“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I have said elsewhere that no species is ever really eradicated — and in those terms no disease, or virus, or germ, ever vanishes completely from the face of the earth. In the first place, viruses change their form, appearing in your terms sometimes as harmless and sometimes as lethal. So-called states of health and disease are also changing constantly — and in those vaster terms disease in itself is a kind of health, for it makes life and health itself possible (all quite intently).

I used quotation marks around the entire heading for this chapter to stress the point that the heading is written with your own ideas of health and disease in mind. Actually, however, regardless of appearances and misreadings of natural events, the very idea of disease as you usually think of it, is chauvinistic (louder) in health rather than in sexual terms.

Basically speaking, there are only life forms. Through their cooperation your entire world sustains its reality, substance, life, and form. If there were no diseases as you think of them, there would be no life forms at all. Your reality demands a steady fluctuation of physical and nonphysical experience. Most of you, my readers, understand that if you did not sleep you would die. The conscious withdrawal of mental life during life makes normally conscious experience possible. In the same way there must, of course, be a rhythm of physical death, so that the experience of normal physical life is possible. It goes without saying that without death and disease — for the two go hand in hand — then normal corporeal existence would be impossible.

Many other diseases that seem to be spread by viruses or contagions are also related to the problems of society in the same manner, and when those conditions are righted the diseases themselves largely vanish. [...]

Many of the public-health announcements routinely publicize the specific symptoms of various diseases, almost as if laying out maps of diseases for medical consumers to swallow. [...]

We have been dealing with quite drastic diseases, but the same concepts are true in other areas also. There are people who undergo a series of highly unsatisfactory relationships, for example, while another person might experience a series of recurrent diseases instead. [...]

Indeed, it seems that he probably has available enough information on the evolutionary aspects of disease to fill a book. [...] The whole idea of such biological experimentation makes us wonder just how, and to what extent, those impetuses may be involved with any of the “ordinary” diseases we’re so used to thinking of as just that — diseases.

[...] There is a disease you read about recently, where the skin turns leathery after intense itching — a fascinating development in which the human body tries to form a leathery-like skin that would, if the experiment continued, be flexible enough for, say, sweat pores and normal locomotion, yet tough enough to protect itself in jungle environments from the bites of many “still more dangerous” insects and snakes.³ Many such experiments appear in certain stages as diseases, since the conditions are obviously not normal physical ones. [...]

(Pause.) Some (underlined) varieties of your own species were considered by the animals as diseased animal species, so I want to broaden your concepts there. In the entire natural scheme, and at all levels — even social or economic ones — disease always has its own creative basis. [...]

I remind the reader that after break ended at 11:35 in the last session (the 804th in Chapter 1), Seth had this to say: “Left alone, the body can defend itself against any disease, but it cannot defend itself appropriately against an exaggerated general fear of disease on the individual’s part. [...] Usually, now, your entire medical systems literally generate as much disease as is cured — for you are everywhere hounded by the symptoms of various diseases, and filled with the fear of disease, overwhelmed by what seems to be the body’s propensity toward illness — and nowhere is the body’s vitality or natural defense system stressed.”

[...] I refer to those in which the specific symptoms of various diseases are given, in which the individual is further told to examine the body with those symptoms in mind. I also refer to those statements that just as unfortunately specify diseases for which the individual may experience no symptoms of an observable kind, but is cautioned that these disastrous physical events may be happening despite his or her feelings of good health. Here the generalized fears fostered by religious, scientific, and cultural beliefs are often given as blueprints of diseases in which a person can find a specific focus — the individual can say: “Of course, I feel listless, or panicky, or unsafe since I have such-and-such a disease.”

Your current ideas of preventative medicine, therefore, generate the very kind of fear that causes disease. They all undermine the individual’s sense of bodily security and increase stress, while offering the body a specific, detailed disease plan. [...]

[...] It may also strike you, my readers, as quite shocking when I tell you that there is no such thing, basically, as disease. [...] What you think of as disease —

Certainly, such ideas will sound like medical heresy to many readers, but the sooner you begin to look at health and “disease” in these new terms, the healthier and happier you will become. [...] Once you know this, you can begin to take steps that will serve to promote exuberance and vitality instead of fear, doubts, and “disease.”

[...] (Long pause.) It may seem instead that the world is filled with unhappiness and disease.

“Again, many can thankfully praise a given doctor for discovering a disease condition ‘in time,’ so that effective countering measures were taken and the disease was eliminated. [...] If they did not die of the disease, they may have ‘fallen prey’ to an accident, or died in a war, or in a natural disaster.

