I read Seth saying a tree feels pain, but I’m wondering if it’s its own form of pain that is unrelated to the outside world, or can vegetables and fruits, for example, feel pain when we eat them?
TES1 session 18 is somewhat related to your question: book:tes1 session:18 Plant sensation - “Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)
However in some other manners the experiences of the tree are extremely deep, dealing with the inner senses which are, and properly, also properties of treedom. There is something here difficult for me to explain clearly. The inner senses of the tree have strong affinity with the properties of earth itself. They feel their growing. They listen to their growing as you listen to your own heartbeat. They experience this oneness with their own growth, and they also experience pain. The pain however while definite, unpleasant and sometimes agonizing, is not of an emotional nature in the same way that you might experience pain.
In some ways it is even a deeper thing. The analogy may not be a perfect one, far from it, but it is as if your breath were to be suddenly cut off. In a manner this somewhat approximates pain for a tree.
Yes, I read that, and that’s what confused me. They experience pain, but is it physical pain? He clarified that it’s not of an emotional nature in the same way as us, so it seems he’s talking about some non-physical pain unique to a tree. It’s also clear they are aware of their surroundings, so I’m guessing that when eaten, a plant would feel pain, as in “I don’t want to die.” but does he talk about physical pain?
This has to be interpreted through the perspective of what the physical reality is, what we, and everything else that we perceive is, their meanings. Somewhere in that session, Seth mentions the law of cause and effect being adopted by humans, and not being adopted by others, in the reality we experience. Elsewhere, Seth talks about the clairvoyant ability of mostly everything that exists, including particles, body cells, plants, animals, our inner aspects of our personalities, … So, nothing that a plant experiences is imposed on it, as it isn’t imposed on us either. Each one makes choices according to their ability, heeding or not the inner guidance that is always available, experiencing scenarios and outcomes, and reworking them; learning.
All Seth concepts work together, and the universally accepted human perspective needs to be left aside because it is highly distorted by limiting and incorect beliefs accumulated during the evolution of the society, and during every individual’s aging.
So, I think that the eaten plant doesn’t feel pain because it is eaten. It might feel a negative sensation, like a pain, if its choices to experience physical existence are incorrect, while learning.
Like everything, a plant is a gestalt of consciousness, with an identity, and it has a materialization in the physical reality that is perceived differently by each one of the other participants. There is no objective physical plant, but an infinite amount if different psychological perceptions, the plant’s own perception of itself, and all the others’.
1 Like
In some fragments such as much plant life and vegetative life there is strong use of certain inner senses. Your rocks, Joseph, I will call vegetative. Rocks are far from lifeless. Other types of life, including your own, rely on the recognized outer senses. The ideal of course is a consciousness that is adept at using both the inner and outer senses fully.
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.
[… 1 paragraph …]
In drawing up his list of so-called natural laws, I have said that man decided that what appeared to be cause and effect to him was therefore a natural law of the universe. Not only do these so-called laws, which are not laws, vary according to where you are in the universe, they also vary according to what you are in the universe. Therefore your tree recognizes a human being, though it does not see the human being in your terms. To a tree the laws are simply different. And if a tree wrote its laws of the universe, then you would know how different they are.
The tree does not even build up an image of man, which is why this is difficult to explain. I have no intention of going deeper into this matter than you can follow at this time. Nevertheless the tree builds up a composite sensation which represents say an individual man. And the same tree will recognize the same man who passes it by each day. Beside the recognized outer senses, and the inner senses of which you are just now beginning to gain knowledge, there are other inner and even outer senses, which you are not quite ready to understand.
They deal with finer distinctions than you know now, being somewhat of the nature of your body’s ability to sense another person’s aggression. As your body senses temperature changes so it also senses the psychic charge not only of other human beings but also, believe it or not, of animals, and to a lesser extent it senses the psychic charge of plants and vegetative matter. Your tree builds up a composite of sensations of this sort, sensing not the physical dimensions of a material object, whatever it is, but the vital psychic formation within and about it.
1 Like
Ig it’s just sort of disturbing to think every plant can feel physical pain. Anyway, thank you for your perspective and time.
Everything that experiences physical reality has engaged in it with a purpose: learning, evolving, value fulfillment. Pain and pleasure are the two sides of a gauge that measures the degree to which each identity is going on its pre-chosen path.
Function of its level of awareness (Seth said that being a tree is like being in a deep trance), each identity makes choices based on its perceptions (outer and inner senses) and according to its abilities.
This reminds a situation from a historical drama I recently watched. A young girl is in reciprocated love with a young man, and they are engaged to marry. The young emperor, friend with both of them, highly valuing both of them for their intelligence, integrity and commitment to the country and the people, is aware of their love, but forcefully takes the young girl to be his empress. You can imagine the pain, suffering, anger of the couple in love. The emperor’s justification is that he wants to reform the country but being in poor health he foresees having a short life, so he needs an empress that he trusts to be able to continue and safeguard the implementation of his reforms. His expectations are confirmed: he doesn’t live long, and the empress proves to be an exceptional leader, living quite a bit longer than him. The young man eventually comes back and takes a high rank position in the administration, eventually becoming the empress’ “multi-level” partner. 
In the same way, a plant can experience a more basic life, enjoying growing, reproducing, eventually dying somehow, or can participate with some pain with a pre-chosen higher contribution to the overall scheme of life, like feeding or serving another biological identity. You have to remember Seth’s assertion that life at all levels is clairvoyant, that everything knows what’s coming, with what probabilities, and makes free-will choices. This includes the human personalities, which in our current setup mostly don’t consciously use that ability due to their limiting beliefs (which they should strive to overcome; it doesn’t have to be this way).
There is no physical experience that doesn’t include some pain as feedback to some less optimum choices.
The trick is to learn why you are here, what you have to do.
1 Like