“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] If you worry about the world, you can somehow perhaps save it—or so many people think. If you don’t worry about the world, you are considered unfeeling, and it certainly seems ridiculous to imagine that the world can somehow take care of itself, and even remedy whatever damage it seems man has done to it.

(Part of the session grew out of our recent reactions to the televised newscasts, as well as what we’ve been reading lately, concerning the mass suicide in Guyana, the shooting of the mayor of San Francisco, problems with inflation, the Middle East —any of what seemed to be an infinite number of ills the species has created for itself. [...] In some fashion, in order to maintain sanity, I end up laughing at what goes on in the world—probably a last resort. [...]

[...] And it is an achievement of great import, for the world can no longer hide one portion of itself from another.

[...] We will save the matter of the animal until later. [...]

[...] The act itself was symbolic, and the dog picked up all of your attitudes through its own sense of communication.

[...] You would not feel free to hunt successfully with the animal, for he was, you felt, the symbol of an unsuccessful hunt in the work world.

[...] “Here you won’t go to the marketplace, but you think of saving all of these private sessions for posterity, to give them to the world. [...]

Both of you, highly creative, find your creativity in conflict with your ideas of sexuality, privately and in your stance with the world. Much of this is involved with the unfortunate myths about this creative person, who is not supposed to be able to deal with the world as well as others, whose idiosyncrasies are exaggerated, and whose very creativity, it is sometimes said, leads to suicide or destruction. [...]

[...] It wants to ignore the creative aspects of the universe, however, which are everywhere apparent, and it first of all believes that it must divorce itself from any evidence of feeling. [...]

[...] Here you won’t go to the marketplace, but you think of saving all of these private sessions for posterity, to give them to the world some day. [...]

[...] Both of you, highly creative, find your creativity in conflict with your ideas of sexuality, privately and in your stances with the world. Much of this is involved with the unfortunate myths about the creative person, who is not supposed to be able to deal with the world as well as others, whose idiosyncrasies are exaggerated, and whose very creativity, it is sometimes said, leads to suicide or depression. [...]

[...] It wants to ignore the creative aspects of the universe, however, which are everywhere apparent, and it first of all believes that it must divorce itself from any evidence of feeling. [...]

Partially and I will save the rest of the goodies till you are ready for them. [...]

In certain portions of your world there were memories from other peoples and other layers of existence, and these memories for some time remained. [...]

[...] When your species squatted in the cliff caves and when they ran in terror across the face of the earth pursued by wolves and imagined that demons lurked in the shadows, when with ghost memories were great contrast to the world that they saw and know, and so they weaved a story from their memories. [...]

What is perfectly clear to one portion of that world brain may not be perceived at all by the other side, and vice versa. For the purposes of this discussion, we must simplify, so we will say that generally speaking your own country aligns itself with the world of reason, while in the same fashion Iran allies itself with the world of emotion. [...]

In between you have the nations’ concerns about world approval or disapproval, and endless versions of face-saving devices. [...]

Both portions of this world mind, or world brain, therefore, operate in exaggerated fashions, so that their own characteristics are almost caricatured, untempered as it were by other portions, as if perhaps in an individual the left and right portions of the brain were artificially functionally separated. [...]

[...] The dreams, hopes, aspirations and fears of man interact in a constant motion that then forms the events of your world. [...] You interpret the phenomena of your world according to the mythic characteristics that you have accepted. [...] The physical body itself is quite capable of putting the world together in different fashions than the one that is familiar to you.

The world’s ideas, fantasies, or myths may seem far divorced from current experience — yet all that you know or experience has its origin in that creative dimension of existence that I am terming Framework 2. In a manner of speaking your factual world rises on a bed of fantasy, myth, and imagination, from which all of your detailed paraphernalia emerge. [...]

[...] They involve symbols and known emotional validities that are then connected to the physical world, so that that world is never the same again.

