“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] Wars are basically examples of mass suicide — embarked upon, however, with all of the battle’s paraphernalia, carried out through mass suggestion, and through the nation’s greatest resources, by men who are convinced that the universe is unsafe, that the self cannot be trusted, and that strangers are always hostile. [...]

[...] The mass deaths at Jonestown (in November 1978) took place during our long layoff from book dictation, but Seth began discussing the affair almost at once in our private material, as Jane described in her own portion of the opening notes for Session 831. Now she told me that Seth introduced the subject in that manner so that later she’d be more at ease dealing with it for Mass Events.

[...] You have meditations for disaster, beliefs that invite private and mass tragedies. [...]

[...] In death they fulfilled their purposes, making a mass statement. [...]

(Long pause at 10:20.) While in this book I will point out some of the unfortunate areas of private and mass experience, I will also provide some suggestions for effective solutions. [...] These are ancient dictums, but you must understand the ways in which your mass communication systems amplify both the “positive and the negative” issues.

“MASS MEDITATIONS.”

[...]

(Pause at 10:15.) Chapter 2: “ ‘Mass Meditations.’ (A one-minute pause.) ‘Health’ Plans for Disease. [...]

[...] Unfortunately, many of your public health programs, and commercial statements through the various media, provide you with mass meditations of a most deplorable kind. [...]

(This evening’s session was of average length for recent ones — lasting about an hour and a half, including break — but Seth devoted only the first short portion of it to Mass Events.)

Better social programming, greater job opportunities, health plans or urban projects, are often considered the means that will bring fulfillment “to the masses.” [...]

[...] I hope Seth comes through with more on the subject before he finishes Mass Events.)

(All of this began when at break this morning I asked Jane is she knew her true feelings about the Mass Events affair. [...] I personally resent a great deal the poor connotations that now have attached themselves to Mass Events; if the material has any validity, this has happened, and would be picked up by readers, even if counterbalanced by other good feelings. [...]

(Notes: Today Jane called Tam about the continuing hassles over the disclaimer for Mass Events, and learned several important things—among them that the legal department is now “drafting” a letter to us, explaining their position in the matter. [...]

[...] Jane has God of Jane and her book of poetry well in the works now, and both involve Mass Events, or material in it. [...]

[...] I’d just gotten nicely into that project when the disclaimer business started over Mass Events—it seems like months ago; actually, this may be the third month following the interruption, an incredible gap in creativity, for which I blame Prentice, no doubt about it. [...]

However, the sleeping portion of the species represents the brain’s unconscious activities in the body — particularly when you think of the motion of all of the species’ actions en masse in a given day. [...] If you think of a mass world brain — one entity — then it must wake and sleep in patterns. If you think of mass daily action as performed by one gigantic being, then all of those conscious actions have unconscious counterparts, and a great intercommunication of an inner nervous system must take place.

(As can be seen by Seth’s comments about the mass world mind-brain, he was all ready to launch into some new material. [...]

(Volume I of “Unknown” Reality came out in the fall of 1977 — and by then Seth was well into his latest, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, even though this book, Psyche, hadn’t yet been typed for publication. [...]

[...] Today she’s been “pretty well out of it,” while trying to help me get through the changes we want to make in the copy-edited Mass Events. [...]

(Softly amused:) As a matter of fact — in case you may think sometimes that I am not fully aware of your mores — I did indeed temper many of my remarks in Mass Events on several subjects, so that the book would not be found too objectionable in the context of your times. [...]

(We laughed again when we considered that Seth had tempered some of his material for Mass Events. [...]

[...] My stomach has been knotting up because I’m stewing over the reactions of those in charge at Prentice-Hall to Seth’s material in Mass Events about medical matters.

(I also learned during the discussion that Jane didn’t like the Seth book material being tied too closely to current events, as witness Mass Events and Jonestown and Three Mile Island. She reminded me also that even the title of Mass Events, when Seth had given it, had alarmed her, or at least aroused some sort of defensive mechanism in her—something I’d forgotten. On the other hand, I’d taken it for granted that the way Seth had used current events in Mass Events had been quite natural and extremely informative, offering a much broader view of human affairs. [...]

