“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

How can you stay healthy? How can you get rid of any illnesses you might have? Exactly what is the connection between your state of mind and your health? Seth’s ideas on this subject have been of great value to Rob and me, and to everyone who has come in contact with them. We have put his concepts to work in our own lives, and sometimes both of us wonder how we managed daily life before we understood the close relationship between thoughts, emotions, and health.

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.

Yet she had been warned. Two years before her death she asked to attend a regular Seth session. Seth was quite serious and not as jovial as usual, and at the time I thought that he was being rather hard on her. Now I see that he was trying to impress her with the necessity of changing her attitudes and reactions. He stated his ideas on health as clearly and directly as possible, dealing with their practical application. I can almost see Joan sitting there, legs crossed, before the session. If she had been able to follow his advice, I am convinced she would be alive and well today. I am also sure that readers who understand and follow Seth’s ideas on health will find their own greatly improved.

“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.

“If you imagine dire circumstances, ill health, or desperate loneliness, these will be automatically materialized, for these thoughts themselves bring about the conditions that will give them reality in physical terms. If you would have good health, then you must imagine this as vividly as in fear you imagine the opposite.

“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.

“You cannot escape your own attitudes, for they will form the nature of what you see. Quite literally you see what you want to see; and you see your own thoughts and emotional attitudes materialized in physical form. If changes are to occur, they must be mental and psychic changes. These will be reflected in your environment. Negative, distrustful, fearful, or degrading attitudes toward anyone work against the self.”

“These mass suggestions include not only those given to him by others, both verbally and telepathically, but also those he has given to himself, both in the waking and dream states. If an individual is in a state of despondency, this is because he has already become prey to negative suggestions of his own and others. Now if you see him and think that he looks miserable”—Seth looked at Joan sharply—“or that he is an incurable drunk, then these suggestions are picked up by him subconsciously, though you have not spoken a word. And in his already weakened condition they will be accepted and acted upon.

“There are obviously ways in which you mold your own conditions, protect yourself from your own negative suggestions and those of others. You must learn to erase a negative thought or picture by replacing it with its opposite.

We had a short break, and Joan continued to complain of her friend’s drinking habits, how they only added to her own nervousness. She was certain that if she didn’t have this to contend with, her health would return. Quite vehemently, she set about blaming her friend for almost all of her problems. When Seth resumed, he was even more serious than before.

“Another example: A very industrious individual thinks the majority of men are lazy and good for nothing. No one would ever think of calling him lazy or good for nothing, yet this may be precisely his own subconscious picture of himself, against which he drives himself constantly. And all of this without his realizing his basic concept of himself, and without recognizing that he projects his feared weaknesses outward unto others.

“You should tell yourself frequently, ‘I will only react to constructive suggestions,’ for this gives you some protection against your own negative thoughts and those of others. A negative thought if not erased will almost certainly result in a negative condition: a momentary despondency, a headache, according to the intensity of the thought.

Repression has been one of my own habits, particularly after I learned how destructive negative thoughts can be. At first I went overboard, or tried to. I’d catch myself thinking a resentful thought about a particular person or situation and I’d almost recoil, “Wow, that’s a terrible thing to think,” I’d say to myself.

Seth always says that life is abundant, vigorous, and strong. Each of us has our own defenses against negative suggestions, and we should trust in our own immunity. People react to negative suggestions only when their own frame of mind is negative. Then we close ourselves off from the constructive energies we need.

We were talking about this in class one night, when suddenly Seth came through. “Emotions flow through you like storm clouds or blue skies, and you should be open to them and react to them,” Seth said. “You are not your emotions. They flow through you. You feel them. And then they disappear. When you attempt to hold them back, you build them up like mountains. I have told our Dean that spontaneity knows its own discipline. Your nervous system knows how to react. It reacts spontaneously when you allow it to. It is only when you try to deny your emotions that they become dangerous.”

