“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

As you understand the nature of natural hypnosis, you will no longer feel the need to generate new negative feelings. [...] As you trust yourself more you will naturally express your feelings, and their suppression will not bring about explosive reactions any more. [...]

[...] In some other civilizations, and particularly in the past as you think of it, witch doctors operated within a context of nature accepted by all. The witch doctor, while initiating natural forces on behalf of his patient, who seemed momentarily unable to do so, was then returning the patient to the source of himself and reviving his own buried sense of power. [...]

(Pause.) Love is propelled by all of the elements of natural aggression, and it is powerful; yet because you have made such divisions between good and evil, love appears to be weak and violence strong. [...]

[...] Society as you know it, not understanding the nature of normal aggression, considers it violent. [...]

[...] As a result, one you see in art particularly, man became a heroic figure, then a natural one. (Pause.) The curiosity that had been directed toward divinity became directed toward nature. Man’s sense of inquiry led him, then, to begin to paint more natural portraits and images. [...] As it occurred, however, [man] began to make great distinctions between the world of the imagination and the world of nature, until finally he became convinced that the physical world was real and the imaginative world was not. [...]

[...] Whether an artist painted saints or apostles as heroic figures, as ideas embodied in flesh, or as natural men, he commented on the relationship between the natural and the divine.

[...] Artists decided to stick to portraying the natural world as they saw it with their natural eyes, and to cast aside the vast field of inner imagery. [...]

(9:57.) His notebooks, for example, dealt with minute observations made upon aspects of nature itself. He combined the forces of highly original, strong imagination with very calculated preciseness, a kind of preciseness that would lead to detailed sketches of flowers, trees, the action of water—all of nature’s phenomena.

[...] The fact is that before being “assailed” by what may seem to be such terrifying unnatural ideas, you have already blocked off an endless variety of far less drastic ones, any of which you could have expressed quite safely and naturally in daily life. [...] Here I simply want to point out the difference between healthy natural aggressiveness, and the explosive, distorted emergence of repressed aggression.

At certain levels both cat and mouse understand the nature of the life energy they share, and are not — in those terms — jealous for their own individuality. This does not mean they will not struggle to live, but that they have a built-in unconscious sense of unity with nature in which they know they will not be lost or immersed (quietly intent).

[...] This same man, however, who would not purposely entertain fantasies of such nature under normal conditions, may in time of war imagine himself killing the enemy with the greatest feelings of holy joy and righteousness.

(Pause.) What is usually forgotten is the real nature of aggressiveness, which in its truest sense simply means forceful action. [...]

[...] nature—psychic nature... [...] overreacted to my version of the social or cultural world as opposed to the natural one—where of course I fit in beautifully. [...]

[...] Then thought, nearly crying: I cut down desire—like loving to shop, and am afraid now to mix with people—then said Rob would help me there—in decent walking shape surely my attitude would be entirely different—so different it’s hard for me to imagine then to the importance that I make distinctions between the natural world; and the social or cultural one. I must be free to walk in the natural world, to see its wonders. [...]

[...] Yet natural grace and natural guilt are given you, and these will also grow more fully into conscious awareness. [...]

[...] Your own body grows naturally and easily from its time of birth, not expecting resistance but taking its miraculous unfolding for granted; using all of itself with great, gracious, creatively aggressive abandon.

[...] Like natural guilt, the state of grace is unconscious in the animals. [...]

[...] His connections will be of a more biological nature and will not provide the leeway (pause), that your own mental conditions allow you.

[...] Man cannot disentangle himself from the natural context of his physical life. His culture, his religion, his psychologies, and his psychological nature together form the context within which both private and mass events occur. (Loudly, then whispering so softly that I could barely hear:) This book will, then, be devoted to the nature of the great sweeping emotional, religious, or biological events that often seem to engulf the individual, or to lift him or her willy-nilly in their power.

THE EVENTS OF “NATURE.”
EPIDEMICS AND NATURAL DISASTERS

(10:39.) We have begun Part 1, to be called: “The Events of ‘Nature.’ Epidemics and Natural Disasters.”

(11:44.) I am not speaking here of the desire for suicide, which involves a definite killing of the body by self-deliberate means — often of a violent nature. Ideally this desire for death, however, would simply involve the slowing of the body’s processes, the gradual disentanglement of psyche from flesh; or in other instances, according to individual characteristics, a sudden, natural stopping of the body’s processes.

[...] There are also mass natural events of varying degrees, as say, the flooding of large areas. Such events involve psychological configurations on the part of all those involved, so that the inner individual patterns of those lives touched by each such event have in one way or another a common purpose that at the same time serves the overall reality on a natural planetary basis. [...] Each is also endowed with patterns toward growth and fulfillment — not at the expense of the rest of nature, but to the contrary, so that every other element of nature may also be completed (all with much emphasis).

At certain levels these intents of man and nature may merge. [...] They want to feel a renewed sense of nature’s power, and often, though devastated, they use the experience to start a new life.

