Mass Events 5

From Seth's "The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events": p57 "Because events do not exist in the concrete, done-and-finished versions about which you have been taught, then memory must also be a different story. "You must remember the creativity and the open-ended nature of events, for even in one life a given memory is seldom a "true version" of a past event. The original happening is experienced from a different perspective on the part of each person involved, of course, so that the event's implications and basic meanings may differ according to the focus of each participant. That given event, in your terms happening for the first time, say, begins to "work upon" the participants. Each one brings to it his or her own background, temperament, and literally a thousand different colorations — so that the event, while shared by others, is still primarily original to each person. "The moment it occurs, it begins to change as it is filtered through all of those other ingredients, and it is minutely altered furthermore by each succeeding event. The memory of an event, then, is shaped as much by the present as it is by the past. Association triggers memories, of course, and organizes memory events. It also helps color and form such events. "You are used to a time structure, so that you remember something that happened at a particular time in the past. Usually you can place events in that fashion. There are neurological pockets, so to speak, so that biologically the body can place events as it perceives activity. Those neurological pulses are geared to the biological world you know. "In those terms, past or future-life memories usually remain like ghost images by contrast. Overall, this is necessary so that immediate body response can be focused in the time period you recognize. Other life memories are carried along, so to speak, beneath those other pulses — never, in certain terms, coming to rest so that they can be examined, but forming, say, the undercurrents upon which the memories of your current life ride. "When such other-life memories do come to the surface, they are of course colored by it, and their rhythm is not synchronized. They are not tied into your nervous system as precisely as your regular memories. Your present gains its feeling of depth because of your past as you understand it. In certain terms, however, the future represents, say, another kind of depth that belongs to events. A root goes out in all directions. Events do also. But the roots of events go through your past, present, and future. "Often by purposefully trying to slow down your thought processes, or playfully trying to speed them up, you can become aware of memories from other lives — past or future. To some extent you allow other neurological impulses to make themselves known. There may often be a feeling of vagueness, because you have no ready-made scheme of time or place with which to structure such memories. Such exercises also involve you with the facts of the events of your own life, for you automatically are following probabilities from the point of your own focus. "It would be most difficult to operate within your sphere of reality without the pretension of concrete, finished events. You form your past lives now in this life as surely as you form your future ones now also. "Simultaneously, each of your past and future selves dwell in their own way now, and for them the last sentence also applies. It is theoretically possible to understand much of this through an examination-in-depth of the events of your own life. Throwing away many taken-for-granted concepts, you can pick a memory. But try not to structure it — a most difficult task — for such structuring is by now almost automatic. "The memory, left alone, not structured, will shimmer, shake, take other forms, and transform itself before your [mental] eyes, so that its shape will seem like a psychological kaleidoscope through whose focus the other events of your life will also shimmer and change. Such a memory exercise can also serve to bring in other-life memories. Edges, corners, and reflections will appear, however, perhaps superimposed upon memories that you recognize as belonging to this life. "Your memories serve to organize your experience and, again, follow recognized neurological sequences. Other-life memories from the future and past often bounce off of these with a motion too quick for you to follow. "In a quiet moment, off guard, you might remember an event from this life, but there may be a strange feeling to it, as if something about it, some sensation, does not fit into the time slot in which the event belongs. In such cases that [present-life] memory is often tinged by another, so that a future or past life memory sheds its cast upon the recalled event. There is a floating quality about one portion of the memory. "This happens more often than is recognized, because usually you simply discount the feeling of strangeness, and drop the part of the memory that does not fit. Such instances involve definite bleed-throughs, however. By being alert and catching such feelings, you can learn to use the floating part of the otherwise-recognizable memory as a focus. Through association that focus can then trigger further past or future recall. Clues also appear in the dreaming state, with greater frequency, because then you are already accustomed to that kind of floating sensation in which events can seem to happen in their own relatively independent context. "Dreams in which past and present are both involved are an example; also dreams in which the future and the past merge, and dreams in which time seems to be a changing ingredient. "In certain terms the past, present, and future [of your present life] are all compressed in any given moment of your experience. "Any such moment is therefore a gateway into all of your existence. The events that you recognize as happening now are simply specific and objective, but the most minute element in any given moment's experience is also symbolic of other events and other times. Each moment is then like a mosaic, only in your current life history you follow but one color or pattern, and ignore the others. As I have mentioned [in other books], you can indeed change the present to some extent by purposefully altering a memory event. That kind of synthesis can be used in many instances with many people. "Such an exercise is not some theoretical, esoteric, impractical method, but a very precise, volatile, and dynamic way of helping the present self by calming the fears of a past self. That past self is not hypothetical, either, but still exists, capable of being reached and of changing its reactions. You do not need a time machine to alter the past or the future. "Such a technique is highly valuable. Not only are memories not "dead," they are themselves ever-changing. Many alter themselves almost completely without your notice. In his (unpublished) apprentice novels, Ruburt (Jane) did two or three versions of an episode with a priest he had known in his youth. Each version at the time he wrote it represented his honest memory of the event. While the bare facts were more or less the same, the entire meaning and interpretation of each version differed so drastically that those differences far outweighed the similarities. "Because the episode was used on two or three different occasions, Ruburt could see how this memory changed. In most cases, however, people are not aware that memory changes in such a fashion, or that the events they think they recall are so different. "The point is that past events grow. They are not finished. With that in mind, you can see that future lives are very difficult to explain from within your framework. A completed life in your terms is no more completed or done than any event. There is simply a cutoff point in your focus from your framework, but it is as artificial as, basically, perspective is applied to painting. "It is not that the inner self is not aware of all of this, but that it has already chosen a framework, or a given frame of existence, that emphasizes certain kinds of experience over others."

