“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It is true that some native populations — particularly in the past — were free of many of the childhood diseases that are considered natural by western medicine. It is also true, of course, that some primitive societies have lost large numbers of their populations to disease. Some of those instances, however, were caused precisely by the sudden introduction of western medicine.

I am not condemning western medicine per se, however, but merely pointing out its many detrimental aspects. Medicinal science is also in a state of transition, and it is just as important — if not more so — that it examine its concepts as well as its techniques.

Now in the context of usual Western learning, and with the introduction of modern drugs, you are in somewhat of a quandary. [...]

(Pause at 9:58.) I am not suggesting that you not visit doctors or not take drugs of that nature, as long as you believe in the structure of medical discipline that the Western world has evolved. [...]

[...] Generally speaking, in Western society the conscious mind is seen as coming into its own in early adulthood, as the self rises from the bed of childhood unconsciousness into its critical awareness and differentiation. [...]

During Western years of adulthood, consciousness is focused most intently in one specific area of activity and physical manipulation. [...]

[...] Now all of this so far is from the standpoint of American and Western belief. [...]

[...] The thought patterns beneath various languages are different, and he has been trained in the Western tradition. [...]

The translations when they come must make sense to the Western mind. [...]

[...] With the greatest understanding and compassion, let me mention that Western medicine is in its way one of the most uncivilized hypnotic devices. The most educated Western doctors will look with utter dismay and horror at the thought of a chicken being sacrificed in a primitive witch doctor’s hut, and yet will consider it quite scientific and inevitable that a woman sacrifice two breasts to cancer. [...]

(Pause.) A modern Western physician — granted, with the greatest discomfiture — will inform his patient that he is about to die, impressing upon him that his situation is hopeless, and yet will react with scorn and loathing when he reads that a voodoo practitioner has put a curse upon some innocent victim.

(Yet I think more is involved than choosing among the belief systems offered by Eastern or Western cultures, for instance — that is, in more basic terms each personality would make that kind of choice before physical birth, with the full understanding of the vast influence such a decision would have upon a life’s work. [...]

[...] We could easily take a book to present the reasons for our particular beliefs, examining them in connection with both Eastern and Western religious philosophies. [...]

[...] The male aspects of Christ were the ones that Western civilization emphasized. [...]

[...] I am speaking now of mainline Western civilization. [...]

Now: Realize that for now I am emphasizing your Western civilization.

Much investigation along the lines of so-called ESP is being carried on in the Western world. The fact is that Western man has not only cut himself off from half of his own ability, and half of his own knowledge because of his insistence upon an artificial dual nature, but he has also cut himself off from the very primitive societies from which he could learn very much about these abilities, which he himself refuses to admit.

[...] There is certainly much to be said for Western man. [...]

The fact remains that psychologists or scientists cannot really speak of so-called ESP as either below normal or above normal as far as the species is concerned, just because Western man finds such difficulty in using it with any effectiveness. [...]

[...] This shop specialized in unusual military type uniforms… jackets that buttoned up the side of the type that possibly an early western constable might wear. [...]

[...] There are some exceptions of note, but here I am speaking historically of the Western world with its Roman and Greek heritage. [...]

[...] The species, then, had not yet taken up the theme that has been predominant in Western culture.

(The experience gave rise to a couple of questions which I added to the list for Chapter Twenty: 1. My own projection was so enjoyable, but more importantly contained so many potentials, that I wonder why Western man isn’t more aware of these abilities. [...]

Now in answer to your questions: Western man has chosen to focus his energy outward and largely ignore inner realities. [...]

[...] Creative people are not self-destructive, but if they sometimes appear so in the western world, it is because of that division, that artificial barrier. [...]

(Of more importance, it seems on the surface at least, is a reaching-out on Assad’s part toward a dialogue with the Western world — quite an unexpected development, I thought. [...]

[...] We go along in our own stubborn ways, knowing that our outlooks are rooted in the Western traditions of the world, but also knowing that there exist all about us these numerous other philosophies or systems, some of them many centuries old, that the human race has created to help it explain reality. [...] (A simile I often think of here compares Eastern and Western life and thought with the right and left hemispheres of the brain; they’re separate, yet united; each half performs functions that complement and to some extent overlap those of the other, and together they operate as a whole.) But we dislike the idea of nirvana in Buddhism and Hinduism, which calls for the extinction or blowing out of individual consciousness, and its absorption into a supreme spirit, usually after a series of lives. [...]

[...] The very casting of the idea into words (as best Jane can do it) helps one grasp what Seth means: We can make intuitive nonverbal nudges, or jumps, toward understanding that to some degree transcend our trite ideas of that quality or essence we call time, and take so much for granted in our Western societies that to even question its seeming one-way flow appears to be quite futile.

[...] Ordinarily we don’t think of those questions — and challenges — as being mystical in origin, not from our Western social viewpoint. [...]

[...] We aren’t satisfied with the answers to our questions that our social orders, whether Eastern or Western, give us. [...]

But your beliefs do not stop there; because of both scientific and religious ones you believe in western civilization that there are threats from within also. [...]

There is another reason why they remain a secret from Western scientists. [...]

[...] This year [1979], Iran has turned into a land in which all Western nations—but particularly the United States—have become anathema. Iran’s religious leaders actually run the country now, operating behind a weak secular and probably temporary government appointed by its Western-leaning and departed leader before he fled his country last January. [...]

[...] Our citizens began a large-scale evacuation of Iran by air, as did those of several other Western countries. The official and unofficial call has gone out from millions of Iranian throats to purge the country of all Western thought….

Iran’s fundamentalist Islamic orientation is directly opposed to the secular or worldly view of government espoused in Western lands. [...]

[...] A Western doctor may give vitamin shots or pills to a native child in another culture. The child need not know what particular vitamin is being given, or the name for his disease, but if he believes in the physician and Western medicine he will indeed improve, and he will need the vitamins from then on. [...]

Nevertheless it is fully capable of perceiving far more than Western man allows it to perceive. [...]

[...] So churches as they now exist in Western society need a devil as well as a god.

(10:59.) I am dealing here mainly with Western culture. [...]