NIRVANA, RIGHT IS MIGHT,
ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS, AND THE
HUMAN BODY AS A PLANET WORTH SAVING

We will continue dictation, starting a new chapter, to be called: “Nirvana, Right is Might, Onward Christian Soldiers, and the Human Body as a Planet Worth Saving.”

[...] In such a philosophical world it would seem that man had no power at all.

[...] In fact—in fact—his body can heal itself overnight. All of this boils down to what I have said unceasingly (whispering) about trusting the spontaneous self—for in the most simple of terms, you do not need poor mobility as a working method for any reasons, if you trust the spontaneous self in its dealings with the conscious personality and with the world.

As he became known, they served to keep the world away for both of you. [...] They saved you both from making endless decisions as to whom you would see, or whether you would go on tours. [...]

Of course, to some degree the condition involves you both in your social dealings with the world. [...] You kept the world at a good reach. [...]

Before even hearing the poetry no such audience, Ruburt felt, would question the fact of poetry itself—its techniques, traditions or value. My books, however, by their very existence appear in a world that largely does not concern itself with anything but the most surface elements of psychological reality. [...]

(Putting off the publication of Dreams, then, is only a ploy to gain some time to defuse the present situation, while Jane’s body struggles to right itself as much as possible. We do believe Seth’s assessment, to the effect that her body is righting itself in numerous areas after years of disuse, of being held down, but at the same time it’s very difficult not to have qualms and doubts about what’s happening at the same time. [...]

Ruburt and you live in a world with its own cultural taboos, its own assumptions. [...] The idea of personhood held by the Roman Catholic Church affected the history of the world for centuries, and that idea of personhood is intimately involved, of course, with the idea of personhood’s source. [...]

[...] It maintains contact awareness and the ability to manipulate itself in two completely different worlds, so to speak, one in which it meets little resistance growing upward, and one composed of much heavier elements into which it must grow downward. Man needs artificial methods for example to operate effectively on land or in water, but the so-called unconscious tree manages very nicely in two worlds as diverse certainly as land and water, and makes himself a part of each. [...]

The confident inner self will let the ego manipulate in the physical world, but will not allow it to become fiercely overprotective. [...] Your particular ego’s function is to show this work to the world as you know it. [...]

When I said that you saved Ruburt’s life I meant it quite literally. In a sense, Ruburt saved your parents’ lives by insisting that you leave Sayre when you did. [...]

(1. Does Jane’s inherently mystical nature give rise to conflicts with the non-mystical world she finds herself in this time around? [...] Jane said that she never thinks of mysticism, herself, yet I think such factors could operate easily enough in our world. [...]

[...] The entire issue, however, involving both questions, I would like to save for our next session. [...]

[...] To be creative in Ruburt’s particular way, you need a variety of characteristics that will allow you to probe alone into the nature of your own experience, and yet abilities that will also help you relate to the world—and Ruburt has those necessary abilities. [...]

[...] The conscious options that opened as man’s mental world enlarged made it impossible to allow sufficient freedom, and yet necessary control, on a biological level alone.

(Long pause at 9:56.) So controls were needed lest the conscious mind, denied full use of the animals’ innate taboos, run away with itself. [...]

[...] In cancer cells the growth principle runs wild; within creaturehood each of the species has its place, and if one multiplies out of its proper order then all life and the body of the earth itself comes into peril.

[...] He is very cleverly trying to appeal to the misdirected good intent of Sadat and Begin, and by doing so to redirect the policies of the world. At the same time he must deal with the chicanery of politics itself, and the face-saving devices known so well to religion and politics both.

[...] Simply put, it concerns the fact that our world society is now run by these brilliant men who think that way. [...] Did it disappear when it found itself badly outnumbered? [...]

It is highly important, again, that you remember the context in which the letters are written, and the great thrust of creativity that supports the world. I must remind you both that peoples’ good intent, their constructive creativity, their desire “to do better,” is far stronger, far more vital and all-pervading than any of their negative qualities—or, quite simply, you would not have a world, in your terms.

