“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After her visit I began to feel a resurgence of the same uneasy, even panicky, chest symptoms that I’d experienced on occasion before while Leonard has been sick. These sensations persisted through the evening; they certainly felt physical in origin, even while I tried to tell myself to forget the whole thing. I was mad at myself. I felt badly as I took out the garbage, went for a walk, etc, and when I went to bed I nearly had to get up again because the feelings intensified. But I soon fell asleep all right. However, in the morning the symptoms returned as soon as I woke up, and have lasted at various pitches of intensity through the day. By session time they were somewhat diminished, but were very inhibiting during the day, making me hesitate to do the things I’d ordinarily do without a second thought, such as drive to the post office to mail Jane’s intro for Sue’s book Conversations With Seth.

(Jane was so relaxed by session time, so “out of it,” that she didn’t think she could manage a session. I told her to do as she pleased; I hadn’t asked her to have Seth say anything about me. She decided to try for the session. As I sat on the couch Billy, who is much improved now, curled himself up half in my lap, so that writing as Seth spoke was more than a little difficult. Yet when Jane went into trance her delivery as Seth was fast and steady:)

Mitzi, running up and down the stairs (as she was doing even now, chasing her wadded-up paper ball), is an example of the love of excitement and activity with which both man and animals are innately endowed. Animals enjoy being petted, stroked, loved. They react in their own ways to suggestion to the tone of your voice, to your expectations of their behavior, to your treatment of them—and in that regard your body consciousness responds to your conscious treatment of it. For this analogy alone, meant to further develop your joint understanding of the relationship between your conscious mind and your body, we will make further points. Think of your body, for the purpose of this discussion, as a healthy animal. Think of the human animal, only let the word “animal” carry all of those beneficial colorations that you hold when you think of other species.

There is certainly no point either in belaboring the fact that you are still, individually and jointly, affected by some of them. Animals and your own body consciousness have little concept of age. (Pause.) In a fashion almost impossible to describe, their consciousnesses—the body’s and the animals’—are “young” in each moment of their existences. I must perhaps here clear up a point: I am taking it for granted that you understand that I am referring to the “mental attitude” of animals and of the body consciousness, for they both do possess their own mental attitudes—psychological colorations—and above all, emotional states.

In news watching—which does satisfy a natural need—you also run into a barrage of cultural beliefs and attitudes that are secondary. They are secondary in that they are interpretations placed upon events. The events come first. The body consciousness, watching the news, would think—if it thought as you do—“What activity, what commotion, what excitement (almost laughing), what a conglomeration of smells and sights, what a congregation of my fellows, running and chasing, rising and falling, even living and dying. What a sensual barrage of activity—and how juicy it all is, since, relatively speaking (underlined), I sit here in my cozy cave, gnawing my supper bone, peacefully, with a rug at my feet. My belly full and my bed nearby.” (All with gusto and emphasis.)

Any normal process or feeling of the body can then be magnified or dwelled upon until it seems to provide only further proof of the same fears—which are then projected into the future. Some few people in your world expect to work productively through their 90’s at hard work, and do so. Not because hard work keeps them alive and healthy, but because their beliefs do. They are kind to their bodies. They give their bodies (pause) credit for having an animal’s good sense, vitality and endurance. They do not think their bodies are out to get them.

(Pause at 9:59. Seth probably used his 90’s analogy because the other evening on TV Jane and I saw a program about Eubie Blake, the jazz pianist, who is still performing on stage in his late 90’s, and doing very well at it to. His fingers seemed to be as flexible as a child’s. Incidentally, he talked about taking care of his hands. He played one of his own songs on camera. He’s black, by the way.)

There is also something else you can do at such times—and try all of these suggestions of mine, for one or another may be particularly effective, while another simply does not suit you as well: one way or another, imagine a kind of neutral platform, a subjective platform. Imagine yourself standing upon it, and see it as being a certain distance away from the platform of your usual beliefs.

Self-disapproval is always detrimental, so it does not help, as you know, to become angry at yourself. These negative beliefs are the ones we are trying to combat in our own work. They are the beliefs you are trying to combat as well. Therefore, do not be angry with yourself, when you fall susceptible to beliefs that are so paramount in your world. Be thankful that you can recognize them.

Do you have questions?

Remember the natural man. Remember his animal characteristics. Ask him what is wrong when you are bothered with symptoms, and he will most certainly tell you that you are frightening him by dire imaginings that do not exist in his world.

He understands the nature of death, as in their way all animals do, but he does not understand frightening pictures of imagined illnesses that do not exist in his present, or worries about death that is not as yet to be encountered. Again, he is like all animals, filled himself with unbounded, natural biological optimism, and when that biological support is allowed its freedom, you have people performing into the very latest of years, with vitality, agility, and an elegance that only age can provide.

(10:24. “It’s weird when I do that. It’s fascinating, but it’s really weird....” Then: “It’s almost like a dream. I could go right on.” Then with another laugh: