An identical claim is made by 'Seth,' a discarnate teacher who communicates through the medium Jane Roberts. According to Seth, each individual consciousness - or spark of God-consciousness - must undergo a long period of training and learning through repeated physical embodiments. Being human is simply one 'stage' in this process of development, and when, through repeated incarnations, this stage is complete, one passes onward to further planes of existence which offer more exalted opportunities for development and creative expression of the God-like qualities of love, life and truth. The most crucial lesson to be learned is karmic or ethical. Through repeated embodiments, the undeveloped individual - through ignorant selfishness - treats others with cruelty and hatred, and, in accordance with natural process, is subjected to cruelty and hatred in return. When one treats others with unconditional and selfless love and kindness, one is likewise rewarded.

The ultimate result of these lessons is spiritual development and a passage beyond physical embodiment, giving access to God-like creative powers once the entity is highly enough evolved to use these in an ethically responsible way. While he is still unevolved and would use these powers to injure, control, exploit or destroy others, he does not have access to them.

In a series of trance communications, Seth had given Jane Roberts and her husband Rob a series of 'lectures' on the nature of reality as he perceived it from a plane higher than the human. With all Seth had told them about man's potentials, they wondered why the race isn't more developed morally and spiritually. They were pretty upset about the state of the world in general. That evening, Seth came through in his usual distinct, clear voice. Among other things, Seth said:

"The human race is a stage through which various forms of consciousness travel. Before you can enter into systems of reality that are more open and extensive, you must first learn through physical life. As a child forms mud pies from dirt, so you form your civilizations. When you leave the physical system after reincarnations, you have learned the lessons - and you are literally no longer a member of the human race for you elect to leave it. In more advanced systems, thoughts and emotions are automatically and immediately translated into whatever approximation of matter that exists. Therefore, the lessons must be taught and learned well.

"The responsibility for creation must be clearly understood. In physical life on earth, you are in a soundproof and isolated room. Hate creates destruction in that room, and until the lessons are learned, destruction follows destruction ... the agonies are sorely felt. You must be taught to create responsibly. Earth life is a training system for emerging consciousness. If the sorrows and agonies of your system were not felt as real, the lessons would not be learned. It is like an educational play."

In other words, in these realms beyond the human, thought and emotion can immediately create - through the causative attribute of consciousness that is the power of intention - a concrete, objectively real environment. Entities - being essentially 'of God' - do not allow themselves to enter these realms until they are highly developed enough to create 'responsibly.'

6. Dr. Grof's LSD Research

"The opening of the area of past incarnation experiences in LSD sessions is sometimes preceded by complex instructions received through non-verbal means (i.e. on an intuitive level) through the assignment of an individual spiritual entity. This being introduces the subject to the fact of reincarnation, and helps him to recognize his responsibility for past actions."

Although this is extraordinary enough, the evidnce from hypnotic regression will have prepared us for it. But with LSD regression we find ourselves in an even more alien and dizzying realm, for LSD subjects not infrequently report experiences as animals, plants and minerals. These experiences are typically accompanied by uncannily accurate knowledge of the nature of such creatures and structures. Grof writes:

"Evolutionary memories have specific experiential characteristics that make them distinct from human experiences and often seem to transcend the scope of human fantasy and imagination. The individual can have, for example, an illuminating insight into what it feels like when a snake is hungry, when a turtle is sexually excited, when a hummingbird is feeding its young, or when a shark breathes through its gills. Subjects have reported the drive the sustains a salmon on its journey against the river's flow, the sensations of a spider weaving it's web, or the mysterious Cultivate Life! of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Subjects commonly have a detailed knowledgeof the animals with whom they have identified - of their physical characteristics, habits and behavior patterns - that far exceeds their education in the natural sciences. Subjects have accurately described courtship dances, complicated reproductive cycles, techniques of nest-building, patterns of aggression and defense, and many other such zoological facts."

With respect to plant experiences, Grof says:

"The instances of experiencing plant forms are less frequent than those involving animal life. The individual has the unique feeling of participating in the basic physiological processes of plants: as a germinating seed, a leaf in the course of photosynthesis or a root reaching out for nourishment. A subject might become a plankton in the ocean and experience pollination or cellular divisions during vegetable growth."

And these experiences of existence in forms simpler than the human are not confined to biological life:

"They can include inorganic nature. Subjects have repeatedly reported that they experienced consciousness of the ocean or of particular minerals such as diamond, granite or gold. Similar experiences can reach even the microworld and depict the dynamic structure of atoms, the nature of electrodynamic forces involved, the world of interatomic bonds or the Brownian dance of molecules. LSD subjects often consider the possibility that consciousness is a basic cosmic phenomenon - that it exists throughout the universe - and that human consciousness appears to be only one of its many varieties."

Of course, the lower you go in the chain of matter, the greater the number of 'forms' which exist. How can so many become so few? Myers has an answer:

"Place plants, insects, fish, reptiles, birds and beasts into their several classes. These resemble the grades in a school. The souls of plants, after dying, gather together in their myriads and form larger psychic units. These innumerable little units go one step up, then as one psychic entity enter the body of an insect after conception. Myriads of insect lives again make one being which, in due course, enters the body of a fish or bird. And so the process continues. Finally the embryonic souls of animals so evolve that many, making one psychic entity, eventually become one human soul."

In other words, every material form and variety of life in the universe is at a different stage in the very long process of psychic evolution. More than 'men' are brothers!