“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

These portraits obviously have a biological reality. In a manner of speaking, now, each person dips into the same supplies of paint, and so forth — which are the elements out of which your likenesses emerge. There must be great creative leeway allowed for such portraits. Each one interacting with each other one helps form the psychological and physical reality of the species, so you are somehow involved in the formation of a multitudinous number of portraits. I simply want you to keep that analogy in the background.

(Pause.) These portraits, however, are the result of creativity so inborn and miraculous that they are created automatically — an automatic art. At certain levels the species is always creatively embarked upon alternate versions of itself. The overall patterns will remain. Biological integrity is [everywhere] sustained. What you think of as diseases, however, are quite creative elements working at different levels, and at many levels at once.

(9:46.) Many viruses are vital to physical existence, and in your terms there are gradations of activity, so that only under certain conditions do viruses turn into, say, what you think of as deadly ones. The healthiest body contains within it many so-called deadly viruses in what you may call (underlined) an inactive form — inactive from your viewpoint, in that they are not causing disease. They are, however, helping to maintain the body’s overall balance. In a way (underlined) in each body, the species settles upon a known status quo, and yet experiments creatively at many levels with cellular alterations, chromosomal variations, so that of course each body is unique. There are kinds of gradations, say, in the lines and kinds of disease. Certain diseases can actually strengthen the body from a prior weaker state, by calling upon the body’s full defenses. Under certain conditions, some so-called disease states could insure the species’ survival.

(Long pause, one of many.) Give us a moment… (Long pause.) It is very difficult to explain. (Pause.) In a way, some disease states help to insure the survival of the species — not by weeding out the sickly but by introducing into large numbers of individuals the conditions needed to stabilize other strains within the species that need to be checked, or to “naturally inoculate” the species against a sensed greater danger.

At the minute levels — microscopic levels — there are always some biological experiments being carried out, in a creative effort to give the species as much leeway as possible for effective action. Your body is changed biologically by your thoughts.

(Long pause at 10:01.) Your culture has its biological effect upon the species. I am not speaking of obvious connections in a derogatory manner, such as pollution and so forth. If you were thinking in old terms of evolution, then I would be saying that your cultures and civilizations actually alter the chromosomal messages. Your thoughts affect your cells, again, and they can change what are thought of as hereditary factors. Give us a moment… Your imaginations are intimately connected with your diseases, just as your imaginations are so important in all other areas of your lives. You form your being by imaginatively considering such-and-such a possibility, and your thoughts affect your body in that regard. In a way, illness is a tool used on behalf of life, for people have given it social, economic, psychological, and religious connotations. It becomes another area of activity and of expression.

It “sings” with the quality of its own life. It cooperates with other cells. It affiliates itself with the body of which it is part, but in a way it lends itself to that formation. (Pause.) The dreams of the species are highly important to its survival — not just because dreaming is a biological necessity, but because in dreams the species is immersed in deeper levels of creativity, so that those actions, inventions, ideas that will be needed in the future will appear in their proper times and places. In the old terms of evolution. I am saying that man’s evolutionary progress was also dependent upon his dreams.

(10:20.) Give us a moment… Now many of the characteristics you consider human — in fact, most of them — appear to one extent or another in all other species. It was the nature of man’s dreams, however, that was largely responsible for what you like to think of as the evolution of your species. (Intently:) You learned to dream differently than other creatures. I thought you would like that quotation.

His dreams reminded him that a cold season had come, and would come again. Most of your inventions came in dreams, and, again, it is the nature of your dreams that makes you so different from other species.

(10:35.) Give us a moment… The creativity of the species is also the result of your particular kind of dream specialization. It amounts to — amounts to — a unique state of existence by itself, in which you combine the elements of physical and nonphysical reality. It is almost a threshold between the two realities, and you learned to hold your physical intent long enough at that threshold so that you have a kind of brief attention span there, and use it to draw from nonphysical reality precisely those creative elements that you need. Period.