“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Survival, of course, is important, but it is not the prime purpose of a species, in that it is a necessary means by which that species can attain its main goals. Of course [a species] must survive to do so, but it will, however, purposefully avoid survival if the conditions are not practically favorable to maintain the quality of life or existence that is considered basic.

In that environment there is a cooperative sociability of a biological nature, that is understood by the animals in their way, and taken for granted by the young of your own species. The means are given so that the needs of the individual can be met. The granting of those needs furthers the development of the individual, its species, and by inference all others in the fabric of nature.

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.

The species is in a state of transition, one of many. This one began, generally speaking, when the species tried to step apart from nature in order to develop the unique kind of consciousness that is presently your own. That consciousness is not a finished product, however, but one meant to change, [to] evolve and develop.” Certain artificial divisions were made along the way that must now be dispensed with.

(9:40.) We have been speaking about probable men, and do intend to deal more deeply with probable man [or woman], as that is applied to your species. The events of the species begin with the individual, however. All of the powers, abilities, and characteristics inherent in the species are inherent in any individual member of it. Through understanding your own unknown reality, therefore, you can learn much about the unknown reality of the species.

As you are looking at one photograph in your personal history, that represents your emergence in this particular reality — or the reality that was accepted as official at the time it was taken — so you are looking at a picture of a representative of your species, caught in a particular moment of probability. That species has as many offshoots and developments as you have privately. As there are probable selves in private terms, there are probable selves in terms of the species. As you have your recognized, official personal past, so in your system of actuality you have more or less accepted an official mass history (see Note 2). Under examination, however, that history of the species shows many gaps and discrepancies, and it leaves many questions to be answered.

[...] Yet each location is as unique as the habitat of any animal — as private, as shared, as significant in terms of the individual and the species of which that individual is a part. Simply to stretch your imagination: When you look at your photograph, imagine that you are a representative of a species, caught there in just that particular pose, and that the frame of the photograph represents, now, “a cage of time.” [...] That specimen, that individual, that you, represents not only yourself but one aspect of your species. [...]

(“What we know of the species can be compared to what we know about ourselves as individuals. [...] The individual, like the species, exists in multidimensional terms; and hovers around focuses of probabilities, weaving in and out of alternate realities constantly.

[...] (Pause.) In a way, some disease states help to insure the survival of the species — not by weeding out the sickly but by introducing into large numbers of individuals the conditions needed to stabilize other strains within the species that need to be checked, or to “naturally inoculate” the species against a sensed greater danger.

[...] In a way (underlined) in each body, the species settles upon a known status quo, and yet experiments creatively at many levels with cellular alterations, chromosomal variations, so that of course each body is unique. [...] Under certain conditions, some so-called disease states could insure the species’ survival.

[...] (Pause.) The dreams of the species are highly important to its survival — not just because dreaming is a biological necessity, but because in dreams the species is immersed in deeper levels of creativity, so that those actions, inventions, ideas that will be needed in the future will appear in their proper times and places. [...]

(10:20.) Give us a moment… Now many of the characteristics you consider human — in fact, most of them — appear to one extent or another in all other species. It was the nature of man’s dreams, however, that was largely responsible for what you like to think of as the evolution of your species. [...]

[...] If a portion of the race is hurt it may take a while before “you” feel the pain, but the entire unconscious mechanism of the species will try to heal the wound. [...] A biological brotherhood exists, an inner empathy on cellular levels, connecting all individuals of the species with one another. [...] It exists in all species, and connects all species.

[...] This applies in terms of the species as well as individuals. Because you are now a conscious species, in your terms, there are racial idealizations that you can accept or deny. [...]

[...] In the same way all members of the species are benefited by the happiness, health, and fulfillment of any of those individuals who compose it. [...] One part of the species cannot grow or develop at the expense of the other portions for very long.

[...] They move toward like thoughts, and you have as a species an inner mass body of thought. [...]

[...] When your species sees that it is destroying other species and disrupting the natural balance, then it is consciously aware of its violation. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

[...] This is of course a learning process, natural within the time system that the species adopted. [...]

[...] Again, the injunction had to be flexible enough to cover any situations in which the conscious species could become involved. [...]

[...] In your terms, it contains the physical history of the species in context with the probable future capabilities of the species. You choose your genetic structure so that it suits the challenges and capabilities of the species. [...]

