“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Generalized body changes since the last session Saturday night: More loosening in neck, ligaments, chin and face area; walking is easier but still requires support – legs tremble and have trouble supporting weight, but knees move better. “Shitty,” Jane said with a rueful laugh. Right foot looser and looser, but no help walking. Head and back more flexible; eyes not quite so red—“in and out” of focus in a period of minutes, yet Jane could see to work part of the time today, as Seth suggested.)

The practical experience of reality is formed through the suggestive psychological idea-shapes that appear in the guise of theories, dogmas, and assumptions.

The theory of evolution represents a magnetic organizing suggestive hypothesis. It can, even in scientific terms, never be proven. Under its banner of suggestion, however, the great parade of men and other living creatures are observed so that the hypothesis brings about its own hypnotic focus—so that creatures, man, and indeed the universe itself, seem to behave in certain highly ritualized fashions.

In a manner of speaking, the motives familiar to men are applied to the smallest microbe. More than this, however, the theory’s vast suggestive nature forms a framework through which people then view the experiences of their lives, and through whose focus the behavior of their own species seems determined.

The theory, then, is a way of organizing experience, a suggestive hypothesis. It is indeed no more than a point of view. It has colored man’s societies and cultures since its inception. It has dominated economical systems. In that regard, for example, James was quite correct: certain religious societies interpreted the theme so that it read “evolution of the soul”; but there is no soul in Darwinian theory and hereditary, and certainly none in the environment.

I do not think you understand yet the importance of suggestion, for once you said to me “Suggestion cannot be all that important.”

You did indeed—not in that context. There is little difference, however, between private suggestion in your personal lives, and the power of mass suggestion in your society.

Suggestion not only impels toward action, but causes you to interpret action in a given manner. In strict Darwinian terms, man and animal alike had to be turned aggressively outward in the most competitive of physical ways. A new achievement on the part of a species, or any mutation occurred, occurred as the direct result of personal experience—and of course no information was available otherwise.

Those theories of Darwin, however, formed part of the suggestive background in which you and Ruburt and millions of others matured. Each person interpreted those beliefs in an individual fashion. Sexual, economic, social and even religious behavior became tinged by these concepts.

The value of the artist was deprecated. Contemplation had little part to play. As per James, it was no coincidence that the beliefs of Freud and Darwin merged so well to form western society’s idea of the self, physically and psychologically. The ideas of financial competition, advocated, came into direct conflict, Joseph, with your own inclinations to be an artist. The ideas of manliness in your society, particularly in past years, were directly tied in with Darwinian concepts and Freudian theory. They operated as suggestion that directed the actions of millions of people, and provided a framework through which they experienced their reality.

In other kinds of systems, great premiums would be put upon your work. I want you to understand, personally, the importance of such suggestions—particularly when they have authoritative backgrounds.

The work of the jaws necessitates the actions occurring, and if the new jaws end up with new teeth (humorously), that must not be considered a failure or a tragedy. That fear is precisely what keeps Ruburt from saving the teeth so far. The teeth business has to do also with Darwinian concepts of age, with thought of the animal not surviving, and in your world that is ridiculous. The fears behind the fears are groundless. He must not be so afraid, then, of losing the teeth—and then perhaps he can save them. But in any case you both lay highly negative and unwarranted suggestions in that area.