“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Ann Kraky visited us at supper time last night. She brought with her a batch of papers Leonard Yaudes had saved for us; naturally our talk revolved around Leonard’s recent heart bypass operation—see the opening notes for sessions 894-97, for example, and my own reactions to Leonard’s situation.

Your body consciousness is like the consciousness of any animal—alert, above all optimistic, focused in the present, as you understand it, glorifying in motion and in rest, in excitement and in quietude. The body seeks to use itself. The body consciousness enjoys its own expression.

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.

You can learn much about your own body consciousness, and therefore to some extent about the natural man, by observing the behavior of your pets or other animals, and you can to some extent learn from their behavior, and therefore to some extent counteract any susceptibility to negative beliefs. I have given some material like this in the past—but on such occasions try to return to the moment, to the present. Perceive it as clearly as you can from the standpoint of the stimuli present before you. Mentally say “This is my present experience now.” Then, if you find yourself exaggerating any unpleasantness within that moment, and projecting it into the future, you stop and say “That is not a part of this present moment. In the terms of my bodily reality, those dire imaginings, whatever they are, are not real. My body can only respond to the present. I will not overload that present by borrowing trouble that in this moment has no reality” (all very emphatically). Such imaginings frighten the body consciousness, as you might frighten an animal.

The same applies if a friend becomes ill—the beliefs behind it say that you are vulnerable creatures, the victims of bodily distress that operates regardless of your wishes, and each instance of another’s illness can then be seen as proof of one’s own vulnerability.

(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.)

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.

Now Ruburt has managed to find a platform, lately, that has allowed him a good deal of freedom from his usual worries. This has allowed more body relaxation, and agility. In exercises his legs are indeed more flexible, his knees more agile, and relaxation of mind is the key, for it allows the body to express its own animal wisdom.

(She thought the information would be part of this book. Another idea—“It’s no big deal”—was that for centuries man thought the universe was created for man, and everything else revolved around man.

(By now, speaking, Jane had fallen into a mode of dictating to me as I wrote; this was different than her simply telling me something in ordinary terms. It wasn’t Seth speaking, but her own delivery was quite precise and unhesitating, and she paused just as Seth did to give me time to write down her words. So from here on I’ll put her material in quotes:

(“Man was created by God, so that nature only had meaning in relationship to man—man was dominant. Then science threw out the entire thesis: Man wasn’t at the center of the universe anymore. The universe wasn’t created by God, and man and nature alike had no meaning, so that thematically man went from being the center of the universe, a special creature, created by God, to a meaningless conglomeration of atoms and molecules, and a meaningless universe, and that philosophical drop was shattering to man. So he’s now actually in the process of forming a new model of the universe between those two extremes—one that recognizes that each portion of the universe has meaning in relationship to all of its other parts, but that the meaning can’t necessarily be deduced by an examination of exterior appearances, but only in so far as man examines the nature of his own consciousness in its relationship to other species—to nature itself, to the objective universe, and begins to understand the vital nature of interrelatedness, within which the process of divinity is actualized.”

(“Man’s own subjective reality, in all of its manifestations [pause] is the only one real “tool” that will give him any indication of his own greater existence, and therefore of his own origins and that of the universe. The patterns for all of man’s work appear first in the mind, and the fragments of man’s individual and joint dreams fall together faultlessly to form the mosaic of individual and mass events.”

(“Each individual mind is a storehouse of knowledge from which each person can draw, but you have been taught that all knowledge comes from the exterior world, and from the stimuli that arises from it. But all knowledge is originally direct knowing—a kind of molecular mentality, in which the atoms and the molecules give their own kind of intuitive translation of knowledge possessed by all units of consciousness —for all of the knowledge of the universe is inherently contained within even the smallest, most microscopic of its parts.”