“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jerry said that the data echoed Billie’s fiery, hot-tempered disposition very well, and that the phrases Jane cited like “guts and gumption”, etc., were the exact ones used by Billie. Billie swore often and talked very fast, as noted in the data. Billie was dominant over her father, Jerry said; she was very insistent and wouldn’t back down in an argument.

(Jerry said that emotionally Jane acted much like Billie, that there was good contact here, and that in the fight scene she thought that Jane was Billie. Billie died at age 47. Jane rubbed her right hip as she talked, and Jerry said that Billie had a bad hip in the same area, and rubbed it also as Jane had done.

(Jerry said she didn’t see how Billie could have written the note when Jane said she did, in November 1964, since Billie died in 1965 [just two months into the year] and had been unable to write for some time before her death. As we talked however now, Jane said Billie was “still there” and that she now insisted this was the correct time re the note-writing.

(The note was from Billie, Jerry’s stepmother, who had died in 1965. Neither Jerry nor her father had seen the note before, and it had a strong emotional effect on both of them. A further puzzle was due to the fact that for some time before her death Billie could not write, so Jerry was curious as to just when the note had been written.

In reply to another of my questions, she said her emotional charge was also involved with the death of our cat, Billy One, in February 1979. Billy One had been, obviously, the predecessor to the Billy we have now; the present Billy is remarkably similar to him in looks and temperament. [...]

[...] This morning I took David Yoder home from the hospital, and this afternoon I took our tiger cat, Billy, to the veterinarian. Billy hasn’t acted well since last Saturday, and his beautiful coat has lost its luster. [...] Jane and I wondered what role Billy’s illness might play in our affair with David—surely a way of thinking that would have been quite alien to us before the advent of the Seth material.

We’d also noticed that as soon as Billy lost his appetite his littermate, Mitzi, became “just a little busybody,” as Jane put it, playing and running about the house and out on the porches, as if in her own way she was trying to compensate for Billy’s unaccustomed lack of activity.

“I wouldn’t mind getting something from Seth on why Billy got sick,” I said to Jane after supper. [...] She’d been “stewing” about David, the state of the world, human frailty, Billy, and herself, and had had to make strong efforts to change her thinking.

(When I arose early on the 26th so that I could wrap the proofs for mailing, however, I noticed that Billy didn’t appear to feel well. [...] Jane and I both wondered: Why Billy? [...] During the session Seth discussed Billy’s illness to some extent, while also giving the first “installment” of an answer to a longstanding question of mine: I was curious about the relationship between the host — whether human, animal, or plant — and a disease it might contract, one that was “caused,” say, by a virus. [...]

(On Tuesday the veterinarian told us by telephone that Billy was better, that “probably” we could take him home the following afternoon; I was to call before making the drive across town, though. [...] And it was he, regretfully explaining that Billy had died an hour or so before. [...] When he returned he found Billy dead in his cage. [...]

[...] At once Jane and I named them Billy Two and Mitzi: Billy Two, obviously, because he was also a tiger cat and bore a strong resemblance to the dead Billy; Mitzi because with her longer, black and white fur she at once reminded me of the Mitzi who’d belonged to the Butts’s next-door neighbors when I was a child. [...]

1. We were shocked because Billy’s unexpected — and serious — illness reminded us of the almost universally accepted view that life is terribly vulnerable. [...] Billy was a replacement for our previous cat, Willy (who’d died in November 1976 at the age of 16), and we’d found him at an animal shelter the next weekend after Willy’s death; as far as having a pet to love went, we’d thought ourselves “set” for a number of years. At first we’d called the newcomer Willy Two, but soon automatically shortened that to Billy.

[...] Our Billy was there also. When it came time for me to leave, I started hunting around to find Billy. Each time I picked up a cat, I discovered that I didn’t have Billy. All of the cats were marked more or less similarly, yet there were enough differences in color and pattern so that I could know Billy when and if I found him.)

(Jerry was convinced by my actions in the argument sequence that I was Billie or controlled by her at that time. [...] She was certain it was Billie. [...]

[...] We take Billy to vet’s to get “fixed”—& curtains to be shortened, cleaned for my new room.

