“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

She always began with one of her fantastically funny sarcastic tales about someone she knew. She had an uncanny ability to sense people’s weak points and make fun of them. For all of that, when she was not sick she had a fine vitality, and a keen, native shrewdness. We played a sort of game: I liked her, but I wasn’t going to be besieged by a barrage of negative thoughts and pessimism for an hour, no matter how wittily presented—and she knew it. The worse part was that she really was funny and it was hard as the devil not to laugh at her, even when I knew I shouldn’t. And she knew this, too. So she would try to see how far she could go before I would call her on it and begin a “mini-lecture,” pointing out that her attitude toward other people was largely responsible for her difficulties.

Remember what I said earlier, that we form physical reality as a replica of our inner ideas. This is a major premise of the Seth Material. Joan literally disliked everyone with few exceptions. She was convinced, furthermore, that she was unliked and unlikable. She felt persecuted, sure that people were talking or gossiping about her when her back was turned—because this was precisely what she did. Daily life contained all kinds of threats for her, and she kept her nervous system in a constant state of stress. Her body defenses were lowered. She was tired of the constant battle, never realizing that much of the war was one-sided and unwarranted. She projected her ideas of reality outward, and they literally led her to destruction.

“You must watch the pictures that you paint with your imagination,” he said, “for you allow your imagination too full a reign. If you read our early material, you will see that your environment and the conditions of your life at any given time are the direct result of your own inner expectations. You form physical materializations of these realities within your own mind.

“You create your own difficulties. This is true for each individual. The inner psychological state is projected outward, gaining physical reality—and this regardless of the nature of the psychological state. … The rules apply to everyone. You can use them for your own benefit and change your own conditions once you realize what they are.

“Now, you are not speaking of basic issues,” he said. “You are flying paper dragons to be punctured, but these are not the real dragons. You must learn to listen to the voice of the inner self. It is hardly to be feared. You have allowed the ego to become a counterfeit self, and you take its word because you will not hear the muffled voice that is within it.

“In this way you are no longer suggesting that the body reproduce the headache conditions. The exercise may be repeated.”

One of my students, a businessman, always gets worried when Seth speaks about spontaneity. He equates it with lack of discipline. Seth calls this man “the Dean,” with affectionate humor, because he’s one of my best students, and the others listen to his psychic adventures with a good deal of interest. But he’s very much a community man also, and the word “spontaneity” can be like a red scarf to a bull, at least as far as he is concerned! And I have to admit that many of us have the feeling that our inner emotions are too hot to handle.

We had a new student that evening, and someone made the remark that Seth could be quite stern. Now he said, jokingly, “I have been drastically maligned this evening, and so I come to show our new friend here that I am a jolly fellow. That, at least, was my initial intention. Now it has changed. For I must tell you again that the inner self, acting spontaneously, automatically shows the discipline that you do not as yet understand.”

“Freedom in the total sense seems like irresponsibility, almost.”

Again, Seth stared at “the Dean,” but now he spoke to the others in the group. “In the spontaneous working of your nervous system, what do we find? We see here the head of ‘the Dean’ that rests upon his shoulders, and the intellect that demands discipline. And yet all of this rests upon the spontaneous workings of the inner self, and the nervous system of which the intellect knows little. And without that spontaneous discipline, there would be no ego to sit upon the shoulders and demand discipline. . . . Now that I have proven how jovial I am, you may all take a break.”

“Unifying principles are groups of actions about which the personality forms itself at any given time. These usually change in a relatively smooth fashion when action is allowed to flow unimpeded. [See how this ties in with Seth’s advice to the students on the value of spontaneity and the difficulties of repression.] These impediments [illnesses] may sometimes then preserve the integrity of the whole psychological system and point out the existence of inner psychic problems. Illness is a portion of the action of which personality is composed and therefore it is purposeful, and cannot be considered as an alien force that invades personality from without. . . .

“Illness could not be called an impeding action unless it persisted long after its purpose was served. Even then you could make no judgment without knowing all the facts . . . for the illness could still serve by giving the personality a sense of security, being kept on hand as an ever-present emergency device in case the new unifying system should fail.

Over and over again Seth tells us that physical symptoms are communications from the inner self, indications that we are making mental errors of one kind or another. He compares the body in one session to a sculpture “never really completed, the inner self trying out various techniques on its test piece. The results are not always of the best, but the sculptor is independent of his product and knows there will be others.”

He also has some fascinating comments on the relationship of various kinds of symptoms to the inner problems involved. “Do not forget that you are a part of the inner self. It is not using you. You are the portion of it that experiences physical reality. Now, physical illnesses that are not critical but observable—that do not involve, say, loss of a limb or organ— generally represent problems that are in the process of being solved, problems that are “out in the open.’

“Such illnesses are the end product of a process of discovery. Inner problems are literally brought out where they can be faced, recognized, and conquered, using the symptoms as measuring points of progress. A trial-and-error system is involved, but the inner processes are reflected rather quickly by the physical condition.”

As Seth makes clear in other sessions, the symptoms in such cases are themselves part of the healing process. What we are supposed to do, then, is change our mental attitude, search ourselves for the inner problem represented by the symptoms, and measure our progress as the symptoms subside.

According to Seth, each case of senility is different, but generally speaking, the personality transfers the vital parts of consciousness into the next area of existence, and is often fully aware there, and functioning. Gradually the personality’s mental focus leaves this life and begins to operate entirely on another level. The physical disease—the hardening of the arteries—is caused by the personality’s gradual refusal to accept new physical stimuli, thus avoiding physical experience (either purposefully or through error). People who are terrified of physical death might take this path, since when physical death occurs, consciousness is already acquainted with its new environment and the organism’s death is relatively meaningless. In any case, the individual’s inner decision causes the physical symptoms, not the other way around.

According to Seth, during our reincarnational existences we are to realize that we project our thoughts and emotions outward to form reality. When you realize, for example, that ill health is the projection of distorted ideas outward onto the body, then you work to clear up the inner problems. This realization can cure even illnesses that are related to past lives. Since Seth says these existences are actually lived spontaneously, then these “parallel” selves exist in us now, and we can reach them through therapy.

Seth suggests that self-hypnosis and light trance states be used as ways to uncover inner problems that are causing us difficulty. He also suggests that we simply ask the inner self to make the answer available on a conscious basis. If the inner problems are not discovered, we will simply exchange one set of symptoms for another. Various sessions include specific steps to be taken in these areas and others. Dreams are very important, both in uncovering problems and in providing solutions to them. In fact, I’ll begin the next chapter with Seth’s suggestions on the use of dreams as therapy. The instructions are simple and can be used by anyone.

“When I tell you that you lived, for example, in 1836, I say this because it makes sense to you now. You live all of your reincarnatons at once, but you find this difficult to understand.”

“Because I say that you create physical matter by use of the inner sense, I do not mean that you are the creators of the universe. I am saying that you are the creators of the physical world as you know it.”