, a system that consisted of, among other things, implied images that were neither here nor there—neither entirely earthly nor entirely divine—a mythology of God, angels, demons, an entire host of Biblical characters that were images in man’s imagination, images to be physically portrayed. [...] Using them, the artist automatically commented upon the world, the times, God, man, and officialdom.

Later, as man insisted upon more objectivity of a certain kind, he determined that images of men should look like men—human beings, with weaknesses and strengths. [...]

The species uses those conditions, however, so that the paintings of the great masters can serve as models and impetuses, not simply for the extraordinary artwork involved, but to rearouse within man those emotions that brought the paintings into being.

[...] The full extent of these policies in their specific form is not realized by the man’s superiors. The man thinks he is acting in response to demands put upon him by his superiors.

[...] A stout man who either wears glasses, or has worn them, with pale eyes; or the lenses of his glasses are extremely pale. [...]

[...] Two men, somewhat younger than the stout man. [...]

[...] He said that Seth had correctly described the stout man with glasses, though the description was so general it could apply to many.

[...] You saw the species pitted against nature, and man pitted against man. [...] Man is seen in opposition in the most immediate fashion with his own father. [...]

These changes first occurred in man’s stories of the deities. [...] Man first changed his myths, and then altered the reality that reflected them.

In usual historic terms, humanity has been experimenting with its own unique kind of consciousness, and as I have mentioned many times, this necessitated an arbitrary division between the subject and the perceiver — nature and man — and brought about a situation in which the species came to consider itself apart from the rest of existence.

[...] It is what others will think about his masculinity that such a man is concerned with. [...]

[...] If God could tell a man to slay a son, and if private revelation were granted validity, then “divinely inspired crimes” might not only be legion, but might also take man’s energies away from accepted Godly pursuits—like fighting the infidels or heretics at home (all louder).

[...] Obedience was man’s largest responsibility to the Godhead of the Old Testament. [...]

[...] This was largely out of self-interest, and the many Protestant faiths are a proof of the fragmentation that results when man is given some freedom to interpret his relationship with God himself.

For centuries, priests of one kind or another have been put in charge of “reading God’s messages,” and interpreting them to the rest of mankind, just as in later times the scientists have been put in the position of interpreting man’s own world to him—in terms quite as esoteric as those of any religion. [...]

[...] The need for language arose, however, as man became less a dreamer and more immersed in the specifics of space and time, for in the dream state his communications with his fellows and other species was instantaneous. [...] There is a great underlying unity in all of man’s so-called early cultures—cave drawings and religions—because they were all fed by that common source, as man tried to transpose inner knowledge into physical actuality.

Then in your terms man began, with the other species, to waken more fully into the physical world, to develop the exterior senses, to intersect delicately and precisely with space and time. Yet man still sleeps and dreams, and that state is still a firm connective with his own origins, and with the origins of the universe as he knows it as well.

[...] Man was aware of its support in a luxurious, intimate fashion. [...]

(8:58.) During this period, incidentally, mental activity of the highest, most original variety was the strongest dream characteristic, and the knowledge [man] gained was imprinted upon the physical brain: what is now completely unconscious activity involving the functions of the body, its relationship with the environment, its balance and temperature, its constant inner alterations. [...]

3. Nor was I quick enough to ask Seth if the material Jane delivered for him tonight constituted any kind of contradiction with that of the 689th session; for in that session he discussed man-animal and animal-man as existing within the Tertiary Period. Presumably these “mutated forms” had implied the beginnings of man, in ordinary terms, yet now Seth spoke of cave-dwelling humans as coexistent with large birds at an earlier time. [...] Was it possible that during the complicated rhythms of history, man could have been man (at least approximately as we know him) even before the Tertiary Period, then moved into a long cycle of animal-man forms before returning to being man again? [...]

[...] (Her eyes wide and dark, Jane held up her hands, fingers bent as though ready to grasp — or claw.) When he was a cave dweller,³ man saw these birds often, particularly in cliffs by water. [...] Man identified with their easy flight up the cliffsides, and followed the sounds of their songs to safe clearings. [...]

Darwin managed to bring out nature’s complexity, though this had been mentioned by other men—I believe by a man called Mendel in particular. But Mendel did not catch man’s imagination. Darwin then brought nature to man’s focus in a new way, for before neither science or religion had dealt with it in a meaningful manner. The full sweep and extent of the natural world , with all of its seeming ambiguities, cruelties and splendors, had to be accepted as more than a passive package delivered into man’s hand. [...]

[...] A man could scarcely trust his neighbor if he agreed with Darwin or Freudian concepts. [...] Before all of this, however, nature was seen as primarily passive—put here by God for man’s purpose, but without possessing the uniqueness or even approaching the status of man. [...]

[...] Under its banner of suggestion, however, the great parade of men and other living creatures are observed so that the hypothesis brings about its own hypnotic focus—so that creatures, man, and indeed the universe itself, seem to behave in certain highly ritualized fashions. [...]

[...] It has colored man’s societies and cultures since its inception. [...]

[...] The old man also stands for Ruburt’s father, as Ruburt thought of him bumming around, frittering away his time and energy, so he was stealing from the pot. [...] (Pause.) The old man also stood for old man time in the dream, and reinstated the fact that an executor is important, for the old man also stood for —in the dream, now—Ruburt’s father acting as his own executor—meaning that his nature led him to leave ends loose.

Ruburt suspects this man of helping himself in somewhat the same manner, in the meantime. [...] There is a missing key, and the old man also possesses one to the mechanism, which he finally gives to Ruburt, who then operates it. [...]

The ideal may be specific, then, or ill-defined, and man’s idea of “the good” varies considerably. [...]

