“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(A note: The Democratic National Convention is in its third day. As I typed away after supper, I could tell that Jane was listening to the speeches on TV in the living room. Then I realized I’d goofed: Last Saturday, our local paper had carried a short article to the effect that a psychic we’d heard of had predicted recently that Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia would obtain the Democratic nomination for president, after a deadlock between Carter and Kennedy developed at the convention. I read the article and called it to Jane’s attention. I’d meant to save it, but instead the paper ended up bundled up with the trash for pickup this morning. Since the Carter forces won the fight to keep the convention “closed” during its first, Monday session, this assures Carter the nomination on the first ballot. Thus the psychic is wrong in the prediction, which evidently obtained national circulation.

First of all, if you realize that the intellect itself is a part of nature, a part of the natural person, a part of magical processes, then you need not overstrain it, force it to feel isolated, or put it in a position in which paranoid tendencies develop. It is itself supported, as your intuitions are, by life’s magical processes. It is supported by the greater energy that gave you and the world birth. That power is working in the world, and in the world of politics, as it is in the world of nature, since you make that distinction.

The magical approach takes it for granted, in the simplest terms, that the life of any individual will fulfill itself, will develop and mature, that the environment and the individual are uniquely suited and work together. This sounds very simple. In verbal terms, however, those are the beliefs (if you will) of each c-e-l-l (spelled). They are imprinted in each chromosome, in each atom. They provide a built-in faith that pervades each living creature, each snail, each hair on your head. Those ingrained beliefs are, of course, biologically pertinent, providing the impetus of all growth and development.

All of these reasons lie beneath man’s mass problems, and apply in each life. I want to note, again, that Ruburt earlier decided to bank on his intellect as a child, rather than upon beauty, as he felt his mother had. In his case also, as given in the past, he felt that the feminine qualities were those opposed to intellectual development. (Pause.) He was gifted intuitively and intellectually, however, and naturally was propelled toward growth in both areas — areas that he felt stressed contradictory rather than complementary characteristics.²

The magical approach takes it for granted that the human being is a united creature, fulfilling purposes in nature even as the animals do, whether or not those purposes are understood. (Pause.) The magical approach takes it for granted that each individual has a future, a fulfilling one, even though death may be tomorrow. The magical approach takes it for granted that the means for development are within each individual, and that fulfillment will happen naturally. Overall, that approach operates in your world. If it did not, there would be no world. If the worst was bound to happen, as the scientists certainly think, even evolution, in their terms, would have been impossible, of course — a nice point to put somewhere (all intently).