“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A tree knows a human being also … by the weight of a boy upon its branches … by the vibrations in the air as adults pass, which hit the tree’s trunk at varying distances, and even by voices. You must remember what I said earlier about mental enzymes and my remark that color can sometimes be heard … The tree recognizes a human being, though it does not see the human being in your terms. It does not build up the image of a man, but it builds up a composite sensation which represents, say, a given individual. And the tree will recognize the same man who passes it by each day.

Man’s ego causes him to interpret everything else in light of himself. He loses much in this manner. The ego can be compared to the bark of a tree. The bark is flexible, vibrant, and grows with the growth beneath. It is a tree’s contact with the outer world, the tree’s interpreter and, to some degree, the tree’s companion. So should man’s ego be.

As to Jane’s feeling about the tree having a certain consciousness, of course this is the case. What you have here is latent energy, vitality and capacity, with much of it withheld or suspended momentarily. The tree is dissociated in one manner. In some ways, its living forces and consciousness are kept to a minimum. It is in a state of drowsiness on the one hand; and on the other, it focuses the usable portion of its energy into being a tree.

Neither should the ego react so violently that it remembers and reacts to past storms in the midst of clear and sunny weather. You can understand the analogy, Joseph. You know that such a tree bark would be death to the tree. What you must still understand is that the same applies to any individual and the ego. It applies to you. And Ruburt must learn that it is equally ridiculous to act as if it is a summer day in the middle of wintertime. The tree has enough sense not to show blossoms in a blizzard.

[...] The ego is definitely an advancement, but it can be compared to the bark of the tree in many ways. The bark of the tree is flexible, extremely vibrant, and grows with the growth beneath. It is a tree’s contact with the outer world, the tree’s interpreter, and to some degree the tree’s companion.

The inner tree continues to grow because the bark is flexible. Man lets his ego face the outer world as does the tree bark, and this is its purpose. Nevertheless the inner self, like the inner tree, must have room to expand. The tree bark makes allowances for good weather (here Jane pounded the table) though bad weather is repulsive to the bark. [...] Nor does it solidify, stopping the flow of sap to the treetop for fear the dumb tree, not knowing what it was up to, would bump its head against the sky.

Your tree lives through its inner senses, experiencing many sensations and reacting to many stimuli of which you are unaware. Minute earth tremors, even the motion of small ants about its lower trunk, are recognized and experienced by tree consciousness. Such invisibilities as humidity, radioactivity and all electrical earthly values, are felt as quite real things by your tree and recognized as being separate from the tree itself.

The idea of dissociation could be likened to the slight distance between the bark and the inside of the tree. [...] We have instead a flexible bark, changing with the elements, protecting the inner tree or the inner self, but flexible, opening up or closing in rhythmic motion. The bark is so to speak outside our tree; and there is a small space between the inner tree and the bark. [...]

(First I thought of Seth’s assertion in the 92nd session for September 28, 1964, that “trees have their dreams”; [in Volume 1, see the quotations in Note 1 for Session 698]. Then I remembered that he’d come through with extensive material on tree consciousness in a much earlier session. [...] It contains many intriguing ideas — as, for example: “A tree knows a human being also … [yet it] does not even build up an image of a man, which is why this is so difficult to explain … And the same tree will recognize the same man who passes it by each day.”

To your way of thinking some lives are lived in a twinkling, and others last for centuries, as some huge trees. The perception of consciousness is not limited … I have told you, for example, that the consciousness of the tree is not as specifically focused as your own. To all intents and purposes, however, the tree is conscious of 50 years before and 50 years hence.

(Next, the subject matter of the 18th session led me to recall that Seth had also discussed trees several years later. [...]

the apples grow in the trees

oak tree

the oak tree grows and I grow

then I can speak to the oak tree

7. Seth’s material on trees reminded me of his 18th session for January 22, 1964. [...] It’s full of evocative statements that were new to us at the time, since the sessions were barely underway: “As to Jane’s feeling about trees having [a certain kind of] consciousness, of course this is the case … The tree is dissociated in one manner. It is in a state of drowsiness on the one hand, and on the other it focuses the usable portion of its energy into being a tree.

“A tree knows human beings also … by the vibrations in the air as they pass, which hit the tree’s trunk from varying distances, and even by such things as voices. The tree does not build up an image of man, but a composite sensation which represents an individual. And the same tree will recognize the same person who passes it by each day….”

A simple tree deals with the nature of probabilities as it thrusts forward into new seeds. [...] The tree knows its present and future history,⁷ in your terms, but it understands a future that is not preordained. [...] In deeper terms the tree’s seeds also realize that there is a future there — a variety of futures toward which they grope.

