“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There are other people who firmly believe that the pursuit of pleasure must lead to pain, and there are also others for whom pain itself is pleasure. (Long pause.) There are also individuals whose beliefs cause them to feel very uncomfortable when they are in a state of health — and for these individuals poor health brings a sense of security and safety.

At first thought, it certainly seems as if people love life and fear death — that they seek pleasure and avoid pain.

Yet this is not always the case. There are people who must feel themselves to be at the brink of death before they can fully appreciate the quality of life. There are people who cannot appreciate or enjoy the satisfaction of life or of happiness unless faced simultaneously with the threat of death or intense pain.

(Joe, John said, has been taken very ill — pains throughout his body, in the bones, but also in the heart area. A test of fluid drawn from the heart area had shown free-floating cancer cells. A CAT-scan did not reveal where they came from. Joe had lain in bed in the trailer, and Margaret had resisted sending him to a hospital. His diabetes is out of control. As I drove John to the hospital, he said the date of my dream checked with developments Margaret had described. I may have tuned into the testing of the fluid around the heart, but I doubt if this can ever be confirmed. It doesn’t matter. John took the car after leaving me at the hospital, and called at 6:45 to say “mission accomplished,” that all were home now. He picked me up at 7:05. The weather is poor, and we had a couple of fairly close calls as he drove me home. I told him to have Margaret call me when I can visit them.

Certain kinds of pain automatically eject consciousness from the body. Such pain cannot be verbalized, for it is a mixture of pain and pleasure, a tearing free, and it automatically brings about an almost exhilarating release of consciousness. Such pain is also very brief. Under your present system, however, drugs are usually administered, in which case pain is somewhat minimized, but prolonged — not triggering the natural release mechanisms.

[...] Much of the pain connected with serious illness and death results because you have no faith in your own continuing reality. You fight pain because you have not learned to transcend it, or rather to use it. [...]

For one thing, while pain is unpleasant it is also a method of familiarizing the self against the edges of quickened consciousness. [...] This acquiescence to even painful stimuli is a basic part of the nature of consciousness, and a necessary one.

Without any acceptance of painful stimuli the structure could never maintain itself, for the atoms and molecules within the structure constantly accept painful stimuli, and suffer even joyfully, their own destruction; being aware of their own separateness within action, and aware of their reality within all action, and not having complicated “I” structures to maintain, there is no reason for them to fear destruction.

[...] All this is basic knowledge, if you would understand why the personality accepts even an impeding action, or pain or illness, as a part of itself, despite the ego’s resistance to pain.

[...] The self does not want to give up a portion of itself, even while that portion may be painful or disadvantageous. [...]

His mother chose a reality that seems incredibly tragic and painful from the outside looking in. In certain terms it was tragic and painful but it was not Ruburt’s fault, and within it his mother achieved a different kind of knowledge and even triumphant experience.

[...] With the death of Ruburt’s mother Rooney’s purpose was done as far as Ruburt was concerned; and Rooney did a final service, for through his death Ruburt faced the nature of pain and creaturehood that his mother’s life had so frightened him of.

[...] There is no unbearable pain. [...]

Since Ruburt’s mother had often spoken most vehemently of Ruburt’s birth being a source of disease, that is her arthritis, and pain, subconsciously Ruburt feared on a basic level that his mother wished to punish him for causing her such pain.

(At 6:00 AM Jane woke me to say that she was in the grip of an extremely painful stiff neck. [...]

(As we sat talking about the reasons for Jane’s painful neck, Seth came through again. [...]

I am giving this material now, rather than later, as I said I would, because I could tell that Ruburt would clamp up on me, as far as this particular subject is concerned, after the pain was gone, and block this material.

[...] It knows pain and pleasure. [...] Pain often acts as a teacher, saying “This direction is not for you” as it reflects painful thoughts. [...]

[...] What he experiences sometimes as painful sensations, the body experiences as new signs of activity.

[...] In such a way pain becomes a sought-after goal, and pleasure becomes subverted into pain.

There are many differences between the ideas of nirvana and heaven, but each has been used not only to justify suffering, but also to teach people to seek pain. [...]

[...] The sensations of suffering, and the pain, do exist. [...] Walking barefoot on a bed of fire would most likely cause most of you, my readers, to feel the most acute pain — while in some primitive societies, under certain conditions the same situation could result instead in feelings of ecstasy or joy.

[...] Then we will discuss pain and suffering and their implications. I do want to mention, however, that pain and suffering are also obviously vital, living sensations — and therefore are a part of the body’s repertoire of possible feelings and sensual experience. [...]

