“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause.) Discipline is a form of applied suffering, as discipline is usually used. People are not taught to understand the great dimensions of their own capacity for experience. It is natural for a child to be curious about suffering, to want to know what it is, to see it—and by doing so he (or she) learns to avoid the suffering he does not want, to help others avoid suffering that they do not want, and to understand, more importantly, the gradations of emotion and sensation that are his heritage. [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.

Give us a moment…. That will be it for the evening. My heartiest regards to each of you. 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. Each, say, failure, or disappointment, or unresolved problem that results in suffering, becomes a part of the world’s experience: This way or that way does not work, or this way or that way has been tried, with poor results. So in that way even weaknesses or failures of suffering are resolved, or rather redeemed as adjustments are made in the light of those data.

(10:05.) As I said, there are all ranges of suffering, and I am beginning this discussion, which I will continue now and then in between regular book dictation, in a very general manner. In times past in particular, though the custom is not dead, men purged themselves, wore ashes and beat themselves with chains, or went hungry or otherwise deprived themselves. They suffered, in other words, for religion’s sake. It was not just that they believed suffering was good for the soul—a statement which can or cannot be true, incidentally, and I will go into that later—but they understood something else: The body will only take so much suffering when it releases consciousness. So they hoped to achieve religious ecstasy.

The subject matter of suffering is certainly vitally connected to the subject at hand, but basically speaking, disease and suffering are not necessarily connected. Suffering and death are not necessarily connected either. 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.

We want to discuss “disease” as it exists apart from suffering for now, then. 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.

The ideas of penance, fasting to excess, the personal abuse of the body, such as self-flagellation — all of those practices are conducted in the belief that suffering is something to be sought in itself. 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. [...]

Quite ordinary people often believe, then, that suffering itself is a way toward personal development and spiritual knowledge. [...]

Most people do not seek out suffering’s extreme experience, but within those extremes there are multitudinous degrees of stimuli that could be considered painful, that are actively sought. Man’s involvement in sports is an instant example, of course, where society’s rewards and the promise of spectacular bodily achievement lead athletes into activities that would be considered most painful by the ordinary individual. People climb mountains, willingly undergoing a good bit of suffering in the pursuit of such goals.

[...] Thoughts of death and suffering are among those. In a species geared above all to the survival of the fittest, and the competition among species, then any touch of suffering or pain, or thoughts of death, become dishonorable, biologically shameful, cowardly, nearly insane. [...]

“I don’t remember much of that,” Jane said, “but I’ve got the feeling that Seth meant the material to defuse some of my own thoughts lately—that there isn’t any answer for all of the pain and suffering in the world—that the whole thing is so vast that you can’t say or do anything that will be of much use to anyone….”

(Long pause.) Suffering is a human condition that is sought for various reasons. There are gradations of suffering, of course, and each person will have his or her definitions of what suffering is. Many people do indeed equate a certain kind of suffering with excitement. Sportsmen, race-car drivers, mountain climbers—all seek suffering to one extent or another, and find the very intensity of certain kinds (underlined) of pain pleasurable. [...]

Now I have often said that suffering of itself is not “good for the soul.” It is not a virtue, yet certainly many individuals seem to seek suffering. Suffering cannot be dismissed from human experience as a freak matter of distorted emotions or beliefs.

(9:29.) Some s-e-c-t-s (spelled) have believed that spiritual understanding came as the result of bodily agony, and their self-inflicted pain became their versions of pleasure. It is usually said that animals, and also man, avoid pain and seek pleasure—and so any courting of pain, except under certain conditions, is seen as unnatural behavior.

[...] Number twenty-one: How do you account for the pain and suffering in the world?” Many people have asked us this question.)

Illness and suffering are the results of the misdirection of creative energy. [...] Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you how to stop suffering. [...]

(9:48.) Illness and suffering are not thrust upon you by God, or by All That Is, or by an outside agency. [...]

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. [...]

[...] The book dealt extensively with the sufferings of women in childbirth, and their lot in general, in those days.

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.

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.

[...] 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.

[...] It will also be recalled that in several different sessions Bill was counseled by Seth to live alone, lest he suffer a recurrence of his lung trouble.)