[...] I have told you, for example, that trees have their own consciousness. The consciousness of a tree is not as specifically focused as your own, yet to all intents and purposes, the tree is conscious of 50 years before its existence, and 50 years hence. [...]

A tree reflected in the water is still the same tree, and unchanged as the mental act is unchanged. As the reflection of the tree, however, gives a waving and distorted appearance, so as the idea is projected into another field it also is seen in a distorted fashion.

In your field, when the tree is reflected in the water, the tree itself is stationary. In our basic universe the tree, while remaining stationary, would nevertheless fall crashing into the water.

The distorted reflection of the tree in no way changes the actual tree. [...]

We are merely adding dimensions of actuality here that your tree does not have, and we are also adding a differential mobility which your tree does not possess.

I am sorry that your tree has vanished, yet we all know that the tree has not really vanished. And I hope that you will use your inner senses to create the tree in your mind for the painting that you have begun. Now it will be a better tree in the painting, for you will be able to create the essence of the tree.

(This afternoon at about 2 PM workmen took down the tree that had partially fallen on March 6. See the 33rd session. It was a very beautiful elm tree that died several years ago, and I was quite attached to it. With a power saw one man cut into the base of the tree; pulling on a rope thrown over a higher branch, two other men pulled it down. When the tree fell its branches seemed to crumple and break as though there was no strength left in them. [...]

[...] What you actually felt when the tree fell was the pain of the tree, in much muted form. The tree while dead still had consciousness. [...]

(“What was the sensation I felt when the tree fell?”)

The proximity of so many trees also has considerable health value, and to those doing psychic or other creative work the effects are particularly conducive to a peaceful state of mind. Trees are great users and yet conservators of energy, and they automatically provide much vitality to areas in which they are plentiful. [...] Besides that, however, the consciousnesses of trees are remarkably kind and enduring.⁵

[...] In those terms, now, trees are also guardians. [...] You cannot put a leash on them and walk them around the block, yet trees form a protective barrier about, say, a home or a neighborhood. [...] The trees in that (hill house) neighborhood then are particularly friendly, strong, and protective, and they will help renew your energies.

5. See Seth’s discussion of tree consciousness in Session 727; Note 7 for that session contains excerpts from his tree data in the 18th session (for January 22, 1964) and in the 453rd session (for December 4, 1968). [...]

“The table beside Ruburt senses him even as Ruburt senses the table … The abilities of the tree are latent in man as, dear Joseph, are the abilities of man latent in the tree.”

[...] As you can climb trees, both up and down the branches, so you can climb times in the same way. [...] The family tree exists at once — but that tree is only one tree that appears in the land of time. [...] There are probable family trees, then. [...]

[...] Culture is as real and natural as trees and rocks, so see the various cultures of these three groups as natural environments of the different places or countries; and imagine, then, each group exploring the unique environment of the land into which they have journeyed. [...]

Following our analogy, in the dream world the shadow of the oak tree, once cast, would then be free to pursue its own direction. Not only that, but there would be a creative give-and-take between it and the tree that gave it birth. Anyone fully accustomed to inner reality would have no difficulty in telling the dream oak tree from its frisky shadow, however (humorously), any more than awaking photographer would have trouble distinguishing the physical oak tree from its counterpart upon the grass.

Now: The physical shadow of a tree bears witness to the existence of a tree, even if you see only the shadow; so your hallucinations appearing in dreams also bear witness to their origin, and give testimony to a valid “objective” dream object that is as “solid” (slowly) in that reality as the tree is in your world.

[...] A shadow of a tree cools the ground. [...]

Physically, an oak tree may cast a rich deep shadow upon the ground. [...]

[...] Very simply: I dreamed that I was a youth, and that even though there was snow on the ground I’d been given the task of taking care of a beautiful young tree growing in a large field next to the Butts family home in Sayre, Pennsylvania. (Sayre is only 18 miles from Elmira, New York, where Jane and I live now.) Even though it was wintertime, the tree carried a sparse cover of leaves. Nearby in the dream were old industrial buildings, in which I became lost—but I found my way out of them and returned to the tree. My interpretation is that I saw the tree as the tree of life even then, and that I’d chosen to remain close to the world of nature and art instead of immersing myself in the safer industrial one. [...]

[...] The next day we were ready to get back to our writing and painting, but first I cleared the house of holiday paraphernalia—including our beautiful Christmas tree. I carefully propped up the tree, a balsam fir, in the woods at the back of the hill house. I told myself that next summer the tree’s skeleton would remind me of the days that had passed since 1980 began, in our terms; I knew I’d be grateful for having physically experienced every one of them. [And as an artist, I’d be as much intrigued by the tree’s naked structure as I had been when it bore its dense greenery.]

Take the English sentence: “I observe the tree.” If that original language had words, the equivalent would be: “As a tree, I observe myself.”