(Long pause.) I am not simply saying that genetic activity can be changed, for example, through something like a nuclear accident, but that highly beneficial alterations can also take place in genetic behavior, as in your terms the genetic structure not only prepares the species for any contingency, but also prepares it by triggering those characteristics and abilities that are needed by the species at any given time, and also by making allowances for such future developments (all quite forcefully).

[...] But man’s life is obviously dependent upon the existence of life’s other species, and with him those species share certain values. [...]

(Long pause.) Perhaps at first that prejudice of the reasoning mind might escape you, since after all mice are far divorced from your own species. (Louder:) There were Jews sacrificed to the same end not too long ago, and the reasoning was largely the same, though in that case you were dealing with your own species.

(Long pause.) One particular experiment in consciousness may be pursued by one species, for example, and that knowledge given to another, or transferred to another, where it appears as “instinct.” [...] I have said that evolution does not exist as you think of it, in any kind of one-line, ape-to-man time sequence.^l No other species developed in that manner, either. [...]

[...] Land changes and alterations of species are conditions brought about in line with overall patterns that involve all species, or land and water masses, at any given “time.” [...]

(Long pause.) In a larger sense the same applies to any given species. [...] On the one hand as a species your present forms your future, but in even deeper terms your precognitive awareness of your own possibilities from the future helps to form the present that will then make that probable future your reality.

The church ignored Christ’s physical birth, for example, and made his mother an immaculate virgin, which meant that the consciousness of the species would for a longer time ignore its relationship with nature and its feminine aspects. [...] Man would believe he did indeed have dominion over the earth as a separate species, for God the Father had given it to him.

(Long pause, one of many.) The challenges and problems of the species were different from those of others. [...] If that were true, the species never would have been concerned beyond the issues of physical survival, and such is not the case. The species could have survived quite well physically without philosophy, the arts, politics, religion, or even structured language. [...]

(Pause at 9:38.) Biologically, the sexual orientation is the method chosen for continuation of the species. [...] Those that do are the result of programming, and are not inherent — even biologically — in the species itself.

The vitality of the species in fact was assured because it did not overspecialize in terms of sexuality. [...] Instead, the species could reproduce freely so that in the event of a catastrophe of any kind, it would not be so tied into rigid patterns that it might result in extinction.

[...] You interpret the past history of your species in the same manner. [...] The family of the caveman was a far more “democratic” group than you suppose — men and women working side by side, children learning to hunt with both parents, women stopping to nurse a child along the way, the species standing apart from others because it was not ritualized in sexual behavior.

[...] The great facility and adaptability of the human species are dependent upon an amazing interplay between genetic preciseness and genetic freedom. The very characteristic attributes of the species, its dependability and integrity, are dependent upon constant checks and balances, the existence of divergent characteristics against which the species can measure itself.

(Long pause.) Your species as a species includes the idiot and the genius, the stupid and the wise, the athletic, the deformed, the beautiful and the ugly, and all variations in between. [...]

The species is also always in the process of keeping within its genetic bank millions of characteristics that might be needed in various contingencies, and in that regard there is a connection, of course, between, say, viruses of many strains and the health not only of man but of other species.

The possibility of creative change must always be present to insure the species’ resiliency, and that resiliency can show in many ways—in conditions that you consider deformities, disabilities from birth, or in any physical variation from a hypothetical physical norm. [...]

[...] But that also [became] bound up with Darwinian ideas of the survival of the fittest, and with the belief, then, that each individual must seek his or her own good at the expense of others, and by the quite erroneous conception that all of the members of a given species are in competition with each other, and that each species is in further competition with each other species.

(Pause, then all intently:) Religion and science alike denied other species any real consciousness. [...] You are not in competition with other species, nor are you in any natural competition with yourselves. Nor is the natural world in any way the result of competitiveness among species. [...]

[...] In the past you treated the land in your country as if your species, being the “fittest,” had the right to survive at the expense of all other species, and at the expense of the land itself. [...]

Individually, you exist physically because of the unsurpassed cooperation that exists just biologically between your species and all others, and on deeper levels because of the cellular affiliations that exist among the cells of all species. [...]

