“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

The body, responding to his thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, has much more data to deal with, therefore, and must have a clear area in which concise action is possible.

Many people, however, do not pay attention to everything in their environments, but through their beliefs concentrate only upon “the ferocious dog four blocks away.” That is, they do not respond to what is physically present or perceivable in either space or time, but instead [dwell] upon the threats that may or may not exist, ignoring at the same time other pertinent data that are immediately at hand.

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.

More and more, the quality of your lives is formed through the subjective realities of your feelings and mental constructions. Again, beliefs that foster despair are biologically destructive. They cause the physical system to shut down. If mass action against appalling social or political conditions is not effective, then other means are taken, and these are often in the guise of epidemics or natural disasters. The blight is wiped out in one way or another.

Such conditions, however, are the results of beliefs, which are mental, and so the most vital work must always be done in that area.

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.

Now, there’s very recent discussion in medical circles that many cases of senility are caused by a “slow virus infection,” rather than just heredity or the traditional aging and oxygen starvation of the brain. The hope, and the unproven speculation, are that eventually such an infection might be treatable medically. But either way (whether senility arises through aging or infection), beliefs would come first, helping the whole body maintain its healthy performance well into old age, or encouraging it to deteriorate unnecessarily.