“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] In the same manner, say, the ideal is to protect human life, and in the pursuit of that ideal you give generations of various animals deadly diseases, and sacrifice their lives.³ Your justification may be that people have souls and animals do not, or that the quality of life is less in the animals, but regardless of those arguments this is fanaticism — and the quality of human life itself suffers as a result, for those who sacrifice any kind of life along the way lose some respect for all life, human life included. The ends do not justify the means (all very emphatically).

[...] People would do anything at all for money, he said, and as his monologue continued, he expressed his opinion that the species itself would almost inevitably bring about its own destruction.

[...] I do not want to define his existence by those attitudes alone, however, for when he forgets the great gulf between his idealism and practical life, and speaks about other activities, then he is full of charming energy. [...]

[...] If you want to change the world for the better, and if you are determined to do so, no matter at what cost to yourself or others, no matter what the risk, and if you believe that those ends justify any means at your disposal, then you are a fanatic.

[...] Constructive thoughts do not simply affect the system for good in some sort of a generalized fashion, nor do destructive thoughts simply happen to affect the system directly.

[...] However, the system obviously has the ability to heal itself, and every opportunity should be given so that it is allowed to do so. [...]

This is all fairly new to Ruburt, and he is doing very well. [...]

[...] A message having to do with a boy. [...]

He has been reading various sections of the material, including portions having to do with the ego, personality and action, and you see attempted to set himself aside from the action in which his whole personality was intimately involved. As impossible [to do] as the ego’s general attempt to insist upon some sort of permanent, unchanging, stable identity, since it is composed of action.

I do intend to implement this material whenever possible by helping you both achieve subjective experiences that will fill out the words for you. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) Whenever the ego gains overcontrol, or sets itself up to oppose deep and basic action within the whole personality, then in doing so it also blocks to some considerable extent the passage or use of the whole personality’s vital energy.

[...] Tonight she felt some of the energy of last Monday, but didn’t feel she could do anything with it— she just enjoyed soaking it up.

[...] Do you follow me?

Now: the units about which I have been speaking do not have any specific, regular, preordained “life.” [...]

[...] But the rhythms have to do with the nature of emotional energy itself, and not with the laws of matter.

[...] Do you follow the analogy?

(4:03.) In other words, they do not trust the energy of their own lives. They do not trust the natural functioning of their bodies, or accept this functioning as a gift of life. [...]

[...] “We can’t afford to do anything else anymore. [...]

[...] She said that she was doing well — obviously — then added that when she spoke a sentence for Seth she also sensed the other sentences to come, or those around the spoken one. [...]

They are not forgotten, but the people involved simply close their own eyes, so to speak, to those decisions, and pretend (underlined) that they do not exist, simply to make their lives appear smooth and to save face with themselves, when they know very well that the decisions really rest on very shaky ground indeed.

[...] In some cases the imagined events never do show. [...] He was also afraid that spontaneously he might want to do such things after all, as if his spontaneous self would work against his better interests. [...]

[...] You do know where the book begins or ends, more or less, in your creative lives, however, and you have the satisfaction of that creative activity. [...]

[...] So it seemed to Ruburt that the books were not considered to be enough: he was expected to do all of those other things beside. [...]

[...] All of this made him feel that he was not living up to expectations, that he was to some extent a failure for not doing all of those things. [...]

[...] One question had to do with the oil showing two male heads which I painted in 1965. [...]

[...] (Which we had wondered about this afternoon.) There were other issues, having to do with Ruburt’s own mental characteristics. [...]

[...] Do you have questions on this material?

[...] The discussion veered around to our wondering how Jane would do under such conditions, when Seth abruptly resumed at 9:50.)

I do not mean to demean you. [...]

He did not know his wife requested the session, and I do not want it known. [...]

(“You’re doing all right”)

[...] (Meaning Jane.) I do suggest, now, a meeting in Elmira, at which time any questions you have can be answered without the necessity for long and complicated letters.

[...] The prizes—a car, etc.—reminded her of how we used to travel, and her physical freedom to do so. She can’t do this now. [...]

[...] Even as she smoked Jane’s left foot moved around, with the right one doing the same thing in miniature. [...]

[...] I told her I’m always going to park out front and just walk through the house, but I never do. [...]

It is an excellent sign that as portions of the body are released they move spontaneously, following their own order—but they do move with remarkable ease, even while other portions of the body are slowly beginning to release themselves. [...]

[...] She was doing well when I got there at 1:05 this afternoon, though. [...]

[...] She finished in 12 minutes, though, doing better as she went along, until she finished up in good style. [...]

[...] She then tried to read the fan letter about the “nightshade” diet, but didn’t do well even though it was typed. [...]

[...] She did report increased mobility in the hand—but has also been doing so for a little while now. [...]

[...] For weeks after her admittance in April, I didn’t know if Jane would ever do any “psychic” work again, but three months later she surprised me by beginning a series of dialogues similar to the “world-view” material she’d produced for her books on the psychologist and philosopher William James, and the artist Paul Cézanne. [...] “At least I feel I’m doing something I’m made for,” she said when starting the new project. [...]

[...] Not only about Jane’s fine ability to speak in a trance or dissociated state for Seth, that “energy personality essence,” as he calls himself, but about all of the vastly complicated challenges that can, and do, arise in the course of a human life.

