“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(3. During a conversation Jane and I had wondered why the members of the human species were so woefully ignorant of the internal structure of their own bodies. Not that we wanted or needed conscious control—but why didn’t we have the conscious visual knowledge of the workings of our various bodily parts, be they heart, liver, or whatnot?

I assume that by your question you mean, why does not man understand how his heart works? I confess that I do not quite know how to explain what I mean. In all the terms of common sense, of course our body is composed of organs—heart, liver, and so forth, and I mention them at times. You must understand, however, that the very terms are arbitrary to a certain extent.

In your terms, early man felt his body to be a living, independent extension of the earth itself, and of the land. His head, to him, was like space or the sky. His feet were like moving roots. He believed that his feelings were like the world’s winds that swept through his body. To him, his spirit was inside his skin. Blood flowed through him with refreshing life, as water flowed through the rivers, refreshing the land. In your terms of course he had a heart and liver, but those terms are still arbitrary.

Native cultures, believing that the courage or fleetness of an eaten animal became part of the hunter’s mental and physical acquisition, handled the body in entirely different terms, and did very well. You can say that you have a brain and heart and liver and appendix, and so forth, and muscles and bones, and insist that all of these work in a certain fashion, as of course they do. Cutting the body open will show those organs. You can say with equal validity that the body holds a man’s ghost, that it is filled also with the organs of all the animals a man has consumed—that one man has the heart of a lion, and in that framework that is true.

(Jane said she did not know I had taken cod liver oil as a child. [...] My parents have told me often that I displayed hay fever symptoms by the age of 3 or so, so evidently the first cod liver oil episode was earlier than this, and before my conscious memory. Jane insisted I hadn’t mentioned cod liver oil to her, though I had discussed castor oil.

[...] You were given cod liver oil. [...]

[...] Just before she did, we were treated to the rather strong and tasty smell of liver and onions, coming up the elevator shaft across the hall from our door, from the kitchen in the basement. [...]

[...] I replied that all I knew was that she couldn’t move like that before taking the vitamins, the peanut oil massages, and the cod liver oil, etc., but I added that I was more than happy to credit sessions, beliefs, and/or anything else that gave us results. [...]

(At this point I am more than reasonably sure that Jane began to show certain marked improvements after I initiated the vitamin, peanut-oil, cod-liver-oil daily routine: Her hands first began to show definite reductions in swelling within a very few days, and this was followed by an excellent increase in her knee movement a few days later. [...] My personal opinion is that the combination of all three elements—vitamins, peanut oil, and cod liver oil, have helped a great deal in achieving these improvements, and that each time we pass up the “treatment,” which is absurdly simple, we do miss out on something helpful. [...]

[...] So, I think, are the results, re the vitamin therapy and our own efforts—the peanut oil massages and the cod liver oil, and so forth. [...]

(“How about the cod liver oil suggestion?” [by the chiropractor.])

The cod liver oil is now safe enough. [...]

[...] He said Jane could die, but obviously she didn’t. He was correct in mentioning anemia, incorrect about liver and spleen problems, as far as we know. [...]

[...] Continue with the cod liver oil for now.

(Today we resumed the vitamin and cod-liver-oil therapies, which we’d let go last week, in the face of what I had taken to be Jane’s resistance. [...]

[...] The cod-liver oil should not be renewed, although he was told it is a protection against arthritis; the word itself operates with each dose in a negative way.

[...] We haven’t used the vitamins, or cod liver oil, for several days now, and as usual I feel a sense of frustration over this, coupled with an unsureness as to whether any such routine should be too rigidly adhered to. [...]

[...] Other tests that I recall made it clear that my heart and liver and internal organs were in good shape—but Doctor Kardon had seen them newly threatened by the vasculitis, and I felt, “My God, what a merry-go-round of disastrous expectations must everywhere color the medical profession and its practitioners and patients.” [...]

[...] Surely we don’t think that atoms or cells, or livers or eyeballs, are irrational.

[...] Jane does know the suspected cat food, which is a combination of liver and fish. [...]