“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:19.) The myths upon which you base your lives so program your existence that often you verbally deny what you inwardly know. When people are hurt in a natural disaster, for example, they will often profess to have no idea at all for such involvement. They will ignore or deny the inner feelings that alone would give the event any meaning in their lives. The reasons for such involvement would be endless, or course — all valid, yet in each and every case, man and nature in those terms would meet in an encounter that had meaning, from the largest global effects to the smallest, most private aspects of the individuals involved. You have made certain divisions because of your myths, of course, that make this kind of explanation extremely important and difficult. You think of rain or earthquakes as natural events, for example, while you do not consider thoughts or emotions as natural events in the same terms. Therefore it is difficult for you to see how there can be any valid interactions between, say, emotional states and physical ones.

Some people believe that they must be punished, and so they seek [out] unfortunate circumstances. They [go] to one event after another in which they meet retribution. They may seek out areas of the country in which natural disasters are frequent, or their behavior may be such that they attract from other people reactions of an explosive kind. Often, however, individuals use disasters quite for their own purposes, as an exteriorized force that brings their lives into clear focus. Some may be flirting with the idea of death, and choose a dramatic encounter with nature in the final act. Others change their minds at the last moment.

I am speaking particularly of epidemics that are less than deadly, though danger is involved. In your times, hospitals, you must realize, are important parts of the community. They provide a social as well as a medical service. Many people are simply lonely, or overworked. Some are rebelling against commonly held ideas of competition. Flu epidemics become social excuses for much needed rest, therefore, and serve as face-saving devices so that the individuals can hide from themselves their inner difficulties. In a way, such epidemics provide their own kind of fellowship — giving common meeting grounds for those of disparate circumstances. The [epidemics] serve as accepted states of illness, in which people are given an excuse for the rest or quiet self-examination they desperately need but do not feel entitled to otherwise.

2. I underlined the word story (like this) in Seth’s material just to remind the reader that the Christ figure symbolizes our idea of God and his relationships. According to Seth, the man we call Jesus Christ was actually composed of three individuals who were the physical manifestations of the same nonphysical entity: John the Baptist, St. Paul, and a man historically known as Christ. None of these were crucified. Their roles became blended and distorted in history. Seth discussed the Christ story in various passages in The Seth Material and Seth Speaks, and has at least touched upon it in all of his succeeding books.

3. Seth referred to the latest scientific ideas concerning “selfish genes” — a subject Jane and I had been talking about today. (Genes are units found on the chromosomes of the cell nucleus; they carry hereditary characteristics, and consist mainly of protein and DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid.)

A number of scientists — biologists, zoologists, and psychologists, among others — have recently published highly praised books in which they claim to show how our genes manipulate our individual behavior with only their own genetic survival at stake, even when we think we are displaying subjective qualities like altruism. Jane and I think the idea of such self-centered genetic behavior is much too limited, simple, and “mechanistic,” to use another term that’s currently in scientific vogue. The idea of selfish genes also implies plan on the part of such entities — and so comes dangerously close to contradicting several basic tenets of science itself: among them that life arose by chance, that it perpetuates itself through random mutations and the struggle for existence (or natural selection), and that basically life has no meaning.