“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] In one manner of speaking you do this now, you see, translating your psychological experience — your thoughts and emotions — quite literally but unconsciously into physical objects. You may find that when you imagine yourself as a child — after death — that you suddenly have the form of the child that you were. [...]

[...] They are given various kinds of treatment of a psychic nature, and told that the condition of that body is being brought about by the nature of their own beliefs.

They are taught, in other words, the methods that allow them to translate emotion and thought into physical actuality. [...]

[...] 9:42 to 9:58.) Now: You may after death utterly refuse to believe that you are dead, and continue to focus your emotional energy toward those you have known in life.

Now: As I said before, also, when faced with the difficulty, the conventional, rational approach tells you to look at the problem, examine it thoroughly, project it into the future, and imagine its dire consequences — and so, faced with the idea of a disclaimer (for Mass Events), that is what you did to some extent, the two of you. You saw the disclaimer as fact, imagined it in your minds on the pages of our books, projected all of that onto future books, and for fine good measure you both imagined this famous disclaimer published in editions of all the books as well.

[...] The textbook division represents the workings of the intellect in the usual terms of rational thought, and in those books the qualities of the imagination, of the psyche, of poetry, of creativity, are quite lacking. [...]

Many of the Parker books on the other hand emphasize creativity, the intuitions, the use of the imagination, but are relatively innocent of any clear reasoning, logic, or any feeling for tradition at all. [...]

Now with the various people at Prentice, you will have such tendencies often appearing separately, so that one person will be highly conventional and dislike changes, while another might be responsive to work that was emotionally exciting, avant garde. [...]

[...] Now Anita Bryant serves a purpose for all of her distortions, for she presents each person with an exaggerated picture of certain beliefs. She makes each person question the nature of their own beliefs concerning sexuality. [...] And each person who views her on television must look into their own beliefs. And the same applies to our Reverend Jones, and to any fanatic, for the fanatic speaks in exaggerated terms, but he or she speaks beliefs that to some extent each of you hold, but to what degree? [...] But they frighten you, because you know that in your hearts some of their beliefs exist in weaker terms, and where do you draw the line? [...]

[...] But in the vast range of your emotions, leave room for loves that are very distant, so distant and so alien that you do not recognize them. [...]

(Seth:) Since there are no physical universities, and since I threw out those statements with my own purposes in mind, then it follows that those who are interested must find their own way; and that their imagination and will must drive them to find their own methods. [...]

[...] And you forge such dreams in your sleep and in your private imaginings, and in your inspirations. [...]

[...] We were NEVER externalized!’ These words do little to explain my emotional, subjective feelings of participation in this idea. [...] Everything we imagine and know is inside. [...]

(“Each of these ideas came as emotional revelations, accompanied by various bodily sensations and alterations of visual perception. [...]

[...] (Quietly:) Your attitudes toward sleep, dreams, or any alterations of consciousness are all colored to some extent then by beliefs concerning good and evil in your Western society. [...]

[...] People with such beliefs will find it most difficult to understand the creativity of their own being. [...]

[...] It was his belief, quite simply, that brought about the mowing of the lawn. [...]

The event itself was an interaction of thoughts and emotions and images, a group of communications in which actually many people were involved. [...]

[...] There is one area you see where he (Leonard) is thus far entirely blocked, for he cannot love another person wholeheartedly, nor imagine himself in that position. [...]

[...] Many of the men involved were imagining how happy they would be in a medical building, and subconsciously hoping for an excuse to move into one. [...]

He felt himself to be a portion of the storm, however, and felt the storm as a vast magnification of his own emotional reality—even as he felt the body of the earth itself to be, beside itself, the magnification of his own emotional reality and that of others.

When man identified with nature, as given in Psyche, he did not imagine that the gods disapproved of him when storms lashed across the landscape. [...]

In your terms, with time, historically, he began to lose this identification, so that an emotional separation began to occur between man and the elements, between man and the other manifestations of nature. [...]

With that loss of identification storms for the first time became truly threatening, capricious, for man’s mind could not intellectually understand the intimate and yet vast connections that the intuitions and emotions had once comprehended. [...]

[...] Your main belief systems lead you to feel that your present life is singular, unsupported by any knowledge of prior experience with existence, and fated to be cut off or dead-ended without a future. Instead, you always carry the inner knowledge of innumerable available futures (emphatically). Your emotional life at certain levels is enriched by the unconscious realization that those who love you from past or future are connected to you by special ties that add to your emotional heritage and support.

If we had been appalled when Seth began giving his version of the beliefs her sinful self held, we were even more so when that self began to express itself “personally.” And once more I had to guard my own expressions of frustration and anger; those emotions were so mixed up with my love for my wife that I even developed a perverse, almost black humor about the entire situation. [...]

