“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Your own choice will dictate the way you die, as well as the time. We are dealing now with your beliefs as you know them in this life, and leaving for a later chapter any bleed-throughs of beliefs that may occur from other existences. But whatever beliefs you accept, for whatever reasons, your point of power is in the present.

It is far more important that you understand this than that you become overly concerned with labyrinthian “past reasons,” for you can get so lost in a negative approach that you forget that these beliefs can be changed in the present. For various reasons, you hold beliefs that you can alter at any time. Many individuals die young, for example, because they believe so strongly that old age represents a degradation of the spirit and an insult to the body. They do not want to live under the conditions as they believe them to be. Some quite frankly prefer to die in what others would consider to be the most dire circumstances — swept away by the raging waves of an ocean, or crushed in an earthquake, or battered by the winds of a hurricane.

This recognition can lead them — and often does — to seize their own energy and use it in a strong creative manner. A natural catastrophe or a riot are both energy baths, potent and highly positive in their ways despite their obvious connotations. In your terms this in no way absolves those who start riots, for example, for they will be working within a system of conscious beliefs in which violence begets violence. Yet even here individual differences apply. The inciters of riots are often searching for the manifestation of energy which they do not believe they possess on their own. They light and start psychological fires, and are as transfixed by the results as any arsonist. If they understood and could experience power and energy in themselves they would not need such tactics.

Obviously, many riots are quite consciously instigated. Certainly thousands of individuals, or millions of them, do not consciously decide to bring about a hurricane, or a flood or an earthquake, in the same manner. In the first place, on that level they do not believe such a thing possible. While conscious beliefs have a part to play in such cases, on an individual basis the “inner work” is done just as unconsciously as the body produces physical symptoms. The symptoms often seem to be inflicted upon the body, just as a natural disaster seems to be visited upon the body of the earth. Sudden illnesses are thought of as frightening and unpredictable, with the sufferer a victim, perhaps, of a virus. Sudden tornadoes or earthquakes are seen in the same light, as the result of air currents and temperature, or fault lines instead of viruses. The basic causes of both, however, are the same.

Now: Natural disasters are brought about more at an emotional level than at a belief level, though beliefs have an important part to play, for they generate the emotions to begin with.

As your conscious beliefs determine your bodily condition, and as your body is maintained at an unconscious level (though in line with your beliefs), so natural catastrophes are the result of the beliefs that give rise to emotional states which are then automatically transformed into exterior atmospheric conditions.

(11:09.) Then, according to your beliefs, you deal with the physical dilemma as it is presented in those terms. You will react individually with your own purposes in mind. Your own unique and highly private beliefs help bring about the overall emotional condition. The pool of emotional energy into which your emotions flow is still composed of unalike charges, but generally speaking, the individual contribution of all those participating will fall into a coherent pattern that gives impetus and direction to the storm, providing the charge and the power behind it.

Locally, there were some general beliefs held: The Elmira region was economically depressed and considered to be in a backwash area of the state of New York, yet the condition was not bad enough for crisis aid. Industry had been moving away. People were out of work; the old routines of livelihood had been uprooted. There was no inspiring local leadership, and a variety of different kinds of individuals felt ill at ease, depressed and forced to the wall.

The beliefs upon which these plans were based did not correlate, however, with the mass beliefs of the populace, and so the attempt failed. The program was based on precognitive knowledge of the flood event. The crusade never took place for the revivalist organization was frightened away by the flood.

There were old people, laden with negative beliefs about age, who discovered great vitality and further purpose under the stimuli of survival. There were people blinded and lost by a belief in the supreme importance of things, who found themselves with nothing left. They realized the relative unimportance of belongings, and felt within themselves the stirring of a freedom they had not experienced since youth.

Many past beliefs were automatically shattered in the reality of the moment. Powers of initiation and action, long buried, were released in numberless individuals. Federal funds were directed instantly to this region. The spotlight was turned on to the section. (Pause.) Many lonely people were forced, or rather forced themselves, into a situation where it was imperative that they relate with others. Since this is not the main topic of this book, I cannot go deeply into the ways and means involved.