“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:42.) I am trying to put this simply — but without some illnesses, the body could not endure. Give us a moment… First of all, the body must be in a state of constant change, making decisions far too fast for you to follow, adjusting hormonal levels, maintaining balances between all of its systems; not only in relationship to itself — the body — but to an environment that is also in constant change. At biological levels the body often produces its own “preventative medicine,” or “inoculations,” by seeking out, for example, new or foreign substances in its environment [that are] due to nature, science or technology; it assimilates such properties in small doses, coming down with an “illness” which, left alone, would soon vanish as the body utilized what it could [of it], or socialized “a seeming invader.”

The body is geared then to act. It is pragmatically practical, and above all it wants to explore and to communicate. Communication implies a social nature. The body has within it inherently everything necessary for its own defense. The body itself will tease the child to speak, to crawl and walk, to seek its fellows. Through biological communication the child’s cells are made aware of its physical environment, the temperature, air pressure, weather conditions, food supplies — and the body reacts to these conditions, making some adjustments with great rapidity.

The body’s main purpose is not only to survive but to maintain a quality of existence at certain levels, and that quality itself promotes health and fulfillment. A definite, biologically pertinent fear alerts the body, and allows it to react completely and naturally. You might be reading a newspaper headline, for example, as you cross a busy street. Long before you are consciously aware of the circumstances, your body might leap out of the path of an approaching car. The body is doing what it is supposed to do. Though consciously you were not afraid, there was a biologically pertinent fear that was acted upon.

In the same way, if one portion of your own body is injured, then other portions feel the effects of the wound. An earthquake can be a disaster in the area where it occurs, even though its existence corrects imbalances, and therefore promotes the life of the planet. Emergency actions are quite rigorous in the immediate area of an earthquake, and aid is sent in from other countries. When an area of the body “erupts,” there are also emergency measures taken locally, and aid sent from other portions of the body to afflicted parts.

[...] The question had been triggered by a sentence of mine in the notes for yesterday’s session, to the effect that I sometimes wondered why Jane’s body, particularly her body consciousness, didn’t simply take over to “even a more profound degree, and see to it that her physical body healed itself even more rapidly so that we could get out” of the hospital. [...]

The molecules, and even the smaller aspects of the body act and react, communicate, cooperate with each other, and share each other’s knowledge, so that one particle of the body knows what is happening in all other parts. [...] Many body events that you think of in your society as negative — certain viruses, for example — are instead meant as self-corrective devices, even as fever actually promotes health rather than impedes it.

[...] “If it never happened, it would mean the body consciousness was always subservient to other more dominant portions of the personality, and I don’t think that’s true either. After all, if that was the case and things went wrong, the body consciousness could see its own death approaching, even, and not be able to do anything about it …”

Each most microscopic portion of the body is conscious, strives toward its own goals of development, and is in communication with all other parts of the body.

So far in our discussion, then, we have an inner self, dwelling primarily in a mental or psychic dimension, dreaming itself into physical form, and finally forming a body consciousness. To that body consciousness the inner self gives “its own body of physical knowledge,” the vast reservoir of physical achievement that it has triumphantly produced. (Pause.) The body consciousness is not “unconscious,” but for working purposes in your terms, [the body] possesses its own system of consciousness that to some extent, now (underlined), is separated from what you think of as your own normal consciousness. The body’s consciousness is hardly to be considered less than your own, or as inferior to that of your inner self, since it represents knowledge from the inner self, and is a part of the inner self’s own consciousness—the part delegated to the body.

(Pause at 9:23.) As the body became physical, however, the inner self formed the body consciousness so that the physical body became more aware of itself, of the environment, and of its relationship within the environment. Before this could happen, though, the body consciousness was taught to become aware of its own inner environment. The body was lovingly formed from EE units through all the stages to atoms, cells, organs, and so forth. The body’s pattern came from the inner self, as all of the units of consciousness involved in this venture together formed this fabric of environment and creatures, each suited to the other.

(Pause, one of many in here.) Thus far in our discussion, we still have only an inner self and a body consciousness. As the body consciousness developed itself, perfected its organization, the inner self and the body consciousness together performed a kind of psychological double-entendre.

