“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now your physical body is a field of energy with a certain form, however, and when someone asks you your name, your lips speak it — and yet the name does not belong to the atoms and molecules in the lips that utter the syllables. [...] Within your body you cannot put your finger upon your own identity. If you could travel within your body, you could not find where your identity resides, yet you say, “This is my body,” and, “This is my name.”

(10:14.) If you cannot be found, even by yourself, within your body, then where is this identity of yours that claims to hold the cells and organs as its own? Your identity obviously has some connection with your body, since you have no trouble distinguishing your body from someone else’s, and you certainly have no trouble distinguishing between your body and the chair, say, upon which you may sit.

It goes without saying then that the soul does not require a physical body for purposes of perception; that perception is not dependent upon physical senses; that experience continues whether or not you are in this life or another; and also that the soul’s basic methods of perception are also operating within you now even as you read this book. [...]

Now: I want to emphasize again that while all this sounds difficult in the telling, it becomes much more clear intuitively when you learn to experience what you are, for if you cannot travel inside your physical body to find your identity, you can travel through your psychological self.

In a manner of speaking, Frank said “As you recover, the soreness of the body will be a sign of new activity, letting you keep track of your progress.” [...] Ruburt’s body felt dead by contrast in large areas in the past. [...]

(11:55.) Ruburt has decided to move, and the body is responding.

Practically speaking, some soreness was to be expected, because of mass and private beliefs about the body. [...]

He does not have anything new “wrong” with his body. Such fears show that the distrust of the body is still to some extent present, so he should refresh his memory on the connections between femininity, his physical body, and health.

(I felt depressed after today’s session, for it seemed to me that Jane still hasn’t shaken her fears, especially her distrust of her own body and its processes, after all this time. [...] The question isn’t why she’s so uncomfortable these days, but why the body, the psyche, has chosen to endure those symptoms for so long.)

Ruburt’s recent discomfort is partially caused by the fear that his body will not be able to completely heal itself, even if he does uncover all of the reasons for his predicament.

Certainly he does believe that his body can begin to feel better and better — and that suggestion is a good one to use, for it implies continuance of input, without getting involved in absolutes.

[...] Why does the body not protest if men have nearly starved, or become the scorn of their fellows, or whatever? The answer is that as beneficial, as desirable, as good health is, and the performance of an excellent body, man’s pursuit of other kinds of accomplishment, his equally strong desire for knowledge, and his insatiable curiosity, his pursuit of the ideal, often lead him into pathways that result in the body’s difficulties.

[...] Almost immediately after your chair suggestion, and with the work you are both doing, Ruburt’s mind and body began to respond. [...] The definite improvements are therefore the result of Ruburt’s determination, and your support, but also of the body’s resiliency when it is allowed to follow its natural impulses.

The body likes to exert force, however, beside that. It enjoys using its strength, so the pillow beating need not be necessarily tied in with the release of aggression alone, but can serve now simply as a way for the body to express its sensations. [...]

[...] Since he is moving more, just about every portion of the body takes new positions. [...]

Ruburt is beginning from his own position, and he is seeking the normal, free motion of his body. [...] The body has not been used, however, in a normal manner. [...]

[...] At its beginning I wrote about the soreness Jane was experiencing throughout the left side of her body. [...] Instead, she’s aware of soreness in other parts of her body on the right side.

[...] We’ve learned much, and Jane’s body seems to be initiating good responses.

(At the same time, her responses are at times very uncomfortable as the body begins readjusting various portions of itself, like long-unused mechanisms that need prompting and lubrication to start working more smoothly. [...]

Earlier he did not want to use the body largely, for reasons he now understands and largely dismisses. As a part of that process he convinced himself that he could not use the body. Now those body beliefs have still to be tackled.

As I told you a while back, Ruburt is left with body beliefs. [...] The body beliefs however have not been challenged.

[...] They led up to the resulting body beliefs, however. These are met most immediately in Ruburt’s most intimate contact—body meeting world. [...]

I told you both to do certain suggestions together, because your belief in them and your effectiveness could help him revive his own body beliefs. [...]

The physicians aid by giving precise overall directions to the body consciousness, simply facilitating healing, and directing energy—they are artists in their field. The body must adjust itself, and is doing so. [...]

[...] A painful sensation started in the canal of her right ear, spread to her jaw, then down the side of her body in the back. [...]

Now: for Ruburt: a major tension block has begun to release itself—one that physically was largely responsible for the difficulties on the right side, and the lack of true body alignment. [...]

[...] the dreams also provide additional assurance, and while dreaming body states are altered—something physicians of course do not recognize. [...]

If you thought or felt in such a fashion, then you would appreciate the fact that biologically your body is yours by virtue of the mineral, plant and animal life from which it gains its sustenance. You would not feel imprisoned as you often do within one corporal form, for you would understand that the body itself maintains its relative stability because of its constant give-and-take with the materials of the earth that are themselves possessed of consciousness.

[...] You do not trust the natural consciousness of the body, so that when its end nears — and such an end is inevitable — you do not trust the signals that the body gives, that are meant to free you.

If you read your selves adjacently, you would build up confidence in the body, and in those cooperative consciousnesses that form it. You would have an intimate awareness of the body’s healing processes also. [...]

Again, in a way your bodies speak a biological language, but in those terms you are bilingual, to say the least. [...]

The full personality consciousness indeed places an additional strain upon what you may call the overall body consciousness, and prolongs the sense of pain connected with that body consciousness. [...] In a terminal illness, the personality consciousness, the I as you know it, bears down in panic upon the body consciousness when it does not understand the state of affairs.

[...] (Last summer, Jane found an injured bird, and for several days tried to make it live.) When the personality understands, it can indeed then will itself to leave the body in an aware state, and as it goes bless the body consciousness who has served it so well, release the tiny birdlike awareness within each cell, and go on to its own transition.

If you know now that you exist independently of the body, if you have experiences within other realities and messages from them, then you need not fear leaving the body, for you can already begin to make inroads.

[...] You can indeed then leave your body while still conscious, and arrive so to speak with your senses about you. [...]

[...] He does feel it when his foot moves as it did this afternoon, or when other portions of his body move easily and automatically. [...] The body will follow its own order as the healing process continues, so he should not demand that it perform thus and so, for the body knows what it is doing. [...]

Ruburt can tell himself that the same energy that writes his books and that moved his foot up this afternoon can indeed heal those other portions of his body. They can close easily and naturally as the body follows its own spontaneous bent toward normal health. [...]

[...] The ritual of the dressings and so forth, and the general concentration upon those portions of his body have, in the past, helped prolong the condition. [...]

[...] I had to laugh at the way Seth had announced that her body knew perfectly well how to heal itself in its own way, regardless of her demands upon it. [...]

[...] Unconsciously she chose the precise “old” class session, dealing with probabilities, and containing her description, last June, of an out-of-body episode in which she did indeed visit a probable class. [...] She visited here, then, out-of-body, and was perceived by Ruburt, who was in an out-of-body state himself. [...]

[...] Ruburt was out-of-body, as he knows, and in that state he was perceiving the greater dimensions of the class event, and trying to correlate this with ordinary class perception. You were also out-of-body, but do not recall the situation.

[...] It concerns Jane’s out-of-body experience of last night. [...]

Then he realized that his body was sleeping. [...]

The body is always an alive, alert, responsive, ever-changing framework, fully focused in the present. [...] And the desire for it propels you and the body. [...]

Ideally—and this is a big ideally—there would be no such damage to the body. [...] Any health difficulties will flow into the pool of your beliefs—but the body is not meant to be more than the reflection and materialization of your inner reality as it appears in space and time. [...]

Briefly, all portions of Ruburt’s body are gaining strength, and are rapidly changing. What he experiences sometimes as painful sensations, the body experiences as new signs of activity.

[...] Your world view must include your beliefs about the body and the mind, about religion, history, and philosophy—and you stand as an entity, a psychological entity, in the center of this inner world.

[...] He was reacting to new stimuli, as is natural for the body. He stretched just about every muscle in a new way, and made new demands upon the body, that the body quite agreeably tried to meet.

(Both of us wanted Seth to discuss the sudden relaxation of her upper body that Jane experienced last Friday afternoon when we made love. [...] But the event provided us with an obvious clue—any body that can undergo so spontaneous a change can hardly be one that’s permanently fixed in a stiffened condition.... [...]

It was easy to see how the body could respond, and only provides a hint of what such future episodes could bring. [...] It happens spontaneously when no healers, per se, are involved, millions of times, anytime a body is touched with love, compassion, and understanding. [...]

In between, there were periods of body soreness in one area or another, which he and you handled well, remembering what I said. [...]

Peter [for his own reasons] may decide that his body is out to get him and punish him, rather than, say, the FBI. He may symbolically pick out an organ or a function, and he will misinterpret many body events in the same way that another may misinterpret mass events. [...] He will consciously and unconsciously focus upon that part of the body, anticipating its malfunction. Our friend can indeed alter the reality of his body.

