“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Tonight’s session isn’t book dictation, but the large portions of it I’m presenting convey useful insights into our social behavior and social health—and as I show in Note 1, those states can include our interactions with animals.

When Jane began the session her voice was a bit rough and very quiet, but by listening closely I could understand Seth well enough.)

Viruses serve many purposes, as I have said before.¹ The body contains all kinds of viruses, including those considered deadly, but those are usually not only harmless, or inactive, but beneficial to the body’s overall balance.

The body maintains its vitality not only through the physical motion and agility that you perceive, but by microscopic agility, and actions within microseconds, that you do not perceive. There is as much motion, stimulation, and reaction in the interior bodily environment as the body meets through its encounters with the exterior environment. The body must now and then “flush its systems out,” run through its repertoire, raise its temperature (pause), activate its hormonal actions more strongly. In such ways it keeps its system of immunities clear. That system operates always. To some extent, it is a way that the body distinguishes between self and nonself.

(Still quietly, but at a good pace:) When a skunk is frightened, it throws off a foul odor indeed, and when people are frightened they react in somewhat the same fashion at times, biologically reacting to stimuli in the environment that they consider alarming. They throw off a barrage of “foul viruses”—that is, they actually collect and mobilize from within their own bodies viruses that are potentially harmful, biologically trigger these, or activate them, and send them out into the environment in self-protection, to ward off the enemy (more vigorously).

(Pause at 9:17.) There are all kinds of biological reactions between bodies that go unnoticed, and they are all basically of a social nature, dealing with biological communications. In a fashion viruses—in a fashion—again, are a way of dealing with or controlling the environment. These are natural interactions, and since you live in a world where, overall, people are healthy enough to contribute through labor, energy, and ideas, health is the dominating ingredient—but there are biological interactions between all physical bodies that are the basis for that health, and the mechanisms include the interactions of viruses, and even the periods of indisposition, that are not understood.

All of this has to do with man’s intent and his understanding. The same relationships, however, do not only exist between human bodies, of course, but between man and the animals and the plants in the environment, and is part of the unending biological communication that overall produces the vitality of physical experience.

Obviously those abilities operate best when you trust them. The body’s systems know what diseases are in the air, so to speak, and will often set up countermeasures ahead of time, giving you what you experience as an indisposition of one kind or another—but an indisposition that is actually a statement of prevention against another condition.

(9:35 P.M. “Jesus, I didn’t know whether I could do it or not,” Jane said, “but I felt all that stuff there in a great big block, and I just had to get it out. I like it when I do that. I also like it when I don’t have to.” So once again I’d seen it happen: Jane had done very well with a session when she’d felt poorly beforehand. Although her voice had remained muted, her delivery had increased in vigor and emphasis as the session progressed. It was as though she’d acquired an infusion of energy from Seth—yet once the session was over she announced that she wanted to go to bed.)

1. Seth first mentioned viruses in the 17th session for January 26, 1964, when I asked him to comment upon the recent deaths of our dog, Mischa, at the age of 11, and of a pair of kittens Jane had obtained from the janitor of the art gallery where she worked part time. (The kittens had the same mother, but had come from successive litters.) I was 44 and Jane was 34, and in conventional terms both of us were still struggling—not only to learn about ourselves and the world, but to find our creative ways in that world. Seth’s answer to my question was more than a little surprising and saddening to us, and opened up a number of insights:

“The viruses and infections were of course present. They always are. They are themselves fragments, struggling small fragments without intention of harm. You have general immunity, believe it or not, to all such viruses and infections. Ideally, you can inhabit a plane with them without fear. It is only when you give tacit agreement that harm is inflicted upon you by these fragments. To some degree, lesser, dependent lives such as household pets are dependent upon your psychic strength. They have their own, it is true, but unknowingly you reinforce their energy and health.

“Your dog’s illness was incipient. You could not have maintained his health for many long years in any case. I would like to make clear, of course, that animals certainly do have energy to maintain their own health, but this is strongly reinforced as a rule by the vitality of human beings to whom the animals are emotionally attached. The fact is, you were not able to give your dog that added emotional vitality at a time when he needed it most. There is no need to blame yourselves. It was beyond your control.

“Animals, like people, sense when they are a burden, and the dog sensed that he was a burden, and also something of a nuisance. I would have preferred that you did not ask me this question, but since you did, and since you both loved the dog, it deserves an answer.”