“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane’s ideas — and mine, too — have matured considerably since I wrote a month ago that she was thinking of converting half of our garage into a writing room, with its attendant back porch. In fact, we’ve agreed to go ahead with that project this summer. It will certainly be a long and noisy endeavor. Now that he’s finished the front porch, our contractor is free to begin work at the back of the house as soon as possible.)

The species is in a state of transition, one of many. This one began, generally speaking, when the species tried to step apart from nature in order to develop the unique kind of consciousness that is presently your own. That consciousness is not a finished product, however, but one meant to change, [to] evolve and develop.” Certain artificial divisions were made along the way that must now be dispensed with.

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.

1. When Seth came through with “You get what you concentrate upon,” I remembered that he’d first spoken that sentence some years ago — and that soon afterward I’d made a little paper sign bearing those words and taped it to a wall in one of the two apartments we occupied in Elmira, New York. Had I dated the excerpt? I knew that a few years later the sign had accompanied us on our move to the hill house just outside the city, where we live now. After tonight’s session I found it — again upon a wall — with the date: February 26, 1972. From our records I learned that I’d taken Seth’s quotation from a personal session Jane held while we were on vacation in Marathon, a resort community in the Florida Keys.

“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.

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.”

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.