“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The physically alive body, its activities and condition, are directed through the beliefs of the conscious mind. The body, as explained in this chapter, also has “invisible” counterparts composed of the electromagnetic properties and the interior sound and light qualities.

These invisible structures preceded the emergence of the physical body. They also exist after the body’s death. While the condition of the body is directed by the conscious mind in life, then, the idea or mental pattern for the body existed before the conscious mind’s connection with the physical brain.

Therefore the inner self forms, first, the “invisible” body structure which will “later” emerge in flesh. At the event of this mental seeding, the conscious mind, in your terms, is obviously not connected with the brain, which has not yet been formed in flesh. The idea of the body is held and made physical by a conscious mind.

New paragraph: Consciousness then is not dependent upon physical perception, though this attribute does require an awareness immersed within a material form. While physical consciousness is sifted through the bodily apparatus, you are usually unaware of noncorporeal kinds because of that process. The general framework, properties and characteristics of the body exist, therefore, before its formation. In simple terms, you choose ahead of time the kind of body you will inhabit and impress. It may seem to you that you do not have any conscious control over your body’s condition in life as you know it, much less before your birth. You have been taught that there is little connection between your thought and your body’s activities.

(9:29.) A man believing he has heart trouble will finally, through his own anxiety, affect the functioning of his “involuntary” system until his heart is definitely harmed if the belief goes unchecked. The conscious mind directs the so-called involuntary systems of the body, and not the other way around. No idea slips insidiously past your awareness to affect your involuntary system unless it fits in with your own conscious beliefs. Once more, you will not be sick if you think you are well — but there may be other ideas that make you believe in the necessity for poor health.

You are not aware of how the body performs its many involuntary functions. The conscious mind could not handle all that data, but those functions perfectly mirror your consciously held ideas and beliefs.

As I also mentioned (in the 614th session in Chapter Two), the conscious mind is not basically cut off from the inner self or from those deep inner sources of knowledge available to it. The aware mind is not any one event, for that matter; it represents various portions of the inner self that “surface” at any given time.

Within the basic framework of the body chosen before physical birth (for reasons that will be discussed later), the individual has full freedom to create a perfectly healthy functioning form. The form is, however, a mirror of beliefs, and will accurately materialize in flesh those ideas held by the conscious mind.

The conscious mind exists before material life and after it. In corporeal existence it is intertwined with the brain, and during physical life your earthly perceptions — your precise and steady focus within your particular space and time system — are dependent upon that fine alliance.

Now it is here that the seeming division in the self occurs, for in physical life the conscious mind must be connected with the brain, and in terms of time that organ itself must grow and develop. So all of your consciousness cannot be physically aware. The portion that must “wait for” the brain’s development is the part you call in life “the conscious mind.”

The brain with its bodily connections must deal with the time lapses that sensual perception always imply. The interior workings of the body, to be conscious, would have to deal with time sequences that would present the physically attuned consciousness with “mathematical” deductions and calculations far too numerous for it to handle. For example, it would have to keep conscious track of all the muscles, nerves, organs, cells, molecules and atoms, while manipulating the body in space and time.

Therefore a seeming division occurs, in which a portion of the invisible conscious mind is connected with the physical brain, and a portion of it is free of that connection. That [latter] part forms what you think of as the involuntary system of the body.

Again, it is important that you realize the initial nonphysical reaction to stimuli that sparks off all physical reactions. There is constant interplay and communication between the areas of consciousness that are connected to the brain and those that are not. The “deeper” purposes of the consciousness involved “circulate,” sometimes arising in the awareness that is joined with the brain. Information coming from those deeper sources of the self, reaching the areas connected to the brain, will be interpreted according to the beliefs of that most physically focused segment of the self.