Mass Events 4

From Session 805 in Seth's "The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events":


p45
"The animal knows he has the right to exist, and a place in the fabric of nature. This sense of biological integrity supports him.
"Man, on the other hand, has more to contend with. He must deal with beliefs and feelings often so ambiguous that no clear line of action seems possible. The body often does not know how to react. If you believe that the body is sinful, for example, you cannot expect to be happy, and health will most likely elude you, for your dark beliefs will blemish the psychological and biological integrity with which you were born.
"The species is in a state of transition, one of many. This one began, generally speaking, when the species tried to step apart from nature in order to develop the unique kind of consciousness that is presently your own. That consciousness is not a finished product, however, but one meant to change, [to] evolve and develop." Certain artificial divisions were made along the way that must now be dispensed with.
"You must return, wiser creatures, to the nature that spawned you — not only as loving caretakers but as partners with the other species of the earth. You must discover once again the spirituality of your biological heritage. The majority of accepted beliefs — religious, scientific, and cultural — have tended to stress a sense of powerlessness, impotence, and impending doom — a picture in which man and his world is an accidental production with little meaning, isolated yet seemingly ruled by a capricious God. Life is seen as "a valley of tears" — almost as a low-grade infection from which the soul can be cured only by death.
"Religious, scientific, medical, and cultural communications stress the existence of danger, minimize the purpose of the species or of any individual member of it, or see mankind as the one erratic, half-insane member of an otherwise orderly realm of nature. Any or all of the above beliefs are held by various systems of thought. All of these, however, strain the individual's biological sense of integrity, reinforce ideas of danger, and shrink the area of psychological safety that is necessary to maintain the quality possible in life. The body's defense systems become confused to varying degrees.
"I do not intend to give a treatise upon the biological structures of the body and their interworkings, but only to add such information in that line that is not currently known, and is otherwise important to the ideas I have in mind. I am far more concerned [with] more basic issues. The body's defenses will take care of themselves if they are allowed to, and if the psychological air is cleared of the true "carriers" of disease."

Mass Events 3

From Session 804 in Seth's "The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events":


p36
"The body is a spiritual, psychic, and social statement, biologically spoken. It is obviously private, yet it cannot be concealed, in that "it is where you are," in usual terms.
"The individual body is what it is because it exists in the context of others like it. By this I mean that a given present body presupposes a biological past of like creatures. It presupposes contemporaries. If, for example, one adult human being were perceived by an alien from another world, certain facts would be apparent. Even though such an alien came upon a lone member of your species in otherwise uninhabited land, the alien could make certain assumptions from the individual's appearance and behavior."