(Pause at 10:42.) Give us a moment… In your society scientific medical beliefs operate, and a kind of preventative medicine, mentioned earlier, in which procedures [of inoculation] are taken, bringing about in healthy individuals a minute disease condition that then gives immunity against a more massive visitation. In the case of any given disease this procedure might work quite well for those who believe in it. [...]

[...] If you have decided to die, protected from one disease in such a manner, you will promptly come down with another, or have an accident. [...] It may appear that left alone the body would surely develop whatever disease might be “fashionable” at the time, so that the specific victory might result in the ultimate defeat as far as your beliefs are concerned.

Unfortunately, when man became a labeller he also made maps, so to speak, of great complexity, categorizing various diseases with greater effectiveness than ever before. He studied dead tissue to discover the nature of the disease that killed it. Physicians began to think of men as carriers of disease and diseases — which, in certain terms, they [the physicians] did themselves create through some new medical procedures.

[...] Many of their techniques were adopted for their psychological shock value, in which the patient was quite effectively “brainwashed” out of the disease he believed that he had.

[...] Often it operates as a framework in which poor health and disease are not only accepted as normal, but the concepts behind them strengthened. [...]

(4:20.) There are those who come down with one serious disease — say heart trouble — are cured through a heart transplant operation or other medical procedure, only to fall prey to another seemingly unrelated disease, such as cancer. It would relieve the minds of families and friends, however, if they understood that the individual involved did not “fall prey” to the disease, and that he or she was not a victim in usual terms.

People with life-threatening diseases also often feel that further growth, development, or expansion are highly difficult, if not impossible to achieve at a certain point in their lives. [...] Somehow the person learns to circumnavigate the unpleasant situation, or the conditions change because of other people involved — and presto: the disease itself vanishes.

This does not mean that anyone consciously decides to get such-and-such a disease, but it does mean that some people instinctively realize that their own individual development and fulfillment does now demand another new framework of existence.

[...] The people who take such inoculations within your own culture, now, usually do so because they do not want the disease specified, and they believe that the inoculation will prevent it. It is impossible to tell ahead of time how many of those individuals would come down with the disease otherwise, yet diseases do come and go whether or not inoculations are given. [...]

Diseases have been wiped out through the use of inoculations. In past cultures, diseases have been wiped out through the intercession of good spirits. The specific nature of inoculations, however, means that more and more become necessary in that system, for the fear of each newly discovered disease becomes paramount—and no time is given, in your terms, now, for the body to respond naturally to those natural conditions, and therefore build up a natural immunity, biologically speaking.

You cannot afford that kind of method now, because you do not believe that the mind itself can help protect the body against disease caused by bacteria or virus. [...]

When civilized children are medically inoculated against such diseases, however, they usually do not show the same symptoms, and to an important extent the natural protective processes are impeded. Such children may not come down with the disease against which they are medically protected, then — but they may indeed therefore become “prey” to other diseases later in life that would not otherwise have occurred.

Many diseases are actually health-promoting processes. Chicken pox, measles, and other like diseases in childhood in their own way “naturally inoculate” the body, so that it is able to handle other elements that are a part of the body and the body’s environment.

There are many other conditions to be taken into consideration, for such diseases certainly do have strong social connections. [...]

[...] The healthiest body contains within it many so-called deadly viruses in what you may call (underlined) an inactive form — inactive from your viewpoint, in that they are not causing disease. [...] There are kinds of gradations, say, in the lines and kinds of disease. Certain diseases can actually strengthen the body from a prior weaker state, by calling upon the body’s full defenses. Under certain conditions, some so-called disease states could insure the species’ survival.

[...] She had no questions for Seth, but expected him to continue his material of last Wednesday night, when he’d started an answer to my question about the relationship between the host organism and disease. [...]

[...] I will, therefore, combine the idea of a disease with the idea of creativity, for the two are intimately connected.

[...] If you are convinced that a specific food will give you a particular disease, it will indeed do so. It appears that certain vitamins will prevent certain diseases. [...] The child need not know what particular vitamin is being given, or the name for his disease, but if he believes in the physician and Western medicine he will indeed improve, and he will need the vitamins from then on. [...]

This does not mean that those individuals might not come down with another disease instead, but it does mean that the belief in disease is patterned and focused to particular symptoms by such methods. [...]

