“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You may do as you wish.

(“I’ll get the beer,” I said, since Jane was doing well and I felt like continuing. As Seth, Jane sat waiting quietly until I came back from the kitchen.)

(10:13.) Ruburt correctly perceived the great need for a zest and excitement in this woman’s life, for initiative. It was apparent that Dineen sat alone all day in her lovely home with nothing to do; that she was making no effort to face her situation truly, but looking to others to do it for her, and therefore reinforcing her sense of powerlessness. She felt she had no power in the moment.

Ruburt explained, after hearing about the automatic communications, that these were simply repressed elements of the subconscious finding needed outlet. He suggested that Dineen find herself a job, stop seeing psychics, and assert her own individuality and her own responsibility for action. Dineen believed that other people acted oddly toward her because they had all been hypnotized into doing so. If someone frowned at her, this was the result of hypnotic suggestion. All of this may sound exotic to some of you, and be only too real to others, but any time that you assign elements of your experience to exterior sources, you are really doing the same thing that Dineen did.

She felt that certain rituals or foods warded off this evil hypnotic suggestion. Yet many of you take vitamins, convinced that they will save you from various diseases. Within Dineen’s belief system she was acting quite rationally — and in your belief system you are doing the same.

(10:29.) If you believe that you come down with a cold every time you are in a draft, you are using natural hypnosis. If you think that you must come and go at everyone else’s beck and call, then you are like Dineen, who believes that she must do what this “hypnotist” tells her to do. In her case Dineen gave up the responsibility for action and initiative, yet because one must act the reasons were assigned to another. Ruburt also pointed this out. Dineen asked for advice from me and again Ruburt said, quite correctly, “You must learn to stop depending upon others, to use your own common sense. You must stop trying to use one symbol against another, and look at your own life and your beliefs.”

As I have said before, your thoughts are reality. They directly affect your body. It seems that you are highly civilized people because you put your ill into hospitals where they can be cared for. What you do, of course, is to isolate a group of people who are filled with negative beliefs about illness. The contagion of beliefs spreads. Patients are obviously in hospitals because they are ill. The sick and their doctors both work on that principle.

The individual is made to feel powerless, at the mercy of doctors or nurses who often do not have the time or energy to be personable, or to explain his [or her] condition in terms that he can understand. The patient is therefore forced to transfer his own sense of power to others, which further deepens his misery; this in turn reinforces the sense of powerlessness that initiated his condition.

Furthermore, the natural elements of sun, air, and earth are refused him. The stability of familiarity is withdrawn. Now with your set of beliefs you are indeed more or less obligated to go to hospitals in severe conditions. I am not saying here that many doctors and nurses do not try their best to promote healing, and certainly healings occur — but they do so despite the system and not because of it. In many cases the belief of a doctor in a person who is ill revives him and rearouses his own belief in himself. The patient’s confidence in the doctor will then reinforce the entire medical procedure, and he may then be filled with faith in his recovery. But as there are natural healing processes within animals, so there are in your race.

Do you want a break?

Certain kinds of medications can indeed help, but those given in your hospitals simply drug the consciousness out of its own understanding, and inhibit the body mechanisms that make for an easy transition. In your prisons you do the same thing, of course, isolating groups of people with like beliefs — denying them all natural stimuli so that a greater contagion of similar beliefs ensues. You separate such people from the normal contact of their loved ones, and all usual conditions for growth or development.

Now: That is the end of our session. Tell Ruburt to continue working with this book in his class as he has been doing. And my heartiest regards to you both, and a fond good evening.