[...] The inner self still related to dream reality, while the body’s orientation and the body consciousness attained, as was intended, a great sense of physical adventure, curiosity, speculation, wonder—and so once again the inner self put a portion of its consciousness in a different parcel, so to speak. As once it had formed the body consciousness, now it formed a physically attuned consciousness, a self whose desires and intents would be oriented in a way that, alone, the inner self could not be.

Such a knowledge as you suggest in actuality would not have added to his comprehension of his body, for he comprehended it very well. It would not have added to his health for example either, for he listened to his body so acutely that natural healings followed as he sought from nature what his body needed. [...]

Native cultures, believing that the courage or fleetness of an eaten animal became part of the hunter’s mental and physical acquisition, handled the body in entirely different terms, and did very well. [...] Cutting the body open will show those organs. You can say with equal validity that the body holds a man’s ghost, that it is filled also with the organs of all the animals a man has consumed—that one man has the heart of a lion, and in that framework that is true.

[...] The body is letting down. You can, and you have, helped him by reminding him that this is safe, that the body’s protection and his own lies precisely in the body’s agility and quick response.

[...] More than that, however, your question of course reflects your cultural beliefs and assumptions, and so you do not realize that in some ways such conscious knowledge of the body’s workings might limit rather than expand concepts and experience of the body and the self.

(Very long pause.) Good health is closely related, of course, to a family’s beliefs about the body. If parents believe that the body is somehow an inferior vehicle for the spirit, or if they simply view the body as unreliable or weak and vulnerable, then children will at an early age begin to consider good health as a rarity, and learn to take depression, poor spirits, and bodily aches and pains to be a natural, normal condition of life.

[...] No portion of the body should be spoken about in secret, hushed tones. Each child should be told that his body, or her body, is a precious private possession, however, so that it is easy to build up a desirable feeling of bodily privacy, without any hint of shame or guilt.

(3:51.) Again, it is a good idea for Ruburt to remind himself of the connections between his idea of his body and its relationship to his sexuality and to health. This will help him uncover the reasons for his distrust of the body, so that he can begin to feel a new sense of the body’s reliability, resourcefulness, and powerful healing abilities.

If, on the other hand, parents view the body as a healthy, dependable vehicle of expression and feeling, then their children will look at their own bodies in the same fashion. [...]

[...] I found myself getting out of my body with some difficulty, only I was someone else or in someone else’s body, a young woman student. I went running out of a house into a landscaped yard, sat down, left that body and went strolling through the yard. [...] I finally said, ‘I’m out of my body. [...] Can you?’ He said that he could, and didn’t seem at all impressed, so I went back into the other body again. [...]

I arrived at this idea after several conscious and deliberate attempts to ‘get going’ once again and leave my body behind. [...] All this time I enjoyed the feeling of floating above my body, but even more, of using my physical body to make noise with. This must imply a kind of dual consciousness here, since I was aware of both bodies.

[...] I started thinking about what Jane said about people being out-of-body without knowing it and wondered if Mom was out right then. [...] Apparently this worried me, for I ran to my body for protection. After this I came awake in my body and wrote down my first out-of-body trip!

Between the first episode and the second, I was fully alert, awake in my astral body, but still connected with the physical one. In this state I experienced what I can only call ecstasy, involving the entire body. While the feeling was not localized, it certainly felt strongly sexual in nature, and when I left my body, there was a moment when this continued very intensely.

(9:21.) This body prediction is then assessed, and on more levels than it is possible for me to explain. [...] The state is brought about through certain interactions that occur deep within the body. [...] These are all assembled and used to form the larger picture of the body’s condition.

[...] In any case they cannot be perceived except by the body. But this procedure is so far superior to anything that you know that the body, therefore, actually takes precognitive pictures of its future condition — as if the body situation at the time were projected into the future.

[...] First it is checked against the body’s ideal standard of health in its individual case — its own greatest fulfillment. Then it is checked against the image of the body sent to it by the conscious self. [...] The body makes whatever changes are necessary in order to bring the two images in line with the present corporeal condition.