[...] But in some newish way I seemed to understand how much seemingly mental work is dependent upon physical vigor, flexibility and so forth; and then rather strongly—emotionally it came to me that I’d thought it my duty to clamp down physically, to cut down mobility in order to … have mobility as a writer; that is, to sit down, cut down on impulses, distractions, to make sure I’d ‘do my work,’ pursue my goal undeviatingly; that new [book] contracts instantly led me to that kind of behavior and that I really see that such behavior carried to its extremes would end up smothering my writing, defeating the purposes it (seemingly) meant to protect. [...] Now I see how much impulses are conducive … to just typing, for God’s sake; imagine typing and seeing with ease, just thinking about what I’m thinking about, instead of trying to get my fingers on the proper keys. [...]

“They were these: that the entire world with its organization was kept together by certain stories, like those of the Roman Catholic Church; that it was dangerous beyond all knowing to look through the stories or examine them for the truth, and that all kinds of taboos existed to keep us from doing this, since … on the other side, so to speak, there was an incomprehensible frightening chaotic dimension, malevolent; powers beyond our imagining; and that to question the stories was to threaten not just personal survival but the fabric of reality as we know it. So excommunication was the punishment, or damnation … which meant more than mere ostracism, but the complete isolation of a person from those belief systems, with nothing between him or her and those frightening realities … without a framework in which to even organize meaning. [...]

You expect yourself to be a great artist, lost in the intricacies of what you think of as an artistic emotional reality, innocent of any interfering intellectuality. You berate yourself on the one hand for an intellect that it seems to you separates you from immediate emotional contact with painting and with others. At the same time, of course, you would certainly berate a Van Gogh for his overly emotional behavior.

Your intellect operates beautifully in the notes and appendixes of “Unknown,” but instead of rejoicing in it, you wonder if your notes lack the very kind of emotionalism that would make that particular kind of clear intellectual objectivity most difficult. [...] You wish for the intensified emotional preoccupation that would close your mind to all else but painting.

[...] I used the front page of the newspaper as an analogy, saying that it exhibited far worse behavior and beliefs than any we were responsible for, yet the news and world events seemed to be made by individuals who behaved much more badly than we did, and that further the people involved seemed not to suffer any consequences of note, beyond say losing a job or an election, etc. [...]

[...] He tries to be disciplined, put in his time, temper his emotional nature, so neither of you approve of yourselves. [...]

Now imagine that the picture on the television screen shows your own universe. [...] Imagine here, now, that the screen’s picture is off-center to begin with, so that everything is distorted to some extent, and going out into space seems to be going backward into time.

[...] The will, again, operates according to the personality’s beliefs about reality, so its desires are sometimes tempered as those beliefs change. [...]

You see about you others dealing with life’s challenges, following the old beliefs. They must see for themselves that those beliefs do not work.

(Long pause.) It might help here if you imagine the psyche again as some multidimensional living television set. [...]

In usual circumstances you may remember the emotions that you felt at the time a picture of yourself was taken, and to some extent those emotions may show themselves in gestures or facial expression. [...]

It will help if now and then you imaginatively think of vivid dream imagery^l as if it appeared in a photograph instead. [...]

[...] All of your institutions, beliefs, and activities seem to justify your picture, because everything within the overall “frame” will of course seem to agree.

So, from other streams of actuality you choose those events that you want physically materialized; and you do this according to your beliefs about the nature of reality. [...]

[...] Only an objectively tuned consciousness like man’s would imagine that the physical eradication of a species destroyed its existence.”

The initial contagion in such cases is always emotional and mental. [...]

[...] The belief system was tight and accepted, and it only began to fail when those societies encountered “civilized views.”

If you call the demons “negative beliefs,” however, then you have taken strides forward. [...] It does not help a patient inoculated against smallpox and polio if [eventually] he dies of cancer as a result of his negative beliefs.⁴

[...] Imagine many other such paths, all converging; again, imaginatively take one of them in your mind and follow it. [...]

[...] That exterior world is thrust outward, however, and projected into reality in line with your conscious desires, beliefs, and intent. [...]

[...] He was intuitively and emotionally led to his discoveries. [...]

(With amusement:) The wrong kinds of questions are the right ones for you, however, in your civilization and with your beliefs, because you want to stay within that structure to that extent. [...]

Many — not all — plotless novels or movies are the result of this belief in man’s powerlessness. [...] On the other hand your common, unlettered, violent television dramas do indeed provide a service, for they imaginatively specify a generalized fear in a given situation, which is then resolved through drama. [...]

[...] The first is that other agencies and individuals in the medical and psychological fields are conducting studies of the ties that exist between emotional states and cancer. The second is that Jane and I are perfectly aware of all the good things that medical science has contributed to our worldwide civilization; given our species’ present collective beliefs about the vulnerability of the individual to outside forces, medicine as it’s now practiced is a vital component of that civilization. [...]

