“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

So when you think of your beliefs and who you are, you must also think of your species, and how you are told your species came to be. For your private beliefs are also based upon those theories, and the beliefs, culturally, of your times.

[...] For Darwin and his followers — even those of today, then — nature’s effects gave the appearance of design or plan in the universe without necessitating a belief in a designer or a god; although, as I wrote in Note 7, from the scientific standpoint this belief leaves untouched the question of design in nonliving matter, which is vastly more abundant in the “objective” universe than is living matter, and had to precede that living matter.

[...] Certainly individual and mass beliefs will be involved [along with the natural and unnatural guilt Seth discussed in the sessions making up Chapter 8 of Personal Reality]. I’d say that just understanding the complicated relationships between mass beliefs and illness alone, for example, will require much material from Seth and much time invested upon our parts.

(Our beliefs and intents cause us to pick “from an unpredictable group of actions,” or probabilities, those that we want to happen, as Seth tells us in the 681st session in Volume 1; therefore, from my physically oriented probability the considerable work I’ve put into this paper is an examination of evolution in connection with a number of Seth’s concepts. [...]

In the past some religious groups have also promoted beliefs that illness is a sign of God’s punishment, or vengeance for sins committed against his “goodness.”

The same beliefs often spread to economic areas in which (long pause) people who met pleasure in God’s eyes were therefore gifted with wealth and prosperity, as well as good health. [...]

(I told Jane she could very well be projecting her own fears upon something that wasn’t that bad at all—that the episode instead served to show what a deep hold old beliefs still had on her. [...]

[...] I emphasized to my wife the role belief could play in her reactions. [...]

Ruburt’s reaction to the doctor’s visit this morning does indeed show the hold that old beliefs can have, and the panicky feelings they can arouse. [...]

[...] If you believe you are not worthy of nourishment, if you believe that life itself is dangerous, then your own beliefs make it impossible for you to fully utilize that available help. [...] Then forsake beliefs that tell you otherwise. [...]

[...] Your beliefs form your reality. [...]

[...] Find the beliefs responsible for the unfortunate conditions. [...]

Fanatics work best in isolation, where their own beliefs are currently and constantly reinforced, and where they are surrounded by sacred yes-men of one kind or another, whatever their designation. Other beliefs are not allowed to intrude, and even those who are firm believers, but not fanatics, naturally prefer the company of their own kind.

[...] People are faced with beliefs other than their own, and discover that the “enemy” or the “infidel,” or the terrorist or the respected head of state, while having completely different views, are each convinced of their own uprightness and virtue.

[...] This is not a lack of belief or optimism, but an honest response at a given moment, and one that allows the body a natural release from tension. [...]

You are afraid, each of you to some extent, of needing comfort from the other, or vocally asking for it—quite in keeping with sexual beliefs in certain respects.

[...] The woman represents Ruburt’s old beliefs, the woman that he was, so to speak. All that are immediately salvaged are the inner organs, which Ruburt symbolically washes clean in a ritual indicative of washing away old beliefs, and of washing the inner organs clean—the act of inner cleanliness. [...]

[...] I thought the dream very positive, and showed that Jane was shedding old beliefs and starting anew with new ones. [...]

Later he finds a pyramid-shaped pile of dead puppies, representing the death of old beliefs that had lingered from his childhood. [...]

[...] And again, the survival of the species in those terms is basically dependent upon its belief in the meaningfulness of its existence. (Emphatically:) These new cults and groups, however—these new cults and groups, therefore—therefore—are following the paths of genetic wisdom, opening up new areas of speculation and belief. And if some of their present beliefs are ludicrous in the light of the intellect’s reason, in the end—because [such groups] are following the dictates of value fulfillment, however feebly—they are significant. [...]

[...] A belief in life’s meaning is a necessity on the part of your species.

I also want to emphasize that your present beliefs limit the full and free operation of your intellects, as far as your established fields of knowledge are concerned, for science has placed so many taboos, limiting the areas of free intellectual inquiry. [...]

[...] Your conscious mind, generally speaking, interprets reality according to your private beliefs and those of your civilization. As long as the civilization maintains certain beliefs, then events must be perceived in a complementary fashion.

[...] The words are perceived consciously, but the concepts run directly counter to many usual beliefs—not just scientific ones, but to the beliefs that underlie the accepted establishment of the world.

(Today I mentioned to Jane that I’d like Seth to discuss any beliefs she might still have that might reinforce feelings that it still wasn’t safe to recover fully. [...]

[...] Physical life is a fantastic event, in which all kinds of preferences, feelings, beliefs, desires, and experiences are possible—within of course the physical level.

