“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

These people may be of any age. They may come from any economic environment. Now if you happen to be Protestant, male, white, American, rich, and healthy, at least within the framework of your beliefs you can look at yourself with “clear” eyes. Your foundation is shaky indeed, but at least you fit within it for the moment. You will notice that I added “Protestant” to our value system, as well as “American.” If however you hold this group of beliefs and you fall short — that is, if in some way you do not fit in — then even within that system you are in trouble.

Now: The third diagram can cut across the other systems of belief, of course. In the first two groups there are many leeways. You may have one, two or three preferred characteristics that correlate with your ideas, for example, but your concepts about age leave you no such freedom; for at one time or another all of you, “if you are lucky” in your terms, will approach old age.

As mentioned earlier in this book (in the 644th session in Chapter Eleven), many who follow such beliefs try to hide them from themselves, desperately attempting to be young. Youth and old age both have their place, and within the framework of your race each play important roles.

(Jane spoke very emphatically, gesturing often.) This would be quite apparent were it not for your current belief systems, through which the old are forced to interpret their experience. Many instances of expansion of consciousness, and mental and psychic growth, are interpreted by you as senility. No important correlations have been made between the subjective experiences of the old, particularly in “senile” conditions, with those of other ages involved in expansion of consciousness, whether natural or drug induced.

There are no teachers to guide them. Old age is a highly creative part of living. The connections between it and childhood are often made in a derogatory fashion, but the personality is in just as creative a state. I am speaking generally now, of course, for your living conditions so distort the natural situation.

(11:17. Jane, in a very deep and active trance, had been so focused on the material that she’d been unaware of anything else. “Boy, I felt Seth was getting into some really good stuff — a whole new system of geriatrics,” she said. “I was right into those feelings. Animals already know all of this unconsciously. But it’s so strange and funny to be going into things about old age,” she continued, surprised. “Our society doesn’t suspect any of this. I feel very excited about it.”

(Jane and I have had some preparation for the information, at least on emotional levels. My father died in February, 1971, after spending three years in a county “home.” Diagnosis: senility. For much of that time he had been under varying degrees of sedation. In light of tonight’s material, I couldn’t help feeling that he’d lost part of his natural heritage — whether he had decided upon that course himself, whether it had been imposed upon him, or both. Seth, I thought, would say that my father chose all the circumstances of his life, and that such a deprivation in old age was a probable result that materialized physically. But while agreeing, I could still wish it had been otherwise….

So at whatever age, a revelatory episode is difficult to relate to others. In older age, however, no one is interested, and yet it is here, as in adolescence, that the greatest creativity may emerge but go unrecognized. This era could be more advantageous to the individual and to the race than any other period, were it recognized for what it is and understood.