“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After supper tonight Jane and I had a discussion about the theory of evolution. But before that….)

The child knew “that it came from somewhere else” — not by chance but by design. The child knew that in one way or another its most intimate thoughts, dreams, and gestures were as connected with the natural world as blades of grass are to a field. The child knew it was a unique and utterly original event or being that on the one hand was its own focus, and that on the other hand belonged to its own time and season. In fact, children let little escape them, so that, again, they experiment constantly in an effort to discover not only the effect of their thoughts and intents and wishes upon others, but the degree to which others influence their own behavior. To that extent, they deal rather directly with probabilities in a way quite foreign to adult behavior.

Children understand the importance of symbols, and they use them constantly to protect themselves — not from their own reality but from the adult world. They constantly pretend, and they quickly learn that persistent pretending in any one area will result in a physically-experienced version of the imagined activity. They also realize that they do not possess full freedom, either, for certain pretended situations will later happen in less faithful versions than the imagined ones. Others will seem almost entirely blocked, and never materialize.

Parents and physicians believe, instead, that the child is a victim, ill for no personal reason, but indisposed because of elements attacking him — either the outside environment, or [something] working against him from within. The child may be told: “You have a cold because you got your feet wet.” Or: “You caught the cold from Johnny or Sally.” He may be told that he has a virus, so that it seems his body itself was invaded despite his will. He learns that such beliefs are acceptable. It is easier to go along than to be honest, particularly when honesty would often involve a kind of communication his parents might frown upon, or the expression of emotions that are quite unacceptable.

When a person recovers from such an ordeal, he [or she] usually grants his recovery to be the result of the medication he has been given. Or he may think that he was simply lucky — but he does not grant himself to have any real power in such an affair. The recovery seems to occur to him, as the illness seemed to happen to him. Usually the patient cannot see that he brought about his own recovery, and was responsible for it, because he cannot admit that his own intents were responsible for his own illness. He cannot learn from his own experience, then, and each bout of illness will appear largely incomprehensible.

The results, appearing initially in that now-yellowed handwritten script, made him initially see that he had chosen the events of his life in one way or another, and that each person was not the victim but the creator of those events that were privately experienced or jointly encountered with others.

In that literally power-packed few hours, he also knew that the physical senses did not so much perceive concrete phenomena, but actually had a hand in the creation of events that were then perceived as actual.

Forgive the terminology, but you each believed in “magic,” or the sessions never would have started. You believed that reality had more to it than the senses showed. You believed that together you could achieve what had not been achieved earlier — that you could somehow or other offer meaningful and real solutions to the world’s problems…. (End at 11:34 P.M.)

1. At first Jane and I thought Seth was in error when he said “chariot” instead of “coach” or “carriage.” But from the dictionary we learned that in archaic terms a chariot could be a four-wheeled lightweight carriage, used either for pleasure or on certain affairs of state.

2. Jane and I watched an adaptation of the Westernized Cinderella fairy tale, of course. I almost didn’t bother looking it up, but I’m glad I did, for we learned that the power of Cinderella has been much longer-lasting and more pervasive than we’d realized: The Cinderella tale reaches back to China in the 9th century, and exists in hundreds of versions around the world.

3. The 806th session proper can be found in Chapter 2, but in the deleted portion of that session Seth came through with some comments relative to children that fit in well with his material this evening: “The point of power is in the present. Whenever possible, minimize the importance of a problem. Forget a problem and it will go away. Dumb advice, surely, or so it seems. Yet children know the truth of it. Minimize impediments in your mind and they do become minimized. Exaggerate impediments in your mind and in reality they will quickly adopt giant size.”