1 result for (book:nome AND session:802 AND stemmed:new)
5/63 (8%)
epidemics
disease
plagues
inoculation
die
(The regularly scheduled session for last Wednesday evening was not held. As I wrote in Note 2 for the first session of Mass Events, which Seth-Jane gave a week ago, we’re having the front porch of our hill house rebuilt. The workmen poured the cement for the new floor on Thursday. Today they installed the forms for the new porch steps, and poured again. The weather has been excellent.)
[... 15 paragraphs ...]
The sight of the dying gave them visions of the meaning of life, and stirred new [ideas] of sociological, political, and spiritual natures, so that in your terms the dead did not die in vain. Epidemics by their public nature speak of public problems — problems that sociologically threaten to sweep the individual to psychic disaster as the physical materialization does biologically.
[... 9 paragraphs ...]
New paragraph: Despite all “realistic” pragmatic tales to the contrary, the natural state of life itself is one of joy, acquiescence with itself — a state in which action is effective, and the power to act is a natural right. You would see this quite clearly with plants, animals, and all other life if you were not so blinded by beliefs to the contrary. You would feel it in the activity of your bodies, in which the vital individual affirmation of your cells brings about the mass, immensely complicated achievement of your physical being. That activity naturally promotes health and vitality.
[... 12 paragraphs ...]
(Pause at 11:55.) Suffering is not necessarily good for the soul at all, and left alone natural creatures do not seek it. There is a natural compassion, a biological knowledge, so that the mother of an animal knows whether or not existing conditions will support the new offspring. Animals instinctively realize their relationship with the great forces of life. They will instinctively starve an offspring while its consciousness is still unfocused, rather than send it loose under adverse conditions.
[... 21 paragraphs ...]
I’m sure Seth would say that the whole affair was hardly a coincidence, since he’s commented several times that new ideas often separately arise more than once in a given historical period.