“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There is an enchanting suggestion, solemnly repeated many times, particularly after the turn of the century: “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”¹

This might sound like a bit of overly optimistic, though maybe delightful, nonsense. To a degree, however, that suggestion worked for millions of people. It was not a cure-all. It did not help those who believed in the basic untrustworthiness of their own natures. The suggestion was far from a bit of fluff, however, for it could serve — and it did — as a framework about which new beliefs could rally.

We often have in your society the opposite suggestion, however, given quite regularly: “Every day, in every way, I am growing worse, and so is the world.” You have meditations for disaster, beliefs that invite private and mass tragedies. They are usually masked by the polite clothing of conventional acceptance. (Pause.) Many thousands may die in a particular battle or war, for example. The deaths are accepted almost as a matter of course. These are victims of war, without question. It seldom occurs to anyone that these are victims of beliefs (emphatically) — since the guns are quite real, and the bombs and the combat.

The enemy is obvious. His intentions are evil. Wars are basically examples of mass suicide — embarked upon, however, with all of the battle’s paraphernalia, carried out through mass suggestion, and through the nation’s greatest resources, by men who are convinced that the universe is unsafe, that the self cannot be trusted, and that strangers are always hostile. You take it for granted that the species is aggressively combative. You must out-think the enemy nation before you yourself are destroyed. These paranoiac tendencies are largely hidden beneath man’s nationalistic banners.

(Pause.) You have occasional epidemics that flare up, with victims left dead. Partially, these are also victims of beliefs, for you believe that the natural body is the natural prey of viruses and diseases over which you have no personal control, except as it is medically provided. In the medical profession, the overall suggestion that operates is one that emphasizes and exaggerates the body’s vulnerability, and plays down its natural healing abilities. People die when they are ready to die, for reasons that are their own. No person dies without a reason.² You are not taught that, however, so people do not recognize their own reasons for dying, and they are not taught to recognize their own reasons for living — because you are told that life itself is an accident in a cosmic game of chance.

1. Seth cited the same famous autosuggestion from the work of the French psychotherapist, Emile Coué (1857–1926), in Chapter 4 of Personal Reality, and then as now, he was correct except for the first two words. He should have said: “Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” In a note for Personal Reality I wrote that “Coué was a pioneer in the study of suggestion, and wrote a book on the subject in the 1920s. His ideas were well received in Europe at the time, but weren’t in this country to any large degree. In fact, his lecture tour of the United States turned out to be a failure because of the hostile press reaction.”