“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(3. During a conversation Jane and I had wondered why the members of the human species were so woefully ignorant of the internal structure of their own bodies. Not that we wanted or needed conscious control—but why didn’t we have the conscious visual knowledge of the workings of our various bodily parts, be they heart, liver, or whatnot?

Early man related to his insides, then, symbolically in a way that is now quite outside of your comprehension. He knew he needed rain and sun and food as the land did. He felt so at one with the land, he and his body, that “a conscious knowledge of it,” it in your terms not only would have inhibited his identification with nature, but his agility within it.

Such a knowledge as you suggest in actuality would not have added to his comprehension of his body, for he comprehended it very well. It would not have added to his health for example either, for he listened to his body so acutely that natural healings followed as he sought from nature what his body needed. Perhaps a more recent example would help. There have been articles (in the newspapers) about people dying of broken hearts after long periods of time, when hearts were simply regarded as mechanical pumps. No man’s knowledge will alone save him from heart failure, or heart difficulties, if such knowledge is not backed up by comprehensions of an entirely different order.

(10:18.) Give us a moment.... You have categorized by part, certainly it seems, the great part of emerging knowledge, when in your terms taboos were broken and medical men were allowed to dissect corpses, to see what was before hidden. Yet again, men who felt they had the fleetness of the gazelle, the heart of the lion, or whatever, did not need literal knowledge in your terms. It is quite correct to say that your body is composed of everything you have consumed, also—each bird, animal, and plant—that those qualities form your flesh, ever change their form.

Man has a knowledge of his body. This need have nothing to do with detailed information about its parts. Each man feels his relationship with his body. Your belief structures have clouded the practical use of that knowledge, however.

It should play far more a part then than it does in your lives, whether it amounts to a quiet half hour, simply lying together; but touch is vital. You see how your cat needed it (who stood in Jane’s lap as she spoke for Seth).

Also, he uses his energy differently than you, and needs to eat oftener. Coffee cake is no answer. Either he may be hungry and take his nap, or he may eat coffee cake for example that initially supplies energy that quickly depletes itself—just about the time his nap is finished.