Chapter Five: The Constant Creation of the Physical Body
… So – once more – you form reality through your beliefs, and your most intimate production is your physical body. Your beliefs about it are constantly fed into inner data. You organize on an unconscious level the atoms and molecules that compose your cells to form your body. But the blueprint is made by your conscious beliefs. To change your body you change your beliefs, even in the face of physical data or evidence that conflicts.
You each have a body and you each have a consciousness. You can practice with these ideas by applying them to your body. For now we are taking into consideration the fact that, generally speaking, you are not going to make yourself five physical feet taller if you are a grown adult already, because there are certain physical laws with which you must contend. We will discuss those more fully later.
In that context you can even appear taller, and affect others as if you were – which would usually be what you wanted in any case under the circumstances. But except for some conditions which will be mentioned later, you can become healthy if you are ill, slim if you are overweight, gain weight if you prefer, or alter your physical image in profound fashion through the use of your ideas and beliefs.
They form the blueprint by which you make your body, whether you have known this or not. Your body is an artistic creation, formed and constantly maintained at unconscious levels, but quite in line with your beliefs about what and who you are.
(10:55) Now: Dictation: You constantly give yourself suggestions about your body, your health or ill health. You think about your body often, then. You send a barrage of beliefs and instructions to the inner self that affect your physical image.
As mentioned earlier, your thoughts have a very definite vital reality. Beliefs are thoughts reinforced by imagination and emotion concerning the nature of your reality.
Now thoughts in general possess an electromagnetic reality, but whether you know it or not, they also have an inner sound value.
You know the importance of exterior sound. It is used as a method of communication, but it is also a by-product of many other events, and it affects the physical atmosphere. Now the same is true about what I will call inner sound, the sound of your thoughts within your own head. I am not speaking here of body noises, though you are usually oblivious to these also.
Inner sounds have an even greater effect than exterior ones upon your body. They affect the atoms and molecules that compose your cells. In many respects it is true to say that you speak your body, but the speaking is interior.
The same kind of sound built the pyramids, and it was not sound that you would hear with your physical ears. Such inner sound forms your bone and flesh. The sound exists connected with by quite apart from the mental words you use in thinking.
it does not matter in which language you are addressing yourself, for example. The sound is formed by your intent, and the same intent – I am putting this simply now – will have the same effect upon the body regardless of the words used.
But usually you think in your own language, and so in quite practical terms the words and the intent merge. For all practical purposes then the two are one. When you say, “I am tired,” mentally you are not only giving silent messages to yourself – I say messages rather than message because the general statement is broken down; many portions of the body must be affected before you feel tired – but beside this the inner sound value of the messages automatically affects the body in just that way.
What should you do, then, if you find yourself feeling tired? This is your conscious assessment of your body's reality at a given time. You want to change it so you do not reinforce it. Instead you say mentally that the body can now begin to rest and refresh itself. You take your initial judgment for granted then without restating it, and instead suggest the remedy be carried out (positively).
You can, if the conditions warrant, physically rest by lying down or making whatever adjustments seem appropriate. If none are possible then several such suggestions – that the body can refresh itself – will give you benefit. To tell yourself over and over that you are tired, however, reinforces the condition.
The inner sound value of the countering suggestion automatically begins to refresh the body. It is fashionable now to think about noise pollution, yet the same kind of circumstances occur with inner sound, particularly when your inner thoughts are self-contradictory, scrambled and random.
(11:23) Diverse and highly conflicting instructions are then given to the body. As you should know, the body's inner environment changes constantly, and it is you who change it. Chane is quite necessary and as a rule the body's overall balance is maintained. But the directions that you give are often not clear or advantageous, and your beliefs largely determine the kind of information you send to that environment.
The inner self always attempts to maintain the body's equilibrium and health, but many times your own beliefs prevent it from coming to your aid with even half of the energy available to it. Often only when you are in dire straits do you open up the doors to this great energy, when it is much too clear that your previous beliefs and behavior have not worked.
You have at your disposal the means to insure your health. My friend Joseph (as Seth calls me) brought up a point concerning this before our session. He wanted to know why so many in this country wore glasses. He wondered if people unacquainted with glasses and suddenly introduced to them would develop a need for them; and they would.
Many individuals are given glasses to correct an eye difficulty at an early age. Left alone, in many cases, the eyes would correct themselves. The glasses can impede any such self-correction by providing a crutch that further weakens eye muscles, for example, and instead fixes the condition. When you believe that only glasses will correct poor vision then only glasses will.
Instead you must discover the reason for the belief behind the physical poor function or non-function, and if this is done the condition will automatically clear up. Now for most people it is easier to get glasses.
We will end dictation.
(“Okay.”)
Good night.
(“Thank you, Seth, and good night.”)
Session 624, October 30, 1972, 9:45 PM Monday
Now: Good evening.
(“Good evening, Seth.”)
We will continue dictation.
To be healthy you must believe in health. A good physician is a changer of beliefs. He will replace an idea of illness with one of health. Whatever methods or drugs he uses will not be effective unless this change of belief takes place.
Unfortunately, when man became a labeler he also made maps, so to speak, of great complexity, categorizing various diseases with greater effectiveness than ever before. He studied dead tissue to discover the nature of the disease that killed it. Physicians began to think of men as carriers of disease and diseases – which, in certain terms, they [the physicians] did themselves create through some new medical procedures.
The old medicine men often dealt far more directly with the patient himself, and understood the nature of beliefs and the prime importance of suggestion. Many of their techniques were adopted for their psychological shock value, in which the patient was quite effectively “brainwashed” out of the disease he believed that he had.
The present medical profession is sadly hampered because of its own beliefs. Often it operates as a framework in which poor health and disease are not only accepted as normal, but the concepts behind them strengthened. Here you have again, as in psychoanalysis, a hide-and-seek arrangement in which both doctor and patient take part. (See the 616th session in Chapter Two.)
both believe they need the other, of course. Behind this is the psychic pattern of beliefs in which the patient often assigns to the doctor the powers of knowledge and wisdom that his beliefs have taught him he does not have. Knowing otherwise, the patient still wants to consider the doctor omnipotent.
Upon the patient a doctor often assigns and projects his own feelings of helplessness against which he combats. The interactions continue with the patient trying to please the doctor, and at best merely changing from one group of symptoms to another. Far too often the doctor shares the patient's unshakable belief in poor health and disease.
Not only this, but the medical profession often provides blueprints for diseases, and the patient too often tries them on for size. This is not to say that the medical profession often is not of great aid and benefit, but within the value system in which it operates much of its positive influence is negated.
Because they are held in such high esteem, the suggestions given by doctors are paid particular attention. The patient's emotional condition is such that he or she readily accepts statements made under such circumstances less critically than usual.
The naming and labeling of “diseases” is a harmful practice that to a large extent denies the innate mobility and ever-changing quality of the psyche as expressed in flesh. You are told that you have “something”. Out of the blue “it” has attacked you, and your most intimate organs, perhaps. You are usually told that your emotions or beliefs or system of values have nothing to do with the unfortunate circumstances that beset you.
(10:08) The patient, therefore, often feels relatively powerless and at the mercy of any stray virus that might come along. The facts are that you choose even the kind of illness that you have according to the nature of your beliefs. You are immune from ill health as long as you believe that you are.
These are quite practical statements. Your body has an overall body consciousness filled with energy and vitality. It automatically rights any imbalances, but your conscious beliefs also affect this body consciousness. Your muscles believe what you tell them about themselves. So does every other portion of your physical body.
While you believe that only doctors can cure you, you had better go to them, because in the framework of your beliefs they are the only people who can help you. But the framework itself is limiting; and again, while you may be cured of one difficulty, you will only replace it with another as long as your beliefs cause you to have physical problems.
Now the same applies to what is frequently called spiritual healing. If through the concentrated use of psychic energy your body is cured by such a healer, you will also simply trade those symptoms for others unless you change your initial beliefs. Now sometimes a healer or a doctor, with his effectiveness in healing a condition, will show you by inference that the healing energy was always within yourself, and this realization may be enough to allow you to change your beliefs about health entirely.
