“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We held the session in Jane’s study so that she could sit before the double microphones of her new recording system. So far, though, we haven’t succeeded in obtaining the best results from the equipment.)

Precisely at this time however the individual is told to beware of any such straying, and to consider that kind of behavior a symptom of mental deterioration. Those following mass beliefs will find that their own image of themselves has changed. They fear that their very age, or existence in time, has betrayed them. They see themselves as leftovers, dim vestiges of better selves, and in their own system of value judgment they condemn themselves through the very fact of their continued existence in time. If they ever did, they no longer trust the integrity of their bodies. They begin to act out the drama in a script written by others — to which, however, they have acquiesced.

In this value system the black races are feared, as, basically, the aged are feared. The blacks are considered the primitives. To them are assigned creative musical abilities, for example, but for a long time these were “underground” activities: They gave birth to acceptable musical productions but were not admitted themselves into the concert halls of the respectable nation.

Applied to old age, the color black denotes a returning to those unconscious forces. Now all of this so far is from the standpoint of American and Western belief. It is simply the reality in which many of my readers are involved. In other “underground” systems of belief, however, black is seen as a symbol of great knowledge, power and strength. When this is carried to an extreme you wind up with devil cults, in which the poorly understood powers of creativity and exuberance rush out in distorted form; the undersides of consciousness are then glorified at the expense of the other, white, “conscious and objective” values.

Yet in both of these systems the old are denied their unique power, strength and wisdom, and hence the civilization is robbed as well as the individuals within it.