“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Four days after Sue’s visit we received an enthusiastic letter from an independent motion-picture producer and director in Hollywood, informing us that he’s finally succeeding in his quest for an option to the film rights to Jane’s novel, The Education of Oversoul Seven. This event marks the latest step in a rather complicated affair that began 18 months ago. It means only that our friends in Hollywood and in the subsidiary rights department at Prentice-Hall have agreed upon the terms of the option; a contract has yet to be signed by all of us. We’ve never asked Seth to comment upon either this project itself or anyone involved with it—nor has he volunteered such information, even in private sessions.

As for Ruburt, he became overconcerned about work because of the contracts (for Mass Events and God of Jane, which we have yet to sign with Prentice-Hall), and the foreign hassles. It would be nice if you took it for granted that all of those issues were also being creatively worked out to your advantage. He is still somewhat afraid of relaxing. It makes him feel guilty. His body is responding, however, so let him remember that creativity is playful, and that it always surfaces when he allows his mind to drop its worries.

You are doing well, and your notes (for Mass Events) are coming together in their own order, so let them.

However, for every scientist bold enough to think this way, there are scores of others who vehemently disagree. For most scientific materialists only physical matter is real. For them consciousness is nothing more than an epiphenomenon, the passive by-product of the brain’s physiology and chemical events. They believe that physical death is the end of everything, that ultimately all is pointless. They derisively call their rebellious colleagues “animists”—those who believe that all life forms and natural phenomena have a spiritual origin independent of physical matter. (Such heretics are also called “vitalists,” a term related to animism, and one which also has a long history of scientific contempt behind it.)

Aside from anything Seth has said or ever may say about other probable realities, or even about human origins here on earth, I think it most risky at this stage in history for anyone—scientist or not—to dogmatically state that life has no meaning, or is a farce, or that attributes of our reality of which we can only mentally conceive at this time do not really exist. Discoveries in the “future” are quite apt to prove such limited viewpoints wrong. The history of science itself contains many examples of theories and “facts” gone awry. Moreover, why would our species want to depend upon as fragile a conception as epiphenomenalism through which to comprehend our reality? Or better yet, why does it in large part? Truly, our individual and collective ignorance of just our own probable reality is most profound at this time in our linear history (in those terms). Jane and I wouldn’t be surprised if ultimately, as a result of mankind’s restless search for meaning, we didn’t end up returning in a new official way to our ancient concepts of spirit within everything, animate and inanimate. Such an updated animistic/vitalistic view would take into account discoveries ranging from subnuclear events to the largest imaginable astronomical processes in our observable universe. Human beings do know their own worth, as Seth stated in this session.