Your scientific beliefs tell you that your entire world happened accidentally. [...] In this maze of beliefs you have largely lost a sense of your own worth and purpose. [...]

[...] Now these medical beliefs are intertwined with your economic and cultural structures, so you cannot lay the blame upon medical men or their profession alone. [...] Many dedicated doctors use medical technology with spiritual understanding, and they are themselves the victims of the beliefs they hold.

Now, all of your so-called pasts exist within you now, and you can discover what they are and recapture your own memories, but you are not imprisoned in time unless you believe that you are, and there is nothing more important than belief. There is nothing that can free you more than belief, and there is nothing that can hold you in bondage more than belief. [...]

Now, you must try to stretch your imagination and to feel these realities because the intellect alone cannot comprehend them. [...]

[...] You need to learn the power of thought and emotion, but this should fill you with the joy of creativity and the possibility, not frighten you out of (words missing) of responsibility. [...]

[...] You imagined, for example, a heartbeat pulse of that nature simply to bring the idea home to you. [...]

[...] Always end your pendulum sessions with the new beliefs you want to instill, reinforcing whatever you have learned from that particular session. The idea of those pendulum sessions should not be to find out what is wrong, but to discover Ruburt’s feelings and beliefs, and to ascertain how they can be changed to bring about more favorable conditions.

[...] He was examining beliefs, expressing aggressions naturally, and freeing his spontaneity. [...] His beliefs and hopes arose again later when I gave the sessions on spontaneity and work that I want him to reread. [...]

In those terms, when the subconscious considers health, it must also take into consideration the individual’s strong intents, in which case it is insuring the mental and emotional health in a somewhat different fashion.

[...] He must also remember Sumari time, for the creative imagination works no matter what you are doing.

[...] You are the one who is out of contact with your feelings and emotions at that point, however, for at this point of your “spiritual progression” you only imagine that you wish him good. [...]

[...] Now this is the kind of consciousness of which you are used to thinking, for you cannot imagine consciousness without perception, in your terms, and yet consciousness can be vital and alive without perception as you think of it. [...]

[...] And, therefore, it behooves you to understand and know what these ideas and emotions and feelings are and not to be frightened of them. [...]

(Joel told of finding a man asleep at his work, explained his feeling and emotions and could he change them?)

[...] Later Sue laughingly admitted that she’d been nervous at first, imagining all kinds of adverse reactions either Jane or I might have—but she’s doing a fine job. [...]

(9:33.) There is furthermore a deep, subjective, immaculately knowledgeable standard within man’s consciousness by which he ultimately judges all of the theories and the beliefs of his time, and even if his intellect is momentarily swamped by ignoble doctrines, still that point of integrity within him is never fooled.

[...] I thought they’d been [perhaps unwittingly] oriented in certain negative directions—that is, the one taking the test has to choose from a series of more or less negative possibilities, listing specific choices in an order that depends upon his or her personal belief systems—I think.

[...] “I respect your emotional reactions, whatever they are, and your right to them. [...]

[...] The psyche itself leapfrogs our beliefs at usual conscious levels, and sees us as a part of all life, excitedly forming all kinds of complexes which then fill themselves to the brim, exploding, escaping the framework only to form another. The emotions themselves can sense this when we let them, and grasping that sense of excitement can show us a glimpse of the even greater freedom of our own psychic existence, which flows into us as individuals and then bursts apart that short-lived form into another, as the excitement of individuation leaps from life to life.”

[...] Alone, imagination finally becomes less imaginative over time.” [...]

[...] That whole area in the Middle East, then, is a stew of emotions, actions, and consciousnesses.

[...] I see many correlations between this evening’s material and that in Session 917 for Chapter 8; there, among other things, Seth had discussed the reasoning mind, the imaginative mind, and schizophrenia. [...]

He is obviously more restricted in that regard, but neither have you had a woman you had to escort, so your times were spent thinking, writing, exploring the nature of reality, and affecting society while not being infected by it, according to your concepts and beliefs. [...] Nor do you set up a school for fools—again, according to your beliefs and concepts.

[...] The group was given to mystical practices, in which the dictums of Allah were followed—but also those dictums were enmeshed with some old Jewish practices and beliefs.

[...] It was a rich pageantry of beliefs—almost an Oriental Christianity despite the fact that the Christians were considered the true infidels.

[...] Reincarnation was also part of the belief structure. [...]

Using emotion from the present, let him now imagine the event only defiantly, saying to hell with the feelings he had at that time about the dumb psychologist. [...]

[...] But you are beginning, both of you, to change your beliefs and feelings, and that is good. [...]