OK, here are the excerpts from Jane Roberts' "The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events" I thought would shed some light on the working behind the curtain. They can be found between pages 12 and 33 of the book.

"Dying is a biological necessity, not only for the individual, but to insure the continued vitality of the species. Dying is a spiritual and psychological necessity, for after awhile the exuberant, ever-renewed energies of the spirit can no longer be translated into flesh.

"Inherently, each individual knows that he or she must die physically in order to survive spiritually and psychically (underlined). The self outgrows the flesh. Particularly since [the advent of Charles] Darwin's theories, the acceptance of the fact of death has come to imply a certain kind of weakness, for is it not said that only the strong survive?

"To some degree, epidemics and recognized illnesses serve the sociological purpose of providing an acceptable reason for death - a face-saving device for those who have already decided to die. This does not mean that such individuals make a conscious decision to die, in your terms: But such decisions are often semiconscious (intently). It might be that those individuals feel they have fulfilled their purposes - but such decisions may also be built upon a different kind of desire for survival than those understood in Darwinian terms.

"It is not understood that before life an individual decides to live. A self is not simply the accidental personification of the body's biological mechanism. Each person born desires to be born. He dies when that desire no longer operates. No epidemic or illness or natural disaster - or stray bullet from a murderer's gun - will kill a person who does not want to die."

...


"The physical world that you recognize is made up of invisible patterns. These patterns are "plastic," in that while they exist, their final form is a matter of probabilities directed by consciousness. Your senses perceive these patterns in their own ways. The patterns themselves can be "activated" in innumerable fashions. There is something out there (humorously emphatic) to observe.

"(Long pause, one of many, at 10:04.) Your sense apparatus determines what form that something will take, however. The mass world rises up before your eyes, but your eyes are part of that mass world. You cannot see your thoughts, so you do not realize that they have shape and form, even as, say, clouds do. There are currents of thought as there are currents of air, and the mental patterns of men's feelings and thoughts rise up like flames from a fire, or steam from hot water, to fall like ashes or like rain.

"All elements of the interior invisible environment work together, and they form the temporal weather patterns that are exteriorized mental states, presenting you locally and en masse, then, with a physical version of man's emotional states. Period."

...

"Now: The physical planet is obviously also ever-changing while it is operationally or realistically or pragmatically relatively stable. The physical matter of the planet is also composed of literally infinite hordes of consciousnesses - each experiencing its own reality while adding to the overall cooperative venture.

"(Long pause.) Natural disasters represent an understandably prejudiced concept, in which the vast creative and rejuvenating elements important to planetary life, and therefore to mankind, are ignored. The stability of the planet rests upon such changes and alterations, even as the body's stability is dependent upon, say, the birth and death of the cells.

"(10:20.) It is quite obvious that people must die - not only because otherwise you would overpopulate your world into extinction, but because the nature of consciousness requires new experience, challenge, and accomplishment. This is everywhere apparent in nature itself. (Pause.) If there were no death, you would have to invent it (smile) - for the context of that selfhood would be as limited as the experience of a great sculptor given but one hunk of stone (with quiet dramatic emphasis).

"The sculptor's creation is pragmatically realistic, in that it exists as an object, and can be quite legitimately perceived, as can your world. The sculptor's statue, however, comes from the inner environment, the patterns of probabilities. These patterns are not themselves inactive. They are possessed by the desire to be actualized (with a hyphen). Behind all realities there are mental states. These always seek form, though again there are other forms than those you recognize."

...

"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.

"Am I going too fast?

('No, ' I said, although Seth-Jane's pace was pretty good as far as my writing speed was concerned.)

"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.

"(11:44.) 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.

"(Long pause.) 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."