“That is indeed your interpretation,” Seth said, “and this is because you set demands. Now I ask you, how far do you think a flower would get if in the morning it turned its face toward the sky and said, ‘I demand the sun. And now I need rain. So I demand it. And I demand bees to come and take my pollen. I demand, therefore, that the sun shall shine for a certain number of hours, and that the rain shall pour for a certain number of hours . . . and that the bees come— bees A, B, C, D, and E, for I shall accept no other bees to come. I demand that discipline operate, and that the soil shall follow my command. But I do not allow the soil any spontaneity of its own. And I do not allow the sun any spontaneity of its own. And I do not agree that the sun knows what it is doing. I demand that all these things follow my ideas of discipline’?

“And who, I ask you, would listen? For in the miraculous spontaneity of the sun, there is discipline that utterly escapes you, and a knowledge beyond any that we know. And in the spontaneous playing of the bees from flower to flower, there is a discipline beyond any that you know, and laws that follow their own knowledge, and joy that is beyond command. For true discipline, you see, is found only in spontaneity. Spontaneity knows its own order.”

“Each of you in your way contribute. For you can consider the body of the earth and all that you know . . . the trees, the seasons, and the skies, to some extent as your own contribution . . . the combination of spontaneity and discipline that gives fruit to the earth.”

But, of course, it is not as simple as all this. In speaking directly to people in class sessions, Seth tries to explain matters as clearly as possible and in a way that they can understand. In our own sessions he goes much more deeply into such subjects. In the following excerpts from a private session, he explains the biological and psychic elements of pain and consciousness and also states that illness itself is sometimes a purposeful activity.

“Without this acquiescence to even painful stimuli, the structure would never maintain itself, for the atoms and molecules within it constantly accept such stimuli, and joyfully suffer even their own destruction. Being aware of their identity within all action, and not having the complicated ‘I’ structure, there is no reason for them to fear destruction. They are aware of themselves as a part of action.

“All illness is almost always the result of another action that cannot be followed through. When the lines to the original action are released and the channels opened, the illness will vanish. However, the thwarted action may be one with disastrous consequences which the illness may prevent. The personality has its own logic.”

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.’

You can even continue some symptoms after death. For example, Miss C, who lived in our apartment house, finally died of hardening of the arteries. One night I found myself out of my own body in a strange house—strange because while it was extremely old-fashioned, somehow it looked brand-new. Miss C was just going out the door as I arrived. She was very distracted. Suddenly I “knew” that the house was an hallucination she had created, a replica of her childhood home, and I knew that she did not realize she was dead.

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.

“You have not accepted life on life’s terms,” he said. “You are demanding that it behave in certain ways and take courses that you have consciously decided upon. You are refusing to accept life gladly, as its own reason and cause within you.

“The idea that you must find a man that will love you is a cover to hide this deeper refusal to accept life on life’s terms. … You are saying, ‘Unless existence meets my terms, I will not exist,’ and no one has the right to so set themselves against their own innate vitality.

“Once you wholeheartedly accept life on life’s terms, then you may indeed get what you are after, but not while you insist upon it as a condition for continued existence. … Your own purpose will make life a daily joy when you let your conditions go. You forget what you do have—health and vitality. You forget your intellect and intuitions. You forget what blessings are yours.

“The uniqueness that is your own personality is to be cherished. The particular purposes of your present personality can only be met in the present circumstances in the way that is best overall. The challenges can be met at another time and in another life, this is true. But the particular people that you can help now, and the particular good that you can do now, can never be done in precisely the same way. …

“You should desire good health because it is a natural state of your being. You should trust in the innate intelligence of your own being. Health is its natural state. Through your physical image the energy of the universe expresses itself. You, as an individual, as individualized consciousness, are a part of this, and you cannot express yourself fully, nor fulfill your purpose as an identity if you are not in good health. For the effects of the body are felt in the mind, and the mind’s effects are felt in the body.”

Seth sessions are held in full light in the Butts’ living room. Jane’s husband, Rob, using his own shorthand system, takes down Seth’s words verbatim. Above, as Jane goes into trance, she—as Seth—removes her glasses and has thrown them onto the couch. (Rich Conz)

“You will reincarnate whether or not you believe that you will. It is much easier if your theories fit reality, but if they do not, you will not change the nature of reincarnation one iota.”

“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.”