“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(On Sunday afternoon and evening we were visited by Andrija Puharich and Joyce Petschek. We had a most enjoyable time. Andrija recorded Jane, Seth, and Sumari—all of which saw Jane coming through at her best. He is to send us a copy of his tape. Tonight I asked that Seth at least comment upon the visit, since I had the feeling it marked a turning point for us as far as our attitudes went; about meeting others, etc.

Now: it may seem to most people that an exuberant, always-vital, energetic, healthy body would indeed be one of the greatest gifts of all—a body that never worried or showed signs of any disorder, a body that went ahead on its own, so to speak, propelled by feelings of strength and vigor. This certainly sounds like a fine ideal. Yet I tell you that in such a body you would finally feel like a prisoner, for your moods and reflections, your feelings and your thoughts, would find no responsive mirror in your flesh.

It is natural and healthy to yearn for a comfortable body if you are in health difficulties. The body, however, is not an assumed facade, but the physical materialization in your world of your inner being. All of nature is responsive, pliant, changing, each part connected with each other part. It is quite natural, then, that during a lifetime you experience various assorted periods of temporary illness.

These will be caused by your beliefs and your feelings, but they will not be necessarily negative at all, but a demonstration of the body’s responsiveness. It is not realistic to expect a life of unending, exuberant health, with no momentary lapses of any kind.

The mind may want to react. The individual may realize that his or her pace has been too fast, and so natural feelings bring about a lethargy of body, or a slight fever, or an indisposition—all quite natural, resilient activities. I do not want this ever to be interpreted to mean, a priori, and in conventional terms, that “suffering is good for the soul.” A reliance and faith in the natural self, however, would be large enough to accept certain indispositions without fear, panic, or doubt. With the best of intent most public health announcements shout the symptoms of critical diseases to the skies, so that the smallest of indispositions becomes the trigger for personal fear on the part of millions. Such announcements actually teach people to fear what might be happening within the body. There is a stress upon disease rather than health.

(To me:)You are stubborn. Your own thoughts wore you out. You needed to let down, and you would not do it. You could not take a vacation, you felt. You worried about time and your painting and “Unknown” Reality, and you would not relax. You worried about other issues that I told you about—taxes and money. You not only worried about the present, but you dwelled upon the “past mistakes.” You remembered doing Ruburt’s Dialogues drawings, and Adventures diagrams, and those thoughts crowded your present. To some extent, it is quite valid to say—though you may not agree with me—that you might as well have had all that work to do now as well.

Now: you can depress the body and the mind through certain drugs, destroying that great natural resiliency. A concentration upon negative thoughts and feelings to the exclusion of all else, will depress the mind and body as surely as any drugs.

The gentleman who wrote you from Canada (Vincent Vycinas)—the writer—is living out his cultural agony. (The name of VV’s book is Our Cultural Agony.) In his case the drugs are being used so that they can be blamed for a malaise that is spiritual. They give our friend the excuse physically for a retreat from the world. He feels that he has lost his power, because he does not believe that the individual, with all his capacities, really has any effective power in the cultural world.

(10:30.) Now: his body is making an excellent readjustment, as it becomes more and more flexible. I tell you that the recovery is more or less assured—as long as he does not backtrack in beliefs. When he learns he learns, however, so I do not expect backtracking. It might seem that all of this should happen without any soreness, that he should simply feel better and better, but such an attitude would also attempt to deny the body’s resiliency, and to short-circuit it.

All of the physical apparatus necessary for normal walking is being activated. Problems that existed in the past will not be encountered in the future to anything like the same degree when Ruburt begins his encounter with the world again—for his and your feelings and beliefs have changed enough.

You affect matter all the time, of course, including the matter of your bodies. To some extent you breathe “life” into your machinery. Geller must be a performer, with all the characteristics that implies. He displays the obvious, but that obvious is not at all obvious to most people, and so they need the lesson.

(“Thank you.” 11:20 PM. Seth had considered all the questions I’d raised before the session.)