“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:42.) Give us a moment … Without an identification with the land, the planet and the seasons, all of your technology will not help you understand the earth, or even use it effectively, much less fully. Without an identification with the race as a whole, no technology can save the race. (Pause, during an intent delivery.) Unless man also identifies himself with the other kinds of life with which he shares the world, no technology will ever help him understand his experience. I am speaking in very practical terms. Gadgets will, ultimately, teach you nothing about the dimensions of your own consciousness. When you use them (biofeedback, for instance) even to attain alterations of consciousness, you are programming yourselves, stepping apart from yourselves.

(I thought it very interesting that Seth had talked about subatomic waves and particles in the last paragraph of his delivery tonight. Such ideas involve the physicists’ ongoing conception of the duality of nature. For instance: Is light made up of waves or particles? A contemporary accommodation, called complementarity, leads experimenters to accept results that show either aspect to be true. As noted in the last session, Jane had attempted to read Einstein’s book on his theories of relativity earlier that day. We had briefly discussed Einstein’s work and some allied subjects before tonight’s session, but I hadn’t asked her to give material on physics through Seth.⁵ In her own way, Jane is quite interested in the field, however, and has done a little work in it with scientists. We may have more to say about those efforts later in “Unknown” Reality.

My first example concerns the development of biofeedback machines in the 1960’s. With one of these devices the individual was to learn to control, when necessary, his or her own blood pressure, or any of certain other involuntary body functions. Doubtlessly such self monitoring is an example of the “loving technology” that Seth mentioned in his final delivery for the last Session; yet we now understand that the early claims for biofeedback were considerably exaggerated. Within a more reasonable context the technique will take its place in our medical systems, but in each case what we learn will surely point up the need to understand our individual inner realities; i.e., what caused the high blood pressure, or whatever, in the first place?