APPENDIX 12

(Originally I planned this appendix on evolution to contain just three widely separated excerpts from Seth’s material: an early unpublished session, a few passages in Seth Speaks, and one in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. The appendix, however kept growing as I worked on it; I found myself adding quotations from other sessions, along with comments derived from my own reading and from conversations Jane and I had on the subject.

(I learned that “evolution” can mean many things.¹ Like variations on a theme, it can be progressive or relatively sudden, convergent or divergent. I also learned that once I began to study it, a great amount of material presented itself seemingly without effort on my part, the information ranged all the way from paleontological studies to current biological research on recombinant DNA, and I found it in newspapers, scientific journals and popular magazines, in books and even on television. [I’m sure others have had similar experiences: Once a subject is focused upon, data relative to it seem to leap out from the background welter of daily events and “facts” surrounding one’s life.] Almost automatically, many of the notes for this appendix came to deal with the scientific thinking about evolution, and I realized that I wanted them to show the differences [as well as any similarities that might emerge] between Seth’s concepts and those “official” views prevailing in our physical reality.

(Even so, as I worked on this appendix I wondered again and again why I was investing so much time in it. The answers proved to be simple once I understood. Then I ended up shocked to discover how little real evidence there is to back up the idea of evolution, and fascinated by the limits of scientific thinking. I was quite surprised at my reactions. Somehow Jane and I always understood, to make an analogy, that Seth’s kind of “simultaneous” reincarnation [or anyone else’s kind, for that matter] wasn’t acceptable in our Western societies at this time in history; we could trace out many reasons why this is so. But some time passed before I realized that our ruling intellectual establishments were advancing notions about evolution that were not proven in scientific terms — then teaching these “facts” to succeeding generations. Finally, the humor of the whole situation got through to me: As some have very clearly noted, in the biological and earth sciences especially, circular reasoning often predominates: The theory of evolution is used to prove the theory of evolution.

(The first quotes I’ve put together, then, are from the 44th session for April 15, 1964. In that session Seth gave us his interpretations of some of the basic laws or attributes of the inner universe, but it will be quickly seen that he was really discussing space and time,² as those qualities are perceived in his reality and in ours. In our world, of course, space and time form the environment in which conventional ideas of evolution exist. For that matter, all of the material in this appendix shows the interrelationship between our ideas of serial time and Seth’s simultaneous time. Connected here also is the philosophical concept known as “naïve realism,” which will be discussed briefly later.

(The “value climate of psychological reality” first mentioned in the [44th] session just quoted, is also dealt with through analogy in the 45th session. Portions of that material are given as Appendix 8 in Volume 1; in that session also Seth stated that “value expansion becomes reincarnation, and evolution and growth.” [Seth’s own kind of simultaneous time, of course, easily accommodates all three concepts, although this appendix isn’t concerned with reincarnation.]

(From the beginning, then, Seth has referred to evolution in his material. He attaches his own meanings to it, however, and as I show in this appendix, does not imply that all life as we know it on this planet evolved from a single primeval source. [See notes 5 and 7.]

(For the most part Seth’s ideas are far away from thoughts of replicating genes or the second law of thermodynamics. Through Jane, he grapples with the mysteries of existence in emotional terms, rather than through the impersonal, “scientific,” and really unproven concepts that life originated by accident [more than 3.4 billion years ago,⁸ to give a late estimate], and perpetuates itself through chance mutations. Darwin’s objective thinking, then, cut him off from such comprehensions as Seth advocates. The same was true for many scientists and theistic thinkers in succeeding generations, and in my opinion this holds today. I suggest that the entire 634th session in Personal Reality be read with this appendix, for in it Seth explored some connections between animal and man — including the evolution [my emphasis] by man of “certain animal capacities to their utmost.” At practically the same time, in the 637th session for the following chapter [9], he could tell us: “Note: I did not say that man emerged from the animals.”

(Over a year later Jane supplemented such remarks by Seth with some trance material of her “own”; see Appendix 6 in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. According to her, if man didn’t emerge from the animals, there were certainly close relationships involved — a dance of probabilities between the two, as it were. As I noted at the beginning of this appendix, the Seth material is still incomplete, and new information requires constant correlation with what has come before. Jane’s own material — including whatever she comes up with in the future — ought to be integrated with Seth’s, also, and eventually we hope to find time to do this. Although she left Appendix 6 unfinished, it contains many ideas worth more study: “Some of the experiments with man-animals didn’t work out along our historic lines, but the ghost memories of those probabilities still linger in our biological structure … The growth of ego consciousness by itself set up both challenges and limitations … For many centuries there was no clear-cut differentiation between various aspects of man and animal … there were parallel developments in the emergence of physical man … there were innumerable species of man-in-the-making in your terms….” [I can add that just as Jane supplemented Seth’s material on early man, he in turn has added to hers in a kind of freewheeling exchange; his information is presented later in this appendix.]

