“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(A note added a few days later: This session was held on Wednesday. We had guests the following Friday evening, and as Jane described the multiple-channel effects to them, she realized that she was tuning into some of Seth’s backlog of data about peer groups and the need to conform. Seth hadn’t actually given us the material during Wednesday’s session, nor did he now — instead Jane verbalized it on her own to some extent. The next morning I asked her to note down what she remembered of it.

(“Telling Rob and our friends about the channels that I became aware of in the last session,” Jane wrote, “I suddenly began drawing upon the one with the information about conformity and the need for individual expression.

(“I realized that Seth had a great amount of information all gathered and there, including the biological foundations of both characteristics. Take the amoeba, a one-celled microscopic animal, for instance: I knew that the protoplasm in the amoeba, the essential living matter, represents the individual needing-to-go-out quality. Yet the protoplasm must conform to its environment — in this case the amoeba’s ‘body,’ which can only move as a unit when directed by the individualistic need to react to stimuli.

(“This is just a sample of the implications called up by Rob’s talk about peer groups in the session Wednesday. The material itself has much more available on biological aspects, plus cultural and historical ones. It could also discuss the same question from the view of the growth of the human body and the development, say, of cancer cells that break out of a conforming pattern and superimpose a ‘new’ one, their own, on the unit structure….

There is something in here also having to do with your feelings about yourself as a rebel—as one who does not conform, who stands apart. In not having an orgasm, to certain layers of your personality, now, you are maintaining your individuality—you are reinforcing the idea that you are a rebel, and free, but not conforming as is expected of you. [...]

[...] Going along with the authority is not being spontaneous to your way of thinking—it is conforming.

[...] After the ceremony, it meant conforming to what was expected, being one of the masses, giving up your individuality.

(My personal problems developed in force when I began to be overly concerned with my creative “work” as work, as it applied to the world, as it would be received and interpreted; when I tried to compare its reception to other officially accepted activities—that people understood—when I tried to look at my “work” through their eyes, and when I began to expect the kind of honor and approbation given to others—who conformed.

[...] This meant that a certain conformity to official culture was maintained.

The paranoid organizes the psychological world about his obsession, for such it is, and he cuts everything out that does not apply, until all conforms to his beliefs. [...]

[...] We can try to mold it, to make it conform or behave, but each life has a life of its own. [...]

[...] They may not be perceived as physical objects, but as reality that conforms to the particular camouflage structure within.

[...] To conform to the laws of a particular plane is a practical necessity, and at this time the flying saucer craft simply cannot afford to stay betwixt and between for any indefinite period.

[...] (Long pause.) Modern psychology was an attempt to make man conform to the new scientific world view.

(Long pause at 4:28.) A strain develops in the personality as it tries to be faithful to its own private picture of reality, even while it tries to obediently conform to the publicly accepted picture. [...]

[...] To one extent or another, then, you learn to constantly monitor your behavior, so that it conforms to the established criteria set up for sane or rational experience.

[...] As long as the particular directions are given, so will your “automatic” experience conform. [...]

[...] It became more important, then, for the child to conform to the culture rather than to follow its own individual natural leanings. [...]

[...] You keep trying to utilize your eyes properly until exterior images conform with the inner patterns. [...]

[...] I commented upon the value many youths obviously placed upon conforming in their nonconformity. [...]

[...] As the exterior mores try to force you to conform to the generally accepted ideas, so the interior conventions try to force you to make your inner experience conform to preconceived packaging.

As a result, you see in nature only what you want to see, and you provide yourselves with a pattern or model of nature that conforms with your beliefs.

[...] Ruburt is faced with the sensation of tightness, however—there is something there in his experience to deal with, so that his senses can conform to his belief about his body. [...]

[...] If those drives in either sex do not conform in expression to those expected of the male or female, then such young persons become confused. [...]

[...] It is sometimes easier to choose an unfamiliar location, however, for then you are not tempted to test yourself as you go along by wondering whether or not the imagined scenes conform to your memory.