“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The challenges — and fears — created at Three Mile Island will last for years, however. Jane and I read that it will take up to four years and many millions of dollars to decontaminate, overhaul, and place the crippled reactor back in operation; the cost is given in incalculable estimates ranging from $40 million to $400 million. Some government officials say that the reactor may never see service again, that it may end up junked, or as a sealed mausoleum, a mute symbol of our nuclear age. [Nor do we know what fate awaits the plant’s undamaged Unit No. 1.] A current fear is that if and when cleanup operations are begun, the small and supposedly harmless amounts of radiation still seeping into the atmosphere may intensify. There’s much debate already about the “cancer deaths” that may show up in the local populace, since no one really knows yet just what a “safe” dose of radiation could be in such a situation. And above all, our energy experts maintain that the United States has traveled too far along the nuclear path to turn back now.

(Regardless of whether the events at Three Mile Island have resulted in any significant radioactive fallout so far, they have generated some disquieting fallout as far as Jane and I are personally concerned. I’ll describe the latest of the many courses of action we’ve found ourselves considering over the years as we work with the Seth material, while trying to keep a balance between the realities we’ve created for ourselves and the possibilities we constantly encounter in the “outside” world.

(I didn’t get carried away by the idea this evening, but I was certainly taken with it as we talked. Yet I could see that I confused Jane, for to make such a venture possible we’d have to change certain beliefs and values that are deeply rooted within us; especially those about personal privacy and our reluctance to “go public” with such topical, immediate material, instead of trusting that the Seth material will exert a meaningful influence in society over the long run. Also involved would be the instant criticisms we’d encounter. But I think the main portion of my enthusiasm stemmed from the frustration I often feel because much of Seth’s material will go unpublished at this time. This year alone, for instance, he’s already given a good amount of excellent information upon a number of nonbook topics — among them the interpretation of dreams; human, animal, and plant consciousness, and the interactions among them; human sexuality; viruses and inoculation; other realities he himself inhabits, and so forth. We’re sorry to think that such material will be shelved indefinitely, but there’s no room for most of it in Mass Events, and there probably won’t be in future books either. I do try to give hints and clues to some of it in this book, though, as I’ve done recently in sessions 841 and 844–45.

The change in attitude could be quite helpful to you in many ways. It should be obvious to you that your own characteristics, interests, attributes, and directions also are partially responsible for the form the material takes.

The Jonestown and Harrisburg incidents are indeed classic examples of the meeting places between private and public realities. I intend to deal with them in depth in The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, where the background, particularly for Frameworks 1 and 2, has already been established.

Most cults have their own specialized language of one kind of another — particular phrases used repetitiously — and this special language further serves to divorce the devotees from the rest of the world. This practice was also followed by those at Jonestown. Loyalty to friends and family was discouraged, and so those in Jonestown had left strong bonds of intimacy behind. They felt threatened by the world, which was painted by their beliefs so that it presented a picture of unmitigated evil and corruption. (Pause.) All of this should be fairly well recognized by now. The situation led to the deaths of hundreds.

Religion and science both loudly proclaim their search for truth, although they are seemingly involved in completely opposing systems. They both treat their beliefs as truths (underlined), with which no one should tamper. They search for beginnings and endings. The scientists have their own vocabulary, which is used to reinforce the exclusive nature of science. Now I am speaking of the body of science in general terms here, for there is in a way a body of science that exists as a result of each individual scientist’s participation. A given scientist may act quite differently in his family life and as a scientist. He may love his family dog, for example, while at the same time think nothing of injecting other animals with diseased tissue in his professional capacity.

Now those beliefs separate man from his own nature.¹ He cannot trust himself — for who can rely upon the accidental bubblings of hormones and chemicals that somehow form a stew called consciousness (louder and quite ironic) — an unsavory brew at best, so the field of science will forever escape opening up into any great vision of the meaning of life. (Long pause.) It cannot value life, and so in its search for the ideal it can indeed justify in its philosophy the possibility of an accident that might kill many many people through direct or indirect means, and kill the unborn as well.²

(Pause.) The scientists have long stood on the side of “intelligence and reason,” logical thought, and objectivity. They are trained to be unemotional, to stand apart from their experience, to separate themselves from nature, and to view any emotional characteristics of their own with an ironical eye. Again, they have stated that they are neutral in the world of values. They became, until recently, the new priests. All problems, it seemed, could be solved scientifically. This applied to every avenue of life: to health matters, social disorders, economics, even to war and peace.