It always pains me to speak so briefly and run. [...]

[...] The parents did not want the child to suffer. [...]

[...] In a strange fashion, the pain represented heightened sensitivity – extremely unpleasant, but also represented a vital emotional bodily response of a direct nature. [...]

Unfortunately, cries of pain brought the child instant attention, and they were often exaggerated. [...]

Since you value sexual performance in the most limited of terms, and use that largely as a focus of identity, then both your old and young suffer consequences that are not so much the result of age as of sexual prejudice. [...] They will squeeze their identity into sexual clothes, and the society will suffer because the great creative thrusts of growing intellect and intuitions will be divided at puberty, precisely when they are needed.

[...] When you think of a scientist, the majority of you will think of a male, an intellectual, an “objective” thinker who takes great pains not to be emotional, or to identify with the subject being examined or studied.

The race suffers when any of its members die of starvation or disease, even as a whole plant suffers if a group of its leaves are “unhappy.” [...]

[...] If a portion of the race is hurt it may take a while before “you” feel the pain, but the entire unconscious mechanism of the species will try to heal the wound. [...]

(All very intently:) That environment, in your terms, certainly includes suffering. If joy has always been one of the characteristics of earth experience, so has suffering, and the subject will be covered in this book. [...]

[...] We will later discuss the part of the mind and its interpretation, for example, of painful stimuli, but I want to make the point that those attracted to physical life are first and foremost tasters of sensation. [...]

Had you experienced the pain of the tree as directly and as immediately as you would sense another person’s pain through the ordinary senses you could not have stood it. [...]

[...] You will find that your painting will not suffer. [...]

[...] What you actually felt when the tree fell was the pain of the tree, in much muted form. [...]

Also, after supper, it developed that Miss Cunningham, the retired school teacher in the front apartment, suffered an attack of some sort and was in urgent need of help. [...] Jane went to see what was wrong and found that Miss C had fallen on the floor, was suffering from severe lapses of memory and was in very poor condition. [...]

[...] I even thought that perhaps I was having some sort of physical attack, though I felt no pain.

[...] There was no warning or pain, but the surprise doubled me over my desk. [...]

[...] It doesn’t seem right, or natural, that an individual might have to spend say fifty years suffering in life for things that happened to him when he was a child, say; I don’t think nature would arrange things that way—it’s too self-defeating....” [...]

(Now that idea, I thought as I went into the kitchen to get Jane some wine for the session, made sense—it could account for the perpetuation of her symptoms on a daily, present-life basis, and made a lot more sense than thinking she was suffering now because of something that happened to her when she was perhaps eight years old or whatever. [...]

The usual framework of married life with children was not to be a part of your experience this time, and both of you took pains to see that you did not have children—or mates that wanted them. [...]

[...] Without this acquiescence, the physical structure would never maintain itself, for the atoms and molecules within it constantly accept painful stimuli and suffer even their own destruction. [...]

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.

(Ironically, Charles Darwin’s natural selection, “the survival of the fittest,” [a phrase that Darwin himself did not originate, by the way], allows for all sorts of pain and suffering in the process — the same unhappy facts of life, in Darwin’s view, that finally turned him into an agnostic, away from a God who could allow such things to exist! [...] Instead, he assigned the pain and suffering in the world to the impersonal workings of natural selection and chance variation [or genetic mutation]. [...]

Illness and suffering are not thrust upon you by God, or by All That Is, or by an outside agency. They are a by-product of the learning process, created by you, in themselves quite neutral … Illness and suffering are the results of the misdirection of creative energy. [...] Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you how to stop suffering. [...]

[...] It suffers no guilt. [...] The consciousness of the mouse, under the innate knowledge of impending pain, leaves its body. [...]

[...] A little suffering in life—okay, I thought, considering the session last night—but this? [...]

Under certain conditions even pleasant so-called body experiences can be experienced as painful—and indeed vice versa (intently). [...]

The slap could bring pleasure or pain. [...]

[...] There were a few good points here thrown in (humorously) of general interest, regarding the interpretation of suffering. [...]