They believe that diseases are the result of exterior conditions. [...] Often though, some strong suggestions of a very negative character are given, so that all foods except certain accepted ones are seen as bad for the body, and the cause of diseases. [...]

[...] Not only does the idea [of prevention] continually promote the entire system of fear, but specific steps taken to prevent a disease in a body not already stricken, again, often set up reactions that bring about side effects that would occur if the disease had in fact been suffered.

(11:32.) A specific disease will of course have its effects on other portions of the body as well, [effects] which have not been studied, or even known. [...] There are also cases where alterations occur after inoculation, so that for a while people actually become carriers of diseases, and can infect others.

(Intently:) Disease must be combatted, fought against, assaulted, wiped out. [...] Such people are those who are apt to take preventative measures against whatever disease is in fashion or in season, and hence take the brunt of medicine’s unfortunate aspects, when there is no cause.

(Yesterday I’d mentioned to Jane that I hope Seth, in his current book, will go into the real relationship between wellness and disease. That is, what purposes do diseases serve in our world, since they are so prevalent, and have always been with us? [...] Certainly we aren’t doing well as a species in coping with diseases. I also asked Jane about the question of diseases in wild animals — even those who have never seen a human being. If we create our diseases through our thoughts and lifestyles, how about animals? [...] Or there are different reasons for animal diseases — reasons that yield the same results we have to cope with. [...]

Such a person must also contend with society’s unfortunate ideas about the disease in general, so that many cancer patients end up isolated or alone. As in almost all cases of disease, however, if it were possible to have a kind of “thought transplant” operation, the disease would quickly vanish.

Even in the most dire of instances, some patients suddenly fall in love, or something in their home environment changes, and the person also seems to change overnight — while again the disease is gone.

[...] If you have some disease, imagine it as particles of dirt. [...]

[...] You can point to diseases stamped out because of inoculations or other preventive measures, such as the intake of certain vitamins, or sanitary procedures. It seems the worst kind of idiocy to suggest that the individual has any kind of effective protection against illness or disease. (Long pause.) Almost anyone can name a family member or friend who died 30 or 40 years ago of a disease that is now completely conquered. [...]

Again, many can thankfully praise a given doctor for discovering a disease condition “in time,” so that effective countering measures were taken and the disease was eliminated. [...] If they did not die of the disease, they may have “fallen prey” to an accident, or died in a war, or in a natural disaster.

[...] A man or woman who is ready to die, if saved from one disease will promptly get another, or find a way of fulfilling that desire. [...]

Children may come down with many childhood diseases, and still be very healthy children indeed. [...] (Long pause.) People “come down” with colds, or the flu, or some other social disease that is supposed to be passed from one individual to another — yet overall these may be very healthy individuals. [...]

[...] The body does not regard diseases as diseases, in usually understood terms. [...]

(“What,” I wrote for the 836th session, “is the real relationship between the host organism and disease?” Recently Jane and I talked about the evident worldwide eradication of smallpox, as announced earlier this month by WHO — the World Health Organization — and wondered if the disease has truly been eliminated. [...] Obviously, I said to Jane more than once, if as an entity smallpox could “think” as we do, it would hardly consider itself bad, or such an awful disease or scourge. [...] Could the “disease” ever move from whatever probability it now occupies back into our own reality some day, thus appearing to have regenerated itself? [...]

[...] So of course the resulting diseases are infectious. To that degree they are social diseases. [...]

[...] People continue to die of diseases. Many of your scientific procedures, including inoculations, of themselves “cause” new diseases. [...]

[...] The cycles of health and disease are felt as rhythms of the body by the large variety of animals, and even with them illness or disease has life-saving qualities on another level.

[...] The emergence of the “pause of reflection” mentioned earlier (in the 635th session in Chapter Eight, for instance) and the blossoming of memory along with the emotional intensification, led to a situation in which members of the new species recalled, in the present, the dead and the diseases that killed them. They became frightened of disease, particularly in the case of plagues.

[...] Overall, however, in the animals illness and disease play a life-giving role, keeping balance both within a species and between them, therefore insuring the future existence of all involved.

[...] You might think, for example, of the body being invaded by viruses, or attacked by a particular disease, and these ideas, then, may make you question. You might well wonder why the body consciousness does not simply rise up and cast off any threatening diseases: why would the body allow certain cells to go berserk, or outgrow themselves? The very concept of the immunity system suggests, at least, the disease invader against which the body’s immunity system must or should surely defend itself.