I think this book shows, then, that the ways toward health can and do vary tremendously. [...]

During all of this time, we told no one in the hospital what we were specifically doing — staff accepted our conventional explanation that we were writers and “just working.” [...]

[...] I am not advocating a fatalistic approach either, that says more or less: “I have chosen such and such an unfortunate condition at some level I do not understand, and therefore the entire affair is outside of my own hands. There is nothing I can do about it.”

I do not mean to imply that you necessarily deal with opposite kinds of behaviors, for there are endless variances — each unique — as consciousness expresses itself through physical sensation, and attempts to explore all of the possible realms of emotional, spiritual, biological, and mental existence.

For one thing, again, almost all situations, including the most drastic, can be changed for the better to some extent, and the very attempt to do so can increase a person’s sense of control over his or her own circumstances. [...]

[...] Once again I do activate those coordinates that quicken your own peace of mind and body, and accelerate your healing processes.

[...] Now whenever I sense a conflict arising, I do as I’d figured out—and as Seth himself suggested recently: I ask the advice of the first man; what would he do in these situations? [...]

(My own activities, then, have aroused in Jane the urge to try the same approach, and I’ve suggested she think of her own women numbers 1 and 2. It seems that she confronts the same basic challenges I do, I told her, so she could delineate the two opposing portions of her personality well enough to understand that many of her cultural beliefs have been imposed upon her natural, spontaneous, free, creative self, and to such an extent that the acquired beliefs have turned into detriments rather than aids, that she envisioned as helping her obtain what she wants in life. [...]

[...] There may be days when his impulses lead him to do housework, or—zounds!—to want to walk more, but that freer inner motion will also release him for the kind of inspiration he wants. [...]

[...] “I had no idea he was going to do that,”” Jane said, meaning work on the new book. [...]

(“I must be doing something right,” I said to Jane when I returned to the house, and explained the situation to her. [...]

[...] Your eyes do not exist alone in your head. [...]

Do you have a question? [...]

(“How’s Jane doing?”)

(“Do you want to say a word about how Ruburt is doing?”)

(Last night had been very cold — it was still 5 below when I got up at 6:30 a.m. After breakfast I ran the car to do several errands, getting the budget bills ready to mail, and so forth. [...]

[...] Shawn took Jane’s blood pressure and pulse, then my wife went back to reading the session, doing a little better. [...]

[...] The species do not compete with each other over a given territory, no matter how frequently that appears to be the case. [...]

[...] She said that after I’d left last night two nurses had taken care of her, and that while they were doing so, they unloaded numerous negative suggestions about many things. [...]

[...] She began to have trouble getting through the session, but finished by 3:30, doing better towards the end.

[...] I’d started roughing out a note this morning having to do with Seth’s statement in a session for Chapter 5 of Dreams. [...]

[...] However, after she realized what she was doing, Jane seemed to take my questions in stride, and even volunteered a lot of information I hadn’t asked for.

[...] This weaving things together to make them “fit” is only natural for one of my temperament, but I didn’t alter any of my original copy—that I’d have refused to do—and I kept intact those first spontaneous descriptions of the events attendant to Jane’s physical difficulties, as well as our deep-seated, sometimes wrenching feelings connected to them. [...] Instead, we want all of this preliminary material to show how we live daily—regardless of how well we may or may not do—with a generalized knowledge of, and belief in, the Seth material.

[...] Since I’ve completed the essays, all I have to do now is “refine” the session notes (and addenda) as I type the finished manuscript. [...]

Jane appreciates that the dates I’m always giving merely furnish a convenient framework for our material, but she’s hardly enamored of such precise methodology; she understands that it’s my way of doing things, realizes it’s very useful, and goes on from there. [...]

[...] Why do I have to leave my dear wife alone in the hospital each night, so that I feel like crying for her when I go to bed by myself in the hill house? [...]

[...] Something about my personal purposes—what I’m trying to do.... [...]

[...] If so—that in itself is quite legitimate and important; yet I feel, felt, Seth’s personality in a way super-straddle my own as I know it; and that is what the heroic dimensions would do....

[...] to finish my book, start up a definite dream schedule, that is, two or three scheduled long naps plus suggestions as I used to do for various kinds of out-of-bodies and dream states; a session a week as of now with the dream work perhaps making up for the second session we don’t have; and painting. [...]

[...] While she was thinking it over—at my urging, periodically—I went into my writing room to do some work on the intro for Dreams. [...] And she was out of it, but determined to do something. [...]

[...] It must have come to your attention that I have mentioned the nature of your love for each other many times—often when you would have preferred some other material —but I do again want to stress it as a vital ingredient in Ruburt’s recovery. [...]

At first, doing this will take all of your attention. You might do the exercise sitting quietly, or riding a bus or waiting for someone in an office. Some of you might be able to do the exercise while performing a more or less automatic series of actions — but do not try to carry it out while driving your car, for example.

[...] He is studying what he can do and not do with that particular focus. [...]

[...] The break in book dictation gave me time to begin attending class regularly, and I plan to continue doing so. [...]

[...] Jane left her trance state very easily, as she usually does “Well,” I asked her, “how do you feel now?”