p36
"While each individual springs privately into the world at birth, then, each birth also represents quite literally an effort — a triumphant one — on the part of each member of each species, for the delicate balance of life requires for each birth quite precise conditions that no one species can guarantee alone, even to its own kind. The grain must grow. The animals must produce. The plants must do their part. Photosynthesis,1 in those terms, reigns.
"The seasons must retain some stability. The rains must fall, but not too much. The storms must rage, but not too devastatingly. Behind all of this lies a biological and psychic cooperative venture."

p37
"Cells possess "social" characteristics. They have a tendency to unite with others. They naturally communicate. They naturally want to move. Period. In making such statements I am not personifying the cell, for the desire for communication and motion does not belong to man, or even animals, alone.
"Man's desire to journey into other worlds is in its way as natural as the plant's urge to turn its leaves toward the sun. Man's physical world, with all of its civilizations and cultural aspects, and even with its technologies and sciences, basically represents the species' innate drive to communicate, to move outward, to create, and to objectify sensed inner realities. The most private life imaginable is a very social affair. The most secluded recluse must still depend upon the biological sociability of not only his own body cells, but of the natural world with all of its creatures. The body, then, no matter how private, is also a public, social, biological statement. A spoken sentence has a certain structure in any language. It presupposes a mouth and a tongue, the kind of physical organization necessary; a mind; a certain kind of world in which sounds have meaning; and a very precise, quite practical knowledge of the nature of sounds, the combination of their patterns, the use of repetition, and a knowledge of the nervous system. Few of my readers possess such conscious knowledge, yet the majority speak quite well."

p38
"At cellular levels the world exists with a kind of social interchange, in which the birth and death of cells are known to all others, and in which the death of a frog and a star gain equal weight. But at your level of activity your thoughts, feelings, and intents, however private, form part of the inner environment of communication. This inner environment is as pertinent and vital to the species' well-being as is the physical one. It represents the psychic, mass bank of potential, even as the planet provides a physical bank of potential. When there is an earthquake in another area of the world, the land mass in your own country is in one way or another affected. When there are psychic earthquakes in other areas of the world, then you are also affected, and usually to the same degree.
"In the same way, if one portion of your own body is injured, then other portions feel the effects of the wound. An earthquake can be a disaster in the area where it occurs, even though its existence corrects imbalances, and therefore promotes the life of the planet. Emergency actions are quite rigorous in the immediate area of an earthquake, and aid is sent in from other countries. When an area of the body "erupts," there are also emergency measures taken locally, and aid sent from other portions of the body to afflicted parts.
"The physical eruption, while it may appear to be a disaster in the area of the disease, is also, however, a part of the body's defense system, taken to insure the whole balance of the body. Biologically, illness therefore represents the overall body defense system at work."

p39
"The biological basis of all life is a loving, divine and cooperative one, and presupposes a safe physical stance from which any member of any species feels actively free to seek out its needs and to communicate with others of its kind."

p41
"The overall sense of health, vitality, and resiliency is a generalized condition of contentment — brought about, however, by multitudinous specific responses. Left alone, the body can defend itself against any disease, but it cannot defend itself appropriately against an exaggerated general fear of disease on the individual's part. It must mirror your own feelings and assessments. Usually, now, your entire medical systems literally generate as much disease as is cured — for you are everywhere hounded by the symptoms of various dis eases, and filled with the fear of disease, overwhelmed by what seems to be the body's propensity toward illness — and nowhere is the body's vitality or natural defense system stressed.
"Private disease, then, happens also in a social context. This context is the result of personal and mass beliefs that are intertwined at all cultural levels, and so to that extent serve private and public purposes.
"The illnesses generally attributed to all different ages are involved. Those of the elderly, again, fit in with your social and cultural beliefs, the structure of your family life. Old animals have their own dignity, and so should old men and women. Senility is a mental and physical epidemic — a needless one. You "catch" it because when you are young you believe that old people cannot perform. There are no inoculations against beliefs, so when young people with such beliefs grow old they become "victims."
"The kinds of diseases change through historical periods. Some become fashionable, others go out of style. All epidemics, however, are mass statements both biologically and psychically. They point to mass beliefs that have brought about certain physical conditions that are abhorrent at all levels. They often go hand-in-hand with war, and represent biological protests. (Long pause.) Whenever the conditions of life are such that its quality is threatened, there will be such a mass statement. The quality of life must be at a certain level so that the individuals of a species — of any and all species — can develop. In your species the spiritual, mental and psychic abilities add a dimension that is biologically pertinent.
"There simply must be, for example, a freedom to express ideas, an individual tendency, a worldwide social and political context in which each individual can develop his or her abilities and contribute to the species as a whole. Such a climate depends, however, upon many ideas not universally accepted — and yet the species is so formed that the biological importance of ideas cannot be stressed too strongly.
"More and more, the quality of your lives is formed through the subjective realities of your feelings and mental constructions. Again, beliefs that foster despair are biologically destructive. They cause the physical system to shut down. If mass action against appalling social or political conditions is not effective, then other means are taken, and these are often in the guise of epidemics or natural disasters. The blight is wiped out in one way or another.
"Such conditions, however, are the results of beliefs, which are mental, and so the most vital work must always be done in that area."

