“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

THE INTELLECT AS A CULTURAL ARTIFACT. CREATING ONE’S OWN EXPERIENCE.

Now: The intellect is far more socially oriented than is generally understood.

Some of this, again, is difficult to explain (pause), but in a fashion the intellect is a cultural (underlined) phenomenon. Period. It is amazingly resilient, in that according to the belief structures of any given historical period, it can orient itself along the lines of those beliefs, using all of its reasoning abilities to bring such a world picture into focus, collecting data that agree, and rejecting what does not.

Your species shares with the other species a feeling of kinship for its kind. There is a great give-and-take of ideas. You end up, then, with a consensus, generally speaking, as to what a reasonable picture of agreed-upon reality is. Your system has frowned upon many experiences, considering them eccentric behavior in an adverse fashion, since your belief systems have so regimented behavior, and so narrowly defined sanity. (Long pause.) The intellect, I want to stress, is socially oriented. It is peculiarly suited, of course, to react to cultural information. (Pause.) It wants to see the world as it is seen by the minds of others. Through that kind of action it helps form your cultural environment, the civilization of which you are justly proud.

(8:54.) The intellect, then, helps your species translate its own natural purposes and intents — the purposes and intents of the natural person — into their “proper” cultural context, so that those abilities the natural person possesses can benefit the civilization of its time. Those purposes and intents literally change the world. The intellect’s expectations and intents spontaneously and automatically trigger the proper bodily mechanisms to bring about the necessary environmental interactions, and your intent as expressed through your intellect directs your experience of the world.

I am speaking about the intellect here for our discussion, but remember it is everywhere cushioned also. There are backup systems, in other words (amused). If the intellect believes that the world (pause) is a threat to existence, then that belief will alter its intents, of course, and therefore the body’s activities. The beliefs of the intellect operate then as powerful suggestions, particularly when the intellect identifies with those beliefs, so that there is little distance between the intellect and the beliefs that it holds as true.

(Pause in an intent delivery.) I am doing my best to explain the very practical aspects of the intellect’s beliefs, and their strength in drawing experience to you. At one time you both had difficulty with understanding some of these ideas. (Pause.) Your own relationship, your private beliefs about the sort of persons you wanted individually for mates, brought about incalculable actions that led finally to your meeting — yet it all happened “quite naturally,” of course. Your beliefs bring you into correspondence with the elements likely to lead to their affirmation. They draw from Framework 2 all of the necessary ingredients. They elicit from other people behavior that is in keeping with those beliefs.

He continued, however, to remind himself that he was not going to worry about tomorrow today, regardless. He told himself that the prediction might be wrong, and he began with his intellect to pile up evidence that could in one way or another bring about a different, more beneficial experience. He did this by recognizing the way he had earlier been building up the picture in the old manner, by collecting all the evidence that fitted it. He used the same process, only for a more beneficial picture, and the process works. You have only to become aware of it.