For a moment, think of your body as one large cell in the moment of its being. You, the larger self, have many bodies, each turning into the other as one dies and is reborn; yet You (capital Y) maintain your identity and your memory even as the smallest cell in your present body does.

The body’s weight was kept down for the same reasons, because he felt according to those old beliefs, that the body’s sustenance and substance in physical reality was not important in regard to his work. [...] The body with weight and substance might be unmanageable, filled with too much energy, and therefore want the physical activity he thought he must deny it for his work. [...]

The feeling of warmth and identification with the legs, and sensations throughout the whole lower body, is also highly significant and necessary. [...] There are muscles and tendons that are thawing out, hence the body is acclimating itself to new conditions.

[...] The body condition reflects subsidiary beliefs about the body that he mobilized for the other purposes that now no longer operate.

[...] Others await only physical proving-out in experience, and the time necessary in your terms for the body to readjust at an even rate—that is, an overall body of motion will be newly established.

[...] Let both of you rejoice in the body’s growing flexibility. [...] I want Ruburt to relax again, however, and allow his body to do its thing. But the will’s power is impressive, and it is “distributed” throughout the body. The body depends upon it for direction. [...] Activate the body’s automatic resources. [...]

[...] The soul’s body cannot grow at the body’s misery. The body’s joy and flexibility physically expresses the great energy of the soul, and hampering the body then hampers the soul’s expression.

(10:01.) The body itself singlemindedly seeks health. [...] He is quite correct in his feelings, that now his forces are united; and the body unerringly makes its adjustments, and assumes a healthy course.

Now: a few words, though Ruburt’s main appointment this evening is with his own body.

While it is true that the body is the living materialization of idea, it is also true that these ideas form an active, responsive, alive body. The body is not just a tool to be used. [...] But the body is composed of living, responding atoms and molecules. [...]

[...] In your terms the body is the living soul. Now the soul can live, and does, in many forms — some physical and some not, but while you are material, the body is the living soul. The body constantly heals itself, which means that the soul in the flesh heals itself. The body is often closer to the soul than the mind is because it automatically grows as a flower does, trusting its nature.

The stuff of the body should not be considered as some metaphysical result, then, but as a living gestalt of responsive flesh. Your body is composed of other living entities, in other words. [...]

[...] They consider ideas as completely mental properties, separate from their concept of the body. [...]

[...] Right now it is socially fashionable to take up some kind of exercise, gym work, or strenuous sport, so it seems obvious that the general populace must have a great regard for the physical body. Unfortunately, large segments of the population feel uncomfortable with their bodies, and do not trust the body’s spontaneity, strength, or overall dependability. They have been taught that medical science knows more about bodies than any private individual knows about their own bodies and their ways and workings.

[...] Since they feel divorced from their bodies, many people suspect what is going on inside. Some religious beliefs suggest that the body is impure, and the heir to disease and infirmity. Often people exercise over-zealously to punish their bodies, or to force the body to respond at its best, since they do not trust it to do otherwise.

Later on we will discuss more thoroughly distorted ideas about the self and the body in particular that stand in the way of natural exuberance and good health.

People have been taught to trust X-rays for a picture of what is happening within their bodies, and cautioned not to trust their own feelings. [...]

(Pause at 9:16.) Your physical body … give us time … is, as an entity, the fleshed-out version — the physically alive version — of the body of your thoughts. It is not that your thoughts just trigger chemical reactions in the body, but that your thoughts have a chemical reality besides their recognizable mental aspects. [...] It is not the best, but I hope it will get the point across: It is as if your thoughts turned into the various appendages of your body. (Emphatically:) They have an invisible existence within your body as surely as viruses do. Your body is composed not only of the stuff within it that, say, X-rays or autopsies can reveal, but it also involves profound relationships, alliances and affiliations that nowhere physically show. Your thoughts are as physically pertinent to your body as viruses are, as alive and self-propagating, and they themselves form inner affiliations. Their vitality automatically triggers (long pause, eyes open) all of the body’s inner responses. [...]