[...] This pattern was most pronounced while Seth was producing Mass Events, but without checking at the moment we remember similar if shorter layoffs while the previous books were being produced. [...] It did make for some tricky work writing notes for Mass Events, say, to explain these long periods in between certain sessions in the book.

(That topic ties in with my idea that I mentioned to her this afternoon, about it hardly being a coincidence that many events in our lives are coming to a head at the same time: Our deep upset about Jane’s condition; the trouble with the disclaimer idea for Mass Events; Prentice-Hall’s reorganization into the General Publishing Division, in which all of their narrative books will be phased out, thus eliminating any real need for Tam and his job; indeed, Tam is looking at other job offers even now. [...] And the irony of the situation is that, even though we detest the idea of the disclaimer for Mass Events, we see it as another means of protection in the public arena.... [...]

(I remarked to Jane today that if I’d known what I think I know now, today, a month ago we could have withdrawn Mass Events from Prentice-Hall, using the disclaimer dispute as an excuse, and delayed its publication for as long as we wanted to. [...] Now, it seems that we will have to deal with the public as far as Mass Events goes. [...]

[...] It was one hard mass, say, that has largely broken up, leaving you with only the two lumps that change sizes. They are knotted into masses, loose and disintegrating, but presently aggravated by strain as Ruburt’s weight on the walking table “bruises” those ligaments and muscles.

(Part of the session grew out of our recent reactions to the televised newscasts, as well as what we’ve been reading lately, concerning the mass suicide in Guyana, the shooting of the mayor of San Francisco, problems with inflation, the Middle East —any of what seemed to be an infinite number of ills the species has created for itself. [...]

(Here Seth refers to the mass suicides in Guyana, mentioned in the last session. [...]

The entire area, however, began to release with a large mass breakup after the soreness in Ruburt’s ribs, for the ribs “expanded,” relieving pressure on that arm. [...]

(In the notes preceding the last session I wrote that Jane was to call Tam about the date of publication for Mass Events and God of Jane. [...] The expected call came as I finished reading to Jane at breakfast time—but it wasn’t from Tam: Ethel Waters apologized for the fact that now Mass Events has been delayed until May 19, or just possibly only May 4. Mass Events and God of Jane are now due to be published in the same month. [...]

[...] To imagine that you or anyone else can lead large masses of persons astray is a highly erroneous conception. [...]

In a larger sense, for example, the Catholic Church was originally formed as a psychic organization, on psychic levels, by large groups of individuals, as the mass psyche formed the basis of Christianity. [...]

(10:22.) It was in Mass Events and God of Jane that the usual concept of the Sinful Self was most directly and vigorously addressed, and in which the value of individual impulses was stressed with consistent vigor. [...]

[...] You share, then, a mass dream experience as you share a mass waking world. [...]

In waking reality you obviously share a mass world experience as well as a physical world environment.

Individually and en masse, in the dream state you change the orientation of your consciousness, and deal with the birth of events which are only later time-structured or physically experienced.

[...] Here the mass shared environment is encountered as physical reality according to individual belief, love, and intent. [...]

[...] It represents the psychic, mass bank of potential, even as the planet provides a physical bank of potential. When there is an earthquake in another area of the world, the land mass in your own country is in one way or another affected. [...]

[...] All epidemics, however, are mass statements both biologically and psychically. They point to mass beliefs that have brought about certain physical conditions that are abhorrent at all levels. [...]

[...] This context is the result of personal and mass beliefs that are intertwined at all cultural levels, and so to that extent serve private and public purposes.

(Long pause.) Whenever the conditions of life are such that its quality is threatened, there will be such a mass statement. [...]

The mass, generally speaking, is a denseness formed by the varying intensities. [...] There is a ratio between the mass, which is usually considerable, and the weight, which is barely noticeable. [...]

The electromagnetic reality within the human organism has considerable mass, but the entire physical weight amounts to 3 to 6 ounces at the very most. Again, the mass is composed of electrical intensities. [...]

[...] These electromagnetic changes form their own kind of pattern, which has mass but no weight, or weight so slight as to be indistinguishable.

[...] They merely are interchanges and mass identity centers where highly intricate self-translations take place, and where various transformations occur.

[...] In it I wrote: “Ordinarily we think of mass as meaning the bulk and/or weight of an object. [...] An object’s mass is arrived at through dividing its weight by the acceleration caused by gravity.”

