“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(But there was only the one ring. We waited a moment, then resumed the session.)

(Pause.) In all of these areas the problem, whatever its nature or cause, is in one way or another “magically” transferred to another facet of activity, projected away from the self. Huge energy blocks are moved. The man who has believed that he was evil may now see the world, or persons of another faith or political affiliation, as evil instead. He then feels rid of the problem itself but is quite ready to attack it in others, and with great self-righteousness and justification.

You will often try to project a problem outward to free yourself. If this is done the question at issue will seem forever outside of you, beyond solution, and of mass proportion. Let us look into a situation involving a woman I will call Dineen, who telephoned Ruburt today from a Western state, and see one of the predicaments that can arise.

Now the other individual has no power that Dineen does not possess. (Pause.) Dineen heartily believes in good and evil; so, being convinced that she was at the mercy of demoniacal forces, she began to pray. As Ruburt pointed out, however, the prayers themselves were merely a weak surrender to the idea that evil is so powerful. They were not based on any real belief in the power of good, but only upon a superstitious hope that if bad forces exist, good ones must also.

(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.”

(11:09.) The habit of not facing problems, which indeed are challenges, can be addictive. A feeling of powerlessness in one field can be transferred to others. When this happens through natural hypnosis, then even the psychic territory of power can be assailed. Here the individual becomes thoroughly aroused, threatened, and realizes for the first time perhaps the nature of belief and his or her predicament. Here you have life and death struggles in creative terms. Some miraculous cures or change-abouts in midlife occur as a result.

This isolation would be unfortunate enough without the application of drugs meant to help, but often given without understanding. Loved ones are permitted to visit the sick on but certain occasions, so those who wish them well in the strongest terms, who are closest to them and who love them, are efficiently prevented from exerting any natural constructive behavior.

(11:32.) Illnesses usually represent unfaced problems, in your terms, and these dilemmas embody challenges meant to lead you to greater achievement and fulfillment. Because body and mind operate so well together, one will attempt to cure the other, and will often succeed if left alone. The organism has its own beliefs in health that are unconscious on your part.

(11:44. Break came only so that I could rest. Jane had realized during the delivery that Seth was elaborating upon some of her “own” data, which is described at the end of the last session. This had been one of those times when, in the context of an excellent dissociated state, both her energy and the material had seemed to be inexhaustible. For the most part her delivery had been faster than usual, very intent, and animated.

When and if it is killed by its brothers, this is not an act of cruelty but an innate understanding that the creature can no longer operate physically without agony; a quite natural euthanasia is involved, in which the “patient” also acquiesces. In your society such a natural death is most difficult, and because of the power structures can hardly be promoted. No one who decides upon death is saved from it by the medical profession, however. On deeper levels the quite normal desire for survival requires that the individual leave his or her body, in your terms, at one time or another. When that period arrives the person knows it, and the great vitality of the spirit no longer wants to be encased by a suffering physical body.

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.