“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

While it is true that the body is the living materialization of idea, it is also true that these ideas form an active, responsive, alive body. The body is not just a tool to be used. It is not just a vehicle for the spirit. It is the spirit in flesh. You impose your ideas upon it and largely affect its health and well-being through your conscious beliefs. But the body is composed of living, responding atoms and molecules. These have their own consciousnesses alive in matter, their drive to exist and be within the framework of their own nature. They compose the cells, and these combine to form the organs. The organs possess the combined consciousnesses of each of the cells within them, and in their way the organs sense their own identity.

They have a purpose — that function they provide within the organism as a whole. This cooperation of consciousness continues so that you have a body consciousness that is vital, that strives to maintain its own equilibrium and health.

The stuff of the body should not be considered as some metaphysical result, then, but as a living gestalt of responsive flesh. Your body is composed of other living entities, in other words. Though you organize this living material it has its own right to fulfillment and existence. You are not a soul encased in inert clay.

The “house of clay” does not immediately deteriorate when you leave it. It disintegrates at its own rate. It is no longer organized by your own domain. The life of its atoms and molecules and cells is translated into other living natural forms. Your perception is merely that which you are aware of. Even the atoms and molecules have their own fine vision and appreciate their environment in their own way. The same power that moves your mind forms your body.