“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Earlier that evening, class members had been discussing some of the letters they’d been answering for Jane.¹ One young man mentioned “feeling like shit” in connection with another matter — a remark that Seth must have overheard. He began the session by telling the students that they also learned as they attempted to answer the questions asked by correspondents. Then, with much emphasis:)

Now many of you here use the word “shit.” You apply the term in a derogatory manner to yourselves, and you think: “I am full of shit.” And where does the great spectacular reality, the physical reality of your earth, spring from? Why is shit not considered sacred and blessed and glorious? You think of shit, unfortunately, as the antithesis of good; and when you play around it or with it, you think you are being childish at the best, and wicked at the worst.

A child sits, perhaps three years old, with his finger stuck up his ass, feeling the shit that warmly runs down, and that child knows that shit is good. Then, give him credit!

You think that the soul is a white wall with nothing written upon it, and so your idea of sacrilege is to shit upon it, not realizing that the shit and the soul are one, and that the biological is spiritual; and that, again — if you will forgive my homey concept — flowers grow from the shit of the earth. And in a true communion, all things of this life return to the earth, and are consumed and rise up again in a new life that is never destroyed or annihilated, though always changing form.

So, when you shrink from such words or such meanings, why do you shrink? Because you do not trust the biology of your being or the integrity of your soul in flesh. You are people. You are made of the stuff of the earth, and the dust from the stars has formed into the shit that lies in piles — warm piles that come from the beasts and the creatures of the earth. And that shit fertilizes the flowers and the ground, and is a part of it.

Your soul and your flesh are wedded together. One is not “better” than the other. Both are good. Both are, and you are both. The heritage of the earth, in your terms, is ancient and yet ever new, and when you write your letters (to correspondents) you write … with your intelligence and your wit. Yet if it were not that you shit once or twice a day, you would not be writing any letters!

(Seth has always cautioned us against being too self-righteous; warned us against considering silence, seriousness, or piety as synonymous with goodness or “truth.” Above all, he’s insisted upon the exuberance and “rightness” of the physical world. He put the same idea across beautifully, of course, in Session 725 without ever using the word “shit.” But when dealing directly with people, Seth is — direct, and most perceptive. For many people will accept the same philosophy when expressed as it was in the 725th session, and yet be quite upset when those ideas are discussed in the vernacular, in language that certainly cannot be considered ambiguous in any fashion.)