(Long pause at 10:03.) Or: “Taking on my tree nature, I rest in my shade.” Or even: “From my man nature, I rest in the shade of my tree nature.” [...]

[...] He graciously thanked the tree that gave him shade, for example, and he understood that the tree retained its own identity even when it allowed his awareness to join with it.

[...] He no longer merged his awareness, so that he learned to look at a tree as one object, where before he would have joined with it, and perhaps viewed his own standing body from the tree’s vantage point. [...]

My mention of the tree in the kitchen was made because I happen to enjoy seeing it when Ruburt makes his twice-weekly journeys up and down the living room floor. A tree is a living symbol to you Joseph, but I certainly do not insist that the tree be left uncovered though personally I see no reason why any other changes have to be made in the kitchen, except for the addition of the refrigerator. [...]

(Seth’s reference to a tree concerns one I had drawn directly on the kitchen wall, in India ink on the yellow paint. [...] One can look into the kitchen from one end of the living room and thus see the tree, and in a subdued light it is very effective. [...]

[...] It is easy to say to you that such people could identify, say, with the trees, but an entirely different thing to try to explain what it would be like for a mother to become so a part of the tree underneath which her children played that she could keep track of them from the tree’s viewpoint, though she was herself far away.

[...] A person, then, looking out into the world of trees, waters and rock, wildlife and vegetation, literally felt that he or she was looking at the larger, materialized, subjective areas of personal selfhood.

[...] Such a person, however, walking through the forest, also felt that he or she was also a portion of the inner life of each rock or tree, materialized. [...]

[...] To your way of thinking some lives are lived in a twinkling, and others last for centuries, as some huge trees. [...] I have told you for example that trees have their own consciousness. The consciousness of the tree is not as specifically focused however as your own. To all intents and purposes the tree is conscious of 50 years before and 50 years hence.

[...] (Pause, smile.) The possibilities that have come to reality within this universal system have each given birth to other systems and other realities, as one tree bears a thousand seeds. [...]

[...] And then he looks up to the asparagus and to the vines and to the tree. And the tree is much larger so surely, the tree must be God. Aha, but the tree does not look like an onion so, therefore, the tree could not be God. [...]

I told you (to Rachel) to get a Christmas tree. If you get a Christmas tree then I will come over and look at it. [...]

Now (to Rachel) before I forget, Ruburt asked me and, of course, the answer is yes, whether or not you put up your Christmas tree. [...]

Whatever your language, you perceive trees, mountains, people, oceans. You never see a man merge with a tree, for example. [...]

A man, wondering what a tree was like, became one, and let his own consciousness flow into the tree. [...]

You will have to give us time… (Pause, one of many.) When a man’s consciousness, for example, blended with that of a tree, those data became “visual” for others to perceive. [...]

This sense would permit our man to feel the basic sensations felt by the tree, so that instead of looking at the tree his consciousness would expand to contain the experience of what it is like to be a tree. [...]

Imagine a man standing on a corner, looking down the street at a tree a block away. He need not walk that distance in order to know what is there since he can see everything between himself and the tree, at least as far as large objects are concerned. [...]

[...] If you were, or if man A was blind, he would not see the tree in question. [...] Let us pretend this state of events, and let us compare the physical objects between our man and his tree to points somewhat corresponding to them in the inner world. [...]

[...] Now when our man in the automobile reaches the tree he is further ahead, so to speak, in distance. [...]

[...] It is composed of rocks and trees, grass and hills, and in your terms of time you can look at it, see it as such, give it a name, and ignore its equally independent parts. [...] It is not invaded by the trees or rocks that compose it, and while trees grow and die the mountain itself, at least in your terms of time, exists despite the changes. [...]

[...] Even the trees at the highest tip of the hillside send sturdy roots into the ground, and receive from it nourishment and vitality — and there is a great give-and-take between the smallest sapling in the foothills and the most ancient pine. [...] Trees, rocks, and grass constantly exchange places as energy changes form (very forcefully, leaning forward, eyes wide and dark).

Now: Trees bear seeds. [...] Others are carried by the wind some distances into areas that the tree itself, for all of its height, could not perceive.

(Long pause.) Because a tree is physical, physical properties will be involved, and the seeds will mature following certain general principles or characteristics. Atoms and molecules will sometimes form trees; sometimes they will become parts of couches. [...]

[...] In color: I’d looked out the south window of the bedroom to see Fred Kardon standing out on the lawn; he was talking to someone else who was doing some kind of work near the big pine tree that grows up over the corner of the house. Not on the tree itself. [...]

(Long pause.) In your dream, the tree represents the tree of life, or nature, growing on its own, repairing itself as it goes along. [...]