In such a case you will realize that your previous ill health was caused by your belief. If you have any physical problems, concentrate instead upon the healthy portions of your body and the unimpeded functions that you have. In the healthy areas, your beliefs are working for you.
As I mentioned (in the last session), inner sounds are extremely important. Each of the atoms and molecules that compose your body has its own reality in sound values that you do not hear physically. Each organ of your body then has its own unique sound value too. When there is something wrong the inner sounds are discordant.
The unharmonious sounds have become a part of that portion of the body as a result of the inner sound of your own thought-beliefs. That is why it is vital that you not reinforce these inner sounds through repeating the same negative suggestions to yourself. Verbal suggestions are translated into inner sound. This passes through your body in somewhat the same way that some kinds of light do.
You may take a break.
(10:25-10:35)
Now: While you are physical creatures, then your perceptions must be largely physically oriented. Even your bodies exist in other terms than you usually suppose.
You perceive them as objects, with bulk, composed of bone and flesh. They also have “structures” of sound, light, and electromagnetic properties that you do not perceive. These are all connected with the physical image that you know. Any physical disabilities will show themselves in these other “structures” initially.
The sound, light, and electromagnetic patterns give strength and vitality to the physical form that you recognize. They are more mobile than the physical body, and even more susceptible to the changing pattern of your own thought and emotion.
I told you that thoughts are translated into this inner sound, but thoughts always attempt to materialize themselves also. As such they are incipient images, collectors of energy. They build up their own embryonic form until it is in one way or another physical translated.
Mental images therefore are extremely powerful, combining inner sound and its effects with a clear mental picture which will seek physical form. Your imagination adds motivating and propelling power to such images, and so you will find that many of your beliefs are entertained by you in an inner visual manner. They will have mental pictures connected with them.
One such image may represent one particular belief or it may stand for several. As you make lists of your beliefs you will find some of these pictures coming into your mind. Look at them as you would a painting you have created. If you do not like what you see then quite consciously change the picture in your mind.
These images are interior, yet because they are so a part of your beliefs you will see them exteriorized also in your experience.
(10:48) Let me give you a simple example. You have a sore toe. Now and then you see it quite clearly in your mind. You may find yourself looking at the toe more frequently than usual, and you may also find yourself picking out from the populace anyone who is not walking properly. These people might escape your notice ordinarily, but suddenly the world seems to be full of sore toes.
We are dealing to make a point with a belief already made physical. But if you continue such concentration the toe either would not heal or would develop into a worse condition. Behind all this, of course, would be the belief that caused the difficulty; but one you have brought about a group of symptoms you must be very careful that you do not begin to view your field of reality from that position. When you do, you add both inner and outer images that reinforce the condition.
There is light then that you do not see with physical eyes, as there is sound that you do not hear with your ears. These combine to mentally form the physical image that you know, so you must work from the inside out. Your beliefs are your palette, using the analogy of a painting again.
Your thoughts give the general outline of the reality that you physically expeince. Your emotions will fill in the patters with light. Your imagination will forge these together.
The sound of your inner thoughts is the medium that you actually use. This is far more than an analogy, however, for in simple terms it explains quite clearly the way in which your eliefs form your reality. In quiet moments the word “OOOOOOMMMMMM”, said slowly, mentally or aloud will be of benefit in toning up your general physical condition. The sounds contain within them a built-in impetus toward energy and well-being, as I will explain shortly.
Now – I am going to end for this evening. I will resume however at our next session. If you have questions I will answer them.
(“No...”)
Then I bid you a fond good evening.
(“Thank you, Seth, and good night.”)
Session 625, November 1, 1972, 9:03 PM Wednesday
Now: Good evening.
(“Good evening, Seth.”)
Dictation: The body reacts not so much to physical sound as to the interior sounds into which the physical sounds are translated. As mentioned (in the last two sessions), it also reacts to sounds that have no physical “counterparts.”
There are certain properties within the structure of the chromosomes that must be activated by specific internal sound values. If this activation does not take place then the “attributes” latent within the chromosomes remain so.
There are chains of influence that are actually composed of inner values of sound that thread together, as it were, the complicated inter-weavings of both the genes and chromosomes.
I am taking this slowly to explain it as simply as possible.
