“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A few weeks ago we heard that a former neighbor had just died. Joanie had lived in our apartment house for a year or so, once right across the hall from us. She was thin, red-haired, with a wild temper. I think she was one of the wittiest people I’ve known, and she was a great mimic. But she often used her wit like a sword. It was cruel humor, even when she turned it against herself, as she often did.

She was in her early thirties, with a good job, but she looked down on all of the other employees. Her marriage had ended in divorce before she moved here, and while she was always talking about getting married again, she had a great distrust of men. I think she really hated them. She didn’t think much better of women, yet at times she could be very warmhearted. She took a liking to Rob and myself, and often we would sit, she and I at this same table where I’m writing this book, and chat.

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.

“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.

“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.

“Ruburt should remember to recognize resentment when he feels it, and then to realize that resentment can be dismissed. The initial recognition must be made, however. Then have him imagine plucking out the resentment by the roots and replacing it with a positive feeling. But he must imagine the plucking-out process.

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.

Now Seth, through my eyes, stared around the room. Someone picked my glasses up and put them on the coffee table. (As I mentioned before, when Seth comes through, he always takes my glasses off, and often flings them rather grandly upon the rug.) The lights were on, as always. He faced the group and said emphatically, “You are not your body. You are not your emotions. You have emotions. You have thoughts as you have eggs for breakfast, but you are not the eggs, and you are not your emotions. You are as independent of your thoughts and emotions as you are of the bacon and eggs. You use the bacon and eggs in your physical composition, and you use your thoughts and emotions in your mental composition. Surely you do not identify with a piece of bacon? Then do not identify with your thoughts and emotions. When you set up barriers and doors, then you enclose emotions within you ... as if you stored up tons of bacon in your refrigerator and then wondered why there was room for nothing else.”

“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’?

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.”

Everyone laughed. After our rest period, Seth resumed, to answer some other questions, but he ended the last discussion with a smile for “the Dean”: “Now, the seasons come each year as they have come for centuries upon your planet, and they come with a magnificent spontaneity and with a creativity that bursts upon the world. And yet they come within a highly ritualized and disciplined manner. For spring does not come in December. And there is a merging of spontaneity and discipline truly marvelous to behold. And you do not fear the coming of the seasons.

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.

As you read this, think back to various illnesses you have had, and see how this applies. Here Seth discusses illness in its relationship not only to the surface personality but to our deepest biological frameworks. Seth had previously spoken about Sally’s (Jon’s wife’s) need to disassociate herself from her “sick” identity. Now he elaborated:

“The complicated human personality with its physical structure has evolved, along with some other structures, a highly differentiated ‘I’ consciousness [the ego, in other words], whose very nature is such that it attempts to preserve the apparent boundaries of identity. To do so it chooses between actions. But beneath this sophisticated gestalt are the simpler foundations of its being, and indeed the very acceptance of all stimuli without which identity would be impossible.

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.”

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.

I’d read about such instances, but I have to admit that I thought they were highly imaginative accounts until I found myself guiding Miss C. The point is that she was so frightened of death, she didn’t realize it was all over. Since her physical body was quite dead, she was in her astral body; yet she was acting confused, and her mind was still unclear, as if she still had hardening of the arteries.

“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. …

But exactly what is good health? In a recent class session, our “Dean” asked Seth.

“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.”

“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.”