“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Now Jane agreed with all of this at the time, but later while painting I wondered whether I’d been too vehement in what I’d said. [...] Jane further echoed my concern when she said later that she didn’t know what suggestions to give herself when she went to the john, and later got onto the bed. Yet I felt that I was on to something good, and asked Jane pretty definitely to see that Seth discussed the subject tonight. [...]

(“The insight also reminds me of one of my questions for Seth: I plan to ask him for hints about what sort of ideas he would advance if he’s given the freedom to do so by Jane. [...] Jane and me, Prentice-Hall, the world, critics, the post office?”

(Actually it’s Friday night as I finish this typing, and I read the untyped portions of the session to Jane each morning as I had it in progress. [...] I mentioned it because she discussed the question of volition in God of Jane; she thought the insight made sense.)

[...] I’m starting these notes in advance of tonight’s session without being really sure that Jane will hold one—although I think she plans to. [...]

[...] And when you look at me and want Seth to come through, and when you don’t want to know what Jane says but you want to know what Seth says, you are denying your own reality. [...] Because you’re saying, well, Jane is just an individual, and she can’t know but Seth knows, and I’m an individual and I don’t know, but Seth knows. [...]

([Jane:] “I think if we leave our experiences at face value, we’re not learning all we can. [...]

[...] He wanted to speak for a personality like Joel speaks for a personality, or Jane does, or he wanted to get information in a given particular way. [...]

([Jane:]) “Which is denial.”

(For a time we held sessions in the back of our apartment to avoid such interruptions, but Jane prefers them held in the large front room. The interruption tonight was not any kind of a shock to Jane; she left the trance state easily, although I noticed her eyes were very dark when they first opened. It was Jane who answered the door however. [...]

[...] The last word above, which I took to be shoe, was not clearly pronounced by Jane. I asked for a repetition of the word, whereupon Jane, her eyes still closed, pointed at me rather emphatically.)

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. [...] Jane’s slower and quiet manner had made me more aware of the storm and I had wondered whether it would bother her, but she said she had been aware of nothing while speaking.

(See page 241 of the last session, the 227th, for the data on the time schedule by which Jane produced the book of poetry. It will be noted that on the four days, January 21, 24, 25, 26, Jane wrote 52 poems in the course of from 16-18 1/2 hours.

[...] Jane’s middle finger on her left hand continues to slowly mend itself, and the blueness in the little finger on the same hand has gotten no darker. [...] Yesterday—Sunday evening, Dr. Kardon called to ask how Jane was, and to tell us she’d be out of town for a week. I didn’t mention the little finger, in line with Seth’s and Jane’s own ideas as given recently. [...] Jane has been on the 100 mcg dosage only for two weeks.

[...] Before the session I’d told Jane that I’d always felt that in our relationship my own contributions were doomed to fall short of what she wanted and expected from me —that I’d always felt I couldn’t give all she needed from a marriage partner. Those early feelings are still true to me, and now they’re wound up with my more recent feelings that it seems to be up to me to struggle to try to save Jane from herself. [...] One small example: As usual, if it wasn’t for my own demands and suggestions, this session wouldn’t even exist—whereas to my way of thinking Jane should have demanded to have it on her own. [...]

(After supper Jane said she felt “loads of material from Seth” about our discussion this afternoon, and that it would take up not one but many sessions. [...] “It’s weird,” Jane said, “really weird....I was aware of those lapses again as soon as I said I’d have a session, and I wasn’t before. [...]

(This afternoon Jane told me that she felt “panicky.” [...]

(Last Thursday, April 15, as we were driving about Elmira on errands, Jane mentioned to me that she missed trying psychological time. [...] Jane then received the information, she believes from Seth, to the effect that she might soon be allowed to resume psy-time, but only for fifteen-minute periods, and during the evening when I would be home with her.

(Today Jane received word from F. Fell, Inc., that they would like to schedule her book, Hidden Powers Within You; How to Make ESP Work, for publication in the spring of 1966. Jane has the book partially written. [...]

[...] Jane was fully dissociated. [...] Jane resumed in the same manner at 9:58.)

[...] A woman was mentioned as influencing a sale; Jane’s editor, Mara Thomases, is a woman. [...]