[...] Patriotism, family loyalty, political affiliations — the ideas behind these have the greatest practical applications in your world. [...] You instantly color physical experience and nature itself with the tints of your unique imaginative processes. Unless you think quite consistently — and deeply — the importance of the imagination quite escapes you, and yet it literally forms the world that you experience and the mass world in which you live.

[...] A study of the New Testament books alone can quickly lead one into a maze of questions: Why isn’t the resurrection itself described? [...] Sometimes Christ appeared as an apparition — but as Seth commented in a private session: “You could not have a world in which the newly risen dead mixed with the living. [...]

(All with much emphasis and irony:) The idea of a meaningless universe, however, is in itself a highly creative imaginative act. Animals, for example, could not imagine such an idiocy, so that the theory shows the incredible accomplishment of an obviously ordered mind and intellect that can imagine itself to be the result of nonorder, or chaos — [you have] a creature who is capable of “mapping” its own brain, imagining that the brain’s fantastic regulated order could emerge from a reality that itself has no meaning. [...]

[...] Many times the birds saved children from falling. [...] Those who cooperated survived, but they did not think in terms of the survival of their own species alone — but, in time terms, of a greater living picture, or world inviolate, in which all survived.

Your conscious mind tells you where you are in time and space, and directs your activity in a world of human action. That world has its own kind of rich complication, that is as unknown to the animals as is much of their acute realization unknown to you. [...]

[...] With all of their dire faults and distortions, religions have at least kept alive the idea of unseen, valid worlds, and given some affirmation to concepts that are literally known by the cells. [...]

[...] It is not something waiting for you at your death, nor is it something you must save or redeem, and it is also something that you cannot lose. The term, “to lose or save your soul”, has been grossly misinterpreted and distorted, for it is the part of you that is indeed indestructible. [...]

[...] Very briefly let us review a few points: You form physical matter and the physical world that you know. The physical senses actually can be said to create the physical world, in that they force you to perceive an available field of energy in physical terms, and impose a highly specialized pattern upon this field of reality. [...]

[...] Now the soul itself, as mentioned earlier, is not static. [...]

The inner self is acquainting itself with reality as it exists there. In many cases it is emerging into a new world. [...] Your system is not the most elementary, but it is one of the most elementary, and it is a way that the inner self acquaints itself with certain basic facts.

[...] The very mechanism of the body however is so constructed that it can bear the brunt of many errors, and free itself from them, though this may not seem to be the case at times. Nevertheless yours is a slow-motion world in many ways as far as your perceptions are concerned, while you are within it. [...]

In other cases where the symptom is interior itself, as in ulcers, this is a sign that the inner self has not yet come to such a point. The personality is not yet willing to face the problems even to that extent and the symptom itself is shielded from physical sight, quite rightly symbolically speaking. [...]

These may come to the foreground in bad circumstances, and actually save the basic personality itself from what would certainly be disintegration. It is as if the basic personality throws the dirty dogs bone after bone, all the while saving the real morsel.

[...] This is bad enough, but it only means that the personality has been forced to change its mode of action in the physical world. [...] The basic personality, that is the primary personality, has not been changed and will not change except through the personality itself.

It is not complicated in itself, but complicated in the telling. [...] I do like to save a few little surprises like this for you now and then.

It is in its way perfectly all right to be frightened of the world. (Almost with a laugh:) Under certain conditions it may be a mark of sanity—but it is highly self-defeating to put yourself in a position where you cannot go out into the world—or more importantly, where you cannot navigate as a creature.

(10:03.) Ruburt thinks it is beneath him to be frightened of the world, so it is easier to pretend you cannot go out in it than to feel you are a coward—which in your society is the interpretation placed upon such feelings. [...] But as private people, and as creatures, you must value your freedom of motion, and your connections with the natural world of the seasons.

Ruburt does not need to feel that he would naturally, left alone, go out into the world, into the arena, and convince the world of our ideas, or think that with his energy unimpeded that would be part of his natural mission. [...]