“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Man, on the other hand, has more to contend with. He must deal with beliefs and feelings often so ambiguous that no clear line of action seems possible. The body often does not know how to react. If you believe that the body is sinful, for example, you cannot expect to be happy, and health will most likely elude you, for your dark beliefs will blemish the psychological and biological integrity with which you were born.

(10:03.) You must return, wiser creatures, to the nature that spawned you — not only as loving caretakers but as partners with the other species of the earth. You must discover once again the spirituality of your biological heritage. The majority of accepted beliefs — religious, scientific, and cultural — have tended to stress a sense of powerlessness, impotence, and impending doom — a picture in which man and his world is an accidental production with little meaning, isolated yet seemingly ruled by a capricious God. Life is seen as “a valley of tears” — almost as a low-grade infection from which the soul can be cured only by death.

Religious, scientific, medical, and cultural communications stress the existence of danger, minimize the purpose of the species or of any individual member of it, or see mankind as the one erratic, half-insane member of an otherwise orderly realm of nature. Any or all of the above beliefs are held by various systems of thought. All of these, however, strain the individual’s biological sense of integrity, reinforce ideas of danger, and shrink the area of psychological safety that is necessary to maintain the quality possible in life. The body’s defense systems become confused to varying degrees.

“MASS MEDITATIONS.” “HEALTH” PLANS FOR DISEASE. EPIDEMICS OF BELIEFS, AND EFFECTIVE MENTAL “INOCULATIONS” AGAINST DESPAIR

(Pause at 10:15.) Chapter 2: “ ‘Mass Meditations.’ (A one-minute pause.) ‘Health’ Plans for Disease. Epidemics of Beliefs, and Effective Mental ‘Inoculations’ Against Despair.”

Your beliefs have generated feelings of unworth. Having artificially separated yourselves from nature, you do not trust it, but often experience it as an adversary. Your religions granted man a soul, while denying any to other species. Your bodies then were relegated to nature and your souls to God, who stood immaculately apart from His creations.

Your scientific beliefs tell you that your entire world happened accidentally. Your religions tell you that man is sinful: The body is not to be trusted; the senses can lead you astray. In this maze of beliefs you have largely lost a sense of your own worth and purpose. A generalized fear and suspicion is generated, and life too often becomes stripped of any heroic qualities. The body cannot react to generalized threats. It is, therefore, put under constant strain in such circumstances, and seeks to specify the danger. It is geared to act in your protection. It builds up strong stresses, therefore, so that on many occasions a specific disease or threat situation is “manufactured” to rid the body of a tension grown too strong to bear.

Many of my readers are familiar with private meditation, when concentration is focused in one particular area. There are many methods and schools of thought here, but a highly suggestive state of mind results, in which spiritual, mental, and physical goals are sought. It is impossible to meditate without a goal, for that intent is itself a purpose. Unfortunately, many of your public health programs, and commercial statements through the various media, provide you with mass meditations of a most deplorable kind. I refer to those in which the specific symptoms of various diseases are given, in which the individual is further told to examine the body with those symptoms in mind. I also refer to those statements that just as unfortunately specify diseases for which the individual may experience no symptoms of an observable kind, but is cautioned that these disastrous physical events may be happening despite his or her feelings of good health. Here the generalized fears fostered by religious, scientific, and cultural beliefs are often given as blueprints of diseases in which a person can find a specific focus — the individual can say: “Of course, I feel listless, or panicky, or unsafe since I have such-and-such a disease.”

Many — not all — plotless novels or movies are the result of this belief in man’s powerlessness. In that context no action is heroic, and man is everywhere the victim of an alien universe. On the other hand your common, unlettered, violent television dramas do indeed provide a service, for they imaginatively specify a generalized fear in a given situation, which is then resolved through drama. Individual action counts. The plots may be stereotyped or the acting horrendous, but in the most conventional terms the “good” man wins.

Those programs often portray your cultural world in exaggerated terms, and most resolution is indeed through violence. Yet your more educated beliefs lead you to an even more pessimistic picture, in which even the violent action of men and women who are driven to the extreme serves no purpose. The individual must feel that his actions count. He is driven to violent action only as a last resort — and illness often is that last resort.

The doctor is like a biological mechanic, who knows your body far better than you. Now these medical beliefs are intertwined with your economic and cultural structures, so you cannot lay the blame upon medical men or their profession alone. Your economic well-being is also a part of your personal reality. Many dedicated doctors use medical technology with spiritual understanding, and they are themselves the victims of the beliefs they hold.

If you do not buy headache potions, your uncle or your neighbor may be out of business and not able to support his family, and therefore lack the means to buy your wares. You cannot disconnect one area of life from another. En masse, your private beliefs form your cultural reality. Your society is not a thing in itself apart from you, but the result of the individual beliefs of each person in it. There is no stratum of society that you do not in one way or another affect. Your religions stress sin. Your medical profession stresses disease. Your orderly sciences stress the chaotic and accidental theories of creation. Your psychologies stress men as victims of their backgrounds. Your most advanced thinkers emphasize man’s rape of the planet, or focus upon the future disaster that will overtake the world, or see men once again as victims of the stars.

“With some women, not conducting regular self-examinations would rouse as many fears as doing them — and since those women’s beliefs follow official medical ones so strictly, they’re much better off with the examinations. In this and all instances regarding health, each woman should weigh all the evidence, examine her beliefs, and make her own decisions.”

Involved in the arguments are the leading cancer investigative organizations in the country. For example: Scientific advisers to the government’s National Cancer Institute, which is conducting elaborate studies of many thousands of women of varying ages, have called for a halt to the routine screening of younger women. These scientists are on record as stating that such X-raying may cause more breast cancer than it cures. Many millions of dollars, and much time and effort, have been and are being given to such research programs. It will be difficult to alter those studies because of entrenched belief systems. Even the economic factors become important: Beside the great sums involved in the “official” programs, for instance, many private radiologists have also found mammography screening to be quite profitable.

Now, there’s much confusion on the part of women over whether to have mammograms. The process isn’t infallible, unfortunately; also, misinterpretations of its results have caused a number of cancer-free women to undergo mastectomies — often radical ones — when they didn’t have to. Moreover, each of these individuals has to live with the belief that they’ve had cancer, and must constantly be on the alert for any signs of its recurrence — signs they do not find. At the same time, they are subjected to even more X-ray examinations on a regular basis. They can also have insurance and employment problems (as can many other cancer patients).

I’ll conclude this note by making three quick points. The first is that other agencies and individuals in the medical and psychological fields are conducting studies of the ties that exist between emotional states and cancer. The second is that Jane and I are perfectly aware of all the good things that medical science has contributed to our worldwide civilization; given our species’ present collective beliefs about the vulnerability of the individual to outside forces, medicine as it’s now practiced is a vital component of that civilization. The third point is that with his views, Seth is simply trying to open our eyes to a much wider understanding of human capacities.

Apropos of that final item, Jane and I refer the reader to the entire last session. For in it Seth not only discussed the body’s natural defenses and how it “immunizes itself,” but also examined our negative cultural beliefs about the body and disease. We think his material is so good that it deserves more than one reading.