“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENTS, AND POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE MASS BEHAVIOR. RELIGIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC CULTS, AND PRIVATE PARANOIAS

(When he originally gave us the 812th session some 16 months ago, Seth told us it would “be part of a chapter later in the book….” [See my opening notes for Session 814.] The 812th session was held following an encounter Jane and I had with an unexpected visitor, although these excerpts aren’t personal at all. They fit in well with material in Mass Events, however — indeed, as soon as Seth confirmed Jane’s headings for Part 3 and Chapter 6, we knew that we’d found the place to present this material. We made our decision without consulting Seth, by the way.

What I want to emphasize here is the paranoid’s misinterpretation of innocuous personal or mass events, and to stress the ways in which physical events can be put together symbolically, so that from them a reality can be created that is almost part physical and part dream.

You must of course interpret events in a personal manner. You create them. Yet there is also a meeting ground of more or less shared physical encounters, a sense plateau that offers firm-enough footing for the agreement of a mass-shared world. With most mental aberrations, you are dealing with people whose private symbols are so heavily thrust over prime sense data that even those data sometimes become almost invisible. These individuals often use the physical world in the way that most people use the dream world, so that for them it is difficult to distinguish between a private and a publicly-shared reality.

What is the relationship between the individual and the gigantic mass motions of nature, of government, or even of religion? What about mass conversions? Mass hysteria? Mass healings, mass murder, and the individual? [...]

I have thus far stayed clear of many important and vital subjects, involving mass realities, because first of all the importance of the individual was to be stressed, and his power to form his private events. Only when the private nature of reality was emphasized sufficiently would I be ready to show how the magnification of individual reality combines and enlarges to form vast mass reactions — such as, say, the initiation of an obviously new historical and cultural period; the rise or overthrow of governments; the birth of a new religion that sweeps all others before it; mass conversions; mass murders in the form of wars; the sudden sweep of deadly epidemics; the scourge of earthquakes, floods, or other disasters; the inexplicable appearance of periods of great art or architecture or technology.

(I’ll preface the workaday notes for the first session of Mass Events with the following comments, just to briefly summarize the lifetime endeavor that my wife, Jane Roberts, and I are involved in with the Seth books. [...] These notes, then, are written shortly after Seth finished dictating Mass Events in August 1979. [...] And these notes will also free Jane to deal with other matters in her Introduction for Mass Events.

(One might say that Mass Events had its origins two Seth books ago — way back in Volume I of “Unknown” Reality, which Seth finished dictating in June 1974. At 10:14 in the 697th session for that work, he made this statement: “I will have more to say concerning illnesses, epidemics, and mass disorders in this book.”

[...] Jonestown was far away, remote in another land, I said to Jane, but the potential mass tragedy of Three Mile Island hovers at the edges of our personal worlds. [...] It would hardly be a coincidence, I added, that the mass events at Jonestown and Three Mile Island took place within less than six months of each other, and that they represented the two poles, or extremes, of mankind’s present main belief systems: religion and science.

(The last session we presented in Mass Events, the 841st, was held on March 14. [...]

(Certainly we hope that as he continues with Mass Events. [...]

[...] Then Jane proceeded to come through with much evocative material on dreams—our second reason for excerpting the session for Mass Events. [...]

Dictation: (Pause, one of many.) Now: To a certain extent (underlined), epidemics are the result of a mass suicide phenomenon on the parts of those involved. Biological, sociological, or even economic factors may be involved, in that for a variety of reasons, and at different levels, whole groups of individuals want to die at any given time — but in such a way that their individual deaths amount to a mass statement.

[...] Your private mental states en masse bring about the mass cultural stance of your civilization. [...]

[...] As I wrote in Note 2 for the first session of Mass Events, which Seth-Jane gave a week ago, we’re having the front porch of our hill house rebuilt. [...]