These sound values are literally interwoven in an electromagnetic pattern. The sounds weave (gesturing) themselves through, and help form this pattern. The activity of cells within the body also causes what you might call minute explosions of interior sound. (long pause) The electromagnetic and inner sound patterns are impinged upon by certain kinds of light. Together these all form the prototype upon which, and out of which, the physical body is formed.
Now: When you create a mental image in your mind it is composed of the same properties just mentioned. A mental image then is also a pattern of internal sound with electromagnetic properties imbued with certain light values. In a sense, and a very real one, the mental image is incipient matter; and any structure so composed, combining the electromagnetic sound and light values, will automatically try to reproduce itself in physical existence, or materialization. (long pause) There is a definite connection, then, with the nature of such images and the way in which your body itself is composed.
(pause at 9:25) Electrons, atoms, and molecules * all have their independent interior sound and light values. There are definite sounds produced when messages leap from your nerve ends.** It is very difficult to explain some of this, but there is “invisible” light, then, and inaudible sound, that affects your body and helps form the pattern about which it constantly emerges.
The body is obviously continually created during your present lifetime, in your terms. It is not a mechanism once created, then left to fend for itself. You were not given a certain amount of “life force” at birth that you use up as you go along, contrary to many schools of thought.
(9:28) The atoms and molecules within you are quite literally dying and being completely replaced all the time. You are being created physically each instant. Period. The body reacts to exterior sounds and to the stimuli brought to it by the physical senses. These patterns of reaction can be clearly shown. They are all that is presently observable, however, of far greater interactions that also occur.
The atoms and molecules that compose your cells and your flesh, for instance, do not react to the physical sounds that you hear or so the light patterns that your physical eyes perceive. In times of danger your entire body must be able to move swiftly. The hormonal system must react with great rapidity, sometimes completely changing the balance of a moment earlier. The muscles must be immediately alert, and the entire body flexible enough to respond as a whole. This includes every organ and the most minute portion.
Say you are in the middle of a street and suddenly a car is about to hit you. It has come seemingly from nowhere. The cells that compose your intestines, your heart, your muscles obviously do not see the car as “you” do. Yet the whole system must be instantly activate, and the data that “you” perceive must be translated in terms that will energize every portion of your body.
This is done by translating exterior stimuli into interior stimuli, but the physical carriers of the dta are all that scientists or physicians have been able to follow thus far. The greater interactions have not been perceived, and the true story of the decoding of such messages (much louder abruptly) has not been understood – and take your break.
(Resume at 9:57)
Now: (pause) The nerves are also composed of the same kind of interior structures as mentioned earlier (in this chapter); around, or rather from which, the physical nerves form. Here the exterior data is translated and broken down into inner terms. That is, it is decoded in terms of the internal sound, light, and electromagnetic patterns discussed before.
It then becomes usable information, even in terms of the atoms and molecules that compose the cells. The physical lapse that occurs between an incoming message (pause, frowning), and its intended destination does not occur on these other levels. The “interior message” gets to its destination ahead of the physical one.
By the time the organism responds the inner patterns have already reacted, and this must and always does precede any physical response to stimuli. Therefore the invisible body pattern, composed of its interior light, sound and electromagnetic properties, reacts first, and actually initiates the later physical response.
(slowly) There is always this translation of exterior stimuli. The perceived lapse noted by scientists is of course the physical one, caused by the “time” it takes the message to leap the nerve endings.* The interior translation however is simultaneous.
Now return in your mind to the situation of the near accident. That event with the car, its driver, and your own precarious position, exists as another structure beside the one that you physically see. It also – the events – exists in the terms mentioned earlier, in a reality composed of invisible light, inaudible sound, and electromagnetic patterns.
Consciously you react to the physical data – the noise, the squeal of brakes perhaps, the visual shock of seeing the car so close, but the entire inner reality of that scene or event is instantly “recognized” by what I refer to as your inner senses. These respond to the interior patterns I've told you about. The physical data is carried through the nerves with the necessary time lapses that must occur. These represent the temporal end of the spectrum of perception.
Because you are flesh and blood creatures, the interior aspects of perception must have their physical counterparts. But material awareness and bodily response to it would be impossible were it not for these internal web-works.
