“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now in the case of an animal who hibernates, the body is in the same state. But in the greater hibernation of your own experience, the body as a whole becomes inoperable. The cells within you obviously die constantly. The body that you have now is not the one that you had 10 years ago; its physical composition has died completely many times since your birth, but, again, your consciousness bridges those gaps (with gestures). They could be accepted instead, in which case it would seem to you that you were, say, a reincarnated self at age 7 (intently), or 14 or 21. The particular sequence of your own awareness follows through, however. In basic terms the body dies often, and as surely as you think it dies but once in the death you recognize. On numerous occasions it physically breaks apart, but your consciousness rides beyond those “deaths.” You do not perceive them. The stuff of your body literally falls into the earth many times, as you think it does only at the “end of your life.”

(As we sat waiting for the session at 8:50 Jane felt a little nervous; she often does after a layoff from book dictation. But she laughed, as she has before in such cases: “I just want to get it — the beginning — over with.” At 8:55, moving closer to that familiar dissociated state, approaching that psychological bridge which serves as a common meeting ground for Seth and herself she announced that she felt “a rather generalized idea of what Seth will say on the book stuff.” Less clear were some data about herself but she thought Seth would cover all of that along with his material on “Unknown” Reality. “I guess we’ll start out with the book….”

Each system, of course, brings forth its own culture, “technology,” art, and science. The physical body is basically equipped to maintain itself as a healthy long-living organism far beyond your present understanding, medically speaking. The cellular comprehension⁸ provides all kinds of inner therapeutics that operate quite naturally. There is a physical give-and-take between the body and environment beyond that which you recognize; an inner dynamics here that escapes you, that unites the health of plants, animals, and men. In the most simple and mundane of examples, if you are living in a fairly well-balanced, healthy environment, your houseplants and your animals will also be well. You form your environment and you are a part of it. You react to it, often forgetting that relationship. Ideally, the body has the capacity to keep itself in excellent health — but beyond that, to maintain itself at the highest levels of physical achievement. The exploits of your greatest athletes give you a hint of the body’s true capacity. In your system of beliefs, however, those athletes must train and focus all of their attention in that direction, often at the expense of other portions of their own experience. But their performances show you what the body is capable of.

(Jane and I hadn’t realized it at first, but we were to take a long rest from work on “Unknown” Reality following the 707th session, for July 1. We were busy during the next 14 weeks, of course; there follow a few notes about some of our activities, grouped together by subject matter rather than chronology.

[...] triggered a set of associations for me, but they proved to have their complications. I thought I remembered a statement he’d made long ago, but now I couldn’t locate it within the body of his material. [...]

[...] But this time, in spite of my system of indexing each session in at least a fairly adequate fashion, several days passed before I found the passage I wanted. [...]

[...] The inner self is aware of this integrity of identity, but the ego focused so securely in physical reality cannot afford this luxury.

(The morning after the above session had been held [on September 30, 1974], I asked Jane to write down what she’d told me at about 1:15 A.M. I remembered her description of it at the time, even though I’d been pretty bleary by then, but I wanted her own version for use here. [...]