“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

But nowhere do we see anything about any spiritual dilemmas that may be involved with all of this, or about the enormous social problems — challenges, to be sure — that could soon begin to manifest themselves if anything even approaching “eternal life” comes within the reach of numbers of people. Think of the legalities alone involved. (People might even have to change their marriage vows!) Science-fiction ideas abound. What about population control? What about those who want to live on, but can’t afford to? How will decisions be made about who receives the favored treatment and who doesn’t? Will families qualify, or just individuals? Geniuses or dolts? If the services necessary to extend life are free — paid for by the government, that is — will government decide that certain families simply cannot be allowed to have children, that they’ll be left to die out? In view of our present world challenges, it might even be said that there are already too many people in the world. And what about animals and other forms of life? Perhaps in their own collective wisdom the animals will look upon us as though we’ve altogether given up our powers of intuitive understanding.

There’s much irony involved in the whole idea of living indefinitely. If such a possibility is ever achieved, I think that on conscious levels the members of the species will come to fear the chance of accidental death more than anything else, and that this powerful concern may seriously circumscribe behavior. For who, knowing that for all practical purposes he or she is “immortal,” will want to risk that most precious gift of all — life — by doing anything that could rudely take it away? Even contact sports, let alone activities like air, sea, or space travel, or any dangerous occupation, could be abhorred. Disease of any kind, as well as aging itself, would have to be controlled absolutely.

2. Seth and Jane have both referred to faster-than-light effects in earlier books. Seth did so while discussing his CU’s, or units of consciousness, for instance. Albert Einstein, in his special theory of relativity, demonstrated that nothing else in the universe can quite reach — let alone surpass — the speed of light. Some physicists have theorized about certain faster-than-light “particles,” however, that by some unknown process are created traveling at such enormous velocities; thus in that way they try to get around the limits set by Einstein. There have also been recent astronomical observations of several far-distant objects that appear to be “superluminous,” or traveling considerably faster than the speed of light. These effects have yet to be satisfactorily explained.