“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Survival, of course, is important, but it is not the prime purpose of a species, in that it is a necessary means by which that species can attain its main goals. Of course [a species] must survive to do so, but it will, however, purposefully avoid survival if the conditions are not practically favorable to maintain the quality of life or existence that is considered basic.

There are also emotional interactions among the animals that completely escape you, and biological mechanisms, so that animals felled as natural prey by other animals “understand” their part in nature. They do not anticipate death before it happens, however. The fatal act propels the consciousness out from the flesh, so that in those terms it is merciful.

I do not intend to give a treatise upon the biological structures of the body and their interworkings, but only to add such information in that line that is not currently known, and is otherwise important to the ideas I have in mind. I am far more concerned [with] more basic issues. The body’s defenses will take care of themselves if they are allowed to, and if the psychological air is cleared of the true “carriers” of disease.

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.

Headache remedies are a case in point here. Nowhere do any medically-oriented commercial or public service announcements mention the body’s natural defenses, its integrity, vitality, or strength. Nowhere in your television or radio matter is any emphasis put upon the healthy. Medical statistics deal with the diseased. Studies upon the healthy are not carried out.

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.

(11:30.) Such programs do indeed pick up the generalized fears of the nation, but they also represent folk dramas — disdained by the intelligentsia — in which the common man can portray heroic capabilities, act concisely toward a desired end, and triumph.

(Long pause.) Your television dramas, the cops-and-robbers shows, the spy productions, are simplistic, yet they relieve tension in a way that your public health announcements cannot do. The viewer can say: “Of course I feel panicky, unsafe, and frightened, because I live in such a violent world.” The generalized fear can find a reason [for its existence]. But the programs at least provide a resolution dramatically set, while the public health announcements continue to generate unease. Those mass meditations therefore reinforce negative conditions.

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.

The session had been an impromptu one, and developed on our last night in Marathon because we’d been worrying about our goals in life, and how significant a part the Seth material might play in our affairs. We’d felt strong attractions toward what seemed to be a simpler, more open and pleasant life in the Keys, where the weather was excellent all year, and living in a trailer was an accepted way of life. Yet we didn’t think we could afford it. The Seth Material had been published in mid-1970, but sales were slow, and Seth Speaks wasn’t out yet; we’d just finished correcting the page proofs for that work. I’d given up my commercial art job before we went on vacation, and didn’t know what I’d end up doing, besides helping Jane as much as I could.

All of our possessions were in Elmira. To convert to trailer living meant that we’d have to dispose of most of what we owned, including paintings and manuscripts, furniture, files, books, and many written records — something we probably couldn’t have brought ourselves to do. And how could we go to Florida and leave all of our friends, and how inconvenient would it be to deal with a publisher (Prentice-Hall) headquartered way up north in New Jersey? Jane was much more willing to attempt the move than I was, but I think we knew all along that beneath our questions and feelings the idea of moving was more like a shared dream, or a probable reality we chose not to explore during our current physical lives. Jane’s mother was to die within three months of our return home, mine over a year later (in November 1973).

“Do not confuse your [joint] position with anyone else’s. It is unique. Because it is, the possibilities are endless. If you magnify your limitations you create your own prisons. If you enjoy those freedoms that are yours now, you automatically increase them. You are in a clear position at this moment. You cannot expect a blissful time innocent of problems. That is not the nature of life or of existence.

“Your set of problems are of the most creative kind. They are challenges from which great potentials can emerge. Your full energy for work and your creative drives are released, and will be, as you creatively use and understand your problems. But do not concentrate upon them, nor let them close your eyes to the joys and freedoms that you have. You get what you concentrate upon. There is no other main rule (my emphasis).”

2. As Jane wrote for this note: “We think that the dangers of negative suggestion are as real as the physical ones that are connected with the overuse of X-rays, say. Certainly some women have uncovered cancers through self-examinations, and in so doing perhaps saved their lives. There’s no way of knowing, though, what part negative suggestion might have played in their diseased conditions to begin with.

“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.”

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).

Even when resorted to, prophylactic mastectomies are not foolproof, for a few women have still developed cancer in the area of the nipple. What Jane and I are very curious about, however, is how many “statistically vulnerable” women submitted to operations they didn’t need — for surely a significant number of them wouldn’t have developed cancer in the first place. The percentage is unknowable, of course. If it could be shown that most of the “high risk” women would get cancer, there wouldn’t be arguments about whether such mastectomies are of general value. As things are, though, because of the controversy women once again end up confused as to who is right and what to do. Large scale studies, including one by the National Cancer Institute, are planned to explore the whole question of prophylactic mastectomies.