“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Some mountain climbers, when asked why they climb a certain peak, respond “because the mountain is there to be climbed,” so the natural approach, the magical approach, is to be used because it exists—and because it represents an open doorway into a world of reality that is always present, always at the base of all of your cultures and experience. Theoretically at least, the magical approach should be used because it represents the most harmonious method of life (underlined). It is a way of living that automatically enhances all of your abilities and accelerates your comprehensions.

The magical approach puts you in harmony with your own individual knowledge of the universe. It puts you in touch with the magical feeling of yourself that you had as a child, and that is familiar to you at levels usually beyond your physical knowledge of yourself. It is better then, say, to use the approach because you recognize it for what it is, than to use it specifically in order to get something that you want, however beneficial. There is no doubt at my level that use of the approach can clear up Ruburt’s difficulties naturally and easily. If it is used because you recognize its inherent rightness in yourself, its inherent “superior stance,” then it automatically puts you in a position of greater trust and faith. It opens your options, enlarges your vista of comprehension, so that the difficulties themselves are simply no longer as important—and vanish from your experience in, again, a more natural manner (all intently).

(With pauses:) Ruburt is truly beginning to understand that the Magical Approach is indeed the natural approach to life’s experience.

To some extent tonight’s relatively brief session should remove senses of urgency on your parts, or of self-criticism, that make you question when or how can you “learn to make” the magical approach work in any specific way—that is, why can you not learn to make the approach work in, say, helping Ruburt’s condition in a faster, more effective fashion?

[...] The other approach in many ways is completely opposed to the first one. Indeed it may not seem like an approach at all to you. Using this approach however, for ten days minimum, you drop the work you are doing. [...]

[...] (Pause at 10:20.) In the first approach you become completely immersed in the subject. In the second approach you become completely immersed in the idea of spontaneous play, which is true blessedness and creativity and there is no focus upon subject. Do you see the value and similarity of the approaches?

[...] (Pause.) There are two approaches, either of which would be highly beneficial. [...]

[...] Do not mix the approaches however. [...]

You have not really, either of you, been ready to drastically alter your orientations, but you are approaching that threshold. As Ruburt’s notes also mention, the “magical approach” means that you actually change your methods of dealing with problems, achieving goals, and satisfying means. [...] They are not esoteric methods, but you must be convinced that they are the natural methods by which man is meant to handle his problems and approach his challenges.

I want it understood that we are indeed dealing with two entirely different approaches to reality and to solving problems — methods we will here call the rational method and the magical one. 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.

The old beliefs, of course, and the rational approach, are everywhere reinforced, and so it does indeed have a great weight. The magical approach has far greater weight, if you use it and allow yourselves to operate in that fashion, for it has the weight of your basic natural orientation. The rational approach is the superimposed one. [...]

I use the word “methods” because you understand it, but actually we are speaking about an approach to life, a magical or natural approach to life that is man’s version of the animal’s natural instinctive behavior in the universe.

What we want is an altered approach to life itself, to one that follows the kind of natural approach to living that children unerringly possess, but to one that is also enriched with experience that a child does not possess. Ruburt is in the process of gaining such an approach. [...]

(9:35.) Now: in a manner of speaking, of course, the same (alteration of approach) applies to Ruburt’s condition. [...]

[...] As she researched Jane’s published and unpublished notes, journals, and books for The Magical Approach, Laurel learned that my wife had originally intended to call this book The Magical Approach: A Jane/Seth Book, and wrote of it as being “a psychic-naturalistic journal.” [...] Laurel pointed out a number of forceful passages Jane wrote on cultural acceptance in The God of Jane in 1980 — the same year in which she dictated The Magical Approach for Seth. [...]

The Magical Approach is a perfect example of a scientifically-unacceptable method of working with reality. Yet, The Magical Approach works. [...]

[...] Very understandable, then, that Jane, both for herself and for Seth, would write so eloquently about the disparity between her psychic abilities and “the currently scientifically-oriented blend of rationalism,” as Seth describes that quality earlier in this Session Six for The Magical Approach.

[...] The Magical Approach can help with both. [...]

The rational approach of course suits certain kinds of people better than others, even while it still carries its disadvantages. You have been living in an industrialized, scientific society, so that the benefits and the great disadvantages of the rational approach appear everywhere in the social and political world. Artists of any kind find such an approach the least friendly, for it directly contradicts the vast thrust of man’s creativity in several important areas. [...]

THE RATIONAL APPROACH.

[...]

The so-called rational approach to life, as it is practiced, is a highly pessimistic one, carrying along with it its own methods and “solutions” to problems, its own means of achieving ends and satisfying desires. Many people are so steeped in that approach to life that they become psychologically blind to any other kind of orientation. [...]

[...] Ruburt had also been thinking newly about the magical approach from ideas in your own notes² that he had just read. [...] As if to say, “Yes, the magical approach does indeed operate, and this is how.”

In other words, the magical approach and the so-called rational one are to be combined in a certain fashion for best results. [...] They may also, however, have quit their jobs, ignored impulses to find other work, or to take any rational approaches, and rely upon, say, the magical approach alone. [...]

[...]

[...] Laurel is helping greatly as we put The Magical Approach together. [...] She has also been working with and choosing the published and unpublished Seth sessions for The Magical Approach. [...]

[...] Jane has done excellent work interpreting the dreams; some of my nighttime excursions have resulted from these sessions on the magical approach.

(Long pause.) Now: We have been dealing with the magical approach, and let me gently remind the two of you that I said that you must be willing to change all the way from the old system of orientation to the new, if you want the new approach to work fully for you in your lives. That will, as it happens, include your approach to Prentice, of course.

[...] Ruburt mentioned those concerns, but not with the same kind of feelings that he would have, say, [last] Saturday — and when you realize that you are protected, your own intellects can be reassured enough through experience so that they do not feel the need to solve problems with the rational approach in instances where that approach is not feasible.

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. [...]

[...] You did at least question the approach. [...]

The magical approach takes it for granted that the human being is a united creature, fulfilling purposes in nature even as the animals do, whether or not those purposes are understood. (Pause.) The magical approach takes it for granted that each individual has a future, a fulfilling one, even though death may be tomorrow. The magical approach takes it for granted that the means for development are within each individual, and that fulfillment will happen naturally. Overall, that approach operates in your world. [...]

When you follow that so-called rational approach, however, you are bound to feel threatened, divorced from your body. [...] That rational approach goes against what I can only call life’s directives and life’s natural rhythms. [...]

[...] Your society, however, has indeed considered the rational approach to be the masculine-favored one — so Ruburt had an additional reason in that regard to be such a proponent of the rational approach. [...]

[...]

“Some mountain climbers, when asked why they climb a certain peak, respond: ‘Because the mountain is there to be climbed’—so the natural approach, the magical approach, is to be used because it exists, and because it represents an open doorway into a world of reality that is always present, always at the base of your cultures and experience. Theoretically at least, the magical approach should be used because it represents the most harmonious method of life (underlined). [...]

“The magical approach puts you in harmony with your own individual knowledge of the universe. [...] It is better, then, to use the approach because you recognize it for what it is than to use it specifically in order to get something that you want, however beneficial. (All very intently:) There is no doubt at my level that use of the approach can clear up Ruburt’s difficulties naturally and easily. [...]

Jane worked less and less as the holiday season approached, although on December 15 she gave her fourth private session; its most evocative subject matter—art and child psychology—is separate from our themes for Dreams. [...] Jane didn’t do any more on her manuscript for Magical Approach, nor anything about obtaining the medical help she’d mentioned on the first of December. [...]

[...] We talked about the many delays involved in our producing Mass Events and Dreams. She’s “felt good” about finishing Chapter 11 of Dreams a week ago, but has done little on Magical Approach recently, except to reread her rough work for the beginning of that book. (She began to slack off from Magical Approach early last October—two months ago—after working well on the first three chapters.) Tonight, I even speculated, admitted my fear, that in a way she’s embarked upon a long-range campaign to at least drastically reduce, if not eliminate, her communication with the world, for one sacrifice follows another in an order that can hardly be accidental, Jane revealed that she’d had similar thoughts.

“You have not really, either of you, been ready to drastically alter your orientations, but you are approaching that threshold. As Ruburt’s notes also mention, the ‘magical approach’ means that you actually change your methods of dealing with problems, achieving goals, and satisfying means. [...] They are not esoteric methods, but you must be convinced that they are the natural methods by which man is meant to handle his problems and approach his challenges.

“I use the word ‘methods’ because you understand it, but actually we are speaking about an approach to life, a magical or natural approach that is man’s version of the animal’s natural instinctive behavior in the universe. That approach does indeed fly in direct contradiction to the learned methods you have been taught.

[...] She put aside the first session for Chapter 9 of Dreams, and began Seth’s sessions on the magical approach to reality. [...] He also became aware of his limitations, physically speaking: There was not much, it seemed, he could do but work, so he took the rational approach—and it says that to solve the problem you worry about it.”

[...] So closely do those 13 sessions fit together that it’s most difficult to give excerpts.⁵ Seth’s magical-approach material represents one of his best efforts to help us, as well as others. [...] The title of the new book would be automatic: The Magical Approach to Reality: A Seth Book.

[...] It can handle several (pause) main world views at once, realizing that they are each methods of perceiving and approaching reality. To some degree historically speaking, that sort of situation operated in the past when — comparatively speaking, now — people realized that there was indeed an inner world of complexity and richness that could be approached in certain fashions, one that existed alongside with the physical world, so that the two intersected. Certain approaches worked in one area, and others worked in the inner reality.

Now: I want to begin by mentioning one of the most important and vital messages in your glass-door dream (of two days ago),¹for its truth applies to the magical approach as well.

That is, the dream was giving you an example of one of the main characteristics of what we will call the magical approach. [...]

(9:29.) The intellect could handle both approaches, operating with separate assumptions. [...]

And: “The magical approach takes it for granted that the human being is a united creature, fulfilling purposes in nature even as the animals do, whether or not those purposes are understood. The magical approach takes it for granted that each individual has a future, a fulfilling one, even though death may be tomorrow. The magical approach takes it for granted that the means for development are within each individual, and that fulfillment will happen naturally. Overall, that approach operates in your world. [...]

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. [...] For many months she considered doing a book on the magical approach (with my encouragement), and collected much information of her own for it. [...]

Among the subjects not discussed so far are Seth’s (and our own) ideas on reincarnation, counterparts, probable realities, and Frameworks 1 and 2. Jane briefly referred to Seth’s “magical approach” material in her dictation last month (see her own session of April 16, 1982, in Essay No. [...] So as counterpoint to her writings on the sinful self, I’ll be presenting two excerpts to hint at what Seth does mean by his magical approach.

Aside from any books that he may produce himself (and on whatever subjects), I’ve already made plans to put together a short volume featuring Seth’s discussions on the magical approach to reality. [...] She may also contribute an introduction to the book, showing how Seth’s and her own sinful-self information are related to the magical approach.

Ruburt has indeed made excellent strides, of late, in dealing with beliefs, and in switching orientation, so that he is beginning to learn to use the magical approach—which is, again, the natural one. [...]

In those states, while his body is resting, he is learning greater agility both physically and in natural manipulation of the magical approach in general. [...]

[...] Ruburt’s dream, by the way, also signaled him that he is now approaching what the Sumarians used to call “the time of festivals,” or a time of grace. [...]

My wife, Jane Roberts, dictated The Magical Approach for Seth, the “energy personality essence” she spoke for in a trance state, in 1980—but the pressures of Jane’s illness, and of our producing other books, kept us from publishing it quickly. [...]

[...] She’s worked as a researcher of Jane’s material for The Magical Approach — the book she has “most dreamed of working on.” [...]

[...] Sue is mentioned in The Magical Approach. [...]

[...] I’ve let answering any but immediate business mail go while Laurel and I worked on the manuscript for The Magical Approach.)

[...] For these the above approach is not necessary. One approach at one time does not negate the use of another approach at another time.

[...] Any other approach would rob the material of rich dimensions, for I am the proof in my own pudding, you see. [...]

In other words the repressed emotionalism will only carry you so far before you need to be refreshed in Ruburt’s reality; and through approaching his reality you also gain, in a different manner than you usually know it, refreshment from the natural world.

[...] This means that my approach to a given problem will be vastly different than the approach of another personality, even on my plane, who has different interests. [...]

[...] The doctor of whom I have spoken has a more fundamental approach, you see. [...]

(She said she knew from Seth that Seth had frightened Peg somewhat; that is, his approach had been one she was unaccustomed to, and it would have been better had he talked with Peg about Jesus, His love and healing power, etc.

Ruburt has always rather envied your approach. His, relatively speaking, is a fiery approach. [...]

[...] You are both coming along quite well now, but yes, you should cut Frank’s visits to every other week, for you need to concentrate now upon your own approaches. [...]

[...] You approached him because of your own quite conventional feelings, that because he was comparatively young he would be broadminded. [...]

(Long pause.) The entire magical approach is indeed at your command, and with your strong impetus now, you should be able to put it to use in far better fashion than you have before. [...]

[...] The finger that has so upset you both (Long pause at 8:37, leaning to her right, dozing....) I keep trying to explain the magical approach in new ways, to bring home its great effectiveness. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) Throughout the centuries there have been various ceremonies, rituals and so forth, meant to activate the magical approach. [...]

[...] To a lesser extent this applies to your own approach also. [...] Let us look then at the third area, for at one time you both also to some extent imagined impediments, changed your approach, and found new results. [...]

[...] He did not see, however, the difference in his approach to those concerns—and in that difference lies the difference in results.

[...] In other words, his approach to these two main concerns is quite different—one opposite the other.

You changed your approaches indirectly, and Ruburt was always stronger in the financial regard than you, as far as his beliefs that artistic creations could bring financial rewards. [...]