[...] Partially, then, such deaths are meant to make the survivors question the conditions (dash) — for unconsciously the species well knows there are reasons for such mass deaths that go beyond accepted beliefs.

[...] Another long period — 10 weeks this time — has passed following Seth’s last session for Mass Events. [...]

(First, during that 10-week break Seth-Jane held a series of 18 sessions — excellent ones — that once again did not constitute dictation for Mass Events. [...]

(So we’ve decided to simply go along with however Mass Events works out in terms of length, whether that length involves time or the number of sessions. [...]

[...] As we sat for tonight’s session Jane told me — somewhat to my surprise — that she felt Seth might give some material for Mass Events. [...]

(Jane’s poem can also serve as a symbol to show that she hasn’t held a session for Mass Events for 42 weeks, or since giving the 830th session last March; indeed, the summer, fall, and winter of 1978 have passed, and we’re into the next year [and a very cold and stormy one it is, so far]. [...] Those sessions, whether private or not, are of course more than double in number the 22 sessions Jane has given for Mass Events [not counting tonight’s]. [...]

[...] It’s a project that Jane herself never figured she’d do, but wanted done — and Sue, who was a class member, is talented psychically herself, has a newspaper and reporting background, and is ideally qualified for the job.¹ (Conversations, we think, is sure to be published before Mass Events, since Tam is supposed to have Sue’s manuscript in hand by January 1980, for publication in the fall of that year. Even assuming that Seth will finish dictating Mass Events later this year [1979], Jane and I will still have too much work to do on it for publication in 1980.

(“In an important fashion those private sessions parallel his material for Mass Events … material that did make us view the world and current events quite differently than we had earlier. [...] Since then, we’ve voiced our hopes often that Seth will go into the entire Jonestown affair in Mass Events; he can’t but help be aware of our wishes! [...]

(Although each of us had looked over Mass Events occasionally, still it seemed strange to hear Seth come through with new material for it after all of that time had passed, and equally strange to resume work on these notes. [...]

[...] At least from my viewpoint, each of nature’s rhythmic signs implied a continuity, an inevitability and security, that I’ve often felt is lacking in our all-too-human affairs—this, even though I wrote in Mass Events that Jane and I are aware, of course, of all the “good things” we humans have constructed in our mass reality. [...] In Mass Events Seth spent considerable time discussing the deeper and very similar meanings behind both of those belief systems—or cults, as he called them—and Jane and I hope he continues to do so in Dreams. Now it even seems to us that in Mass Events Seth began preparing us for Dreams long before Jane and he ever mentioned that work by name.

I wrote quite a bit in Mass Events about our publishing activities, just to show for the record how complicated certain aspects of the creative life can be as we juggled sessions, manuscripts, proofreading, and deadlines [to list a few of our endeavors]; we “worked” at any time of the day or night—which didn’t bother us at all. Since a lot of that kind of information was presented in Mass Events, Jane and I don’t intend for much of it in Dreams. [...] All of them are related to our work with the Seth material and Mass Events, however, and will, I’m sure, be reflected in Dreams. [...]

[...] In the meantime I want to tie together Dreams and the last Seth-Jane book, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Seth completed his work on Mass Events about a month ago [on August 15], and a week later I began finishing my notes for it. [...]

[...] First, let me update the creative activities Jane was involved in while Seth and she were finishing Mass Events.

[...] Naturally we’d been involved in a number of other projects at the same time, as I’ve indicated in my notes for Mass Events, yet for me especially the publication of the two volumes of “Unknown” Reality meant that we had arrived at a certain point in the development and presentation of the Seth material: In those books, through correlating them in a modest way with our previous works, I’d attempted to show the reader just what the three of us had managed to achieve before Seth led us into Psyche — and, as it developed, Mass Events.

(Tonight, Jane repeated an idea she’d started talking about before holding the 861st nonbook session just a week ago: She thinks Seth is in the process of finishing Mass Events. [...]

