“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:55. Jane was out of trance quickly. She repeated the idea she’d voiced several times lately — that although Seth had ended the Augustus data rather abruptly in Chapter Six, he planned to return to it occasionally through the book.

(I asked about the title for Chapter Eight. Jane thought it had come through; although she had glimmerings of it now, she couldn’t get it clearly. The sirens continued, reminding me of animals prowling about in the distance. As we listened to them I picked up a book which an ESP class member had left behind last night. It was about philosophy and religion in India. “Oh, put it down,” Jane said as I began to leaf through it. “This is one of those times when Seth could give a whole bunch of stuff on that book” — meaning, of course, that now she had more than one channel available.

(She went on to explain that to her way of thinking the book was “more insidious than a lot of outright lies, because the truth that you instinctively feel it contains could lead you to accept the greater distortions that are also in it….”

Feelings of violence accumulated early, but in his family there were no acceptable ways of releasing normal aggressive feelings. When these built up into felt, violent eruptions, Augustus was only the more convinced of his unacceptable nature. For some time in his normal state as a teenager, he tried harder and harder to be “good.” This meant the banishing of thoughts or impulses that were sexually inspired along various lines, aggressive, or even just unconventional. Considerable energy was used to inhibit these portions of his inner experience. The denied mental events did not disappear, however. They increased in intensity and were kept apart from his “safer” usual thoughts.

In his normal state he accepted only the beliefs he considered were expected of him. As mentioned (in the 628th session in Chapter Six), there was a time before his condition developed when his “good-self thoughts” and his “bad-self thoughts” vied for his attention, and the body tried desperately to react to constant, alternating and often contradictory concepts.

(Pause.) What developed was a situation in which the conflicting sets of thoughts and feelings finally took turns, though Augustus maintained his own integrity for most of the time. But those beliefs that he shoved away were, by attraction, instantly seized by the other mental structure — again, composed of ideas and feelings combined into what you might think of as an invisible cellular organization, with all capabilities of reaction.

In his normal condition Augustus thought of his own powerlessness — for he had denied himself normal aggressive action — and felt this weak. The beliefs activated the body’s cellular memory, weakening the body and impeding its function. Yet for a time, while performance was dulled it was steady. A balance was maintained that suited his purposes.

He became afraid that the body would go out of control and commit violent action, because he was of course aware of the strength of the denied thoughts and feelings. When a crisis situation arose or when he became lost in despair, an acceleration began that he pretended not to notice, and Augustus Two would appear.

(10:35.) Augustus Two was filled with a sense of power — because Augustus considered power wrong and set it aside from what he thought of as his normal self. Yet Augustus knew the body needed the vitality that he had denied it. Therefore enter Augustus Two with his great ideas of extraordinary power, vigor and superiority — (louder and smiling:) I am keeping my Augustuses straight. I hope you are too.

Aggressive action conveniently forgotten by Augustus was now recalled with exuberant glee by Augustus Two. As a result the chemical nature of the body was instantly revitalized. Muscular tone was greatly improved. There were changes in the amount of sugar in the blood and an alteration in the flow of energy throughout the body.

Your own value system then is built up of your beliefs about reality, and those beliefs form your experience. Suppose you believe that to be “good” you must try to be perfect. You may have been told, or read, that the spirit is perfect, and hence thought that your duty was to reproduce that perfect spirit in flesh as best you could. To this end you attempt to deny all imperfect thoughts and emotions. Your own “negative” thoughts appall you. You may believe also what I have told you — that your thoughts create your reality — so you become all the more frightened at mental or actual expressions of an aggressive nature. You may be so concerned about hurting someone else that you hardly dare move. Trying to be perfect all the time can be far more than a nuisance: It can be disastrous because of your misunderstanding.

The spirit is always in a state of becoming, ever-changing, supple, and in your terms without end, as it was and is without a point of beginning. Ruburt said recently that if he was sure of one thing about physical reality, it was [that is was] not anywhere near perfect in these terms. But in the same meaning of the word neither is the spirit, which to fulfill the requirement of perfection would have to be set in some state of completion beyond which no fulfillment or creativity was possible.

(11:44 p.m. Only our own weariness prompted me to end the session; I could tell that Seth was capable of continuing indefinitely. It had been a long day for us. Now even the sirens had fallen silent.