“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“That isn’t nearly as conceited a statement as it seems to be, of course, for each thing each person does is also unique in the world. Yet, at the same time I mean that the sessions are truly original and significant, with their contents offering new creative insights and hope to the human species in a way that most endeavors do not do. In that sense the Seth business is a remarkable achievement on Jane’s part. I do believe that prolonged study of the Seth material would yield great results toward our understanding of ourselves….”

(It wasn’t until I was checking the page [or printer’s] proofs for Volume 1 last week that I realized Seth hadn’t followed through on his promise. I’d also forgotten to remind him to do so. I asked Jane if Seth could devote the next session to that subject matter so that I could insert it in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality as a note or an appendix, since I had plenty of work to do yet for that second volume. She agreed; we thought some very interesting material would result. We also thought it was a good time to pose questions for Seth — for just two weeks ago, in the 800th session, he’d finished dictating his own fifth book, The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression.²

The question of epidemics, for example, cannot be answered from a biological standpoint alone. It involves great sweeping psychological attitudes on the part of many, and meets the needs and desires of those involved — needs which, in your terms, arise in a framework of religious, psychological and cultural realities that cannot be isolated from biological results.

When you consider epidemics to be the result of viruses, and emphasize their biological stances, then it seems that the solutions are very obvious: You learn the nature of each virus and develop an inoculation, giving [each member of] the populace a small dose of the disease so that a man’s own body will combat it, and he will become immune.

Give us a moment… In a way the body produces antibodies, and sets up natural immunization as a result of, say, inoculation. But the body’s chemistry is also confused, for it “knows” it is reacting to a disease that is not “a true disease,” but a biologically counterfeit intrusion.

(Long pause, one of many.) I will have more to say about suicide, but I do not mean here to imply guilt on the part of a person who takes his or her own life. In many such cases, a more natural death would have ensued in any event as the result of “diseases.” Period. Often, for example, a person wanting to die originally intended to experience only a portion of earth life, say childhood. This purpose would be entwined with the parents’ intent. Such a son or daughter might be born, for instance, through a woman who wanted to experience childbirth but who did not necessarily want to encounter the years of child-raising, for her own reasons.

An automobile accident, suicide, or another kind of accident might result. The person might fall prey to an epidemic, but the smoothness of biological motion or psychological motion has been lost. I am not here condoning suicide, for too often in your society it is the unfortunate result of conflicting beliefs — and yet it is true to say that all deaths are suicide, and all births deliberate on the part of child and parent. To that extent, you cannot separate issues like a population explosion on the part of certain portions of the world, from epidemics, earthquakes, and other disasters.

As for myself, I took both preventative “treatments” before Jane began speaking for Seth in 1963. One led to a strong serum reaction that incapacitated me for two weeks; the other resulted in a partial paralysis lasting several days. I accepted the vaccines because I yielded (if somewhat reluctantly) to conventional parental and medical pressures, as well as my own beliefs of the time: I was “supposed” to take the inoculations; they would be “good” for me. Even now I must carry a warning card in my wallet. It bears a description of my reactions to at least some vaccines, as well as the most emphatic statement that if I’m found unconscious for any reason — after an accident, say — I must not be given an injection of any kind because I might have a fatal reaction to it. I haven’t had a “shot” since living through those very unpleasant experiences, nor do I intend to. I no longer believe I’d succumb to one of the forbidden vaccines — but at the same time I don’t want to find out what might happen, either!