[...] A good portion of it is deleted, however, since Seth discussed other subjects before coming through with material for Mass Events at 9:09.)

Shortly we will begin to discuss the formation of a better kind of mass reality — a reality that can happen as more and more individuals begin to come in contact with the true nature of the self. [...]

While Seth was dictating The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, for example, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred; and had the affair turned into a disaster, our Chemung County would have been used to house refugees. [...] In this current book, however, he discusses in depth how our private realities merge into mass experience. For that reason he examines the public arena, and devotes a good deal of material to Three Mile Island and to the Jonestown mass suicides as well. [...]

[...] The glass of wine on the coffee table before me, the cigarettes, and the mass-produced table itself, are all reminders that my most adventuresome journeys into other realities are rooted, for now at least, in the physical world of events that we all share together.

While Seth was dictating Mass Events, for example, another of our cats (Billy) died. [...]

[...] In Mass Events, though, Seth goes further, maintaining that our private impulses are meant to provide the impetus for the development of our own abilities in a way that will also contribute to the best interests of the species and the natural world as well. [...]

(This flexibility also generates some challenges, however, for the great amount of material we’ve accumulated during the Mass Events hiatus gave us the urge to see what we could do about getting at least some of it published, so that others could benefit. [...] Jane and I considered combining that hypothetical book with Mass Events, but figured out that the resulting volume would almost surely be too long; longer even than Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, which in our opinion is bulky enough.

[...] Seth-Jane was certainly busy on all of those Monday and Saturday nights, though, and came through with another separate series of sessions after I inserted the 806th session into Mass Events — 17 of them this time, as compared to the 10 sessions delivered before the 806th was held. [...]

(Including the 806th session, those two blocks of material mean that in the last 20 weeks [or 4½ months], Seth has held but one session for Mass Events, and 28 on other subjects. [...]

(“That constant book stuff can get confining, though,” she said, then reminded me that Seth — with her obvious consent — had plunged into Mass Events only a couple of weeks after finishing Psyche. [...]

(According to the theory of relativity, no particle can be accelerated to the speed of light because its mass would become infinitely large as it approached light’s velocity; but this barrier is bypassed by stating that the particles in question have an imaginary proper mass — not rest mass — that is never less than the speed of light. [...]

[...] You simply would not perceive such particles as mass. [...]

(9:33.) You are not utterly unaware of the existence of some of these units, though you do not experience them as mass. [...]

[...] Some of your own feelings are propelled into a reality within such systems, adopting within that framework their own mass and form. [...]

[...] Jonestown was far away, remote in another land, I said to Jane, but the potential mass tragedy at Three Mile Island hovers at the edges of our personal worlds. [...] It would be hardly a coincidence, I added, that the mass events at Jonestown and Three Mile Island took place within less than six months of each other, and that they represented the two poles, or extremes, of mankind’s present main belief systems: religion and science.

The Christ drama is a case in point, where private and mass dreams were then projected outward into the historical context of time, and then reacted to in such a way that various people became exterior participants — but in a far larger mass dream that was then interpreted in the most literal of physical terms. [...]

(The last session we presented in Mass Events, the 841st, was held on March 14. [...]

(Certainly we hope that as he continues with Mass Events Seth will comment extensively on Three Mile Island, just as he’s in the process of doing about Jonestown. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) Experience itself is always plastic, and again, form is not dependent upon mass. Mass belongs to your camouflage system. [...]

Form adopts mass within the physical system, but form is not dependent upon it. Form can exist and does exist without mass and without physical matter. [...]

[...] You will be able therefore to dispense with many seemingly permanent mass images, but when you form them you will realize why and how.

[...] In these to some extent mass perceptions predominate.

Now, your physical universe is obviously composed of shared perceptions, and mass dreams would of course be of the same nature. Mass dreams are indeed a reality. [...]

[...] We have not touched upon it often, if at all, and it has to do with something Ruburt wondered about: Mass, or shared, dreams.

