“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Then today we read how scientists at a company that markets animals for medical research have bred a strain of hairless laboratory mice without thymus glands. The thymus gland helps a body create immunity against outside infections. Scientists often use “athymic” mice in cancer research, for example, since the mice do not reject tumor transplants. [Indeed, these animals are so sensitive to disease of any kind that they must be raised under sterile conditions.] Jane was very upset by the article and mentioned it to me several times.¹

Both are necessary to maintain that larger “norm” of mental activity. I am using the word “norm” here for your convenience, though I disagree with the ways in which the term has been used, when it has been set up as a rule (underlined) of measurement, psychologically speaking. The genetic system² is not closed, therefore. The genes do not simply hold information without any reference to the body’s living system. It does not exist, then—the genetic structure—like some highly complicated mechanism already programmed, started and functioning “blindly,” so that once it is set into operation there is no chance for modification.

Particularly in your own species there is a great give-and-take between human genetic systems, the environment, and cultural events—and by cultural events I mean events having to do with your peculiarly unique field of activity that includes the worlds of politics, economics, and so forth.

(9:45.) In no way do I mean to demean the indisputable value of geniuses, or their great contributions to the quality of life—but the quality of life is, again, also benefited by the existence of idiots. Not only because both ends of the scale are necessary for genetic reasons, but also because idiots themselves are in no way considered failures or defects by nature. Those terms are human judgments. Idiots also serve their role by moderating the sometimes fierce hold that the reasoning mind can (underlined) have upon human activity.

Ruburt was incensed by the article that he read, and he said indignantly that such procedures involve a biological immorality. I usually avoid terms like “morality” or “immorality,” since their definitions vary according to the individual. The proceedings, however, do involve a biological violation, a going against nature’s flow and intent, a process in which a form of life is made to go against its own value fulfillment, and it is because of such attitudes involving other kinds of life that the horrors of the Jewish war camps were made possible.

End of diction (louder). Do you have a question?

1. Jane and I are both aware of and frustrated by the obvious ambiguities in our own feelings about the use of animals in medical research. We also think that most other people have such mixed feelings, whether they realize it or not. Were either of our own physical lives saved—perhaps even before birth—by those using knowledge gained from animal experimentation? We don’t know. We do know that it’s much easier to condone a philosophy espousing traumatic and repetitive animal research if one is relatively shielded from it.

I also believe, however, that generally speaking science still views our genetic systems in mechanical, deterministic, and reductionistic terms, and will continue to do so for a long time: So that evidence is being accumulated to support that overall view that at this time science has no need to seek for other, larger, and more unsettling frames of reference encompassing consciousness, intent, and genetics. Indeed, I seldom see consciousness mentioned in connection with genetics, except as its quality may relate to genetic “defects” like mental retardation, say.

Nor do I think that establishment science will soon be interested in Seth’s ideas that exchanges take place involving our genetic systems, the environment, and cultural events like politics and economics; or that our genetic systems react to our thoughts and emotions—let alone that there’s any genetic planning for future probabilities! I do not know whether, or how, any of those factors could be measured and/or manipulated in the laboratory. Science could grant Seth’s ideas their own realities outside of the scientific framework, of course, and thus be free of them.

I’m sure that Seth would be the first to agree that consciousness obviously contains an unlimited number of viewpoints, regardless of which ones we humans may choose to call “true” at any particular time. Consciousness is just as amenable to having some of its physical manifestations scientifically studied, its parts manipulated through “genetic engineering,” as it is to encompassing Seth’s material. All of our species’ actions represent our keen and creative interests in studying ourselves in the finest details possible. That the scientific approach has limitations is obvious. So do all others in this physical realm. A discipline, of whatever nature and motivation, can erect barriers to “outside” influences—and those barriers are often artifacts growing almost automatically out of the very nature of the belief system in question.