Now before you see anything physically, you do so through these inner pathways. The interior perception activates the outside one. When you experience physical motion or activity, evens or phenomena, you are becoming aware of the tail end of a long “series” of interior comprehensions. I am saying that all exterior events, including your own bodies with the insides, all objects, all physical materializations, are the outside structures of inside ones that are composed of interior sound and invisible light, interwoven in electromagnetic patterns.
Beneath temporal perception, then, each object and event exists in these terms, in patterns that interact with each other. On a physical level you seem to be separated from everything that is not yourself. This is not true, but in your day-to-day existence it seems to be, and it is an assumption that you usually take for granted.
On the interior level of which I have been speaking, all happenings and objects are connected. A movement or change in one affects the others. You will physically respond to and recognize some of this alteration, as in the example of the near accident. But whether or not you are consciously aware of such activity, it changes the interior environment of your body through these inner pathways.
Your own thoughts and beliefs, having the same kind of inner reality, also transform the interior environments of others. The near-accident mentioned was a physical event but it was initially a mental one. It existed in this non-temporal reality then before, in your terms, it was physically materialized, perceived and reacted to.
It was propelled from inner reality to outward reality through belief, emotions and imagination. Because you cannot see them, it may seem to you that these qualities are not as real, say, as an object. Physically you can only see the results of an emotion, for instance. You cannot hold it in your hands as you can a stone.
Ideas represent your psychic intent. They generate emotion and imagination. These activate the interior patterns. They are the motive force of action, the means by which all interior events are extemporized. They are energy formed and directed, formulations of interior and exterior patterns of reality. They are a part of the creative force from which all realities spring. Again we run into difficulties in explanation simply because there are few verbal equivalents for what I am trying to say.
Imagination and emotions are the most concentrated forms of energy that you possess as physical creatures. Any strong emotion carries within it far more energy than, say, that required to send a rocket to the moon.
Emotions, instead of propelling a physical rocket, for example, send thoughts from this interior reality through the barrier between non-physical and physical into the “objective” world – no small feat, and one that is constantly repeated.
Session 626, November 8, 1972, 9:06 PM Wednesday
Good evening.
(“Good evening, Seth.”)
Dictation: An aside to you; Now, you see, I can speak in Time or out of it. Underline “Time”.
(“Yes.”)
The physically alive body, its activities and condition, are directed through the beliefs of the conscious mind. The body, as explained in this chapter, also has “invisible” counterparts composed of the electromagnetic properties and the interior sound and light qualities.
These invisible structures preceded the emergence of the physical body. They also exist after the body's death. While the condition of the body is directed by the conscious mind in life, then, the idea or mental pattern for the body existed before the conscious mind's connection with the physical brain.
The genes and chromosomes do not just happen to have within them the precisely definite coded information that will be needed. The data is impressed upon them from within. The identity exists before the form. You could say that the identity, existing in another dimension entirely, plants the seed into the medium of physical reality from which its own material existence will spring.
Therefore the inner self forms, first, the “invisible” body structure which will “later” emerge in flesh. At the event of this mental seeding, the conscious mind, in your terms, is obviously not connected with the brain, which has not yet been formed in flesh. The idea of the body is held and made physical by a conscious mind.
New paragraph: Consciousness then is not dependent upon physical perception, though this attribute does require an awareness immersed within a material form. While physical conscious is sifted through the bodily apparatus, you are usually unaware of non-corporeal kinds because of that process. The general framework, properties and characteristics of the body exist, therefore, before its formation. In simple terms, you choose ahead of time the kind of body you will inhabit and impress. It may seem to you that you do not have any conscious control over your body's condition in life as you know it, much less before your birth. You have been taught that there is little connection between your thought and your body's activities.
A man believing he has heart trouble will finally, through his own anxiety, affect the functioning of his “involuntary” system until his heart is definitely harmed if the belief goes unchecked. The conscious mind directs the so-called involuntary systems of the body, and not the other way around. No idea slips insidiously past your awareness to affect your involuntary system unless it fits in with your own conscious beliefs. Once more, you will not be sick if you think you are well – but there may be other ideas that make you believe in the necessity for poor health.