(Long pause.) Pain, therefore, by being unpleasant, stimulates the individual to rid himself or herself of it, and thereby often promotes a return to the state of health.

[...] She’s uncomfortable on her back, especially in her right foot, which is still moving, more than yesterday, and is still painful for me to touch on the instep. [...]

[...] She makes almost continuous sounds of pain—discomfort as these bodily motions progress. [...]

(At 4:05 Jane’s whole left leg from the toes on up began to flex noticeably, as she continued to make her noises of pain-discomfort-effort. [...]

[...] It’s still painful for her to be turned. [...]

(10:25.) Man’s vulnerability to pain helps him sympathize with others, and therefore helps him to more actively alleviate whatever unnecessary causes of pain exist in society.

[...] [As an adult] he will not inflict pain upon others if he understands this, for he will allow himself to feel the validity of his own emotions.

If you deny yourself the direct experience of your own emotions, but muffle them, say, through too-strict discipline, then you can hurt others much more easily, for you project your deadened emotional state upon them—as in the Nazi war camps [men] followed orders, torturing other people—and you do that first of all by deadening your own sensitivity to pain, and by repressing your emotions.

[...] I have but one more point to make: Each person’s experience of a painful nature is also registered on the part of what we will call the world’s mind. [...]

[...] She was in a hospital bed, having labor pains. [...] The experience was exceptionally vivid, and the pain quite real. [...]

At first the pain frightened me so that I just blurted out what was happening; I didn’t mean to embarrass Polly. Later I felt foolish and angry at myself, wondering if the pain episode was some kind of subconscious dramatization. [...]

[...] I felt fine towards Joel the first night because the minute you started talking, for weeks I had been coming to class, when I would see the war paint on him I would get a terrible pain in my head. I remarked several times in class about I had this pain in my head, and I couldn’t work it out no matter what I did. And that night here in the room when you were talking it was like somebody was pulling something out of my head, and I have not had this pain or this pressure since.”

[...] The pain is really bothering her at times. [...]

[...] At the same time Jane was in pain — natural enough, I said — for according to conventional belief, muscles that hadn’t been used were supposed to hurt. [...]

[...] She was in a lot of pain, though, and I rang for the Darvoset again, since the staff was late with it.

[...] She’d had a pain in her side lying there, and was afraid that it was something serious — but when I put her on her back she began to feel better, and thought the pain might only be from gas. [...]

[...] After finishing the session, Jane told me now that she’d also been very blue last night, and “really got scared” this morning at the pain in her side, “imagining all sorts of things.” [...]

[...] Jane screamed in pain, and Georgia cried. [...] Although she has some pain in the lower leg and foot, and the area is tender to the touch, there are no wounds or discolorations. [...]

[...] I had not reached any such neat conception as “a pain in the neck” before Jane called me. [...] She did not know of my pain in the neck, or that I was using the pendulum.)

[...] I began to be aware of a rather stiff pain growing in the back of my neck. [...]

[...] I hadn’t mentioned the pain to her, deciding on the spur of the moment to see if Seth could also pinpoint the trouble during the session. [...]

[...] Also gone was the neck pain that I had experienced before the session began. [...]

[...] They experience this oneness with their own growth, and they also feel pain. The pain, while definite, unpleasant and sometimes agonizing, is not of an emotional nature in the same way that you experience pain. [...] The analogy may not be perfect, far from it, but it is as if your breath were to be suddenly cut off — in a manner, this somewhat approximates pain for a tree.

[...] The creative energies build up their thickly-dimensioned pseudo-realities of pain. [...]

[...] Then these materializations of panic and pain play about the physical body, projected by the ego, and steal the powers of the subconscious mind from their natural constructive tasks.… In other words, the ego becomes a tool to disrupt rather than to create.

[...] It is only important because you have cherished it so as one can cherish a great pain and be afraid of letting it go and think “this pain sets me apart” and all you have to do is let go of it. [...]

For one thing, while pain is unpleasant, it is also a method of familiarizing the self against the edges of quickened consciousness. [...] This acquiescence to even painful stimuli is a basic part of the nature of consciousness and a necessary one.

[...] When I woke up, the pain was gone. I’ve been doing the yoga exercise and using the tea bags and the pain hasn’t returned.

[...] Since then, the condition got worse until for the last month or so I haven’t been able to get my right hand in my jean pockets, or comb my hair, or anything without severe pain in my right shoulder blade and right hand to the fingers.

[...] The self does not want to give up a portion of itself, even if that part may be painful or disadvantageous. [...]

(Jane experienced many painful physical and psychological delays while producing Dreams. [...]