“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A species that senses a lack of this quality can in one way or another destroy its offspring — not because they could not survive otherwise, but because the quality of that survival would bring about vast suffering, for example, so distorting the nature of life as to almost make a mockery of it. Each species seeks for the development of its abilities and capacities in a framework in which safety is a medium for action. Danger in that context exists under certain conditions clearly known to the animals, clearly defined: The prey is known, for example, as is the hunter. But even the natural prey of another animal does not fear the “hunter” when the hunter animal is full of belly, nor will the hunter then attack.

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.”

Your current ideas of preventative medicine, therefore, generate the very kind of fear that causes disease. They all undermine the individual’s sense of bodily security and increase stress, while offering the body a specific, detailed disease plan. But most of all, they operate to increase the individual sense of alienation from the body, and to promote a sense of powerlessness and duality.

When man feels powerless, however, and in a state of generalized fear, he can even turn the most natural earthly ingredients against himself. Your television, and your arts and sciences as well, add up to mass meditations. In your culture, at least, the educated in the literary arts provide you with novels featuring antiheroes, and often portray an individual existence [as being] without meaning, in which no action is sufficient to mitigate the private puzzlement or anguish.

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.

“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.”

I remind the reader that after break ended at 11:35 in the last session (the 804th in Chapter 1), Seth had this to say: “Left alone, the body can defend itself against any disease, but it cannot defend itself appropriately against an exaggerated general fear of disease on the individual’s part. It must mirror your own feelings and assessments. Usually, now, your entire medical systems literally generate as much disease as is cured — for you are everywhere hounded by the symptoms of various diseases, and filled with the fear of disease, overwhelmed by what seems to be the body’s propensity toward illness — and nowhere is the body’s vitality or natural defense system stressed.”