“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.