“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(On the same day we received the letter from Holland, Jane also heard from Eleanor Friede, her editor at Delacorte Press: Eleanor sent the first color proof of the jacket design for Emir. Jane really likes it, since it conveys very well the feeling of her little story “for readers of all ages.”

(9:28.) A small note — for this will be a brief session — to add to your material on disease: All biological organisms know that physical life depends upon a constant transformation of consciousness and form. In your terms I am saying, of course, that physically death gives life. This biological knowledge is intimately acknowledged at microscopic levels. Even your c-e-l-l-s (spelled) know that their deaths are necessary for the continuation of your physical form.

(9:40.) Give us a moment… The phase of death is, then, a part of life’s cycle. I mentioned evolutionary experiments,² as you think of evolution. There is a disease you read about recently, where the skin turns leathery after intense itching — a fascinating development in which the human body tries to form a leathery-like skin that would, if the experiment continued, be flexible enough for, say, sweat pores and normal locomotion, yet tough enough to protect itself in jungle environments from the bites of many “still more dangerous” insects and snakes.³ Many such experiments appear in certain stages as diseases, since the conditions are obviously not normal physical ones. To some extent (underlined twice), cancer also represents a kind of evolutionary experiment. But all such instances escape you because you think of so-called evolution as finished.

(Pause.) Some (underlined) varieties of your own species were considered by the animals as diseased animal species, so I want to broaden your concepts there. In the entire natural scheme, and at all levels — even social or economic ones — disease always has its own creative basis. Abnormalities of any kind in birth always represent probable versions of the species itself — and they are kept in the gene pool to provide a never-ending bank of alternates.

(Pause.) There are all kinds of interrelationships. So-called Mongoloid children, for example, are reminders of man’s purely emotional heritage, as separate from his intellectual achievements. They often appear more numerously in industrialized civilizations for that reason….

(9:56 P.M. “Boy, how he got all that out of me, I don’t know,” Jane laughed, for she had been very relaxed before the session. Her delivery had moved right along. I’ve deleted a few portions of the session that don’t apply to disease and evolutionary experimentation. Jane reported that when Seth gave the material on onchocerciasis she “really felt that the people’s skins were trying to turn into some sort of leathery protection. I don’t know whether I got those sensations from Seth, picked them up on my own, or just created them myself to go along with the material.” She hadn’t been aware of any feelings involving her own skin.