“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(On September 25, 1972, the day of the 617th session in Chapter Three, I wrote a note describing how Jane and I had seen and heard geese flying south, in a spectacle both inscrutable and moving. Last night, we had reminders that a natural rhythmic cycle was completing itself six months later: As we retired I thought I heard the barking of geese migrating north, although Jane didn’t. I woke up around four a.m., though, and heard a flight clearly in the silent hour. Then early this morning as I was painting in my studio, that same cadence came sounding down through a fine rain.

(I caught my first actual sighting of geese just before dusk this evening. I was working on this book when I heard the sound of another flight, intermixed with traffic noise. I opened a studio window. It was still raining lightly. A giant Seckel pear tree grows almost close enough to touch, and through its branches I saw the uneven V-formation, flying north just below the cloud cover and sounding off all the way….

(Jane had given a very long session in ESP class last night, along with Sumari. I thought she might not want to go back into trance tonight, but at 9:30 she said she was ready. We held the session in her study for a change. “I felt exhilarated earlier,” she said, “but now that’s gone and I’m just relaxed.”

(Jane’s pace was easy tonight.)

(We had a window open because the night was quite warm. Now I tilted my head toward it, listening. Faintly, above the sound of the rain, I heard geese once more.)

Man forgot the teaching and healing elements, and concentrated instead upon the unpleasant experience itself. To some extent this was quite natural, for the new species developed in order to change the nature of its consciousness, to follow a reality in which instinct was no longer “blindly” followed, and to individualize in strong personal focus corporeal experience that had previously taken a different pattern.

(This was one of those times when she was consciously aware that several channels of information were available from Seth. We had but to decide which subject we wanted material on after break:

Illness therefore was experienced as “bad.” An entire tribe could be endangered by one sick member. At the same time, as the mind developed, cunning and memory became highly effective survival tools. In some societies or tribes, the old or infirm were killed lest their care take too much attention from the able-bodied and endanger the group.

In others, however, the old were honored for the wisdom that they had accumulated with age, and this became very practical in tribes where many did not survive. History was dependent upon the old with their memory of past events, and the group’s sense of continuity was also in the hands of its oldest members, who passed memories on to others.

An individual who had himself survived many diseases was considered a sage. Such people often watched the animals and observed nature’s own therapies and treatments.

(Jane said there was much more to the idea of natural therapy in animals. She began tuning in to this information on her own, rather than getting it through one of Seth’s channels. Ages ago, humans not only watched the animals, but went to them for help. It had to do with shock treatment, she said wonderingly. If a human was in a catatonic state after a battle, for instance, the “animal medicine man” would purposely shock the patient into an emotional reaction to bring him out of the state.

(“Yes. That was nice.”)