“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Seth talked about illness and suffering in general this evening, and about David in particular. I’m presenting excerpts from the generalized part of his material, but none about David himself. We have no idea of pressing Seth’s personal information upon David; doing that would be an invasion of his privacy. Tonight’s material, however, adds to our understanding of subjects like free will and choosing, good and evil, sickness and health, and reflects upon many questions people have asked us over the years.

Illness was suffered, was sent by God to purge the soul, to cleanse the body, to punish the sinner, or simply to teach man his place by keeping him from the sins of pride. Suffering sent by God was considered a fact of life, then, and a religious truth as well.

(Long pause at 9:25.) Some other civilizations have believed that illness was sent by demons or evil spirits, and that the world was full of good and bad spirits, invisible, intermixed with the elements of nature itself, and that man had to walk a careful line lest he upset the more dangerous or mischievous of those entities. In man’s history there have been all kinds of incantations, meant to mollify the evil spirits that man believed were real in fact and in religious truth.

It is easy enough to look at those belief structures and shrug your shoulders, wondering at man’s distorted views of reality. The entire scientific view of illness, however, is quite as distorted (with amused emphasis). It is as laboriously conceived and interwound with “nonsense.” It is about as factual as the “fact” that God sends illness as punishment, or that illness is the unwanted gift of mischievous demons.

Science disconnected fact from religious truth, of course. In a universe formed by chance, with the survival of the fittest as the main rule of good behavior, illness became a kind of crime against a species itself. It meant you were unfit, and hence brought about all kinds of questions not seriously asked before.

Did those “genetically inferior,” for example, have the right to reproduce?¹ Illness was thought to come like a storm, the result of physical forces against which the individual had little recourse. The “new” Freudian ideas of the unsavory unconscious led further to a new dilemma, for it was then—as it is now—widely believed that as the result of experiences in infancy the subconscious, or unconscious, might very well sabotage the best interests of the conscious personality, and trick it into illness and disaster.

In a way, that concept puts a psychological devil in place of the metaphysical one. If life itself is seen scientifically as having no real meaning, then suffering, of course, must also be seen as meaningless. The individual becomes a victim of chance insofar as his birth, the events of his life, and his death are concerned. Illness becomes his most direct encounter with the seeming meaninglessness of personal existence (all quite intently).

Give us a moment…. You have taught yourselves to be aware of and to follow only certain portions of your own consciousnesses, so that mentally you consider certain subjects taboo. Thoughts of death and suffering are among those. In a species geared above all to the survival of the fittest, and the competition among species, then any touch of suffering or pain, or thoughts of death, become dishonorable, biologically shameful, cowardly, nearly insane. Life is to be pursued at all costs—not because it is innately meaningful, but because it is the only game going, and it is a game of chance at best. One life is all you have, and that one is everywhere beset by the threat of illness, disaster, and war—and if you escape such drastic circumstances, then you are still left with a life that is the result of no more than lifeless elements briefly coming into a consciousness and vitality that is bound to end.

Now, it is also true that in some of its aspects religion has glorified suffering, elevated it to [be] one of the prime virtues—and it has degraded it at other times, seeing the ill as possessed by devils, or seeing the insane as less than human. So there are many issues involved.

Illness is used as a part of man’s motivations. What I mean is that there is no human motivation that may not at some time be involved with illness, for often it is a means to a desired end—a method of achieving something a person thinks may not be achieved otherwise.

One man might use it to achieve success. One might use it to achieve failure. A person might use it as a means of showing pride or humility, of looking for attention or escaping it. Illness is often another mode of expression, but nowhere does science mention that illness might have its purpose, or its groups of purposes, and I do not mean that the purposes themselves are necessarily derogatory. Illnesses are often misguided attempts to attain something the person thinks important. [Sickness] can be a badge of honor or dishonor—but there can be no question, when you look at the human picture, that to a certain extent, but an important one, suffering not only has its purposes and uses, but is actively sought for one reason or another.

I do not want any of this to appear too simplistic, but we must begin somewhere in this kind of discussion…. This is far from the entire story [of illness], but it is enough for this evening’s saga. When you can, encourage your fine wife to follow your example in determining not to worry. It should be the first commandment.

Which might help account, I told Jane, for her response to David’s illness, including the book she’s making for him. I also said that even though Seth hadn’t called this session dictation for Dreams, he very well could have done so: Large portions of it might at least help answer people’s questions.)