“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:40.) Give us a moment… The phase of death is, then, a part of life’s cycle. I mentioned evolutionary experiments,² as you think of evolution. There is a disease you read about recently, where the skin turns leathery after intense itching — a fascinating development in which the human body tries to form a leathery-like skin that would, if the experiment continued, be flexible enough for, say, sweat pores and normal locomotion, yet tough enough to protect itself in jungle environments from the bites of many “still more dangerous” insects and snakes.³ Many such experiments appear in certain stages as diseases, since the conditions are obviously not normal physical ones. To some extent (underlined twice), cancer also represents a kind of evolutionary experiment. But all such instances escape you because you think of so-called evolution as finished.

(9:56 P.M. “Boy, how he got all that out of me, I don’t know,” Jane laughed, for she had been very relaxed before the session. Her delivery had moved right along. I’ve deleted a few portions of the session that don’t apply to disease and evolutionary experimentation. Jane reported that when Seth gave the material on onchocerciasis she “really felt that the people’s skins were trying to turn into some sort of leathery protection. I don’t know whether I got those sensations from Seth, picked them up on my own, or just created them myself to go along with the material.” She hadn’t been aware of any feelings involving her own skin.

3. The disease Seth referred to is onchocerciasis, which is caused by a filarial parasite spread by the bite of the blackfly. In his passing reference to it, Seth didn’t mention that besides producing the gruesome leathery skin, onchocerciasis can cause blindness — hence its common name, river blindness. This most serious affliction appears to be centered in West Africa, and infects many millions of people there. Four centuries ago, it was carried to the Western Hemisphere by slaves, and is now found in certain areas of Mexico, south to Brazil.

The skin and bone, being physical, are adequate barriers to bound other material, but they have no hold over what is not material. [...] The outward layer of skin, while serving as a physical enclosure, serves as a physical enclosure only for the sake of convenience, as far as distinctions are concerned.

In actuality the outer layer of skin is a flimsy boundary indeed. [...] It is only to your own outer senses that the skin seems smooth. [...]

[...] No skin or bones or skeletal cage can keep the thought of the self from going outward.

(As with Jane’s right elbow, after the foot moved I thought the skin coloration around the ankle and instep looked better, more normal, like skin. Before the foot [like the right one] had looked immobile and wooden, the skin stretched taut and dry and splotchy; there wasn’t any flexion in the toes, say. [...]

[...] We grated lemon skins and drank the juice, and made the skins into a kind of poultice to put on sores. We dried the skins also and kept them in the hold.” [...]

[...] The skin itself became less responsive in the past, as it did not ripple, say, with ordinary muscular motion. [...]

[...] I broke off to ask Jane about Seth’s reference to her skin being healthy. As I suspected, this came through because both Eleanor and Peggy have been telling Jane that she has to be very careful that her skin doesn’t break down in other areas so that more ulcers appear. [...]

[...] Ruburt’s skin is remarkably healthy, particularly given the situation. [...]

Ruburt should now remind himself that he is indeed of a robust nature—that he is not frail, and that his skin is not delicate and sensitive, but healthy. [...]

[...] Jane said she has picked up from staff people at various times that they thought her skin was fragile and would break down easily—”that a good wind would blow me away, things like that....” [...]

[...] Black skin or brown skin becomes the criteria of spiritual perfection, and poverty a badge of honor to be worn not only proudly, but often to be used as an aggressive tool. [...]

[...] Here, though, wealth and a white skin are not only bad, but obvious symptoms of moral deterioration. [...]

[...] Bill has done extensive skin diving in Seneca Lake. [...] Nor has either of us ever done any skin diving.

[...] Bill dislikes seeing it go, since he uses it as a base for his skin-diving expeditions in the lake, which is one of New York State’s famous Finger Lakes.

There was indeed some resulting alteration, literally, in layers of the skin, so that the skin became tougher. [...]

[...] He has been doing very well, and he tried to approve, but since he lost work time yesterday his approval barely went skin deep (louder).

[...] Does an onion fear its skin or an apple become afraid of its core? [...]

[...] Dark skinned but blonde hair. [...]

(Jane said she hadn’t consciously connected the voices in the first dream with the olive-skinned males in the second dream. [...] He had, Jane said, exceptionally beautiful and smooth olive skin. [...] She remembers the fact that they were all smiling, and their smooth olive skins.

In the dream however I was a young man with olive skin, from a previous existence. [...]

[...] There is a difference in your terms of skin color, his being of a purplelike cast. As they age in their system incidentally the skin turns grayish. [...]

[...] The skin does not exist within this electric counterpart, although the physical skin does contain electric force.

[...] Ruburt was correct, however, in seeing the connection between the lampshades and the Nazi experiments (in World War II) with human skin. [...] The connection with cloning came out in the lampshades made of (human) skins, in the old news stories—though your lampshades merely stood for those, and were of fabric. [...]

[...] It is physically perceived by the eyes, and to a far lesser degree by the skin itself. [...]

[...] Earlier too, someone asked me if my skin wasn’t brown or when it looked brown and I said in Summertime.

[...] This discussion grew out of Seth’s remarks concerning a very close call Bill had while skin diving in Puerto Rico. [...]

(During break, Bill Gallagher described his narrow escape from drowning while skin diving in Puerto Rico. [...]

(Bill now asked Seth if an Indian village had ever been situated over the spot where he had done most of his skin diving in Puerto Rico. [...]