Seth Mass Events 2

p31
"The scientist probing the brain of an idiot or a genius will find only the physical matter of the brain itself.
"Not one idea will be discovered residing in the brain cells. You can try to convey an idea, you can feel its effects, but you cannot see it as you can the chair. Only a fool would say that ideas were nonexistent, however, or deny their importance.
"You cannot find any given dream location, either, within the brain itself. The solid matter of your world is the result of the play of your senses upon an inner dimension of activity that exists as legitimately, and yet as tantalizingly hidden, as an idea or a dream location.
"It is easy for you to see that seeds bring forth the fruit of the earth, each [of] their own kind. No seed is identical to any other, yet generally speaking there are species that serve to unite them. You do not mistake an orange for a grape. In the same way ideas or thoughts form general patterns, bringing forth in your world certain kinds of events. In this respect your thoughts and feelings "seed" physical reality, bringing forth materializations.
"You operate quite nicely politically, living in villages, townships, countries, states, and so forth, each with certain customs and local ordinances. These in no way affect the land itself. They are designations for practical purposes, and they imply organization of intent or affiliation at one level. They are political patterns, invisible but highly effective. There are, however, far more vigorous invisible mental patterns, into which the thoughts and feelings of mankind are organized — or, naturally, organize themselves.
"Each person's thoughts flow into that formation, forming part of the earth's psychic atmosphere. From that atmosphere flows the natural earthly patterns from which your seasons emerge with all of their variety and effects. You are never victims of natural disasters, though it may seem that you are, for you have your hand in forming them. You are creatively involved in the earth's cycles. No one can be born for you, or die for you, and yet no birth or death is really an isolated event, but one in which the entire planet participates. In personal terms, again, each species is concerned not only with survival but with the quality of its life and experience.
"In those terms, natural disasters ultimately end up righting a condition that earlier blighted the desired quality of life, so that adjustments were made.
"The "victims" choose to participate in those conditions at spiritual, psychological, and biological levels. Many of those who are counted among the fatalities might otherwise die of extended illnesses, for example. At cellular levels such knowledge is available, and in one way or another imparted, often in dreams, to the individual. Conscious comprehension need not follow, for many people know such things, and pretend not to know them at the same time.
"Others have finished with their challenges; they want to die and are looking for an excuse — a face-saving device. However, those who choose such deaths want to die in terms of drama, in the middle of their activities, and are in a strange way filled with the exultant inner knowledge of life's strength even at the point of death. At the last they identify with the power of nature that seemingly destroyed them.
"That identification often brings about in death — but not always — an added acceleration of consciousness, and involves such individuals in a kind of "group death experience," where all of the victims more or less embark into another level of reality "at the same time."
"Those people were aware just beneath consciousness of the possibilities of such an event long before the disaster occurred, and could until the last moment choose to avoid the encounter. Animals know of weather conditions ahead of time, as old tales say. This perception is a biological part of your heritage also. The body is prepared, though consciously it seems you are ignorant.
"There are innumerable relationships that exist between the interior environment of the body and the weather patterns. The ancient feelings of identification with storms are quite valid, and in that respect the "realism" of feelings is far superior to the realism of logic. When a person feels a part of a storm, those feelings speak a literal truth. Logic deals with exterior conditions, with cause-and-effect relationships. Intuitions deal with immediate experience of the most intimate nature, with subjective motions and activities that in your terms move far quicker than the speed of light, and with simultaneous events that your cause-and-effect level is far too slow to perceive.
"In that regard also, the activities of the inner environment are too fast for you to follow intellectually. Your intuitions, however, can give you clues to such behavior. A country is responsible for its own droughts, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes — and for its own harvests and rich display of products, its industry and cultural achievements, and each of these elements is related to each other one.
"If the quality of life that is considered spiritually and biologically necessary fails, then adjustments occur. A political problem might be altered by a natural disaster if political means fail. On the other hand, the rousing creative energies of the people will emerge.
"Excellence will show itself through the arts, cultural creativity, technological or sociological accomplishments. The species tries to fulfill its great capacities. Each physical body in its own way is like the world. It has its own defenses and abilities, and each portion of it strives for a quality of existence that will bring to the smallest parts of it the spiritual and biological fulfillment of its own nature."