(But to some degree many scientists outside physics regard such esoteric particle relationships as being of theoretical interest mainly within that discipline; the concepts aren’t seen as posing any threat to biology, zoology, or geology, for instance, nor do they tinker with naïve realism. The biological sciences can cling to mechanistic theories of evolution by employing the conservative physics of cause and effect to support their conclusions while being aware, perhaps, of the tenets of particle physics. Such “causal analysis” then proves itself over and over again — a situation I wryly note, that’s akin to the criticism I’ve read wherein the theory of evolution is used to prove the theory of evolution. [I mentioned such circular reasoning near the beginning of this appendix.]

(Naïve realism, the philosophical concept that’s been mentioned a few times in this appendix, enters in here. It could, however, be considered at just about any time, since its proponents believe that it’s unconsciously involved in practically all of our daily activities. Simply put, naïve realism teaches that our visual and bodily senses reveal to us an external world as it really is — that we “see” actual physical objects, for instance. Disbelievers say that neurological evidence contradicts this theory; that from the neurological standpoint the events in our lives and within our bodies depend upon interpretation by the brain, that we can know nothing directly, but only experience transmitted through — and so “colored” by — the central nervous system. The perceptual time lag, caused by the limited speed of light, is also involved in objections to naïve realism. I merely want to remind the reader that in ordinary terms naïve realism, or some mind-brain idea very much like it, is habitually used whether we’re considering evolution within a time-oriented camouflage universe, painting a picture, or running a household. And after many centuries, the debate over the relationship between mind and brain continues, if first the existence of the mind is even agreed upon!

(Jane and I certainly do not hold creationist views [see Note 1]. As I wrote near the beginning of this appendix, to go very far into religious history would lead away from the subject matter I planned to cover; but to us science is as far away from Seth’s philosophy in one direction as religion is in the opposite direction. The species’ religious drives have been around a lot longer than its scientific ones, however, so I found myself looking for broad correlations between the two, in that under each value system the individual carries a very conscious sense of personal vulnerability. Before Darwinism, to use that concept as an example, man at least felt that God had put him on earth for certain purposes, no matter how much man distorted those purposes through ignorance and war. According to Judaism and Christianity, among many religions, man could seek forgiveness and salvation; he had a soul. After Darwin, he learned that even his physical presence on earth was an accident of nature. He was taught — he taught himself — that ideas of souls and gods were ridiculous. Either way, this very fallible creature found himself vulnerable to forces that consciously he couldn’t understand — even though, in Seth’s view, down through the millennia man had chosen all of his religious and antireligious experiences.

(As far as I can discover, science pays very little attention to any philosophical questions about why we’re here, even while most definitely telling us what’s true or not true. And while postulating that life is basically meaningless or goal-less [DNA doesn’t care what its host looks like, for instance], science fights awfully hard to convince everyone that it’s right — thus attaching the most rigid kind of meaning or direction to its professional views! [If I were very cynical, I’d add here that to Jane and me it often seems that science wants only what science believes.] At the same time, in mathematical and biological detail much too complicated to go into here, the author of many a scientific work in favor of evolution has ended up by undermining, unwittingly, I’m sure, the very themes he so devoutly believes in. I’ve hinted at some of those paradoxes in certain notes [mainly 5 through 8] for this appendix.

(I repeat that when Seth discusses evolution his meaning differs considerably from the scientific one — which, with various modifications, is even accepted by a number of religious thinkers. As I show at the end of this appendix, Seth allows for a much greater range of simultaneous origins; in our reality these imply growth and development out of that “basic” group of species for the most part, with multidimensional purposes operating inside an enhanced time scheme that includes probabilities, reincarnation, counterparts,²² precognition, and other concepts, meanings, and beliefs. All of these qualities are manifestations of All That Is, or consciousness, or energy, or whatever. Probabilities aside, when Seth talks about cells [or their components] recombining as parts of plant or animal forms, as he does in the 705th session, Jane and I don’t take that to mean the evolution, or alteration, of one species into another — but that a unity of consciousness pervades all elements in our environment, whether “alive” or “dead.” With the concept of probabilities in mind, however, much of the “thrust for development and change” that Seth also mentions as existing inside all organisms, could just as well take place in those other realities. Early in this appendix, I described how Seth continually built upon material that he’d given before, and that processes of correlation between old and new resulted. At this time, my ideas here represent a correlation between Seth’s material on evolution in the 705th session [which led to this appendix], and his later statements on origins, referred to above. We hope to learn much more about the whole business of evolution. And behind all, Seth insists upon the condition that each of us chose to experience this camouflage reality within this historical context.

(My thought is that because of that choosing, common denominators must lie beneath the clashing beliefs about evolution, and that a good place to start looking for such unifying factors is within the theory, or the framework or idea, of simultaneous time — however one wants to try to express such a quality within serial terms. The search would be a complicated one. At the same time, I admit that ideas like this always remind me of Seth’s comments in the class session for June 23, 1970, as excerpted in the Appendix for Seth Speaks:)

(Seth’s statement just given, that fully developed men coexisted with their supposed ancestors, led to our request that he follow through with more information on the subject. He’s done so to some extent, and here we’re presenting material from one of those later sessions to show his thinking. He continues to confound accepted evolutionary theory. As usual, however, Seth’s new data obviously imply new questions that we haven’t gone into yet. But at least, I told Jane, he’s said certain things that we can ask questions about, whether from the viewpoint of evolution, time, language, civilization, or whatever. The excerpts to follow, incidentally, are those I referred to earlier in this appendix, when I wrote that just as Jane had supplemented Seth’s material on early man with some of her own [as given in Appendix 6 in Volume 1], he in turn added to hers:)