[...] Those conditions are at least partially the result of such mass dreams.

We will then discuss briefly, very briefly, mass or shared dreams.

[...] In the Preliminary Notes for the session I wrote that Seth had finished dictating Mass Events a month ago [in the 873rd session for August 15, to be exact], and that a week later I began finishing my own notes for the book. [...] [And wouldn’t you know it, I told Jane: My last paragraph for Mass Events is about the biannual migratory flights of the geese.]

[...] She also thought of giving me the night off, by way of celebrating a bit because I’ve finished the notes for Mass Events, but I told her I’d rather keep the sessions going as long as both of us feel like it. This afternoon I’d started my first tentative typing for Mass Events, and felt good about that.

[...] The notes (for Mass Events) as usual are superb. [...]

1. I also kept track of Jane’s progress as she wrote the Introduction for Mass Events. She finished that excellent piece of work seven months ago—a few days before she delivered the first formal session for the Preface to Dreams, the 881st, on September 25, 1979. [...]

[...] Jane plans to write an introduction for Mass Events next month, as summer draws to a close. [...] Now she reminded me that “a lot of God of Jane is written as my own response to stuff Seth gives in Mass Events.” [...]

(While I’m doing my own work on Mass Events we’ll hold the sessions for Seth’s Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, of course. [...] This would certainly be a luxury for me; in my notes for Mass Events I’ve shown how complicated affairs could get for Jane and me when I had to juggle several projects at once over long periods of time.

[...] Nevertheless, we knew that Seth would soon finish Mass Events; he’s been very neatly summing it up in recent sessions.

(10:36 P.M. And on that gentle note Seth brought Mass Events to a close. [...]

[...] Because mass events are concerned there is not a completely different year, of course, for each individual on the face of the planet—but there are literally an endless number of mass-shared worlds of 1980 “in the wings,” so to speak.

[...] But within the range of workable probabilities, private and mass choices, the people of the world are choosing their probable 1980s.

[...] This applies to the individual, and of course en masse the same applies to world events. [...]

[...] Fairy tales are indeed often—though not always—carriers of a kind of underground knowledge, as per your discussion about Cinderella (also see the 824th session for Mass Events), and the greatest fairy tales are always those in which the greatest expectations win out: The elements of the physical world that are unfortunate can be changed in the twinkling of an eye through great expectations.

(Just two months ago, I mentioned in the 857th session that Seth was continuing to dictate material for Mass Events on Wednesday evenings only. [...]

(Even though Seth didn’t call last Monday’s 867th session book dictation, then, Jane and I presented it because his material on viruses, disease, health, and biological experimentation obviously complemented his themes for Mass Events. [...]

[...] Some early chapters in our latest book (Mass Events)¹ throw light on reasons other than biological ones, for such circumstances.

1. See the first three sessions, 801–3, in Chapter 1 of Mass Events.

[...] This had erupted in a mass suicide, involving over 400 Americans, in the community of Jonestown in what was formerly British Guyana, in South America. [...]

(Actually, the affair is a perfect example of much of the material Seth has been going into in his latest book on the mass culture and mind. [...]

Now: the message is clear: fanaticism can lead to mass suicide and murder.

[...] You make your own lessons, so that these mass suicides and murders are an objective culmination, on those peoples’ part, of other, lesser psychological suicides committed on the part of millions who abdicate their personal responsibility in such a way.

You could imagine it for example as having a shape, but the shape would not be formed by matter, but by pattern masses; and all the multitudinous portions of it, the shapes on it, would be composed in terms of mass intensity. [...]

Thoughts have shape in terms of intensity mass, though you cannot see their shape; your outer senses do not perceive it. [...]

[...] In a way I cannot yet explain to you, these fields of intensity, while having mass in terms of intensity, do not have size.

[...] And for a reason too difficult now to explain, intensity, while having a certain sort of mass that is not matter, of course, does not have anything like your idea of size.