“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Only when you operate from your own stance can you help others to the best of your ability. To anticipate danger, or to imaginatively take on the troubles of others robs you of the very energy with which you could help them. I am not saying, therefore, to turn your eyes from the unfortunate conditions of the world. Practical help is needed in all areas of the human life. Yet it is far better, and more practical ultimately, to concentrate upon the beneficial elements of civilization — far better to organize your thoughts in areas of accomplishment than to make mental lists of man’s deficiencies and lacks.

Despite all appearances, conditions of an exterior nature do not cause wars, or poverty, or disease, or any of the unfortunate circumstances apparent in the world. Your beliefs form your reality. Your thoughts generate practical experience. When these change, conditions will change. To add your own energy, focus, and concentration to dire circumstances in other portions of the world does not help, but adds to, such situations.

That reinforcement will add to the personal power of all other individuals with whom those people come in contact. Find the beliefs responsible for the unfortunate conditions. If the ideas in this book were thoroughly understood, then each individual would be able to assess his or her own reality realistically. There would be no need to arm a nation in advance against another nation’s anticipated — but imaginary — attack.

(10:10.) Personal grudges would not build up, so that men or women so fear further hurts that they attempt to hide from life or relationships, or shy away from contact with others. It is not virtuous to count your failings. Self-conscious righteousness can be a very narrow road. If each of you understood and perceived the graceful integrity of your own individuality, just as you try to perceive the beauty of all other natural creatures, then you would allow your own creativity greater reign. There is order in all elements of nature, and you are a part of it.

All That Is vibrates with desire. (Louder:) The denial of desire will bring you only listlessness. Those who deny desire are the most smitten by it. Each of your lives are miniature and yet gigantic episodes, mortal and immortal at once, providing experiences that you form meaningfully, opening up dimensions of reality available to no one else, for no one can view existence from your standpoint. No one can be you but you. There are communications at other levels, but your experience of existence is completely original, to be treasured.

No one from any psychological threshold, however vast, can write a book that defines the psyche, but only present hints and clues, words and symbols. The words and ideas in this book all stand for other inner realities — that is, they are like piano keys striking other chords; chords that, hopefully, will be activated within the psyche of each reader.

(Long pause.) Nature is luxurious and abundant in its expressions. The greater reality from which nature springs is even more abundant, and within that multidimensional experience no individual is ignored, forgotten, dismissed, lost, or forsaken. A tree does not have to ask for nourishment from the ground or the sun, and so everything that you need is available to you in your practical experience. If you believe you are not worthy of nourishment, if you believe that life itself is dangerous, then your own beliefs make it impossible for you to fully utilize that available help. In large measure, since you are still alive, you are of course nourished. You cannot close out the vitality of your own being that easily, and the vitality “squandered” on deeper bouts of depression is often greater than the energy used in creative pursuits. You are a portion of All That Is; therefore the universe leans in your direction. It gives. It rings with vitality. Then forsake beliefs that tell you otherwise. Seek within yourself — each of you — those feelings of exuberance that you have, even if they are only occasional, and encourage those events or thoughts that bring them about.

However, the sleeping portion of the species represents the brain’s unconscious activities in the body — particularly when you think of the motion of all of the species’ actions en masse in a given day. Those conscious motions have an unconscious basis. If you think of a mass world brain — one entity — then it must wake and sleep in patterns. If you think of mass daily action as performed by one gigantic being, then all of those conscious actions have unconscious counterparts, and a great intercommunication of an inner nervous system must take place.

Part of such a brain would have to be awake all of the time, and part engaged in unconscious activity. This is what happens.

(As can be seen by Seth’s comments about the mass world mind-brain, he was all ready to launch into some new material. And though he mentioned a new book, Jane and I had no idea that he’d begin one within a few weeks’ time — yet that’s exactly what happened.

(Jane’s writing on William James also developed into a book: The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher. So during Seth’s dictation of this present manuscript, she produced on her own the Cézanne and James books. Surely all of the creativity cited in this note is the “proof of the pudding,” then — evidence of the psyche’s richness and abilities. Jane displays those attributes in her own way, of course, yet their equivalents are inherent in each of us, waiting to be used.)