“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.

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.

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.

“If I direct an aggressive thought toward someone, then it can hurt them.” I said to Rob. “If I bury it, it can hurt me and emerge as physical symptoms of some kind. So will you please ask Seth in our next session what he suggests?” In this one session Seth explained the difference between repression and the correct approach.

“This is the difference between repression and positive action. In repression the resentment is shoved beneath and ignored. With our method it is recognized, imaginatively plucked out as being undesirable, and replaced by the thought of peace and constructive energy.” (Seth has frequently cautioned me against repressing aggressions out of fear of them. Rob says that it is quite funny—to him!—when Seth, speaking through me, takes me to task in this way. His suggestions have always been excellent, however.)

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.

Again, Seth is not suggesting we repress emotion. Spontaneity, above all, is the rule. If we were truly spontaneous, Seth says, we wouldn’t need to worry about positive suggestions because our health would be normally maintained.

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 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.”

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.”

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.

All of nature operates spontaneously. Our bodies will be healthy automatically if we do not project false ideas upon them.

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:

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.

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.

Remember our friend who kept falling in love with men she couldn’t have? Finally she grew more and more morose, and attempted suicide several times. One night in her absence we had a session for her, and Seth’s advice here has important general implications.

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

“Now, I have made my friend Ruburt sit fairly quietly for some time, so out of the goodness of my heart I will now end our session; though I may indeed drop in a word now and then.”