“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause.) If the “earthling” spoke, the alien would of course instantly know that you were communicating creatures, and in the vocal sounds recognize patterns that contained purpose and intent. To one extent or another, all creatures use language (underlined), implying a far vaster sociobiological relationship than is usually supposed. From [the earthling’s] appearance the alien would be able to deduce — if it did not already know — the proportions of the various elements upon your planet; this being surmised from your method of locomotion, appendages, and the nature of your physical vision.

The seasons must retain some stability. The rains must fall, but not too much. The storms must rage, but not too devastatingly. Behind all of this lies a biological and psychic cooperative venture. All of this could be perceived by our hypothetical alien from one lone human individual; and we will return to our alien later on.

Man’s physical world, with all of its civilizations and cultural aspects, and even with its technologies and sciences, basically represents the species’ innate drive to communicate, to move outward, to create, and to objectify sensed inner realities. The most private life imaginable is a very social affair. The most secluded recluse must still depend upon the biological sociability of not only his own body cells, but of the natural world with all of its creatures. The body, then, no matter how private, is also a public, social, biological statement. A spoken sentence has a certain structure in any language. It presupposes a mouth and a tongue, the kind of physical organization necessary; a mind; a certain kind of world in which sounds have meaning; and a very precise, quite practical knowledge of the nature of sounds, the combination of their patterns, the use of repetition, and a knowledge of the nervous system. Few of my readers possess such conscious knowledge, yet the majority speak quite well.

In one way or another, therefore, it certainly seems that your body possesses a kind of quite pragmatic information, and acts upon it. You can express almost any idea that you want in vocal terms, even if you have hardly any conception at all of the way in which your own speech is executed.

The body is geared then to act. It is pragmatically practical, and above all it wants to explore and to communicate. Communication implies a social nature. The body has within it inherently everything necessary for its own defense. The body itself will tease the child to speak, to crawl and walk, to seek its fellows. Through biological communication the child’s cells are made aware of its physical environment, the temperature, air pressure, weather conditions, food supplies — and the body reacts to these conditions, making some adjustments with great rapidity.

At cellular levels the world exists with a kind of social interchange, in which the birth and death of cells are known to all others, and in which the death of a frog and a star gain equal weight. But at your level of activity your thoughts, feelings, and intents, however private, form part of the inner environment of communication. This inner environment is as pertinent and vital to the species’ well-being as is the physical one. It represents the psychic, mass bank of potential, even as the planet provides a physical bank of potential. When there is an earthquake in another area of the world, the land mass in your own country is in one way or another affected. When there are psychic earthquakes in other areas of the world, then you are also affected, and usually to the same degree.

(10:42.) I am trying to put this simply — but without some illnesses, the body could not endure. Give us a moment… First of all, the body must be in a state of constant change, making decisions far too fast for you to follow, adjusting hormonal levels, maintaining balances between all of its systems; not only in relationship to itself — the body — but to an environment that is also in constant change. At biological levels the body often produces its own “preventative medicine,” or “inoculations,” by seeking out, for example, new or foreign substances in its environment [that are] due to nature, science or technology; it assimilates such properties in small doses, coming down with an “illness” which, left alone, would soon vanish as the body utilized what it could [of it], or socialized “a seeming invader.”

The body is, therefore, quite well equipped to deal with its physical stance in the physical world, and its defense systems are unerring in that respect. Your conscious mind, however, directs your temporal perception and interprets that perception, organizing it into mental patterns. The body, again, must depend upon those interpretations. The biological basis of all life is a loving, divine and cooperative one, and presupposes a safe physical stance from which any member of any species feels actively free to seek out its needs and to communicate with others of its kind.

(Pause at 11:01.) Give us a moment… It is fashionable to believe that the animals do not possess imagination, but this is a quite erroneous belief. They anticipate mating, for example, before its time. They all learn through experience, and despite all of your concepts, learning is impossible without imagination at any level.

Private disease, then, happens also in a social context. This context is the result of personal and mass beliefs that are intertwined at all cultural levels, and so to that extent serve private and public purposes.

(Pause at 11:56.) The illnesses generally attributed to all different ages are involved. Those of the elderly, again, fit in with your social and cultural beliefs, the structure of your family life. Old animals have their own dignity, and so should old men and women. Senility is a mental and physical epidemic — a needless one. You “catch” it because when you are young you believe that old people cannot perform. There are no inoculations against beliefs, so when young people with such beliefs grow old they become “victims.”²

The kinds of diseases change through historical periods. Some become fashionable, others go out of style. All epidemics, however, are mass statements both biologically and psychically. They point to mass beliefs that have brought about certain physical conditions that are abhorrent at all levels. They often go hand-in-hand with war, and represent biological protests.

(Long pause.) Whenever the conditions of life are such that its quality is threatened, there will be such a mass statement. The quality of life must be at a certain level so that the individuals of a species — of any and all species — can develop. In your species the spiritual, mental and psychic abilities add a dimension that is biologically pertinent.

The beliefs people acquire when young can be changed, of course, and according to Seth (and the ideas Jane and I have also) this process of change would be the best “inoculation” there is against senility. As I watched my father grow older, with an accompanying progressive loss of memory and function, I used to wonder why he didn’t consciously revise his response to life — and why I never saw any indication that he wanted to. I clearly sensed that it was possible for him to improve his beliefs about life, and that the benefits from such a course of action would be great. Nor did I merely wish he would change just so that I could avoid the pain I felt watching him deteriorate. My father’s chosen withdrawal from the world was all too plain for everyone to see. In our imperfect understanding, Jane and I and other family members saw this process go on: We did not feel there was much any of us could do.