“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

During the last couple of weeks David hadn’t made his regular trips up the hill, but Jane and I were so busy that that fact nearly escaped us. Last Thursday morning, then, we were really shocked when Doris, who is also a teacher and a friend from those apartment-house years, called to tell us that David was in the hospital—that he was to undergo triple-bypass heart surgery the next day. Jane and I couldn’t believe it. We’d thought David was in excellent health. He’d taken up jogging some time ago and was now running 15 miles at a time, three days a week. As he lay in the hospital, David asked Doris why this was happening to him, when he’d tried to take care of himself, help others, and “do everything right.”

Seth talked about illness and suffering in general this evening, and about David in particular. I’m presenting excerpts from the generalized part of his material, but none about David himself. We have no idea of pressing Seth’s personal information upon David; doing that would be an invasion of his privacy. Tonight’s material, however, adds to our understanding of subjects like free will and choosing, good and evil, sickness and health, and reflects upon many questions people have asked us over the years.

(Our friend, David Yoder [I’ll call him], is 48 years old. He’s a bachelor, and a high-school teacher. Jane and I met him in May 1960, when we moved from Sayre into an apartment house close to downtown Elmira. The house had once been a luxurious private home. Jane began the sessions there three years later; indeed, we were to stay there for 15 years. At first David lived across the hall from us on the second floor. Eventually he moved downstairs when a larger apartment right beneath ours became available: Still later, Jane and I rented the apartment he’d had on the second floor, so that we ended up with two apartments, side by side; we needed more room by then, and didn’t want to move.

David is one of the kindest people we’ve ever known. Jane initiated her ESP classes late in 1967—so each Tuesday night for the next seven and a half years, our friend put up with a vast amount of shouting and banging over his head. He knew what Jane was up to, but had only a peripheral interest in “psychic phenomena.” David never complained about the racket, though sometimes he secluded himself in a back room down there, or left the house until class was over. It seemed that we were always apologizing for bothering him.

[...] It was David Butts again—telling me that since our talk last week he’s been free of the rather obsessive thinking about sending and receiving telepathic messages involving a certain female comedy star who appears on a late-night TV show. [He wouldn’t tell me who the personality is.] I’m David’s uncle.

[...] We await David’s letter. I should add that David said the feelings of panic—if that’s what they are—had gotten bad enough lately so that he’d stopped watching the woman involved on television. [...]

(In our first talk I’d suggested to David that he write us a letter describing his attraction to this woman, and he called today to say that he was mailing such a missive, after rewriting it a couple of times. [...]

(David has told his parents of his yearnings toward this person, he said, and his father responded by telling him it was “all in his head.” [...]

[...] This morning I took David Yoder home from the hospital, and this afternoon I took our tiger cat, Billy, to the veterinarian. [...] 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.

[...] 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.

“Why, for example, did David fall ill? [...]

[...] There is some additional implication, in that he picked up your joint feelings about your friend David—but that is not the cause, simply an added coloration. [...]

Now there are several “house connections” here, involving David, the Steffanses, and ourselves. [...] Jane met Mrs. Steffans just once, in 1973, when she came through with a spontaneous “reading” for the lady at an informal party David Yoder gave in the apartment he was renting at the time. Jane and I think it most interesting that we were living in the same downtown apartment house as David was, and that Jane met—just that once—a person living in the house we were to buy two years later. [...]

(After lunch today Jane and I were visited by our old friend David Yoder, who’s been in Florida recuperating from the heart bypass surgery he underwent early this year.¹ David brought news that was at first startling, then quickly developed into several conflicting emotions and ideas for us: He’d just learned from a relative of hers that a few weeks ago Mrs. Steffans [not her real name], the wife of the couple we’d purchased the hill house from in March 1975, had committed suicide at her home in a Western state while her husband was away on a business trip.

Her relative, David told us now, had informed him that Mrs. Steffans had suffered bouts of deep depression while living in the hill house. After David left we began to wonder if either one of us had ever picked up on such psychic lows, so to speak, either before or after we’d moved into the place. [...]

[...] Dick’s young son David fell from a high slide and injured his back. [...] David naturally cried loudly. As it happened five people tended to David, and their action was witnessed by Jane and myself from some distance away. Three females and two males did the attending: My mother; David’s mother Ida; Ann Crosby; David’s father Dick; and my father.

[...] The blanket data because of David. [...] One was finally taken from a car, and David was made to lie quietly on it for a while to make sure no delayed injury showed up. [...]

[...] Very good, the incident involving David did take place outdoors in the park.

[...] “A letter or note” can refer to the notes for reference I made on David’s drawing. “The color yellow” we think is a strong connection to the drawing of the dog; Dick recently obtained a puppy for his children, and when Jane and I asked David to describe the dog he called it orange at first, then yellow.

[...] I thought David’s drawing good for one his age, and added notes of my own. [...]

[...] Bill’s son is named David, he is four years old, and it is he who drew the test object, with a black ball-point pen on white paper.

(Jane said that Seth’s count of 1, 2, 3 was his way—or Jane’s?—of leading up to the number 4 that I wrote on the drawing, referring to David’s age. [...]

[...] In view of the subject matter that did develop, rather to our surprise, let me note that since late last week President Carter, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and Israel’s Prime Minister Begin have been meeting at Camp David in pursuit of peace for the Middle East. [...]

(9:46.) Your ideas of God are put to the test in this meeting (at Camp David), for here men who claim to believe in a merciful God discuss their mortal claims to property and land, and each feels behind him the ancient dictates of an archaic God.

[...] Nevertheless, Paul O’Neill’s son David was raking leaves as I left the house. [...]

[...] There seems to be a D here—the name of David comes to mind, and the Star of Israel, which may mean that the competitor is Jewish.

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. [...]

David and Goliath (refering to Daniel.

(The second question had to do with Seth’s ideas about our appearing on the David Susskind show, TV, in New York City, should we be asked. [...]

[...] His abilities are detailed in the book, Healing Hands, by J. Bernard Hutton, published 1966 by David McKay Co., Inc., New York, NY, at $3.95.

(Note: The letter from David Butts arrived today, but I haven’t read it yet.)

[...] In the meantime Jane called David Yoder at the hospital. [...]

[...] However, it fits in with much of our questioning of late, in connection with the Middle East peace talks these past few months, and the behavior of the three who met at the summit, held at Camp David: Carter, President Sadat of Egypt, and Prime Minister Begin of Israel. [...]

The boy (David, who has quit school) had an automobile accident. [...]

More from Dick, David

[...] We’d been visited today by Loren, Betts and Doug, and Dick, Ida and David, and at times my left groin area had bothered me considerably. [...]

[...] My experience in female lives varied from that of a plain Dutch spinster to a courtesan at the time of the biblical David, to several existences as a humble mother with children.