“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.”

(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’s main purpose is not only to survive but to maintain a quality of existence at certain levels, and that quality itself promotes health and fulfillment. A definite, biologically pertinent fear alerts the body, and allows it to react completely and naturally. You might be reading a newspaper headline, for example, as you cross a busy street. Long before you are consciously aware of the circumstances, your body might leap out of the path of an approaching car. The body is doing what it is supposed to do. Though consciously you were not afraid, there was a biologically pertinent fear that was acted upon.

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.

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.