“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:20.) It is quite obvious that people must die — not only because otherwise you would overpopulate your world into extinction, but because the nature of consciousness requires new experience, challenge, and accomplishment. This is everywhere apparent in nature itself. (Pause.) If there were no death, you would have to invent it (smile) — for the context of that selfhood would be as limited as the experience of a great sculptor given but one hunk of stone (with quiet dramatic emphasis).¹

Each person’s thoughts flow into that formation, forming part of the earth’s psychic atmosphere. From that atmosphere flows the natural earthly patterns from which your seasons emerge with all of their variety and effects. You are never victims of natural disasters, though it may seem that you are, for you have your hand in forming them. You are creatively involved in the earth’s cycles. No one can be born for you, or die for you, and yet no birth or death is really an isolated event, but one in which the entire planet participates. In personal terms, again, each species is concerned not only with survival but with the quality of its life and experience.

The “victims” choose to participate in those conditions at spiritual, psychological, and biological levels. Many of those who are counted among the fatalities might otherwise die of extended illnesses, for example. At cellular levels such knowledge is available, and in one way or another imparted, often in dreams, to the individual. Conscious comprehension need not follow, for many people know such things, and pretend not to know them at the same time.

(11:44.) Others have finished with their challenges; they want to die and are looking for an excuse — a face-saving device. However, those who choose such deaths want to die in terms of drama, in the middle of their activities, and are in a strange way filled with the exultant inner knowledge of life’s strength even at the point of death. At the last they identify with the power of nature that seemingly destroyed them.

1. Seth’s material on dying and the nature of consciousness immediately reminded me of what he’d said at 11:20 in the 801st session: “Dying is a biological necessity…. Inherently, each individual knows that he or she must die physically in order to survive spiritually and psychically…. The self outgrows the flesh.” I’d been thinking about those passages, and when Seth returned to the subject tonight I decided to have some fun with our accepted social and scientific establishments by writing this note.

Seth’s ideas about the true nature — the necessity — of dying directly contradict more and more of what we read these days. Now a number of scientists tell us that long before the end of this century we’ll have the ability to prolong our physical lives forever — or at least indefinitely, to be more “practical” about it. We’re told again and again that technically we’re on the verge of producing artificial versions of many bodily parts, as well as microcomputers that will be implanted within the body to regulate its performance; these advances, plus our “conquering” of disease, pain, and suffering, plus genetic engineering, will soon make it possible for human beings to live indefinitely. Those in the know maintain that if you are fortunate enough to be a younger person, you may never have to die.

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.