On the other hand, of course, the very individuality implied in art itself tells you that even the ideal must follow its own eccentric patterns, and that man must find his own way out of his l-a-c-k-s (spelled). [...]

[...] The truth behind such relationships is inherent in all God-Man, God-Woman, Animal-Man, or Animal-Woman legends and mythology. There are connections, then, between man and the animals and the so-called gods (in small letters), that hint at psychological and natural realities.

Man is a part of that trans-species consciousness also, as are the plants and animals. Also, part of man’s reality contributes to that trans-species organization, but he has not chosen to focus his practical daily consciousness in that direction, or to identify his individuality with it. [...]

[...] You count your religions, sciences, archeologies, and triumphs over the environment, and it seems to you that no other consciousness has wrought what man’s has produced. [...]

[...] Such identities represent the combined organizations of consciousness of land, man, and animal, within any given realm. [...]

There is no point where the child ceases and the man begins, and no point where the young man ceases and the old man begins. [...]

[...] He knew that it would be quite an occasion for this young man to visit informally, so to speak, with the mayor, though he would vehemently deny it; and yet Ruburt did not want the man in the house, therefore denying him such a privilege at least in thought.

[...] The idea is current in academic psychologicalcircles that the child exists psychologically intact in the man, that the man contains within him the psychological replica of the child that was.

A connection with a man as close to him as a brother, so to speak, with sandy hair, who is somehow connected with the object. (Pause of 50 seconds.) The object also had to do with an understanding that was reached between the owner and another man.

Now we have another man, who is also contemplative and determined—but this man is pursued by time. [...]

That “work,” however, is in your case the natural gift of the first man described—and he, it seems, must work under the demands of the second man, taking all of his ideas of time, sexual roles, and social demands into consideration. [...]

Moving to this house, (any house),brought those hidden demands into some prominence, and then the second man’s idea of a householder were further laid upon our first man’s shoulders. [...]

With your projects of the past finished, the “man who needed a job” had no job. [...] That man approves of creative projects only when he thinks of them as jobs, when they become acceptable as legitimate male pursuits. [...]

(Long pause at 9:25.) Some other civilizations have believed that illness was sent by demons or evil spirits, and that the world was full of good and bad spirits, invisible, intermixed with the elements of nature itself, and that man had to walk a careful line lest he upset the more dangerous or mischievous of those entities. In man’s history there have been all kinds of incantations, meant to mollify the evil spirits that man believed were real in fact and in religious truth.

Science, however, seeing the body as a mechanism, has promoted the idea that consciousness is trapped within a mechanical model, that man’s suffering is mechanically caused in that regard: You simply give the machine some better parts and all will be well (amused). Science also operates as magic, of course, so on some occasions the belief in science itself will seemingly work miracles: The new heart will give a man new heart, for example.

Illness was suffered, was sent by God to purge the soul, to cleanse the body, to punish the sinner, or simply to teach man his place by keeping him from the sins of pride. [...]

It is easy enough to look at those belief structures and shrug your shoulders, wondering at man’s distorted views of reality. [...]

(I said I was most curious that Seth comment, since what the movie showed was so at odds with his material on early man in Dreams. [...] It had to be wrong — for all it depicted was savagery, on the parts of animals, apes, dogs, man, cannibals, and so forth. [...]

The environment, man, and the animals were all characterized as ferocious, hostile to each other, each one determined to attain survival at the expense of the other. Man could not have existed under the conditions fostered in the moving picture — nor for that matter could any of the animals. [...]

The picture of man, animals, and nature depicted in the movie of which you were speaking is the only possible portrayal of reality that could be logically shown, considering the beliefs upon which the premise rests.

Man’s brain was always the size that it is now —

[...] This also presents you with an example of the ways in which early man expanded his own knowledge and experience in the dream state. In the same way, as mentioned in Dreams, man also had dream images of actual geographical locations to which he had not physically traveled.

[...] For Adam was the first man, at least according to the Bible. [...]

[...] The bible that you recognize — or that is recognized — is not the first, however, but was compiled from several earlier ones as man tried to look back, so to speak, and recount his past and predict his future.

(4:19 p.m. Neither of us had particularly thought that my dream-paternal feelings represented an analogy with the way early man had expanded his own knowledge while in the dream state — but we saw the connection as soon as Seth mentioned it. [...]

[...] Christ, as you know, was a common name, so when I say that there was a man named Christ involved in those events (see Seth Speaks), I do not mean to say that he was the biblical Christ. [...]

[...] As I stated before, that part of the world was filled with would-be messiahs, self-proclaimed prophets, and so forth, and in those terms it was only a matter of time before man’s great spiritual and psychic desires illuminated and filled up that psychological landscape, filling the prepared psychological patterns with a new urgency and intent. [...]

[...] You must understand man’s need and capacity for fulfillment, dramatization, and psychic creativity.

[...] And the belief was man’s response to (long pause) intuitional knowledge, to inner knowing, and to spiritual comprehension.

(“It’s wild,” she continued, “but I know that all of this is leading up to alternate man, probable man, and parallel man. [...]

[...] There was never any straight line of development as, say, from reptiles to mammal, ape, and man. [...] There were animal-men and man-animals, using your terms, that shared both time and space for many centuries.⁶ This is, as you all well know, a physical system in time. [...]

[...] Man’s particular kind of consciousness fiercely identified with the body. [...] The cell might gladly “die,” but the specifically oriented man-and-animal consciousness would not so willingly let go.

Man’s consciousness, and to some extent that of the animals, is more specifically identified with form, however. In order to develop his own kind of individualized awareness, man had to consciously ignore for a while his own place within the structure of the earth. [...]