You are not aware of how the body performs its many involuntary functions. The conscious mind could not handle all that data, but those functions perfectly mirror your consciously held ideas and beliefs.
As I also mentioned (in the 614th session in Chapter Two), the conscious mind is not basically cut off from the inner self or from those deep inner sources of knowledge available to it. The aware mind is not any one event, for that matter; it represents various portions of the inner self that “surface” at any given time.
Within the basic framework of the body chosen before physical birth (for reasons that will be discussed later), the individual has full freedom to create a perfectly healthy functioning form. The form is, however, a mirror of beliefs, and will accurately materialize in flesh those ideas held by the conscious mind.
That is one of the body's primary functions. A sick body is performing that function then, in its way, as well as a healthy one. It is your most intimate feedback system, changing with your thought and experience, giving you in flesh the physical counterpart of your thought. So it is futile to become angry at a symptom, or to deride the body for its condition when it is presenting you with the corporeal replica of your own thought, as it was meant to do.
Your environment and your experience in the physical world also provide you with the same kind of feedback. It is just as useless to berate your environment or your experience in it as it is to deride your body, for the same reason.
It often seems, when such ideas as these are presented, that the ideal results in your terms would be perfection - “heaven on earth” - a state in which everyone would be healthy, wealthy, and wise.
You are, however, in physical existence using your body as a medium for learning and expression. You are each unique. Many of you for your own reasons pursue courses that do not involve an even development of abilities, an overall balanced picture, for example, but choose to express and experiment with certain qualities to the exclusion of others. Such a course would not, in physical reality, present you with anything like a balanced picture of perfection.
Later in the book we will discuss other kinds of existence in which you are also involved; and these to some extent color your intents and purposes in physical life as you now understand it.
If all of your beliefs, not just your “fortunate” ones, were not materialized, you would never thoroughly understand on a physical level that your ideas create reality. If only your “positive” beliefs were materialized then you would never clearly comprehend the power of your thought, for you would not completely experience its physical results.
The conscious mind exists before material life and after it. In corporeal existence it is inter-twined with the brain, and during physical life your earthly perceptions – your precise and steady focus within your particular space and time system – are dependent upon that fine alliance.
Before physical birth then you form a mental concept of the body you will have. This image is impressed into matter in this way: You tune yourself into a highly specific dimension of reality. You form a physical structure that will have existence within that intensely concentrated area, that will have validity and actuality – that will come alive within those “frequencies”.
Now it is here that the seeming division in the self occurs, for in physical life the conscious mind must be connected with the brain, and in terms of time that organ itself must grow and develop. So all of your consciousness cannot be physically aware. The portion that must “wait for” the brain's development is the part you call in life “the conscious mind”.
The other portions can be called the inner self. Now all of this inner self cannot become expressed even with its connection with the brain, since the brain must sift perception through the physical apparatus.
The brain with its bodily connections must deal with the time lapses that sensual perception always imply. The interior workings of the body, to be conscious, would have to deal with time sequences that would present the physically attuned consciousness with “mathematical” deductions and calculations far too numerous for it to handle. For example, it would have to keep conscious track of all the muscles, nerves, organs, cells, molecules and atoms, while manipulating the body in space and time.
Therefore a seeming division occurs, in which a portion of the invisible conscious mind is connected with the physical brain, and a portion of it is free of that connection. That [latter] part forms what you think of as the involuntary system of the body.
Again, it is important to realize the initial non-physical reaction to stimuli that sparks off all physical reactions. There is constant interplay and communication between the areas of consciousness that are connected to the brain and those that are not. The “deeper” purposes of the consciousness involved “circulate”, sometimes arising in the awareness that is joined with the brain. Information coming from those deeper sources of the self, reaching the areas connected to the brain, will be interpreted according to the beliefs of that most physically focused segment of the self.
To some degree, such inner data will be colored by the current beliefs of that part of the self most directly confronting the physical world. Those beliefs, however, are also constantly being examined by the inner self.
And now, I suggest that you end the session – but we have a good portion of the material though. So count your blessings.
- pages 81-101, The Nature of Personal Reality by Jane Roberts
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