[...] You should know that thoughts also have their physical aspects in the body, and that viruses have their mental aspects in the body. At times you have both asked why an ailing body does not simply assert itself and use its healing abilities, throwing off the negative influence of a given set of beliefs and thoughts.

[...] I want to discuss thoughts and viruses, along with the health of the body.

[...] It is not just that thoughts influence the body, as of course they do; but each one of them represents a triggering stimulus, bringing about hormonal changes and altering the entire physical situation at any given time.

These invisible structures preceded the emergence of the physical body. They also exist after the body’s death. While the condition of the body is directed by the conscious mind in life, then, the idea or mental pattern for the body existed before the conscious mind’s connection with the physical brain.

[...] The general framework, properties and characteristics of the body exist, therefore, before its formation. In simple terms, you choose ahead of time the kind of body you will inhabit and impress. It may seem to you that you do not have any conscious control over your body’s condition in life as you know it, much less before your birth. You have been taught that there is little connection between your thought and your body’s activities.

That is one of the body’s primary functions. A sick body is performing that function then, in its way, as well as a healthy one. [...] So it is futile to become angry at a symptom, or to deride the body for its condition when it is presenting you with the corporeal replica of your own thought, as it was meant to do.

The physically alive body, its activities and condition, are directed through the beliefs of the conscious mind. The body, as explained in this chapter, also has “invisible” counterparts composed of the electromagnetic properties and the interior sound and light qualities.

So — once more — you form reality through your beliefs, and your most intimate production is your physical body. [...] You organize on an unconscious level the atoms and molecules that compose your cells to form your body. [...] To change your body you change your beliefs, even in the face of physical data or evidence that conflicts.

(11:23.) Diverse and highly conflicting instructions are then given to the body. As you should know, the body’s inner environment changes constantly, and it is you who change it. Change is quite necessary and as a rule the body’s overall balance is maintained. [...]

[...] The inner self keeps the physical body alive even as it formed it. The miraculous constant translation of spirit into flesh is carried on with inexhaustible energy by these inner portions of being, but in all cases the inner self looks to the conscious mind for its assessment of the body’s condition and reality, and forms the image in line with the conscious mind’s beliefs.

You each have a body and you each have a consciousness. You can practice with these ideas by applying them to your body. [...]

Today the body began to rid itself of tension. Ruburt is so used to body tensions that he felt disoriented and afraid. He does not need to go to a doctor, but he does need to pay attention to the physician within, and to heed the body’s ancient wisdom.

Your body can now perform better—that should be used as a morning and evening suggestion, and anything you can say will be of help in that regard. It is highly important as a body belief. [...] There are periods where there is some disorientation, as the body rids itself of tensions, at its own pace, and they will be followed by periods of physical ambition.

He lost confidence in the body as a result of his course, and lost trust in his conscious mind as it directs the body. [...]

We are dealing now with body beliefs, then. Impress upon him that he is not moving too fast, that he is not so nervous that he must slow down, meaning slowing down the body.

Thoughts interact with the body and become part of it as viruses do. [...] The physical body will often let down its own barriers to these, knowing they will counteract certain others that are not beneficial at the time.

[...] The body knows how to handle “natural” drugs coming directly from the earth — whether ground or boiled, minced or steamed. A large variety of “manufactured” drugs offer an unfamiliarity to the body’s innate structure, which can lead to strong defense mechanisms. [...]

[...] Your bodies have been conditioned to it through the use of such medications since birth. [...] Put simply, your thoughts can be regarded as invisible viruses, carriers, sparks setting off reactions not only within the body but the entire physical system as you know it.

Now: As stated, thoughts are as natural as any portion of the body. They are as much a part of nature as feelings are, but if you set up an arbitrary division — considering thoughts mental as distinguished from the physical — then your body may give a truer reflection of your being than your thoughts do.

This on several levels is significant, for you have the first strong challenge to habitual body beliefs, with a resulting initial breakup of old suggestion, given constantly to the body. More than this however, in this one case Ruburt realizes that the body remembers how to sit down properly, once the suggestion that it cannot is broken down.

