“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You were presented—or rather you presented yourself—with a prime example of the abilities of the natural person. I said something once to the effect that so-called miracles were simply the result of nature unimpeded, and certainly that is the case. You are presented now, in the world, with a certain picture of a body and its activities, and that picture seems (underlined) very evidential. It seems to speak for itself.

Instead you are presented, of course, with a picture of man’s body as it reflects, and is affected by, man’s beliefs. Doctors expect vision to [begin to] fail, for example, after the age of 30, and there are countless patient records that “prove” that such disintegration is indeed a biological fact.

Your beliefs tell you, again, that the body is primarily a mechanism—a most amazing machine, but a machine (louder), without its own purpose, without any intent, a mindless assembly plant of assorted parts that simply happened to grow together in a certain prescribed fashion. Science says that there is no will, yet it assigns to nature the will to survive—or rather, a will-less instinct to survive. To that extent it does admit (underlined) that the machine of the body “intends” to insure its own survival—but a survival which has no meaning beyond itself. And because [the body] is a machine, it is expected to decay after so much usage.

Your Olympics,² on television, present you with evidence of the great capacity of the young human body. The contrast between the activity of those athletes, however, and the activity of the normal young person is drastic. (Pause.) You believe that the greatest training and discipline must be used to bring about such activity—but that seemingly extraordinary physical ability simply represents the inherent capacities of the human body. In those cases, the athletes through training are finally able to give a glimpse of the body’s spontaneous abilities. The training is necessary because it is believed necessary (all with emphasis).

(9:53.) Again, in our material on suffering (see the 895th session, for instance), I mentioned that illness serves purposes—that it has a face-saving quality in your society—so here I am speaking of the body’s own abilities. In that light, the senses do not fade. Age alone never brought about any loss of physical agility, or of mental ability, or of desire. Death must come to every living person, yet the time and the means are basically up to each individual. Meaningful work is important at any age. You cannot content the aged entirely with hobbies any more than you can the young, but meaningful work means work that also has the exuberance of play, and it is that playful quality that contains within itself great propensities of a healing and creative nature.

When [most of] you think of physical symptoms, of course, you regard your body with a deadly seriousness that to some extent impedes inner spontaneity. You lay your limiting beliefs upon the natural person.

First: “In those early days men and women did live to ages that would amaze you today—many living to be several hundred years old. This was indeed due to the fact that their knowledge was desperately needed, and their experience. They were held in veneration, and they cast their knowledge into songs and stories that were memorized throughout the years. Beside this, however, their energy was utilized in a different fashion than yours is: They alternated between the waking and dream states, and while asleep they did not age as quickly. Their bodily processes slowed. Although this was true, their dreaming mental processes did not slow down. There was a much greater communication in the dream state, so that some lessons were taught during dreams, while others were taught in the waking condition. There was a greater and greater body of knowledge to be transmitted as physical existence continued, for they did not transmit private knowledge only, but the entire body of knowledge that belonged to the group as a whole.”