[...] Hal and I both had noticed almost a marked improvement in Jane’s condition, especially in her hands, knees and feet. [...] Jane too is quite pleased. [...] My idea is that if Jane will continue the vitamin therapy—a term I don’t particularly like—that in a couple of months she might achieve some good results, for as I explained to her, I think the key to curing the decubiti lies in increased mobility, especially in the knees. [...]

(Today Jane and I were very busy—so busy we were quite late with the session. [...] Hal demonstrated his massage techniques on me as I lay on the couch, so that I’d know better how to help Jane. [...]

[...] I’d gotten her prescription for E-Mycin refilled as soon as Jane’s nurse had pointed out the reinfection, but Jane hasn’t been taking it faithfully, three times a day, as she should. [...]

[...] Jane sat half-dozing at the card table, and I tried to focus on reading some of last week’s mail. [...]

(In the opening notes for last Wednesday’s session I described how Jane had started her new book, Psychic Politics, that same day while she had been immersed in a state of high creativity; I added that at the same time she’d become aware of a slightly different Jane in a psychic library from which, it seemed, she was to get much of the material for Politics. Jane visited her library several times on Thursday, without actually transcribing anything from it. [...]

(At noontime that Friday, then, Jane told me that she was going into another altered or enhanced state of consciousness. [...] Even though her state of awareness was still growing, Jane decided that she wanted to ride downtown with me after we’d finished eating; I planned to pick up one of our typewriters at a repair shop, then buy some groceries. [...]

(We searched the glove compartment of the car for paper and a pencil or pen, so that Jane could make notes about some of her perceptual changes — but to my amazement we could find nothing to use in spite of our efforts to keep writing tools in that very place. Among other papers I finally turned up half a sheet of blank paper, and gave Jane the pen I usually used to cross out items on the grocery list. [...]

2. In Chapter 2 for Psychic Politics Jane presents not only her library material, but quotations from the 715th session for “Unknown” Reality itself. [...] By late November, in other words, Jane had signed a contract with Prentice-Hall for the publication of Politics in 1976, and had also had time to do considerable work on its early chapters. [...]

(Shortly before session time Jane told me she had the thought that dreams and astral travel, or the astral body, were somehow connected. [...] Jane began speaking while sitting down and with her eyes closed. [...]

(Jane said she was even conscious of the sound my pen made on the paper as I wrote. [...] Ordinarily Jane has excellent hearing; she must have super acuity in the trance state.

[...] I relayed the information to Jane at noon, and suggested she decide whether she wanted to hold a session with the idea that it might be interrupted.

(Jane’s first thought was to skip the session, but as the party downstairs got under way in a quiet fashion, and we were not called upon as 9 PM approached, she decided to hold it as usual.

(In the 84th session, September 2, Volume 2, pages 329 and 331, Seth stated that Jane was blocking “a picture of Philip,” Philip being Seth’s name for John’s entity. Without much thought Jane and I had taken the data given on this instance to refer also to John’s September 2 date, since by coincidence the 84th session also fell due on September 2. This evening John said that he’d had no “disagreement in a kitchen, involving two women and a man, with a child close by,” on September 2. So now we wonder whether the above incident is precognition, with the actual date being blocked by Jane, or whether Jane is just plain in error.)

[...] Jane was dissociated to some degree. The music from across the way had stopped sometime during the last delivery, but Jane said the traffic noise continued to bother her. [...] Jane said she would try to avoid this pitfall in the future.

[...] Both of these items, Jane had read recently, had been shown to be useful in psychic states by adding negative ions to the air. [...]

[...] Jane was not nervous before the session. [...]

(Jane paused by the windows, looking down the rather large room to the door. [...] Neither of them had attended a session before, but Jane had made arrangements that they were to enter without knocking if they arrived after 9 PM.

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. [...] Jane resumed in the same vigorous and strong-voiced manner at 9:32.)

(See the 43rd session, page 4. Jane now pointed to a painting I had finished a couple of years ago; it hung over our divan, above the couch. I had used Jane as a model, and in the painting she stood by a river, beneath trees; across the river could be glimpsed a village.)

(This morning Jane invited Dr. and Mary Piper to witness the session tonight. [...]

(In the 6th session, however, I made quite an intuitive remark: I told Jane I had the notion that Ruburt had once been Joseph. It took me a while to recognize that this had simply been my way of groping toward the realization that Seth, Jane, and I did have a strong psychic relationship. Though we’d started these sessions with the Ouija board, Jane had made such a rapid progression that she was already giving some material vocally. [...]

