“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Part One of the book is to be called: “Where You and the World Meet.” The heading that you asked about is for Part Two of the book (“Your Body as Your Own Unique Living Sculpture,” etc., given in the 637th session in Chapter Nine). The heading referring to the soul in chemical clothes is for the next chapter (Ten), which is the first chapter in Part Two.

Now: Those are directions for you. (Pause.) Dictation: Your body is you in flesh. As I have mentioned in other books, the soul cannot affirm itself fully through bodily experience at any given “time,” so in those terms there are always portions of you that are unexpressed.

All of your physical experience must, of course, be pivoted in the corporeal reality of the body. The energy that moves your image comes from the soul. Through your own thoughts you direct the body’s expression, and it can be of health or of illness. Out of a knowledge of the contents of your own conscious mind you can definitely heal most maladies of the body, within conditions to be given later.

(9:32.) If scientists studied the body and the mind in terms of natural healing abilities, they could learn how to encourage these, for such processes — and I have mentioned only one of them — are continuous through your lifetime.

When large doses of chemicals are used, the conscious mind is confronted full blast with very potent experiences that it was not meant to handle, and by which it is purposely made to feel powerless. (Pause.) Faced with the exterior nightmares of wars and natural disasters, the conscious mind is still directed outward into that world with which it knows it was formed to cope. In periods of great physical stress it draws upon the powers of the body and inner self to perform remarkable feats of heroism — that leave it wondering afterward at the power and energy of the self in crisis.

A strong suicidal base frequently exists here. The knowledge is present that the “old self” did not make it — so what assurance does the so-called new self have? (Pause.) Again, the body is a living sculpture. You are in it and you form it, and it is to all intents and purposes you while you are physical. You must identify your material being with it. Otherwise you will feel alienated from your biological identity.

This identity is your physical self through which now, in your terms, all expression must come. You are more than your temporal being alone. Your life as a creature is dependent upon your alliance with flesh. You will exist when your body is dead, but practically speaking, you will always be working through an image of yourself.

(10:42.) If you identify with your body alone, then you may feel that life after death is impossible. If you consider yourself a mental being only, however, you will not feel alive in the flesh, but separated from it. Think of yourself as a physical creature now. Know that later you will still operate through another form, but that the body and the material world are your present modes of expression.

(Smile:) I am quite aware of the distorted religious connections made here: Die to yourself and you will be reborn; you will not kill yourself. What you think of as the self dies and is reborn constantly, as the cells of your body do. Biologically and spiritually, new life relies upon these innumerable changes and transformations, deaths and births that occur naturally both in the seasons of the earth and those of the psyche.

(Slowly at 10:54.) Change flexibly with the gracious dance of all being that is reflected in the universe of the body and mind. This does not include the crucifixion of the ego.

In physical life the soul is clothed in chemicals, and you will use the ingredients you take into your body to form an image that is in line with your beliefs. Some of these ideas will undoubtedly be accepted by you from your culture. Others will be your own private interpretation of yourself in flesh. Your beliefs about any chemical will affect what it does to you. Under LSD therapy you expect a drastic reaction and are told to prepare yourself. Your experience will follow your beliefs and your therapist’s, communicated verbally and telepathically.

In all of this the body’s situation is highly agitated, and the physical organism is forced to respond as best it can to a series of disastrous events — which, however, it realizes it cannot be experiencing physically. It knows a “mock” battle is going on, but cannot stop itself from sending forth those chemicals and hormones necessary to a physical situation of like degree. There is a great wear and tear on the body, and an inexcusable exhaustion of its native energies.

Ideas form reality, so the body is used to reacting to some “imaginary” situations in which, for example, the mind conjures up dire circumstances which do not physically exist; but these still force the organism into an over-activation, setting up a state of stress. In massive drug therapy the body feels in greatest threat, for it is forced to use all of its resources while its own signals tell it that the messages it is getting do not have a correlation — and yet they are of the most urgent nature.