(Long pause.) From approximately 50 million to 30 million years ago¹ there were innumerable species that would now seem to you to be mutated forms. [...] There were many toolmaking animal species, some predating man’s toolmaking facility. [...] Each species carries in its individual and mass psyche the blueprints of such probable actualities. [...] This applies not only individually, so that the cell knows its future pattern, for example; but in the same way, an entire species will unconsciously have the knowledge of its own “ideal” fulfillment in its overall world environment.

(A one-minute pause at 10:28.) In one way or another all mythology contains descriptions of other species existing on the earth in various forms. [...] There were, then, smaller and larger species of men,⁴ with varying conscious connections with the rest of nature. The larger experiments involved the production of a species that would be a part of the earth, and yet become aware co-creators of it. [...]

All animal gods hint of various experiments and species in which consciousness took different forms, in which the birth of egotistical awareness as you know it tried several areas of exploration. [...]

[...] These inner patterns, native to the psyche of any species, turned into concepts, mental images — intuitive projections that were all meant to give conscious direction. [...]

[...] It has been fashionable in the past to believe that each species was oriented selfishly toward its own survival. [...] Each was seen in competition with all other species. [...] One species might use another, for instance. Species were thought to change, and “mutants” form, because of a previous alteration in the environment, to which any given species had to adjust or disappear. [...]

(10:02.) Give us a moment … So-called future developments of your species are now dependent upon your ideas and beliefs. [...] The same applies to the race — or the species, to be more exact. There is an inexhaustible creativity within the cells themselves, that you are not using as a species because your beliefs lag so far behind your innate biological spirituality and wisdom. [...]

In your terms, consciousness of self did not develop because of any exterior circumstances in which your species won out, so to speak. [...] When they form living creatures they become a physical basis for species alteration. [...]

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[...] What you have in your physical species are the manifestations of inner species of being, or creative groupings originated by consciousness as material patterns into which consciousness then flows. In those terms, the world came into being and the species appeared in a completely different framework of activity than is imagined, and one that cannot be scientifically established — particularly within those boundaries with which science has protected itself.

[...] It is as if, then, the earth, with all of its species, existed in complete form as a fully dimensioned cosmic underpainting, which gradually came alive all at once. [...] Physically the species appeared — all species appeared — in the same way that you might imagine all of the elements of a highly complicated dream suddenly coming alive with physical properties. [...]

(Pause at 10:07.) I understand that it appears that species have vanished, but again you must remember probabilities, and that those species simply “developed” along the patterns of probable earths. [...] You choose your time and focus in physical reality again and again, and the mind holds an inner comprehension of many seemingly mysterious developments involving the species.

[...] So what I really want to ask you for are references to later textbooks, that are more clear and precise than those I have on the origin of major new species. [...]

(10:28.) Now: (Long pause.) Mankind is a species (long pause) that specializes in the use of the imagination, and without the imagination language would be unnecessary. [...] The applied use of the imagination is one of the most distinguishing marks of your species, and the imagination is your connection between the inner worlds of reality and the exterior world of your experience. [...] All species are interconnected, so, as I said earlier, when you think you think for yourselves, you also specialize in thinking for the rest of nature, which physically sustains you.

[...] The true motion of the species, however, has always been psychological, or psychic if you prefer, involving the exploration of ideas. And again, the survival of the species in those terms is basically dependent upon its belief in the meaningfulness of its existence. [...]

Now as far as the species is concerned, all variations are necessary—and it is as if (underlined) in one instance a member of the species—for its own reasons, but also on behalf of the whole—decides to specialize in one particular area, to isolate certain abilities, so to speak, and display them with the greatest tenacity and brilliance, while nearly completely ignoring certain other areas. [...]

[...] A belief in life’s meaning is a necessity on the part of your species.

(9:44.) In those terms, it is basically (underlined) impossible for any given species to become extinct. [...] The genetic patterns for any given species reside, of course, primarily in that species’ genetic bank—but that genetic bank does not exist in isolation, but [is] invisibly connected with the genetic makeup of each other species (all very intently).

There are countless relationships between species that go unrecognized. The generations of all species interact. The genetic cues are not triggered on the proposition, obviously, that a species exists alone on the planet, but also in response to genetic sequences that operate in all of the species combined. [...]

