“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(According to him, tonight’s session after 9:52 isn’t book material either, but Jane and I are presenting it here because in it Seth returns to questions I’d asked earlier in Mass Events: What about the roles played in human affairs by viruses like smallpox? As I quoted myself in the opening notes for the 840th session: “What is the real relationship between the host organism and disease?” See Session 840 itself, and certain parts of Session 841.

(My questions had been rearoused because of an article I’d read a few days ago in a scientific journal; in their piece the authors explained that a certain significant percentage of women can develop cervical cancer from contact with a virus carried by the sperm of males who haven’t had vasectomies — or who haven’t been sterilized, in other words. I found the whole premise or situation strange indeed, I told Jane — that the male of our species actually has the potential to pass on cancer to the female. We’ve heard of the theory before, by the way — but transmitting cancer in such a fashion seems to be one of the most deadly results that can follow from the union of a man and a woman. We became intensely curious as to how Seth would explain the whole matter, and he gave us excellent information on it. The chances for ironies abound in our belief systems, I said to Jane. What if researchers next find out that in some as-yet-unsuspected manner, the female can in turn pass on a cancer-causing virus to her mate?

(Then we both laughed. There isn’t any saving of the world necessary, we agreed. The world doesn’t need to be saved. It’s perfectly capable of surviving even while it’s home to a species as obstreperous as man. After all, I said, man is but one species who creates his perception of the living earth in concert with nearly innumerable other species — and each other species does the same thing from its viewpoint. Even with his seemingly destructive ways, man can injure that joint reality only to a minor extent, regardless of such potential fiascos as that posed by Three Mile Island, or even nuclear war. In particular, I reminded Jane of a paragraph of material Seth gave in the 865th nonbook session, which she held a week ago from last Monday evening:

(9:23.) If the simplest particle is so endowed with impetus, with hidden ideals that seek fulfillment, then what about the human being? You have the propensity to search for meaning, for love, for cooperative ventures. You have the propensity to form dazzling mental and psychological creations, such as your arts and sciences and religions and civilizations. Whatever errors that you have made, or gross distortions, even those exist because of your need to find meaning [in] your private existence and [in] life itself.

Any scientist who believes that life has no meaning has simply provided himself with what he thinks of as an unfailing support against life’s vicissitudes. If he says: “Life has no meaning,” he cannot be disappointed if such is the case, for he is ensconced in a self-created cocoon that has meaning (underlined), because it provides a cushion against his deepest fears (all very intently).

To some extent, such a child symbolizes what happens when an individual believes that he or she is unworthy, that he or she cannot trust impulses, that choices present more problems than advantages. That it is safer to hide abilities than it is to use them. Life is expression.

(9:52.) I will give the beginning of an answer (to my question about the relationship between the host organism and disease). You make your own reality. That should be your complete answer (with humor), but obviously it is not.

First of all, if (underlined) a sperm carrying cancer entered a woman’s uterus, and if she had no intentions of getting the disease, her body’s own system would make the cancer completely ineffective. In the second place, however, referring to the article, that is not what happens to begin with — and I am somewhat at a loss to explain, simply because of certain invisible assumptions that it seems to me you must necessarily make.

(Pause.) I will explain as best I can, though some of what I say will certainly seem contradictory to scientific knowledge.

Though scientists might find “cancer cells,” and though it might seem that cancer is caused by a virus, cancer instead involves a relationship, say, between what you might think of as a host and parasite, in those terms — and to some extent the same applies to any disease, including smallpox, though the diseases themselves may appear to have different causes completely. A host cell, say, is not simply attacked. It invites attack, though I am not pleased at all with the connotations of the word “attack.” I am trying to use words familiar to you to start.