[...] Eyes felt softer, etc., Then we went to take Billy to the vet’s; on the way my eyes did funny things; odd sensations involving balance I think—both of these in the car; I asked for help from “divine parent of my being,” and repeated the suggestions Seth gave me; trying not to be worried. [...]

Then somehow our conversation led me to wonder whether our cat, Billy, is color-blind, as we’ve heard most animals are. So far Billy had spent the session beside me on the couch, alternately napping and preening himself. [...] I also asked Jane about what use the gorgeous colors of Billy’s luxurious fur are to him if he can’t appreciate those patches and stripes of sienna, black, warm gray, and pure white. [...] Intuitively, I felt that more is involved here than questions of camouflage and protection—that at the very least there must be connections between Billy and his colors in this reality and his source in a nonphysical one.⁴

[...] That is more than I’d expected, I told Jane, yet I still find it hard to believe that Billy, for example, doesn’t have a much keener sense than that of his own colors.

(Our cat, Willy Two — or Billy — had been sleeping beside me on the couch. [...] Billy sat facing her. [...]

[...] As soon as I sat down again, Seth finished the sentence he’d begun before Billy’s interruption.)

[...] Saturday Rob brought back Billy from the vet’s, and PM, the Lords visited. [...]

1. We called those three very penetrating sessions private, or deleted, because they grew out of our own reactions to David Yoder’s challenges, to the illness of our cat Billy, to the playful antics of Billy’s littermate Mitzi, and to several other personal matters. [...]

(Billy now meowed, and then jumped up on Jane’s chair as she spoke in trance—something he seldom does. [...]

[...] I remember I was talking as Seth, and I looked over and Billy was giving me an entirely different look than he’d ever given me before. [...]

(For perhaps fifteen minutes after he’d jumped up in Jane’s chair, Billy had descended from that spot and curled himself up against me as I sat taking notes on the couch. [...]

Then tonight she began writing “a fun thing” about our cats, Billy and Mitzi, who are brother and sister just 10 months old now: “In the beginning, Billy and Mitzi weren’t even kittens yet, but only bits of sky and cloud that wanted to be pussycats. [...] If it hadn’t been for Billy and Mitzi, cats might not exist at all….” [...]

3. I’ve also suggested to Jane that she might be able to incorporate into her story about Billy and Mitzi the little poem below. [...]

Now to a lesser degree, and in a different fashion, your cat (Billy) also reacted. [...]

(Billy, by the way, is better today, although still not fully recovered.)

[...] The cats did not represent your physical cats (Mitzi and Billy Two), but old comfortable beliefs about the nature of the spontaneous self connected with ideas he picked up from his mother, in which cats represented the worst aspects of human behavior and impulses: they fawned upon you, yet were evil, and could turn against you in a moment.

[...] As he’s taken to doing lately, our cat Billy jumped up on the couch and ensconced himself in a ball tight against my left elbow as I took Jane’s dictation.)

(“In a session I’m working with now for Mass Events—the 837th, about the death of our cat, Billy One, a year ago—you said there wasn’t any such thing as a cat consciousness, per se.”³ Seth nodded. [...]

[...] Billy can be as he chooses—reincarnated into any species within his classification—as a mammal.

(As he had during the 801st session, our cat, Billy, roused himself from a snooze and walked over to Jane. [...] I called Billy to me. [...]

[...] Jane’s trance had been good, but she remembered Billy climbing into her lap, and how he’d put his face close to hers. [...]

And Billy and Mitzi, who had been racing through the house, came as if on signal to play beneath Jane’s rocker when she began speaking for Seth. [...]

[...] As we talked I heard Billy helping himself to some dry cat food in the kitchen, on the other side of the room divider. [...]

[...] As I sat on the couch Billy, who is much improved now, curled himself up half in my lap, so that writing as Seth spoke was more than a little difficult. [...]

(Billy was still curled up against my side. [...]

[...] She ate a good lunch, and I brought home scraps for our cats, Billy and Mitzi. [...]

(About Seth’s reference to Mitzi: Last month both of our cats, Mitzi and Billy, came down with heavy cases of fleas — quite unusual for them even though they are often outside. I bought flea collars, and got one on Billy without trouble. [...]