[...] Individually and en masse, and to the extent that our human systems of perception make it possible, our species has created a world and universe built upon a very limited, repetitious creation and interpretation of internal and external data. We could hardly survive without our particular communicative repetition, nor could any other species without its own.

I’ve often thought that the repetition in the Seth books, say, is nothing compared to the repeated barrages of suggestion—much of it negative—that our species has chosen to subject itself to daily. [...] Indeed, however, Jane and I think that in ordinary terms, and for many reasons, our species long ago began creating a great deal of negative thinking and action—so much so that those qualities came to range throughout all facets of our world culture. [...]

Male and female are each members of the human race — or species if you prefer — so these divisions were made in the species itself, by itself. They are the result of distinctions arising, again, as the species experimented with its line of consciousness, and brought into being the appearance of separation between itself and the rest of the natural world.

[...] Only a basic bisexuality could give the species the leeway necessary, and prevent stereotyped behavior of a kind that would hamper creativity and social commerce. That basic sexual nature allows you the fulfillment of individual abilities, so that the species does not fall into extinction. [...]

[...] In terms of history as you understand it, the species could not withstand such misapplied energy, nor could it have withstood such constant antagonism.

Each species is involved in a cooperative venture, upon which ultimately all earthly existence rests. [...]

[...] The EE units, impressing a probable physical field, contain within them the latent knowledge of all of the various species that can emerge under those conditions. [...] You can say that it took untold centuries for the EE units “initially” to combine, form classifications of matter and various species; or you can say that this process happened at once. [...]

These are creative distortions on your part, directly related to specializations of consciousness that cut you off from the greater concourse existing at other levels between the species and the land. [...] Your own consciousness has its particular unique qualities, in that like other comparatively long-lived species, you associate your identity with your form far more rigidly. [...]

[...] Every known species was inherently “present” with the overall impregnation of the visible universe, then.

[...] Then in a creativity that came from the painting itself the colors would grow rich, the species attain their delineations, the winds blow and the seas move with the tides.

I can only hope to evoke some feeling within you that is reminiscent of your own actual behavior at those hidden levels of dreaming activity, but they have remained highly pertinent in the development of all species with their environments, keeping the intents and purposes of one alive in the other. [...] It is retained in latent form within a kind of backup system, so that in terms of probabilities each species carries within its own genetic patterns the blueprints and specializations of each other’s genetic sequence.

[...] (Long pause.) Dreams serve as backup systems also, for example, in the important communications between various peoples or nations—and, particularly when physical communication is cut off between such groups, dreams provide the continuation of information’s flow from one part of the species to another.

[...] Dreaming touches upon both microscopic and macroscopic events, or realities, and is not simply a human characteristic, appropriately appearing within your own range or within your own species. [...]

There are certain kinds of dreams in which the various species then communicate, and in which the energies of the environment and its inhabitants merge. [...]

[...] This would be an almost impossible situation were the species—meaning each species—not given its own avenues of expression and activity, so that it is easier for certain species to behave in certain manners. And each species has its own overall characteristics and propensities that further help it define the sphere of influence in which it will exert its ability to make choices.

(9:17.) Each species is endowed also, by virtue of the units of consciousness that compose it, with an overall inner picture of the condition of each other species (pause), and further characterized by basic impulses so that it is guided toward choices that best fulfill its own potentials for development while adding to the overall good of the entire world consciousness. [...]

The differences among all species are caused by this kind of organization, so that areas of choice are clearly drawn, and areas of free activity clearly specified. The entire gestalt of probable actions, therefore, is already focused to some degree in the species’ differentiations. [...]

[...] The male’s aggressive tendencies, often taken as basic characteristics of the species itself, are a case in point. This is an exaggerated, learned aggressive response, not natural in those terms in your species, or as interpreted in any other species.

[...] This has contributed to the survival of the species by not separating any of its mental or psychological abilities into two opposite camps. Except for the physical processes of reproduction, the species is free to arrange its psychological characteristics in whatever fashions it chooses. [...]

Dictation: Now: Again, as in your terms the species has a physical past, so it has a psychological past. [...] The most private event is still written in the mass psyche of the species.

The great versatility of the species in its reaction to events is highly dependent upon this kind of dreaming capacity. The species tries out its probable reactions to probable events in the dream state, and hence is better prepared for action “in the future.”