Again, according to your belief structure, such diets can be extremely beneficial, particularly in the short run—but if the person involved forever places—

—their belief in such exterior conditions, then they will feel themselves to be victims, and the charm of the diet may begin to lose its strength. [...]

Your own dream of last night contained far more powerful “medicine”—for it shows you where enthusiastic beneficial beliefs can lead. [...]

(Pause at 4:33.) Now: your dream represented the larger rooms of beliefs into which you are emerging. The many people, and connecting rooms, represented the new structure of vaster beliefs that are all interconnected while you are still, however, concentrating upon the private creative self, and from that viewpoint viewing the world — hence your private corner in which you painted, as from that corner of private creativity you viewed the large interacting structure of new beliefs.

(Very long pause.) Good health is closely related, of course, to a family’s beliefs about the body. [...]

There is no area of thought or belief that does not touch upon the subject of health in one way or another. [...]

The ideas of penance, fasting to excess, the personal abuse of the body, such as self-flagellation — all of those practices are conducted in the belief that suffering is something to be sought in itself. [...]

[...] In matters of health, such beliefs can have most unfortunate results. [...]

[...] The three Christs material particularly affects him that way, for to deny the conventional idea of Christ is to antagonize not merely Catholicism but basic Christian belief. [...]

[...] One strong portion of him knows well that Christian theology is far from any entire answer, that Christ was not the son of the only God; the other portion of Ruburt is still affected by those beliefs, and he did not realize it.

The emotional beliefs therefore could not be reached. [...]

Because they were formed at a time before the intellectual and intuitive abilities developed, and were not a problem until the intellectual and intuitive abilities seemed to come upon a system of thought that was in opposition to the underlying emotional beliefs. [...]

He has always been deeply concerned with the nature of reality, both from an intellectual and emotional standpoint, and where Seagull did not reach him personally, he was fascinated by the phenomena of belief behind it, and then was fascinated by the phenomena of belief behind the Lourdes healings.

For he is a kind, well-intentioned, intelligent man, searching to make sense of the nature of reality by using the yardstick of available beliefs. [...]

An individual who completely accepted what was going on here, and Seagull without question, could (underlined) also possess a fervor that would, or could, overstate the case, rouse instead within people conflicting beliefs. [...]

[...] My original idea was simply to offer the physical body some help it could use, even regardless of the beliefs involved, and to use that help as a springboard for changing certain beliefs. I don’t believe any medication or vitamins—or anything else, for that matter—are going to do a person any good without a change in belief. [...]

[...] I am quite aware that these changes were also accompanied by possible changes in belief, since we’d talked about what we were doing, obviously. [...] I do think I’ve seen similar temporary changes in belief before, without the accompanying changes in the hands and knees. [...]

[...] The more you handle your conscious beliefs and daily problems and relationships then, the healthier you will be in all areas, even if you do not solve the problems. [...]

The belief that a given problem cannot be solved can cause much difficulty, unless you freely and consciously give it up; particularly when inner organs are affected, this point plays a strong part. [...]

[...] It was gone by the time I went to bed, but taught me that sometimes the old ideas and beliefs die hard. [...]

[...] The car stands for my travels through the psyche, and the family represented conventional America and its everyday beliefs, which I rejected. [...]

[...] It signals your determination not to be curtailed by those conventional beliefs that pervade in your society.

First of all, many of your correspondents’ “predicaments” appear particularly disheartening, upsetting, or otherwise psychologically incomprehensible because your general (underlined) belief systems are not flexible enough, and do not reflect many important issues concerning human behavior, motivation, emotion or feeling. [...]

[...] The belief in the struggle for survival so super-pervades that anything but the most competitive, determined, super-valiant, compulsive desire to hold onto life appears to be cowardly, a cop-out, at best an unexplainable, erratic, unnatural response to life’s conditions. [...]

(Long pause at 9:02.) When people finally want to die they will pursue that intent, because each physical death does indeed come—despite your beliefs—as the final framing or finishing touches or culmination of a given existence. [...]

[...] In the framework of general beliefs, however, the natural desire for death is not included in the list of human motivations. [...]

[...] I’ve recorded six of those long and complicated dreams, set in my hometown, since December 22; in them I explored my various, sometimes contradictory beliefs about writing and painting, my relationships with society and the marketplace, and with my [deceased] father as he represented certain other beliefs. [...]

Your beliefs close you off from much otherwise quite-available knowledge concerning man’s psychology—knowledge that would serve to answer many questions usually asked about the reasons for suffering. [...]

The thoughts of children give excellent clues as to mankind’s nature, but many adults do not remember any childhood thoughts except those that fit, or seem to fit, in with their beliefs about childhood.