This reinforces older healthier beliefs in the body’s efficiency, that were discarded before any symptoms appeared. [...] Relief and understanding in one area bleeds through into others, as before the belief in the body’s inefficiency also carried over.

[...] The developments just mentioned with Ruburt represent an inner breakthrough of body beliefs that will automatically bring forth others. He is only now learning again the knack of consciously directing the body in the way he wants to—at a certain level, for what he is really learning to do is change the directions he has been giving it, for those worked very well.

[...] The sinuses are draining, and tension being drawn away from other areas of the body. [...] The condition however also raises body temperature (which Jane had noticed), so that certain necessary antibodies are released into the system that help clear the joints and purify the blood.

[...] When the world-view enlarges to include more sophisticated cultural environments then, however, the body must rely upon the conscious mind’s interpretation of events. [...] Imagined fears, projected into the future, put the body in a state of stress unknown to the animal. When you feel that your world is not safe the body may respond in many ways, according to the characteristic temperament and beliefs. [...] His ideas convinced the body that playing dead was the way to insure overall survival. The body might object, but it still must rely upon the conscious mind’s interpretation of events, that it realizes are beyond its realm.

The body is amazingly quick to act upon environmental cues of a physical nature, but your world also involves cultural activity and “dangers” that are not immediately biologically perceivable. So while the body is well equipped to heal itself, and to maintain its own equilibrium, it is also highly responsive to other issues that are of a different nature and beyond the realm of its own functions.

[...] The body begins to rouse. [...] The body is responding. [...]

[...] Now there are countering body impulses, and a constant set of checks and balances where the mind is meant to take another look, or where the body says that the biological integrity is in jeopardy. [...]

The body maintains its vitality not only through the physical motion and agility that you perceive, but by microscopic agility, and actions within microseconds, that you do not perceive. There is as much motion, stimulation, and reaction in the interior bodily environment as the body meets through its encounters with the exterior environment. The body must now and then “flush its systems out,” run through its repertoire, raise its temperature (pause), activate its hormonal actions more strongly. [...] To some extent, it is a way that the body distinguishes between self and nonself.

There is great traffic flow in a city: A body knows how to leap out of the way in a moment’s time from an approaching car. [...] There are decisions made in periods of time so brief you cannot imagine them—reactions that are almost over before they begin, reactions so fast you cannot perceive them as the body responds to its inner reality, and to all the stimuli from the exterior environment. The body is an open system. As solid as it seems to you, there are constant chemical reactions between it and the world, electromagnetic adjustments, alterations of balance, changes of relationships—alterations that occur between the body and its relationship with every other physical event, from the position of the planets and moon and the sun, to the position of the smallest grain of sand, to the tiniest microbe in anyone’s intestine (intently).

One note to Ruburt on vitamins: They are most effectively used for periods of two or three weeks, where they act as stimuli and reminders to the body. Then drop their use for two or three weeks, so that the body then produces by itself those elements you have reminded it you want. Any steady use of vitamins is not to your overall benefit, for you give the body what it needs too easily, and its ability to produce such material on its own becomes sluggish. [...]

Viruses serve many purposes, as I have said before.¹ The body contains all kinds of viruses, including those considered deadly, but those are usually not only harmless, or inactive, but beneficial to the body’s overall balance.

The dream body is the one with which you are most familiar. It has been called the astral body. [...] As a rule, however, you do not go through walls with this body. This is the body you use for ordinary dreams. [...]

You will be able to look back and see your physical body upon the bed on some occasions, and in other cases you will not be able to do this. In the first body form, for example, you can look back and see the physical body. [...] In the third form, you will no longer be aware of the physical body, and you will not see it.

So at least twice a week I lay down to experiment, my body on the couch or bed, the alarm clock set, my house in order, while I try to “get out” to see what I could find. I seem to have a curious talent for this, and rarely do I fail to leave my body when I’ve really made up my mind to go. [...] Then I avoid out-of-body experiments. [...] And I’m afraid to leave my body in the wintertime. [...]

For all practical purposes, of course, you will usually find yourself in some sort of body form in your out-of-body experiences. These are a necessary camouflage, for you cannot yet think of identity without some kind of body, so you project in such a form. [...]