Seth Mass Events 1

I've just started reading (again) Seth's "The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events". Here are some excerpts:


"You cannot begin to understand the nature of mass events of any kind unless-you consider the even greater framework in which they have their existence. A person's private experience happens in the context of his psychological and biological status, and basically cannot be separated from his religious and philosophical beliefs and sentiments, and his cultural environment and political framework —
"All of the issues form together to make a trellis of behavior. Thorns or roses may grow therein. That is, the individual will grow outward toward the world, encountering and forming a practical experience, traveling outward from his center in almost vine-like fashion, forming from the fabric of physical reality a conglomeration of pleasant or aesthetic, and unpleasant or prickly events. The vine of experience in this analogy is formed in quite a natural fashion from "psychic" elements that are as necessary to psychological experience as sun, air, and water are to plants. (Loudly and humorously:) I do not want to get too entwined (underlined) in this analogy, however; but as the individual's personal experience must be seen in the light of all of these issues, so mass events cannot be understood unless they are considered in a far greater context than usual."

"I have thus far stayed clear of many important and vital subjects, involving mass realities, because first of all the importance of the individual was to be stressed, and his power to form his private events. Only when the private nature of reality was emphasized sufficiently would I be ready to show how the magnification of individual reality combines and enlarges to form vast mass reactions — such as, say, the initiation of an obviously new historical and cultural period; the rise or overthrow of governments; the birth of a new religion that sweeps all others before it; mass conversions; mass murders in the form of wars; the sudden sweep of deadly epidemics; the scourge of earthquakes, floods, or other disasters; the inexplicable appearance of periods of great art or architecture or technology.
(Pause at 9:57, one of many.) "I said there are no closed systems. This also means that in world terms, events spin like electrons, affecting all psychological and psychic systems as well as biological ones. It is true to say that each individual dies alone, for no one else can die that death. It is also true that part of the species dies with each death, and is reborn with each birth, and that each private death takes place within the greater context of the existence of the entire species. The death serves a purpose species-wise while it also serves the purposes of the individual, for no death comes unbidden.
"An epidemic, for example, serves the purposes of each individual who is involved, while it also serves its own functions in the greater species framework."

"There has been great discussion in past years about the survival of the fittest, in Darwinian terms, but little emphasis is placed upon the quality of life, or of survival itself; or in human terms, [there has been] little probing into the question of what makes life worthwhile. Quite simply, if life is not worthwhile (louder), no species will have a reason to continue.
"Civilizations are literally social species. They die when they see no reason to live, yet they seed other civilizations. Your private mental states en masse bring about the mass cultural stance of your civilization. To some extent, then, the survival of your civilization is quite literally dependent upon the condition of each individual; and that condition is initially a spiritual, psychic state that gives birth to the physical organism. That organism is intimately connected to the natural biological state of each other person, and to each other living thing, or entity, however minute.
"New paragraph: Despite all "realistic" pragmatic tales to the contrary, the natural state of life itself is one of joy, acquiescence with itself— a state in which action is effective, and the power to act is a natural right. You would see this quite clearly with plants, animals, and all other life if you were not so blinded by beliefs to the contrary. You would feel it in the activity of your bodies, in which the vital individual affirmation of your cells brings about the mass, immensely complicated achievement of your physical being. That activity naturally promotes health and vitality.
"I am not speaking of some romanticized, "passive," floppy, spiritual world, but of a clear reality without impediments, in which the opposite of despair and apathy reigns."