(Seth’s material on counterparts did make us wonder about Jane’s and his earlier uses of the word and its concepts. Checking backward through past sessions and Jane’s poetry, I soon learned that her intuitive grasp of the term had always been truer than mine, for I’d carried the idea that “counterpart” implied a status of opposites rather than the complementary one it really does. [...]

[...] In Chapter 1 of The Seth Material Jane described how we began these sessions [on December 2, 1963] through our use of the Ouija board. [...] Just before Seth announced his presence to us in that same session, Frank Withers spelled out a remark through the board that meant little to Jane and me at the time: “One whole entity may need several manifestations, even at simultaneous so-called times.”

[...] At the time — and for a long while afterward — his employment of the word meant little, if anything, to Jane and me. The newly begun sessions already contained a number of unfamiliar terms and ideas: In the 4th session three days earlier, for instance, Seth had just given us our entity names [Ruburt for Jane, Joseph for me], and touched upon the psychic links connecting the three of us. [...]

[...] By the 63rd session he was explaining his state as energy not materialized into mass; this after telling us in the 54th session that Jane, Seth and I had been part of the same entity once; he could not tell us this earlier, he said, because Jane and I would have immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was part of Jane’s subconscious mind.

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. [...] The candle flame had shown no noticeable change of importance during the session; Jane said she had not been aware of the flame one way or another all evening. [...] Before the session Jane had been tired; she now felt fine. [...]

(Today Jane read all day, finishing up J. B. Priestley’s book, Man and Time, which she liked very much. [...] After supper this evening Jane told me she thought Seth had come through twice, briefly, as she went about her daily chores before the session. [...]

[...] In it my mother discusses the visit Jane and I were due to make to my parents on Sunday, December 5th. [...] My mother then canceled this visit of ours by telephone, and Jane and I then journeyed to visit my parents in Sayre, PA, on the following Sunday, December 12. [...]

(Jane expressed a desire to see the work in place, so when I picked her up at the gallery we stopped off at the club to see it, where Jane made the impromptu remark that she wanted Seth to call off the session, so we could attend the opening of the club this evening.

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. [...] Jane also said she felt somewhat put out, or “pulled up short” at the short session, although earlier this evening she had expressed the wish for either a short session, or none at all, so we could attend the opening of the supper club operated by our landlord.)

(Jane had no idea of the material due, as session time approached. [...]

(Jane began dictation in a rather fast way, in a voice a little deeper and heavier than usual. [...]

[...] In a way, and in those terms, this also applies in Jane’s case when she contacts Seth, even on the “psychological bridge” those two have constructed between them: When Seth tells us that his last physical life was in Denmark in the 1600s, then Jane and I represent future physical selves of his. [...] (This time, see Appendix 18 for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality.) Yet we are all of us different now: “Ruburt (Jane) is not myself now, in his present life. [...]

[...] Consciously, however, Jane has never been overly enthusiastic about the idea of reincarnation to begin with. [...] Jane does believe that long ago she left behind the church’s dogmas on reincarnation. [...] (As for myself, while growing up I knew nothing of reincarnation beyond its name.) But we’ll be the first ones to agree that in certain Seth sessions, and in her very evocative poetry, Jane has encouraged her intuitive and creative selves to seriously discuss reincarnation. [...]

We’ve presented lengthy quotations from Seth on his Framework 1 and Framework 2 material both in his Mass Events and in Jane’s God of Jane. His discussions on the subject are an excellent example of how a very creative idea, capable of helping many people, can arise from an attempt to deal with a personal situation—for on September 17, 1977, Seth introduced his Frameworks 1 and 2 concept in a private session designed to help Jane contend with her physical symptoms.

Early in this essay (which I began on May 7, 1982), I mentioned the series of sessions Seth gave in 1980 on his magical approach to reality, and the different approaches Jane and I took toward doing books on the subject. [...] Then when Seth and Jane both came through with material on her sinful self (see Essay No. [...] Jane didn’t return to work on Dreams until July 1981, when the two blocks of sinful-self material had run their courses. [...]

(I did not know the contents of the envelope, nor of course did Jane. [...] After the session tonight Jane confirmed she had forgotten that I had the envelope. Even when the Wilburs arrived for the session tonight, Jane did not remember it.

[...] I did not notice, being busy writing, but Don Wilbur said the first knock really jolted Jane out of her trance, or at least the deeper stages of it, even though she continued speaking. Later Jane told me she had been very well dissociated. [...]

[...] Jane was out as usual, she said, and the cats hadn’t particularly bothered her. [...] Jane’s pace had been good, her voice fairly strong, her eyes open often. [...]

[...] The night seemed especially noisy, and Jane began speaking from the first in a heavier voice. [...]

[...] I didn’t feel like hanging around the house until 9:45 — the service was at 10:00 — so I told Margaret Bumbalo I’d run down to the hospital to see Jane first, then walk over. Jane was better, surprised to see me, trying to decide whether to go to hydro [she didn’t].

[...] Patty called me at noon and said Jane wanted me to come to 330 early if I could. [...] Jane said she’d had a much better night than usual, though.

[...] I wanted to show it to Jane.

(It was all part of the ritual, Jane said later as we went over the booklet together in 330. [...]

[...] Jane reported that she was quite a bit more dissociated than usual for a first delivery. [...] Bill Gallagher said he agreed in general with what Jane was saying about his case, as far as he could follow the involved sentences in dictation.)

[...] Jane was well dissociated again. [...] Bill Gallagher said he thought he had noticed a change in Jane’s features, at least in terms of expression, during this last delivery. [...]

[...] Jane was again well dissociated. Once again, Bill Gallagher reiterated that he thought he detected a change in Jane’s features, particularly about the mouth.)

(For the record: On June 1,1965 I mailed to Dr. G. H. Instream a letter explaining something of Jane’s ability and the Seth material, plus a list of the inner senses, a list of the basic laws of the universe, and copies of sessions 138, 141, 142, 149, 153 and 154. [...]

(Today Jane received an answer to her letter of March 11/64 to the American Society for Psychical Research. [...] Jane and I both felt that Seth would not comply, at least at this time. [...]

[...] Jane said she was more dissociated this time. [...] At times I have been aware of a feeling very similar to the pleasant, easygoing state I first became acquainted with when Jane hypnotized me.

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. [...] Seth’s reference to open windows came because Jane had opened a window during last break when the room got stuffy from cigarette smoke. [...]

(Our doctor friend, last week, had half-jokingly suggested Jane and I see what Seth would have to say about the market. Jane and I were so sure Seth would turn thumbs down on the idea that we had not asked the question.)

(The psychic reading was correct, I think, in saying that Jane had the creative potential to create a spectacular success, and recover. [...] I still think Jane carries within her her own solutions. [...] I told Jane part of that value lay in the fact that we waited until now to play it, when she has decided to try to uncover her own causes and effects. [...]

(Jane was okay, although as I got to 330, three nurses were trying to insert a new catheter. Jane had had spasms. [...]

[...] He said Jane could die, but obviously she didn’t. He was correct in mentioning anemia, incorrect about liver and spleen problems, as far as we know. [...] The reading offered no specific insights into the causes behind Jane’s troubles, although this would be difficult in such a short time span.

(Jane called last night. [...]

(“Walter wants to be ‘a great psychic teacher’ like me or Cayce,” Jane said as we waited for Seth to come through. He therefore expressed an attitude typical of many visitors or those who write—attitudes that really bother Jane. [...] Jane continued, “but at the same time I enjoyed talking to him. [...] In this case at least, then, Jane had reacted positively to someone drawn to her by a public aspect of her abilities.

[...] I went back to working on taxes while Jane talked to him, and at the same time found myself wondering whether his unexpected visit might symbolize one of the very facets of Jane’s dilemma about privacy versus the public life—at least as I understand it: Her vulnerability and availability to anyone who chooses to come here. [...] Walter, for example, told us that when he woke up this morning he decided to go see Jane Roberts—so he just came. [...]

(Jane had remarked the other day that she thought Seth would talk about her reaction to class and the mail—topics discussed in the opening notes for the last session. [...] Yet Jane had said recently that such thoughts had come to her. [...]

[...] Simply that the whole hassle Jane and I are involved in first showed itself—clearly—when we met with Instream in Oswego, and encountered the disbelieving young nameless psychologist. I found myself reviving Jane’s hesitation on the jungle gym at the park on the lake at Rochester; we’d stopped there on our way home from Oswego, and brother Dick had taken us to the lake.