“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You have not really, either of you, been ready to drastically alter your orientations, but you are approaching that threshold. As Ruburt’s notes also mention, the “magical approach” means that you actually change your methods of dealing with problems, achieving goals, and satisfying means. You change over to the methods of the natural person. They are indeed, then, a part of your private experience. They are not esoteric methods, but you must be convinced that they are the natural methods by which man is meant to handle his problems and approach his challenges.

I use the word “methods” because you understand it, but actually we are speaking about an approach to life, a magical or natural approach to life that is man’s version of the animal’s natural instinctive behavior in the universe.

That approach does indeed fly in direct contradiction to the learned methods you have been taught. You have held on to those methods to varying degrees, since after all it seems that the world shares them. They are understood ways of dealing with events. Once again, however, with the experience of the last few days, you are both astonished by the magical ease by which work — real work — can be accomplished: events perceived out of place and time and so forth.

I say wrong, meaning no moral judgment, but the application of one method to a pursuit that cannot be adequately expressed in such a fashion. The assembly-line time and the beliefs that go along with it have given you many benefits as a society, but it should not be forgotten that the entire framework was initially set up to cut down on impulses, creative thought, or any other activities that would lead to anything but the mindless repetition of one act after another (intently).

I want it understood that we are indeed dealing with two entirely different approaches to reality and to solving problems — methods we will here call the rational method and the magical one. The rational approach works quite well in certain situations, such as mass production of goods, or in certain kinds of scientific measurements — but all in all the rational method, as it is understood and used, does not work as an overall approach to life, or in the solving of problems that involve subjective rather than objective measurements or calculations.

Those methods work least of all for any art. It is a trite statement, perhaps, but the ruler’s measurements have absolutely nothing to do with the measurements made by the heart, and they can never be used to express the incalculable measurements that are made automatically by the smallest cell.