“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The first episode involved a couple I will call Jim and Ann Linden. Ann, a complete stranger, called me on the phone one morning. Since she dialed me directly, there was no indication that this was a long-distance call, and I thought she was calling from town, particularly since she mentioned having relatives in Elmira. She told me that her son, Peter, had died a few months ago at the age of three. She and her husband were distraught, she said, and a friend of theirs, Ray Van Over, a parapsychologist in New York, had suggested she call me.

“It is not time for you to run willy-nilly, looking for truth in any treetop. The truth is inside yourself. Your son is not a three-year-old any longer. He is an entity older than you, and he has tried to point out the way to you. … He was not a child taken before his promise was achieved, but a personality who left you when his own reincarnations were finished. He will not return, but go on now to another reality in which his abilities can be used to more advantage.”

According to Seth, we choose our illnesses and the circumstances of our birth and death. This applies to every illness, whether it is a broken leg suffered from an accident, or an ulcer. This doesn’t mean that we consciously make a choice in the way we’re used to; we don’t sit down and say, “Well, I think I’ll get a broken leg this afternoon at three in front of Rand’s drugstore.” Some part of us is upset and chooses an illness or accident as a way of expressing this inner situation. This will be explained in the chapter on health, along with Seth’s instructions on the maintenance of good health and vitality.

“The husband should follow this exercise three times a day: He should imagine the energy and vitality of the universe filling his wife’s form with health. This should not be a wishful-thinking sort of thing, but a definite effort to understand that her form is composed of this energy, and in this way he can help her use it to advantage. If possible, he should touch her during this exercise, and it should be done morning, evening, and night.

But Sally was in such terrible condition, going blind, unable to speak or move voluntarily. Why, Jon wrote, couldn’t she have chosen something less damaging? Why couldn’t she have been just sickly for three lives, say, instead of being struck down with such a killing disease in this one?