[...] They are the “natural elements” in that psychological environment that mix, merge, and combine to form, if you will, the psychological cells, atoms, and molecules that compose events. [...]

[...] It is a circular, associative, “naturally ordering process,” in which spontaneity automatically exists in the overall order that will best fulfill the potentials of consciousness.

[...] Ruburt’s natural person is highly spontaneous, creative, imaginative, with an excellent intellect, natural habits of working with a spontaneous rhythm—a rhythm that follows its own internal, logical and intuitive order. [...]

[...] He forgets his natural contours of mind and spirit when he hassles himself about time or hours, for his particular kind of creativity works in a different fashion. I want him, again, to try and sense the natural rhythms within him, of work and play, to continue his notes, to write for now four hours a day, with one hour for poetry, to think of the ideas of his book instead of thinking about the contracts, or of a book as a book, or as work as work; and tune into the library. [...]

The physical with its multitudinous and astonishing complexity, merely hints at the full nature of inner reality however, for all of inner reality cannot be translated in physical terms. [...] It constantly reflects in its own way the nature of your inner environment. [...] Every least alteration of psychic and emotional existence immediately alters the nature of the physical environment through instant interaction.

[...] The existence, maintenance, and appearance of that environment depends upon inner manipulations and automatic transfers that are as natural and as necessary to your existence physically, as breath.

The change itself is the direct reflection of inner psychic and psychological alterations; but you have actually altered the nature of the physical environment and the quality that pervades it. [...]

[...] A strong intensity of a particular nature can give you the feeling of clutter or lack of space. [...]

[...] It has to do with the real nature of aggression and passivity,¹ which you have allowed yourselves to forget … Birth is an aggressive experience. Passivity is based upon the joyful recognition of natural aggression. [...] To allow yourself what is now, in your terms, a luxury of passivity, you must have confidence in the nature of your own reality and strength. [...]

[...] Those people did not progress in industrial terms because they were too well aware of their part in nature. [...]

[...] You are finding out the meaning of individuality, which is a far more important word than you realize, and when you understand that meaning, then your own individuality will express itself in its natural form. [...]

Each of you must discover what sexuality is, in all of its aspects, and connect it with the nature of your consciousness and your being. [...]

[...] He only asks to be left alone in his contemplations, and to express these in whatever manner suits his nature. [...] He wants to study the world and nature, and the nature of men and ideas, and to search from that vantage point for some greater order, and some greater context in which life must reside.

(I’m naturally worried that I’ve created a physical condition, and so is Jane. [...]

The greater portion of your nature belongs to the first man, and the second set of characteristics has been overlaid, so that there is a rub between the two systems of belief and feeling.

That “work,” however, is in your case the natural gift of the first man described—and he, it seems, must work under the demands of the second man, taking all of his ideas of time, sexual roles, and social demands into consideration. [...]

Some of this has to do with the complicated nature of creativity itself, and with the contradictions that seem to exist at certain levels. Your kind of creativity has always been together and jointly of a private nature—so much so that you do not even like to work in rooms too close to each other. [...] You began to accumulate some ideas of a different nature, wondering more about your responsibilities to the world as adults, wondering how “useful” art should be in the world. [...]

The Turkish towel represents the private nature of the self—private attire that you might use in the bath, of intimate nature that comes into contact with the body not so much to hide it as to dry it, give it pleasure, or what have you. [...]

[...] A potential that belongs to all of art, whatever its nature, since it is daring enough, free enough to fly ahead of man’s needs at any given time, and to create a new atmosphere that transforms the nature of being itself. [...]

(All of that naturally led Jane and me into talking about our own experiences in NYC after our marriage. [...]

(Pause.) I am speaking of the inner laws of nature, that pervade existence. What you call nature refers of course to your particular experience with reality, but quite different kinds of manifestations are also “natural” outside of that context. The laws of nature that I am in the process of explaining underlie all realities, then, and form a firm basis for multitudinous kinds of “natures.” [...]

Dictation: When I speak of natural law, I am not referring to the scientists’ laws of nature, such as the law of gravity, for example — which is not a law at all, but a manifestation appearing from the viewpoint of a certain level of consciousness as a result of perceptive apparatus. [...]

[...] Each manifestation of consciousness comes into being feeling secure at life’s center — experiencing life through itself,¹ aware of life through its own nature. [...]

[...] While this is the case, however, these other forms of consciousness also identify then with the source of nature from which they emerge. [...]

NATURAL HYPNOSIS:  A TRANCE IS A TRANCE IS A TRANCE

(Smiling, and progressively louder and deeper:) Sixteen, entitled: “Natural Hypnosis: A Trance Is a Trance Is a Trance.” [...]

Each of you will find habitual thought patterns in your own life backed up by resulting action — conditioned behavior as it were — by which you continually reinforce negative aspects, concentrate upon them to the exclusion of conflicting data, and so bring them into experience through natural hypnosis.

[...] I want to impress upon you the fact that all of this simply follows the natural function of the mind, and to dispel any ideas that you have about the “magical” aspects of hypnosis.

