“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Many in the United States now feel that our country looks the fool before the rest of the world. The mildest epithet being applied to us in the Middle East is “stupid.” A few of our European allies, however, have expressed concern and sympathy. Our President’s main challengers for his office haven’t publicly criticized him, but neither have they defended him from foreign and domestic censure—and today our Secretary of State resigned in protest of the rescue mission. Our government is supposed to have begun preparing for the rescue shortly after the hostages were seized more than five months ago. All details of the failed attempt may not be released for months, or even years, but already critics are questioning whether the excessive secrecy surrounding the operation led to basic errors in planning and judgment, as well as poor anticipation of the mechanical factors involved.

Just before dusk, a fine rain began to fall. Jane sat in the doorway that opens from her writing room onto the screened-in back porch of the hill house, and watched the birds searching out the wet remnants of the feed I’d scattered in the driveway this morning. Because of her walking difficulties she’d stayed in her office chair, which is on wheels, and pushed the sliding glass door wide open from that position. The rain didn’t bother the birds at all: a pair of cardinals, several red-winged blackbirds, some phoebes, various warblers, and a group of mourning doves. Jane grew very relaxed as she sat there at that quiet hour—yet she wanted to hold the session anyhow; she called me early; she felt Seth around….)

In your terms that language speaks the flesh—and it speaks the flesh equally in all races of mankind. There are no inferior or superior races. Now dreams also provide you with another universal kind of language, one that unites all peoples to one extent or another, regardless of their physical circumstances or nationalities or alliances.

(Long pause at 9:13.) I am also stating that the species is itself aware of those conditions that lead to its own value fulfillment, and that of its members. No species basically (underlined) biologically considers its own existence with other species except in a cooperative manner—that is, there is no basic competition between species. When you think that there is, you are reading nature wrong. Whatever man’s conscious beliefs, on a biological level his genetic structure is intimately related to the genetic structure of all other species.

By themselves, whether they appear as superior or defective conditions, they necessitate a different kind of adaptability, a change of subjective or physical focus, the intensification of other abilities that perhaps have been understressed. Yet granting all this, why, again, would some individuals choose situations that would be experienced as defective conditions? For this, we need to examine some human feelings that are often forgotten.

(Long pause.) Suffering is a human condition that is sought for various reasons. There are gradations of suffering, of course, and each person will have his or her definitions of what suffering is. Many people do indeed equate a certain kind of suffering with excitement. Sportsmen, race-car drivers, mountain climbers—all seek suffering to one extent or another, and find the very intensity of certain kinds (underlined) of pain pleasurable. You might say that they like to live dangerously.

While I admit that many people will not agree with me (smile), I know from experience that most individuals do not choose one “happy” life after another, always ensconced in a capable body, endowed by nature or heritage with all of the gifts most people seem to think they desire.

Each person seeks value fulfillment, and that means that they choose various lives in such a fashion that all of their abilities and capacities can be best developed, and in such a way that their world is also enriched. Some people will choose “defective” bodies purposely in order to focus more intensely in other areas. They want a different kind of focus. (Long pause.) They want to sift their characteristics through a certain cast. Such a choice demands an intensification. It is made on the part of the individual and on the parts of the parents as well, so that a certain group of people will relate to the world in a highly characteristic way. In almost all such cases (pause), such people will be embarked upon subjective issues and questions also that might not be considered otherwise. They will ask questions on their own parts that need to be raised, not only for themselves but for the society at large.