[...] The invisible particles that I am referring to, however, have the ability to transform themselves into mass,¹ or to divest themselves of it. [...]

[...] Sometimes they operate with mass and sometimes without it. [...]

The self that you are aware of represents only one “position” in which those invisible particles happen to intersect, gain mass, build up form. [...]

[...] There are also “vast psychological objects,” then, sweeping mass events, for example, in which whole countries might be involved. There are also mass natural events of varying degrees, as say, the flooding of large areas. [...]

[...] In those terms your thoughts mix and match with others in Framework 2, creating mass patterns that form the overall psychological basis behind world events. [...]

[...] Those whose experiences do not merge with nature’s in that regard will not be part of that mass event. [...]

(Even though he said he was through with Mass Events for the evening, the first subject Seth touched upon now — my dream of early yesterday morning — certainly was related to statements he’d made just before break, like this one: “When you enter time and physical life, you are already aware of its conditions.” [...]

[...] They are often attempts to rid the mass psyche of exploding, misdirected, poorly understood aggressions. As a physical organism tries to thrust out poisons that impede its health, so the mass psyche organism, symbolically speaking, attempts to rid itself of this now-poisonous overdeveloped aggression.

[...] The same thing happens with the mass psyche. [...]

These mass killings are your nation’s way of pinpointing an extremely dangerous inner trend, that otherwise could have far more severe worldwide consequences. [...]

[...] Individuals only gave them lip service, and yet individual and mass guilt grew because of the difference between ideals and behavior. [...]

If you are involved in any kind of mass happening, from a concert to an avalanche, you are aware on other levels of all of the actions leading to that specific participation. If buildings are constructed of bricks quite visible, so mass events are formed by many small, invisible happenings — each, however, fitting together quite precisely in a kind of psychological masonry in which each of you has a mental hand. This applies to mass conversions and to natural disasters alike.

[...] As he progressed with the session I began hoping that Seth meant it for Mass Events; finally I decided to insert it in the book even if he didn’t.

[...] This little affair is a typical example of how something good can get lost in the constantly growing mass of Seth material; even with our attempts at indexing, it’s very difficult to keep track of single paragraphs like this:

[...] We’re sorry to think that such material will be shelved indefinitely, but there’s no room for most of it in Mass Events, and there probably won’t be in future books either. [...]

[...] “What would happen to Mass Events in the meantime?”

[...] Jane believed me, finally, and in the course of the conversation I learned that she’s also been worrying about which of Seth’s recent sessions should be presented in Mass Events. [...]

[...] I intend to deal with them in depth in The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, where the background, particularly for Frameworks 1 and 2, has already been established.

[...] When Jeff called I was reading the last portion of the first session in Jane’s book, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events — for April 18, 1977, in connection with a note I’m doing for Dreams. [...]

(I took Mass Events to 330 with me. [...]

[...] I said I wanted information on whether she wanted to live or die — or whether she was trying to die her own natural death, in line with that excellent information in Mass Events. [...]

[...] I told her that Mass Events was still a terrific book. [...]

(All week we’ve been doing additional medical notes for the copy-edited manuscript of Mass Events. [...] We’ve even considered withdrawing Mass Events from publication, although Tam reassured Jane this morning that things would work out all right. [...] Now we have an idea for our own type of “disclaimer” for the frontmatter of Mass Events, based upon a very apt quote from Seth’s material that we found late in the book. [...]

Now: As I said before, also, when faced with the difficulty, the conventional, rational approach tells you to look at the problem, examine it thoroughly, project it into the future, and imagine its dire consequences — and so, faced with the idea of a disclaimer (for Mass Events), that is what you did to some extent, the two of you. [...]

[...] Seth’s amused reference was to manuscript page 457 in Mass Events. [...]

In other words, that entire framework is meant to give you a standardized, mass-produced version of reality. [...]

[...] The rational approach works quite well in certain situations, such as mass production of goods, or in certain kinds of scientific measurements — but all in all the rational method, as it is understood and used, does not work as an overall approach to life, or in the solving of problems that involve subjective rather than objective measurements or calculations.

In Mass Events, Seth speaks often about Frameworks 1 and 2. From my opening notes for Session 814, which Jane held on October 8, 1977 for that book:

Seth speaks in Session 826, held for Mass Events on March 8, 1978: