“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Last Saturday, on the 23rd, I bought another pair of flea collars. Mitzi in the meantime had become thoroughly miserable, and I had determined that I was going to get a collar on her somehow. A friend had suggested using a towel to prevent her scratching. When I set out to do the job that afternoon, Jane suggested using catnip on the towel. After some coaxing on the back porch, I got Mitzi rolling around in the catnip on the towel, but only half succeeded in wrapping her up. I carried her squirming into the kitchen. Jane was doing the dishes. I knelt on the floor holding the cat, while Jane mentally tried to soothe her struggles — and I succeeded in getting the flea collar in place around her neck. Actually, Mitzi didn’t resist half as much as I’d feared she would. I’d thought I might totally alienate her this time if she fought too hard, but such was not the case. Jane said she’d sent Mitzi a stream of suggestions while I coaxed her into letting me put the collar on her. Everything worked well. I fed her a few times that afternoon, and succeeded in making friends okay. Mitzi hasn’t tried to get the collar off. It has a medicinal smell. Now, several days later — as I type this session on Wednesday night — she seems to feel much better.)

(About Seth’s reference to Mitzi: Last month both of our cats, Mitzi and Billy, came down with heavy cases of fleas — quite unusual for them even though they are often outside. I bought flea collars, and got one on Billy without trouble. When I tried to slip the other one over Mitzi’s head, though, I ran into a hornet’s nest of resistance, and Jane couldn’t help. Mitzi actively avoided us for many days before we could make friends anew with her.

(Pause.) With Ruburt: The new orientation is bringing results, and the results do appear effortlessly.² The affair with Mitzi (one of our cats) did involve action at other levels — a magical orientation. Ruburt is doing well. Have him remember that creative activity goes on within him all of the time, and he is often most active precisely when he is not aware of it. He is only aware of those moments when creative activity surges into his conscious awareness, and by then much of the “work” has already been done.

Then tonight she began writing “a fun thing” about our cats, Billy and Mitzi, who are brother and sister just 10 months old now: “In the beginning, Billy and Mitzi weren’t even kittens yet, but only bits of sky and cloud that wanted to be pussycats. [...] If it hadn’t been for Billy and Mitzi, cats might not exist at all….” The story sprang out of the hilarious way she’s taken to addressing Mitzi in regard to that cat’s gifts from heaven; I’ve been telling her that the affair would make a great children’s book.³ In the several pages she wrote this evening Jane presented her material quite humorously, in a manner reminiscent of, yet different from, her second Seven novel, The Further Education of Oversoul Seven, and her Emir.⁴

3. I’ve also suggested to Jane that she might be able to incorporate into her story about Billy and Mitzi the little poem below. [...]

[...] Our black-and-white cat, Mitzi, followed me. [...] When I went outside I made sure the porch door was latched so that Mitzi couldn’t get out; she sat silhouetted against the light coming from the kitchen window as she watched me walk down the driveway. [...] We’d had Mitzi spayed three weeks ago, when she was seven months old. [Our veterinarian has told us we have to wait until early next year before Mitzi’s littermate, Billy, can be neutered; he has some more growing to do first.] Seth’s recent material on animal consciousness has assuaged to some degree the guilt Jane and I feel at depriving the innocent cats of their reproductive roles. [...] Both porches are screened in down to the floor and furnish the only contacts Billy and Mitzi have with the outside environment.

[...] Much earlier in these preliminary notes I wrote that we’d had our cat Mitzi spayed almost three weeks ago [on August 27, to be exact], and that her littermate, Billy, is to be neutered early next year. [...] Earlier that day I’d made a wadded-up paper ball for Mitzi to play with. [...]

Observing the antics of your Mitzi gives me an excuse to begin the topic of the evening: animal consciousness.

(This afternoon I brought Mitzi home from the vet. [...] Every time she jumped up on a chair—or down—Jane and I winced, but Mitzi wasn’t concerned at all. [...]

[...] Indeed, our only problem was keeping him from constantly nosing after Mitzi, since she usually ran away from him each time he tried to investigate what must have been changed bodily odors of hers. [...]

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. [...]

[...] “Mitzi, running up and down the [cellar] stairs, is an example of the love of excitement and activity with which man and animals are innately endowed. [...]

[...] I did bring home some goodies for Billy and Mitzi. Mitzi is going through one of her affectionate stages these days.)

[...] I didn’t know where Billy’s littermate Mitzi was, though. [...]

[...] Purring and rubbing, Mitzi began to climb all over me as I tried to take notes. [...]

[...] Mitzi was still loving me up. [...]

We’d also noticed that as soon as Billy lost his appetite his littermate, Mitzi, became “just a little busybody,” as Jane put it, playing and running about the house and out on the porches, as if in her own way she was trying to compensate for Billy’s unaccustomed lack of activity.

And even as the session ended, I heard Mitzi out in the kitchen, playing with the wadded-up paper ball I’d made for her. [...]

[...] The cats did not represent your physical cats (Mitzi and Billy Two), but old comfortable beliefs about the nature of the spontaneous self connected with ideas he picked up from his mother, in which cats represented the worst aspects of human behavior and impulses: they fawned upon you, yet were evil, and could turn against you in a moment.

[...] Our next-door neighbor’s cat, Mitzi, had caught a field mouse. She played with it in the grass; with conflicting feelings I watched Mitzi, of whom I was very fond, block off each attempt of the terrified mouse to escape — until finally, having had her sport, she ate it….

(The Mitzi episode in turn reminded me of a series of little poems Jane wrote a few years ago. [...]

[...] At once Jane and I named them Billy Two and Mitzi: Billy Two, obviously, because he was also a tiger cat and bore a strong resemblance to the dead Billy; Mitzi because with her longer, black and white fur she at once reminded me of the Mitzi who’d belonged to the Butts’s next-door neighbors when I was a child. [...]

Mitzi, running up and down the stairs (as she was doing even now, chasing her wadded-up paper ball), is an example of the love of excitement and activity with which both man and animals are innately endowed. [...]

(Mitzi was still playing on the stairs.)

[...] She ate a good lunch, and I brought home scraps for our cats, Billy and Mitzi. [...]

[...] Billy and Mitzi had been at their ease in the living room also, on various chairs. [...]

[...] I laughed, telling her her behavior reminded me of our cats this morning, when it was so cold: Both Billy and Mitzi had barely stepped out onto the picnic table from the kitchen window, when they reversed themselves and hopped right back into the house. [...]

[...] I think there is a God of Mitzi, and a God of Billy, for each of our cats, and that each consciousness, regardless of its status, possesses this intimate connection with the universe….”

[...] In back of her and off to her right, our cats, Billy and Mitzi, were crouching in the light cast on the rug by one of our homemade lamps from its position on a low bookcase: An insect, seemingly mesmerized by the illumination, was flying round and round inside the bright cone of the lampshade. [...]

[...] Today I picked up the lawnmower from the dealer who services it; tomorrow I take the cats, Billy Two and Mitzi, to the vet for their first encounter with Doc Davidson. [...]

(As Jane spoke in trance, Mitzi jumped up into her lap. [...] Mitzi is our beloved cat.)

[...] Mitzi was chasing one of her paperfoil toys down the cellar stairs. …