“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(In my Introductory Notes for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, I explained how Jane acknowledges the mail we get from our readers by sending them copies of letters from Seth and herself; to the latter she adds a few personal lines for each correspondent. She also encloses a list of her books, which many readers ask for. Seth dictated his letter in April 1975, just after finishing his part of the work for Volume 2 of “Unknown,” and I presented it while introducing Volume 1. Jane still handles most of the mail herself, and she continues to send people Seth’s letter because we still think he presented excellent ideas in it.

(Pause.) Men can become deranged if they believe life has no meaning. Religion has made gross errors. At least it held out an afterlife, a hope of salvation, and preserved — sometimes despite itself — the tradition of the heroic soul. Science, including psychology, by what it has said, and by what it has neglected to say, has come close to a declaration that life itself is meaningless. This is a direct contradiction of deep biological knowledge, to say nothing of spiritual truth. It denies the meaning of biological integrity. It denies man the practical use of those very elements that he needs as a biological creature: the feeling that he is at life’s center, that he can act safely in his environment, that he can trust himself, and that his being and his actions have meaning.

To some extent, this also applies to religion in the same time period. Churches wanted sinners galore, but shied away from saints, or any extravagant behavior that did not speak of man’s duplicity. Suddenly people with paranoidal characteristics, as well as schizophrenics,² emerged from the wallpaper of this slickly styled civilization. The characteristics of each were duly noted. A person who feels that life has no meaning, and that his or her life in particular has no meaning, would rather be pursued than ignored. Even the weight of guilt is better than no feeling at all. If the paranoid might feel that he [or she] is pursued, by the government or “ungodly powers,” then at least he feels that his life must be important: otherwise, why would others seek to destroy it? If voices tell him he is to be destroyed, then these at least are comforting voices, for they convince him that his life must have value.

At the same time, the paranoid person can use his creative abilities in fantasies that seemingly boggle the minds of the sane — and those creative abilities have a meaning, for the fantasies, again, serve to reassure the paranoid of his worth. If in your terms he were sane, he could not use his creative abilities, for they are always connected with life’s meaning; and sane, the paranoid is convinced that life is meaningless. It did little good in the past for Freudian psychologists to listen to a person’s associations (pause) while maintaining an objective air, or pretending that values did not exist. Often the person labeled schizophrenic is so frightened of his or her own energy, impulses, and feelings that these are fragmented, objectified, and seen to come from outside rather than from within.

I am not simply saying that man does not live for bread alone. I am saying that if man does not find meaning in life he will not live, bread or no. He will not have the energy to seek bread, nor trust his impulse to do so.

(10:17 P.M. “Now that’s weird,” Jane said as soon as Seth withdrew, “It’s only a quarter after ten, but I feel that what we got is way beyond in proportion to the time involved. Before the session I knew he was going into schizophrenia and so forth, but he went past those inklings….” Indeed, her delivery had often been intense, and quite demanding as far as my writing speed went.)