(My position after writing this appendix is that in scientific and religious terms we know little about our world [and universe], its origins, and its amazing variety of forms, both “living” and “nonliving.” Our own limitations may have something to do with our attitudes here, yet Jane and I have become very careful about believing science or religion when either one tells us it can explain our world, for each of those disciplines ignores too much. No matter what the source of this camouflage reality may be, our conscious lack of knowledge and understanding as we manipulate within it, through naïve realism or any other system of belief or perception, ought to make us humble indeed; all arrogance should be transcended as we become more and more aware of the limitless beauty, complexity, and mystery that surrounds us, and of which we are part. Jane and I just don’t think it all came about through chance! The mind can ask too many questions to be satisfied with mechanistic explanations, and nurturing that characteristic of dissatisfaction alone may be one of the most valuable contributions the Seth material can make.

(And as I work on this appendix, Seth has already remarked in the 709th session, just before break at 10:35:)

NOTES: APPENDIX 12

In light of the excerpts to come in this appendix from the 44th session, it should be noted that when Seth used the term “camouflage,” he referred not only to our physical world as one of the forms (or camouflages) taken by basic reality, but to another kind of time as well — the medium of successive moments the outer ego is used to, and in which our ordinary world exists.

Seth’s first mention of “camouflage” is described in Volume 1; see Note 3 for Appendix 11.

3. In this 1964 session, Seth was several years away from any attempt to elaborate upon the vitality that “composes from itself all other phenomena.” In October 1969 he began his material on EE (electromagnetic energy) units. These, he declared, exist just below the range of physical matter, and accrete in response to emotional intensity; eventually, they form physical objects. See sessions 504–6 in the Appendix of The Seth Material, and the 581st session (held in April 1971) in Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks.

4. This paragraph and the preceding one were used as a footnote for the 637th session in Chapter 9 of Personal Reality. That session, held 18 months ago, contains material appropriate to this appendix: As an analogy, Seth compares the “evolution” of souls in terms of value fulfillment to cellular growth in our physical reality.

In Volume 1, see Appendix 6 for Session 687, and Session 689 with its notes.

Finally, in this appendix I haven’t used the term “Neo-Darwinism” in order to avoid confusion with the familiar Darwinism that most people — including scientists — still employ. Neo-Darwinism is simply the original idea of natural selection in plants and animals updated to take present-day genetics into account.

10. See Note 2 for this appendix. Then, in Volume 1 see the material on time reversal and symmetry in Note 6 for Session 702.

13. A note added much later: Sometimes things develop in unexpected ways: One might say that several years later Seth continued the material just presented. By the time he did so he’d been through with “Unknown” Reality for quite a while, but I was still working on the notes and appendixes for Volume 2. As I wrote Appendix 12 in particular I discussed with Jane the passages on naïve realism; soon afterward Seth began to refer to the subject during scheduled sessions, and one of them contained the excellent information below. (Only one part of that session is quoted, but eventually it will be published in its entirety as part of a Seth book.) Very evocative, to consider how consciousness chooses to manifest itself physically, in direct contradiction to the mechanistic beliefs held so tightly — and with so little humor — by those adhering to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. From Session 803:)

16. In this appendix I’ve consistently thought of probabilities and reincarnation as being nearly synonymous, while hardly mentioning the latter to avoid making the material unnecessarily complicated. As Seth himself told us in the 683rd session for Volume 1 of this work: “Reincarnation simply represents probabilities in a time context — portions of the self that are materialized in historical contexts.”

19. Jane described one of her adventures with probable realities in Appendix 4 for Volume 1: She tuned in to her own “sidepools of consciousness,” her own “probable neurological materializations….” (My personal opinion is that although many may think it difficult reading, Appendix 4 contains some of the most important information in Volume 1.)

I should add that the passages on science and scientists in Appendix 12 aren’t intended to add up to any general indictment of what are very powerful cultural forces, but to give insights into “where we’re at” at this time in linear history. Many scientists are agnostic or atheistic. However, Jane and I feel that if science represents the “search for truth,” as it so often reminds us, then eventually it will contend with the kind of gifts she demonstrates. Subjective and objective abilities, working together, can create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. A number of scientists, representing various disciplines, have written Jane about the Seth material, and many of them have expressed such views.

21. Earlier in this appendix, see Seth as quoted from Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks and Chapter 8 of Personal Reality.

22. A note added later: I inserted “counterparts” here because in Section 5 of this volume Seth devotes portions of several sessions to his counterpart concept: “Quite literally, you live more than one life at a time” (his emphasis). Among others, see Session 721, here quoted, with its Appendix 21. As the reader studies those particular sessions, he or she will quickly see how counterpart ideas fit in with the subject matter of Appendix 12.

25. In Volume 1, Jane and mysticism are discussed in the Introductory Notes, Session 679, and Appendix 1 for that session.