SYMPTOM & SIGNIFICANCE

a Sethian Psychology of Healing

In August of 1990 I sequestered myself within the

magnificent stone walls of the Yale Library, repository for

the manuscripts of Jane Roberts and Rob Butts. My mission,

in the mere two days I could spend at Yale, was to resolve

the painful mystery of why Jane had suffered — had, on

some level, chosen to, allowed herself to, suffer — a most

agonizing and debilitating illness for the latter part of her

life.

Previously I had studied everything Rob, Jane and

Seth had said publicly about Jane's condition. In the Yale

library, I pored over Rob's journal notes written during

Jane's last 504 days spent in St. Joseph's Hospital in

Elmira, NY. In the end I returned to San Francisco feeling bemused: I could adduce no shattering

revelations about the complexities, beliefs, machinations, and inner dialog of Jane's entity. I

conceded pro forma that she, and we, created her own reality. I had some insight into the dynamics

of Jane's Sinful Self and the struggle of artist-vs-channeler. Much later, the publication of Jane’s

The Way Toward Health resolved some questions but raised many more.

As Larry Dossey, MD, points out, Buddha died from food poisoning; Jesus from acute

trauma; Ramana Maharishi, the most beloved saint in India, died from cancer as did the great

spiritual teachers Krishnamurti and Suzuki. Bernadette, who saw the vision at Lourdes, died from

disseminated tuberculosis or cancer. Mother Teresa died of heart failure; Pope Paul VI required

an appendectomy; the Dalai Lama wears glasses. If the holiest of holies are thus plagued, what can

I offer my patients and other Seth readers and my self when I am under the weather?

Of course, no one has to become ill, not even in preparation for death. Cats and other

animals can be asymptomatic when they walk off to willfully die. Over the years, by rereading Seth,

by reading my patients, I have learned more about how and why people create illness. As a Seth-

oriented physician, my art is to intuit the personal reality of each patient and gently enable the

most positive beliefs in that reality.

The essay that follows was originally developed for my patients — mostly young, bright,

healthy engineers in California's Silicon Valley. The concepts were designed to introduce Sethian

ideas without explicitly invoking a channeled source. On the other hand, in discussing Seth's ideas

on health among the initiated, I have found that the psychological exercises bridge a gap in the

other direction: they ground a sometimes vague concept that we create our own reality in the

symbolic systems common to our earth psyches at this point of power. As I have found in my 15

years of working with the Seth material, humans behave, practically speaking, rather less

according to Seth's ideal of our larger Being and more according to the consensus camouflage