“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

History is written according to the present beliefs of a historian in his time. As you know, your western world followed its own mixture of Christianity, Darwinism, and Freudian psychology. Because those ideas still are largely in the mainstream of your society, your television news, newspapers, and magazines are invisibly slanted. The news is invisibly organized to fit certain patterns, so that when you read or hear it, it carries the seemingly indelible mark, confirming the basic beliefs of the culture.

(With gentle irony:) You made a remark earlier this evening to the effect that the individual could do nothing in the face of such organized behavior—a remark that by now I’m sure you regret voicing. (I laughed.) Those ideas to begin with began with individuals. The people who make and report the news are individuals. The people who read or view the news are individuals. To some extent through the books you are helping people alter their psychic organizations, to look at the world in a different fashion, and therefore to view a different world—a world in which their experiences are different than they would have been otherwise.

If you do not understand this, then you will take your newspapers and other news unthinkingly, thinking that a fairly adequate picture of world events is being portrayed—a picture that only deepens the negative feelings that are behind the invisible organization of such data. In such a way you miss any significant evidence to the contrary.

For the newspapers also act in a suggestive fashion, further programming your expectations. In a way you organize your physical experience as you do your inner life, through association, through emotional association. I am not simple speaking of sensationalism in newspapers or on TV. When you read the news or hear it, however, because of cultural beliefs you are programmed to behave in a certain fashion, in a fashion that validates, seemingly, the concepts of Freud and Darwin, and the most unfortunate aspects of Christian pessimism.

(I’d debated with myself about not telling Jane the insurance news until I had a chance to ask Seth about it while she was in trance, but soon decided that wouldn’t be fair. [...] Half-crying, she said her good news about turning hardly equaled the bad news about insurance. I stressed the fact that her turning was indeed excellent news, and meant that she was on her way to even better things. [...]

[...] The girl sounded embarrassed to tell me the news. [...]

[...] At the same time she began having bladder spasms after I’d broken the news. [...]

[...] My news upon returning to 330 didn’t help Jane any, but I thought she was taking it very well, everything considered. [...]

(This is surely excellent news, I told Jane. She had other good news—but first, she told me that last night she’d really been blue for a time. The good news is that Toni, the night aide, had suggested that Jane see if she could work the nurse’s call button. [...]

[...] I was certainly glad that she had the session, I told Jane, for it contained excellent news. [...]

[...] In addition, she slept on her left side practically the whole time—very welcome news. [...]

(Sheri Perl also called yesterday, with further news about the healer in England she writes to on Jane’s behalf. [...]

(The session, brief as it was, gave me an odd surge of hope—because of the news involving Sheri and healing, and because I hadn’t expected the session. [...]

[...] Very encouraging news. [...]

(The typing below the photo and on the back sums up the content of the news stories on the object. [...]

[...] The news article concerns the Feinberg Law, which spells out the intent of the New York State Legislature in the Education Law, concerning the removal of any school employees for treasonable or seditious acts. [...]

[...] The whole of the news story indicated on the back of the object, as shown on page 169 concerns law, statues, the Constitution, overthrow, rights, government, etc., plus the mention of two names: Feinberg, and Aronowitz. [...]

[...] The whole tone of the news story about the Feinberg law and the Education Law of New York State concerns the protection of civil rights, and protection by the Constitution; but without using the constitution as a hiding place for subversives, etc. [...]

[...] Like The New York Times, science publishes “all the news that’s fit to print,” meaning all of the news that fits into the officially-accepted view of reality. That news is already invisibly censored, and yet we’re supposed to live our lives in accordance with that official definition of experience.

(Then when we watched the news while eating supper at the coffee table, we soon found the mayhem and related misdeeds recited by the newscasters so depressing that we switched channels to an innocuous Mod Squad show several years old—even though those color backgrounds—Nicaragua, Israel, Russia, etc., were still so fascinating. But I saw similarities of course between those various news events happening in far portions of the earth today, and the thought that the American and European civilizations had existed for so long on the same planet, yet completely unknown one to the other.

(This idea reminded me of one I’ve mentioned rather often to Jane lately about watching the news on TV—a recent habit that it seems we’ll soon dispense with. [...]

[...] It is the official line of consciousness that has become horizontal, yet in so doing it has also opened up questions to which it would have been blind otherwise—and because of its focus your news events, of course, show only one side of the picture.

[...] The news affects “future” events. [...] The written news story is actually composed of a group of symbols. [...] If you watch news on television you have a larger view of a given news event. [...]

[...] Others are like the televised news picture, carrying perhaps more information about the event but still not containing it.

(“Seth was right,” Jane said with a smile as soon as I gave her the news. [...] I think the good news may not have penetrated my psyche yet, not even as I type these lines at 9:00 p.m. After talking to our lawyer this morning I went back to work on Dreams just as though nothing had happened. [...]

[...] I could hardly believe it, and barely reacted to the news. [...]

(The good news data refers to Seth’s prediction of same in the 520th session for March 25, 1970: “I believe there is also some good news for you that you do not expect.” [...]

The good news however, has been hinted at but not yet completely developed. [...]

[...] She wanted to know what the latest news was, and I told her we were doing the best we could. [...] She did have a bit of news — that insurance has been asking for more records of Jane’s care.

[...] The spring and the recent good news are having an effect, and the knowledge he gained this afternoon has given him a conscious understanding that he did not have before; and this will automatically minimize the symptoms, in a way that is not at once apparent.

[...] One point: I am glad of your good news, but it was not what I had in mind.

(In my original and unpublished notes in Session 520 in Seth Speaks I listed three chances for the fruition of Seth’s prediction: The mention in Cosmopolitan of Jane’s ESP book for April 1970; Tam’s news about New American Library being very interested in the Seth material book; or Jane’s contract for the dream book being in the mail from Prentice-Hall.)

(Israel is constantly in the news, of course, and we see the television reports while eating supper or later in the evening. It always seems to be bad news, full of strife and agony and grim determination to survive. [...]

([Joel:] “It was the only news that there was. We weren’t getting any news from back East. [...]

(Jane had some other excellent news. [...]

[...] I was totally surprised at the news. [...]

[...] I imagined the different ways magazines like The National Enquirer could trick someone into giving an interview to start with, and turn people against each other, (Carol Burnett is suing that paper—the story was in the news lately.) From there some wild stuff that doesn’t make sense now, with strange things happening to my chair pillow as I sat on it.... [...]

[...] The verbal facility came easily in song, and so you wandered, singing, from town to town, using for your songs the news that was happening . [...]

[...] You also had some clairvoyant abilities and used them to spice up the day-to-day news.

[...] You often perceived clairvoyant information without knowing it, giving the news ahead of time, and then being surprised yourself when the events did indeed come to pass.

(9:51.) Now: I will give you some good news to take your mind off your modern convenience (refrigerator). [...]

In news watching—which does satisfy a natural need—you also run into a barrage of cultural beliefs and attitudes that are secondary. [...] The body consciousness, watching the news, would think—if it thought as you do—“What activity, what commotion, what excitement (almost laughing), what a conglomeration of smells and sights, what a congregation of my fellows, running and chasing, rising and falling, even living and dying. [...]

[...] It is quite natural then, for example, to want to watch the news on television, and in the same way and for the same reason. [...]

[...] The TV host never referred to the fact that the three youths were actually members of quadruplets — that a fourth brother had died at birth, according to the news article. [...]

[...] I tried to describe it to Jane as we ate supper and watched the news on TV.

I was quite struck by the similarities between the news story and my own experience. [...]