Peter will interpret such body events in a negative fashion, and as threatening, so that some quite normal sensations will serve the same functions as a fear of policemen, for example. If he keeps this up long enough, he will indeed strain a portion of the body, and by telling others about it he will gradually begin to affect not only his personal world, but that part of the mass world with which he has contact: It will be known that he has an ulcer, or whatever. [...]

[...] Let us take a hypothetical individual — one who is convinced he has a healthy body, and is proud of mental stability. [...]

All of this meant he was left with body beliefs, so that he believed his body could not respond normally. Again, the evidence gave seeming confirmation, so that his confidence in his body was lessened. [...]

[...] In past days Jane’s rhythmic alterations between soreness and comfort in various part of her body continued, almost as though on a schedule.)

[...] So then his creative endeavors not only had to bring in money, but they had to be good, moral, responsible, for they were becoming part of a body of work.

The creative abilities, of course, do not think of bodies-of-work. [...]

Ruburt has a condition brought about my inhibiting physical impulses, and therefore body motion. The condition can be reversed by encouraging body motion. The beliefs behind the curtailment are now being laid bare, and the body beliefs themselves are also beginning to be tackled. [...]

[...] Your affirmation that his body can perform better is also of great help, for those body beliefs also have to be tackled. [...]

[...] I personally suggest, although he can do as he wishes, that he see himself rising at a decent hour to enjoy his day, and that he try two out-of-bodies a week during the day, as he used to. [...] Ruburt’s ideas about out-of-bodies and death are highly important, and should be pursued.

[...] At the same time distractions were minimized, impulses to move away from the desk cut down, and day-dreaming, dream recall, and out-of-bodies became not business, not-work. [...]

Now: each body is of course individual, and while there must be similarities in the ways bodies utilize substances, still there are differences—and sometimes the differences can be more than considerable. Not only in the case of a given substance in many bodies, for example, but any given body may utilize any given substance in quite diverse fashions, according to varying circumstances.

The body is amazingly capable of turning what seem to be toxic substances into beneficial ones, and any body carries within it quite harmlessly all kinds of seemingly deadly viruses that in a healthy person add to overall body balance and health.

You tell your body what to do with the food you eat—and when you are in a technological civilization, it is rather foolhardy to convince yourselves that your food is poisoned. [...]

[...] That is simply characteristic of his body.

He has read a book that discusses massaging the feet in relationship with affecting reflexes in the body. Now: The natural consideration given to the body during such “therapy” is highly beneficial because the body’s rights are taken into consideration, without the value judgment of right and wrong carried by the health foods.

Let us consider the idea of original sin, all of the colorful forms it may take within your body of concepts, and the ways in which these will affect your behavior and experience.

[...] In so doing he quite purposefully detached himself, in your terms now, from the body of his planet in a new way. [...]

[...] The less contaminated your food, for example, the better off you are, but not if you believe that the body in its wisdom cannot handle the ordinary foods with which you are provided. [...]

The exterior improvements are the result of inner body workings, and they represent the growth of his inner confidence. [...] There will be some definite, beneficial changes in walking—but a gradual change so that no strain is put upon one part of the body or another. [...] Body consciousness itself is awakening, and this will add to his own perception. The body is flexibility and health is a natural result of alterations of consciousness—a change of focus that literally brings about new experience.

[...] In those terms the body is a safe universe, self-regulating. [...]

The body is responding to the new conditions. [...]

Joints are being lubricated, but first areas about them had to be released, the body cooperating now in this venture to produce flexibility, as before it cooperated to cut down motion.

[...] Earlier Ruburt’s beliefs behind the body beliefs causing the difficulty affected him in such a way that he picked up from others those moods and feelings that agreed with him, so often constructive body messages could not get through. Now however you are left with body beliefs that no longer have a foundation in other personal beliefs, so they will secede much more quickly in the face of encouragement, enthusiasm, and projects that are otherwise personally desired. These can be used therefore to activate the body now far better than before.

[...] As I told you, the reasons behind the body beliefs have largely vanished. You are left with beliefs about the body. [...]

So beliefs about Ruburt’s body on both of your parts, but of course primarily on Ruburt’s part, must be understood as beliefs that then cause physical experience. [...]

[...] If that is expected of him in line with both of your current beliefs in the body’s poor performance then he does not feel free to go at all.