Michael Prescott on Jane Roberts/Seth teachings

[recoverer]

I don't know anything about Michael Prescott, but I have to say I agree with what he wrote about a part of Jane Robert's/Seth's teachings below.


By Michael Prescott:
"My problem with Seth
Last time, I talked a little bit about the so-called Seth material channeled by Jane Roberts and how it relates to the idea of a holographic universe. But I have to say that I have trouble taking Seth altogether seriously. Communications issued in his name seem to vary considerably in quality, from provocative and scientifically respectable theories about the nature of reality to highly dubious and rather childish exercises in what appears to be pseudoscience.

Reading further in Roberts' 1970 book The Seth Material, I came across a good example of the latter. It's a passage in which Seth tries to explain the mechanism by which thoughts become things.

Thoughts and images are formed into physical reality and become physical fact. They are propelled chemically. A thought is energy. It begins to produce itself physically at the moment of its conception.

Mental enzymes are connected with the pineal gland. As you know them, body chemicals are physical, but they are the propellants of this thought-energy, containing all the codified data necessary for translating any thought or image into physical actuality. They cause the body to reproduce the inner image. They are sparks, so to speak, initiating the transformation.

Chemicals are released through the skin and pore systems, in an invisible but definite pseudophysical formation. The intensity of a thought or image largely determines the immediacy of its physical materialization. There is no object about you that you have not created. There is nothing about your own physical image that you have not made.

The initial thought or image exists within the mental enclosure. It is not yet physical. Then it is sparked into physical materialization by the mental enzymes.

This is the general procedure. All such images or thoughts are not completely materialized in your terms, however. The intensity may be too weak. The chemical reaction sparks certain electrical charges, some within the layers of the skin. There are radiations then through the skin to the exterior world, containing highly codified instructions and information....

Objects are composed of the same pseudomaterial that radiates outward from your own physical image, only the higher intensity mass is different. When it is built up enough, you recognize it as an object. At low intensity mass it is not apparent to you.

Every nerve and fiber within the body has an inner purpose that is not seen, and that serves to connect the inner self with physical reality, that allows the inner self to create physical reality. In one respect, the body and physical objects go flying out in all directions from the inner core of the whole self.  (pp. 121-122)

If we boil this down, Seth seems to be saying that our bodies exude chemicals through the pores of our skin, and these chemicals somehow coalesce into the physical objects around us. Now, I don't know about you, but I find this explanation preposterous. I don't even think it makes sense on the most basic logical level. Our bodies are themselves physical, so do these mysterious chemicals first form our bodies before proceeding to form the rest of our environment? And aren't the chemicals themselves physical? (It's not of much help to label them "pseudophysical" - this just muddies the waters even further.)

Beyond that, do we really believe that everything we perceive around us is produced by the emanation of chemicals from our own individual body? (Seth insists that each individual creates his own reality in toto, so we're not talking about a reality constructed by the combined chemical output of billions of humans; instead we have to imagine billions of separate realities.) If I stand on a high point in the desert where I can see for 50 miles, are the rock formations on the distant horizon created by chemicals exuding from my body at that moment?

Sorry. I'm not buying it."

[Psionic]

Hey there, first I would like to apologize for disappearing for so long from the forum.

I sort of agree with you there recoverer. Also, when you channel, you have to verify your message, which means channeling it again to see if it is the same as the first attempt.

[recoverer]

Something wierd happened. I thought I responded to Psionic with a new post, instead I edited his post. After noticing this I removed my edit. I figure we shouldn't be able to alter each other's posts.

I wrote that sometimes I have my spirit guidance verify the messages I receive because I'm stubborn at times.

[RenaissanceMan]

I wouldn't say stubborn,  I would say suitably cautious.   

I wonder what is actually meant by these pseudophysical chemicals?
I am curious as to how spiritual/conscious energy is supposed to underly physical reality - the detail.  Perhaps it can be explained by something similar to "zero-point energy" or that Planck Scale Energy Field that , Stuart Hammeroff I think his name is, refers to. 

[Psan]

Sorry. I'm not buying it."

Well, I don't buy this either (and most of the other "channeled" stuff that floats around on net), and the best meaning of the phrase "We create our own reality", in my opinion, is that everyone interprets reality (which is all that is, the being), using his/her own consciousness or mind.

This is the most scientific view one can take on such stuff.
QM also proposes (ya its a theory only), that consciousness of an observer collapses the wavefunction, and in the absence of a conscious observer, all that remains is a cloud of infinite probabilities.

From neuropsychology we know that brain has very sophisticated arrangements of matter, which define the reality we perceive and the reality gets distorted when abnormalities are introduced in its structure. Drugs disturb the chemical balance of brain and produce alternate realities, which seem as real as this one.

From the study of Astral Projection, we know that everyone CAN consciously alter the reality one perceives, using simple techniques and hard work ....

So yes, if we strip it off the mystic BS, we are somehow responsible for our own reality, but its a matter of choice rather than creation of something from nothing.

[recoverer]

I basically believe that spirit beings from a higher level created this World so that souls such as ourselves can learn by incarnating into this World.

Here's a way to consider the matter.  Initially very simple forms of life existed on this planet. I find it hard to believe that these simple life forms caused themselves (and their supposed ability to excrete chemicals), this planet, our Sun, and the planets and asteroids that are a part of our solar system to be, by excreting chemicals from within themselves.

I think more than twice before I accept what a channeled source has to say. Not to say that a person could never channel a light being. However, on at least a few occasions  other explanations are possible.