“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The session started late because of our experimenting with a high-quality stereo recording and playing system we bought yesterday. Jane has wanted this especially for work with Sumari. Acting upon impulse while we were in the store, I bought one of those watches that gives not only the time of day but the day of the month. For some reason I find this latter feature quite amusing.)

Dictation: The simple diagrams merely represent some general belief systems from the standpoint of “moral values.” Your ideas of good and evil affect not only your behavior with others, but your activity in a community and in the world at large.

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.

On the left side, looking at the second diagram, you will find people in this case, and in this country, of a more “liberal” frame of mind. But you will not find them quite as liberal if you understand that they are as prejudiced in one direction as the first group is in another.

Here we have a system of belief in which it is wrong to be white, American, or wealthy, or even at all well-off in financial terms. All of the distortions in Christianity are apparent, where the first group is blind to them, of course. Here, though, wealth and a white skin are not only bad, but obvious symptoms of moral deterioration. If the first system of beliefs sees money and goods as a sign of God’s blessing, the second group views material possessions as evidence of spiritual decay.

Here the exotic is romanticized, the foreign held up, the picturesque seen as the real. Black skin or brown skin becomes the criteria of spiritual perfection, and poverty a badge of honor to be worn not only proudly, but often to be used as an aggressive tool. The people who follow these belief systems think that they are right. Their living style, community affiliations, and political leanings will be in direct opposition to the “white-wealthy” ethic.

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.

If life is seen as good in this system of belief, then youth is viewed as the crowning glory, from which summit there is no further journey except descent. The old are not granted characteristics of wisdom, but feared as evil, bad, undesirable or frightening. To these people senility seems a natural, inevitable end to life.

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….

(Now Jane discovered that she had but one cigarette left. “Well,” she said, lightening the mood, “it’s going to be a short session, then.” Resume at 11:35.)

Dictation. (A one-minute pause.) In certain terms, “psychedelic experience” cannot be explained within your limited frameworks of reference — not because such illuminations are beyond explanation but because your present systems of belief are too limiting.

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.

The peculiar chemical changes that occur are often precisely those that lead to greater conceptions and experience, but these are free from what you think of as practical application. There is a trigger set off then, an impetus in which the personality tries to free itself from time-space orientation released from the usual necessity to participate in “adult” terms.