“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Individuals feeling this way will be very uncomfortable when they mingle with others of a different race, creed or color, and despite themselves may be revengefully conservative in dealing, for example, with problems of a community nature. They will consider poverty as a sign of God’s displeasure and so be inclined to leave the entire matter in his “hands.” They may speak with seeming compassion about the plight of others, and yet all the while consider that difficulty the simple result of inferiority, of inequality.

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 specific functions brought into operation quite naturally that are scarcely perceived by your scientists, much less understood. As the mind within the body clearly sees its earthly time coming to an end, mental and psychic accelerations take place. These are in many ways like adolescent experiences in their great bursts of creative activity, with the resulting formation of questions, and the preparation for a completely new kind of personality growth and fulfillment.

(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.

The individual, when it is time then, begins to see beyond temporal life, to open up dimensions of awareness that in your terms he or she could not afford while involved in the intense physical focus of normal adult life. Unfortunately the personality has no system of beliefs, as a rule, to support such an expansion. The natural therapies, both physical and mental, are denied. Drugs are often used as depressants, clouding the clarity of what seems to be distorted vision. This is one of the most creative, valuable aspects of your lives. Instead the old are made to feel useless in your society. Often of course they share this value judgment, and their experience within your communities has in no way prepared them to face subjective experience.

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.

(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….

The personality, again, looks at the nature of experience in its purest terms. In some previous civilizations this was done within a natural framework (pause), in which the old were cared for physically while their words were listened to most carefully.

Ideas of the “wise old man,” and similar legends apply here, as do the mystical concepts of the powerful old woman. In their natural progression, and left alone, the old understand their own “visions” quite well. Body and mind operate beautifully together.