“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In that picture consciousness has little part to play. In man’s very early history, however, and in your terms for centuries after the “awakening,” as described in our book, people lived in good health for much longer periods of time—and in certain cases they lived for several centuries.¹ No one had yet told them that this was impossible, for one thing. Their sense of wonder in the world, their sense of curiosity, creativity, and the vast areas of fresh mental and physical exploration, kept them alive and strong. For another thing, however, elders were highly necessary and respected for the information they had acquired about the world. They were needed. They taught the other generations.

In those times great age was a position of honor that brought along with it new responsibility and activity. The senses did not fade in their effectiveness, and it is quite possible biologically for all kinds of regenerations of that nature to occur.

Some in your society feel that the young are kept out of life’s mainstream also, denied purposeful work, their adolescence prolonged unnecessarily. As a consequence some young people die for the same reason: They believe that the state of youth is somehow dishonorable. They are cajoled, petted, treated like amusing pets sometimes, diverted with technology’s offerings but not allowed to use their energy. There were many unfortunate misuses of the old system of having a son follow in his father’s footsteps, yet the son at a young age was given meaningful work to do, and felt a part of life’s mainstream. He was needed.

Your dream³ fits in here in its own fashion, for you see that the ship of life, so to speak, rides very swiftly and beautifully also beneath the conscious surface, traveling through the waters of the psyche…. You are progressing very well at under-the-surface levels. There were few impediments. You had clear sailing, so to speak, and the dream was indeed meant as an inner vision of your progress.

(“I was just going to ask you about doing that.”

After discussing another dream of mine, Seth said good night at 10:11 P.M. “I felt so relaxed before the session I was like a dishrag,” Jane said with a laugh. I told her the session was excellent, and that I’ll be adding relevant parts of it to my dream notebook.)

1. Shades of the great ages given for those patriarchs in the Bible! That was my first thought when Seth told us that in ancient times certain people had “lived for several centuries.” My second thought was to cut his statement out of this record entirely, so that Jane and I wouldn’t have to contend with it at all. Jane wasn’t upset by Seth’s remark, and I could appreciate the humorous aspects of my own initial reactions—yet in all of the years he’s been giving us material, Seth has never before made a reference to what seems like impossible longevities.

I checked several Bibles, a Biblical almanac, and a Biblical dictionary. But one has only to read Chapter 5 of Genesis to learn what great ages are given to Adam and nine of his descendants up to Noah, or the time of the Flood. Did Adam really live for 930 years, or Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, for 912? (Why isn’t Eve’s age given in the Bible?) Enoch, the fifth elder listed after Seth, lived for a mere 365 years, but sired Methuselah, who at 969 years is the oldest individual recorded in the Bible. Methuselah was the father of Lamech (777 years), who was the father of Noah (950 years).

In Genesis 11, the listing of Abraham’s ancestors begins after the Flood with the oldest son of Noah, Shem, living some 600 years. Generally, Abraham’s forebears didn’t live as long as Adam’s descendants had, although after Shem their ages still ranged from 148 years to 460. Abraham himself was “only” 175 years old at his death.

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.”

Second: “The Bible is a conglomeration of parables and stories, intermixed with some unclear memories of much earlier times. The Bible that you recognize—or that is recognized—is not the first, however, but was compiled from several earlier ones as man tried to look back, so to speak, recount his past and predict his future. Such Bibles existed, not written down but carried orally, as mentioned some time ago, by the Speakers. It was only much later that this information was written down, and by then of course much had been forgotten. This is apart from the fact of tampering, or downright misinformation, as various factions used the material for their own ends.”

“In brilliant, limpid color: I dreamed that a ship—a freighter colored a warm gray and a rust-red-orange—sank in the ocean. I was underwater, to one side, and viewed everything as an observer. I watched the ship sink on an even keel through the blue-green water to the smooth yellow and tan and brown sandy ocean floor—but instead of settling motionless there the ship began to ‘sail’ or plow its way across the ocean bottom, almost as though it were a car moving along a road. I saw waves of sand gracefully rise up from the bow of the freighter. I saw no people or fish—just the ship, the ocean, and its floor, which was free of obstacles to the ship’s easy passage. The fact that the ship could navigate that way underwater was a revelation to me, and I knew that in some way this boded well for my future. I was very pleased. The colors were beautiful. I’d really like to do a painting of this dream.”