Let’s Get Spiritual!
Can you imagine John Travolta, cradling the nubile Olivia Newton-John in his arms, gazing lustily into her incredibly blue eyes and singing, “Let’s get spiritual?” No, I thought not.
For those not in the know, the words they sang were, “Let’s Get Physical”, from the musical “Grease,” a horrid yet highly popular take-off on teen life in the Fifties. Now, those are words one can understand. “Spiritual” is a whole different kettle of fish.
The Definition of Spirituality
To some, the word references their belief in a higher power; to others, phantasms with whom they can communicate after death. And a whole range of possibilities in-between.
As a young man, typically, the word didn’t mean much to me. Sensory stimuli were front and centre. Religion offered nothing plausible.
Boredom set in, so I approached my best friend, then studying at NYU, to suggest books I might read. The list he came up with was both thoughtful and clever, offering items of fact, of fiction and of the tantalizing world in the middle.
That was how I was introduced to Jane Roberts, and “Seth”.
Her book, “The Seth Material”
In the Sixties, Jane, a professor, had involuntarily begun going into trances, even in class, during which a separate entity took over – it needed to make use of her physical body to be able to speak.
This “energy-essence personality” which named itself (no gender discrimination in the after-life) Seth, had been one of those three friends in medieval times – along with Jane and her husband!
That two of the three were back on earth, together and as physical as Olivia and John, allegedly created the energy required for Seth to join them – although Jane was supposedly unaware of what was going on during these sessions, and had to be informed when she revived.
I was hooked.
It all made perfect sense. How could it not be true? Seth told of the most recent body it had inhabited. It told secrets of the cosmos. It told of the death of Jesus: not really Jesus on the cross – just a religious zealot – which of course made it possible for the living Jesus to turn up in time for Easter.
Copious notes were taken by Jane’s husband, which became the next book, “Seth Speaks”. The first book (another reason I was hooked) focused on Jane’s efforts to disprove this phenomenon and portrayed her as the last to be convinced of the reality of this evidence of spirits – the proof of how it all works: reincarnation incarnate!!
Now I was “spiritual”. Nothing changed other than I felt something had been settled. I would die: my spirit, having had the experiences which I had made available to it, would offer its silent thanks, and wait in queue for another baby to allow it to return to the ultimate playground that is Earth.
A Shifting Definition of Spirituality
Far be it from me to proselytize; but forty years later, when a new friend and I were good-humoredly discussing our relative nearness to the voyage across the Styx, my “beliefs” and their source were revealed.
Enter: the ghost of Marshall McLuhan. My curious pal didn’t make off to the library to “learn” of Seth as I had. Cyber-savy, he pulled out his trusty laptop and fired off the appropriate inquiries. Imagine my mortification when he played for me a recording of Jane Roberts, in trance, with Seth holding forth – and sounding every bit like a bad act in a doomed carnival!
There is no doubt that, had this been my first experience of Jane and Seth, it would also have been my last. Marshall had won the day. The books had convinced me: the recording carried the same level of conviction for my friend’s view.
Something suggested, however, that maybe I wasn’t being fair to either Jane or Marshall, neither of whom are with us any longer to defend themselves. Many learned thinkers have been influenced by the work that Jane Roberts has produced, irrespective of its source.
Marshall may have admonished, “You’re not thinking it through. The medium is the message – and the medium of recording gave you the impression, and the message, of falsehood.” Ergo, don’t discount the medium of print which, in glorious detail, gave me, and countless others, the impression and the message of truth. I get it.
So, I’m still spiritual – after a fashion; still hoping there’s some truth to it all. Besides, there’s an old friend it would be fun to spend time with again – and who just happens to have sent me the book suggestions in the first place!
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RESOURCES:
Interested in the “Seth Materials” book?
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“The Contrarian” Columnist, Jerry Black is an ex-Montrealer who resides in a low, dark domaine in Ingersoll, ON, suitable for pontification of that nature. He is happy to be “Upright and sniffing the air” – (Stephen King.)