(Pause.) It is somewhat fashionable to see man as always nature’s despoiler, as the destructive member of nature’s family, or even to consider him apart from nature, who was given nature as his living grounds.

Cats in the wild were, in those terms of time, exploring one kind of nature. In that kind of nature, with a natural population taken care of in the environment, there would be far fewer cats than there are now. [...] The household cat is exploring a different kind of nature, in which he has a certain relationship to human consciousness, a relationship that changes the reality of his particular kind of consciousness.

I’d rather write about the nature that Jane and I live amid here at the hill house, I suppose, but it seems that in the beginning each great secret we uncover in our world is a “natural” one. [...]

[...] Man is more a part of nature than he realizes, and in the greater realm of activity he cannot take any … actions with which the rest of nature does not agree for its own reasons.

[...] It seems to Ruburt that his thoughts are negative a good deal of the time—naturally—and that he must take effort to change them. Of course, instead it is the other way around: his thoughts are creative and exuberant—naturally—when he leaves himself alone, and the troublesome thoughts that seem so natural now are the results of acquired mental patterns as he began to distrust his own nature, as given many times.

(I ended up this evening wondering why nature would provide within its limitless possibilities that of such nasty ideas or creations—which, I told Jane, only meant that we had the power or ability to create such ungainly hassles. [...]

Your mind is equipped with a certain mental understanding, as your body is equipped with an automatic physical understanding of its nature in relationship with the environment. [...]

[...] This is the most complex of systems, in which each detail has meaning—not only because of its unique individual nature, but because of the greater meaning that any one detail has in the larger mental structure of the universe.

(Long pause at 11:22.) Give us a moment… Speaking historically in your terms, man first identified with nature, and loved it, for he saw it as an extension of himself even while he felt himself a part of its expression. [...] He did not identify as himself alone, but because of his love, he identified also with all those portions of nature with which he came into contact. [...]

Physically and psychically the species is connected with all of nature. Man did not live in fear, as is now supposed, nor in some idealized natural heaven. [...]

[...] It is the initial basic language from which all others spring, for all languages’ purposes rise from those qualities natural to love’s expression — the desire to communicate, create, explore, and to join with the beloved.

(11:39.) Generally you experience the self as isolated from nature, and primarily enclosed within your skin. [...]

Science delegates the world of nature as the realm of exterior natural events. Its view of nature is therefore mechanistic. The natural self, however, like the rest of nature, possesses a rich dimension of inside psychological depth, that science, because of its own definitions, cannot perceive. Telepathy and clairvoyance, for example, are a part of natural effects, but they belong to a nature so much more expansive than science’s definitions that they have been made to appear as highly unnatural eccentricities of behavior, rather than as natural components of consciousness.

[...] Your metabolisms are different, quite naturally, and under the usual situations, given your lunch hour, Ruburt needs a good meal, sometimes certainly between five and six at the latest. Otherwise he experiences a natural physical irritation that is complicated then by other issues. [...]

[...] Such characteristics are, however, basic properties of the natural person. [...]

[...] When it is given only one world view, and only one group of assumptions, its orderly nature causes it to throw out all information that does not fit. [...]

[...] Bates’s book, or rather philosophy, suggesting that the eyes were not made for reading, is an example of a different kind, implying that there were no books when the eye was created—and so therefore it is not natural for the eye to see letters—while it is natural for the eye to see, say, trees. The body adjusts its rhythms in a quite healthy manner to your activities, and without polarized habits of thought, periods of deep creativity will automatically be followed by periods of walking, natural exercise of one kind or another, in which subjective thought and body motion are synchronized.

Because of the nature of your society, a large number of people cultivate what I will call an outside-attuned consciousness. Naturally, sensation and knowledge must of course come through enjoyment and use of the physical body, and through the data received from the physical environment, with which the body must necessarily react.

[...] Your friends the Gallaghers inhibit their subjective natures strongly, both of them (as I was speculating about the other day). [...] They forget the nature of “youthful thoughts.” [...]

[...] Instead, of course, there are gradations of behavior, and patterns or rhythms in your lives that would naturally flow one into the other, released from the artificial polarities. [...] It, of course, by its nature, is not given to introspection, so it does not question its stance as deeply. [...]

[...] The planner might be God, or nature itself, or man within nature or nature within man. [...]

In evolution man’s nature is amoral, and anything goes for survival’s sake. [...] The fundamentalists would rather believe in man’s inherent sinful nature, for at least their belief system provides for a framework in which he can be saved. [...] The vast social structures of Christianity were instead based upon man’s “sinful” nature — not the organizations and structures that might allow him to become good, or to obtain the goodness that Christ quite clearly perceived man already possessed.

Give us a moment… You are a part of nature that has learned to make choices, a part of nature that naturally and automatically produces dreams and beliefs about which you then organize your reality. [...]

[...] An avalanche or a flood or an earthquake will not be seen as a natural act of the earth’s natural creativity, but instead as a punishment from God for sin.