“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Peter [for his own reasons] may decide that his body is out to get him and punish him, rather than, say, the FBI. He may symbolically pick out an organ or a function, and he will misinterpret many body events in the same way that another may misinterpret mass events. Any public service announcements, so-called, publicizing symptoms connected with his sensitive area, will immediately alarm him. He will consciously and unconsciously focus upon that part of the body, anticipating its malfunction. Our friend can indeed alter the reality of his body.

What I want to emphasize here is the paranoid’s misinterpretation of innocuous personal or mass events, and to stress the ways in which physical events can be put together symbolically, so that from them a reality can be created that is almost part physical and part dream.

Peter will interpret such body events in a negative fashion, and as threatening, so that some quite normal sensations will serve the same functions as a fear of policemen, for example. If he keeps this up long enough, he will indeed strain a portion of the body, and by telling others about it he will gradually begin to affect not only his personal world, but that part of the mass world with which he has contact: It will be known that he has an ulcer, or whatever. In each case we are dealing with a misinterpretation of basic sense data.

When I say that a person misinterprets sense data, I mean that the fine balance between mind and matter becomes overstrained in one direction. There are, then, certain events that connect the world. Though when everything is said and done these events come from outside of the world’s order, nevertheless they appear as constants within it. Their reality is the result of the most precise balancing of forces so that certain mental events appear quite real, and others are peripheral. You have dusk and dawn. If in the middle of the night, and fully awake, you believe it is sunrise in physical terms, and cannot differentiate between your personal reality and the physical one, then that balance is disturbed.

Some of the errors concern the misinterpretation of physical events. [...]

(Very long pause at 3:31.) Regardless of how unbelievable it might seem to some readers, it is true that even the most destructive events are based upon misinterpretations of reality, opposing beliefs, and the inability to receive or express love. [...]

[...] He has always thought that you were used, mainly by your mother, but he was afraid that his statements would be misinterpreted because of his own relationship with his parents.

[...] You misinterpret me. [...]

Now in any ordinary clairvoyant event, in a low mood, Ruburt or any individual may, according to time and circumstance, overemphasize or misinterpret information, overstating say, pessimistic elements. (Pause.) Personalities strongly (underlined) given to the need for self-punishment will consistently misinterpret such information, or any information.

[...] In your terms I help keep to a minimum distortions which might otherwise occur as Ruburt’s own mood or circumstances might otherwise misinterpret.

[...] Yesterday in particular, however, provides an excellent example of the way approval and self-disapproval work, and of the ways in which the habit of disapproval can cause you to misinterpret events, and then of course act accordingly.

Basically, it is this self-disapproval that forms artificial crises, that then impede your progress, cause you to misinterpret events, and act accordingly. [...]

When Ruburt does not go out, however, it is never a simple issue of the body’s condition at any given time, but a moral dilemma in which, basically you see, you are misinterpreting events. [...]

[...] You fear them because you misinterpret their meaning. [...]

[...] Some of these things you can misinterpret, and so I go lightly in class with them because some of you are not ready to understand them as yet. [...] And there are interconnections between you that you do not understand and that can be misinterpreted and these, also, I go lightly with in class and for the same reasons. [...]

But, you cannot use this as a rationalization in this plane of activity, which is why I said that this could be misinterpreted. [...]

[...] All so-called spiritualistic literature should be avoided at this time, simply because the overly conscientious self misinterprets it, and sets up further standards of perfection.

[...] The spiritualistic books however he will manage to misinterpret at this time. [...]

[...] The same can occur in adolescence, and easily be misinterpreted as a schizophrenic episode.

(Seth continued:) He also began to see two poles in society one highly conventional and closed, in which he would appear as a charlatan; and another, yearning but gullible, willing to believe anything if only it offered hope, in which his activities would be misinterpreted, and to him [would be] fraudulent … There was a middle ground that he would have to make for himself … to make a bridge to those intellectuals who doubted, and yet maintain some freedom and spontaneity in order to reach those at the other end. [...]

[...] Now it is possible for an individual who has died to completely misinterpret the experience and attempt to reenter the corpse. [...]

It is the result of your own misinterpretations of the nature of reality. [...]

Events that each of you might have “misinterpreted” in the past were handled quite differently. [...]

You will shortly see how some diseases are caused by the detriments set up against value fulfillment, often because of fears, doubts, or misunderstandings — and how other diseases may actually lead to instances of value fulfillment that are misread or misinterpreted.

[...] There is also a connection with misinterpretation of the Bible. [...]

[...] He also began to see two poles in society—one highly conventional, closed, in which he would appear as a charlatan; and another, yearning but gullible, willing to believe anything if only it offered hope, in which his activities would be misinterpreted, and to him, fraudulent.

[...] But you are bound to misinterpret what I say in some sessions, and so it behooves me to speak more plainly. [...]

[...] Because you do often misinterpret me, I repeat: this does not mean you will not find such a male and relationship. [...]

Using the analogy of consciousness survival and its distortion into fear and hatred, I have given you but one example of the ways in which basic psychological structures are misinterpreted with unfortunate results.

To do so represents an inability to perceive clearly the nature of the basic structure, and such an inability often carries over into habit so that other basic structures are also misinterpreted.

Indeed, part of the would-be suicide’s dilemma may be caused by a lack of communication with others, a misinterpretation of the motives of friends or family members, and a difficulty in expressing one’s own needs and wishes.

[...] The process isn’t infallible, unfortunately; also, misinterpretations of its results have caused a number of cancer-free women to undergo mastectomies — often radical ones — when they didn’t have to. [...]

[...] Those against the procedure cite the errors possible in diagnosis, including the misinterpretation of mammographic patterns. [...]

[...] In all cases a misinterpretation is being made on the part of the conscious mind, that then triggers bodily responses. [...]