“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“Let my soul find shelter elsewhere,” Jane said, by way of a quick translation when I played the tape for her a few minutes later. It was midafternoon on a cold day. She sat bundled up in her chair in the living room, her head down as she listened. I asked her for more on the song’s interpretation, but she just repeated that line. She roused herself enough to stubbornly maintain that she’d give me more later. I knew at once that the tape’s contents were so revealing of her feelings about her illness, so disturbing and frightening, that she couldn’t bring herself to explore those deep emotions at that time. I also knew that my wife feared the effect of the message upon me—for what could the phrase she’d already given me mean, except that her soul had at least considered the possibility of leaving her physical body, perhaps to find shelter in a nonphysical realm? I accepted her reactions, and could only wait in some frustration as I began work on other parts of this essay.

Lest I give an inaccurate picture of my wife, however, let me add that she combines instances of that seeming intransigence with a profound intuitive innocence before nature (and thus All That Is), and with a great literal acceptance of nature’s manifestations and of her own being and creations within that framework. Although she’s not entirely in agreement with me on this point, I think that essentially Jane is a mystic—not an easy thing to be in our extroverted, materialistic society, for it represents a way of life that’s little understood these days. It’s a role she’s chosen for many reasons. Mysticism is still overwhelmingly regarded as a profoundly religious expression, and one that’s hardly practical, but in my opinion neither of those situations applies to Jane. Her “mystical way” is reinforced by a strongly secretive characteristic that’s usually belied by her seemingly outgoing character and behavior. It took me a long time to realize this. I also had to learn that her literal cast of mind grows directly out of her mysticism, and that because it does, she can be quite impulsive. There’s nothing halfway about Jane. She’s intensely loyal. She’s a very perceptive person with many abilities, a fine intelligence, and an excellent critical sense. Whatever reservations she shows—her conscious inhibition of impulses, for example—are learned devices that are literally protective in nature. I’ve certainly found her particular combination of attributes to be unique, and I don’t think she’d be able to express the Seth material as she does without them. Throughout these essays I hope to add many insights into her character. For now, though, I present what I have to work with from the saddest, most mournful Sumari song she’s ever created and sung. The tape goes into our files, although I’d love to know what she said on the rest of it….

At first she didn’t know. The question followed the little talk we’d had after supper. My back hurt somewhat. I’d finally decided that the ache wasn’t because I’d been lifting her physically—all 82 pounds of her—but because of the medical bills we’d received today. (That had been my somewhat amused speculation to begin with.) We’ve gotten a flurry—a small blizzard—of bills from doctors during the last few days.

I should note, by the way, that her bedsores weren’t infected when she went into the hospital, but were less than a week later. How come? “It’s staph,” several of the nurses told us. A sign warning of infection was put on the door of 3B9, Jane’s room, and stayed there until she went home. “If the infection in that ulcer on your coccyx reaches the bone, it means at least a six-week stay in the hospital,” exclaimed Jane’s principal doctor, Rita Mandali (not her real name). Twice-daily treatments with hydrogen peroxide and a sulfadiazine cream were started. And I began to read up on how many kinds of staphylococcus bacteria alone there are, and indeed how common infections are in hospitals, since by their very nature those institutions are far from being the cleanest in town….

Jane’s hearing is much improved after treatment with decongestants and a pair of minor operations in which tiny drainage tubes were inserted through her eardrums—the procedure is called surery—to relieve internal blockage. Jane’s thyroid gland, Dr. Mandali finally told her, has simply ceased functioning, so the doctor has begun a program of cautiously rejuvenating my wife’s endocrine system, and thus all of her bodily processes, with a synthetic thyroid hormone in pill form (a low 50 micrograms to start). Jane is to take these pills for the rest of her life. At least that’s the current prognosis. Her double vision is not as severe and is supposed to keep improving as the hormone takes effect. Dr. Mandali has prescribed drops to keep Jane’s eyes lubricated, and a liquid salicylate medication (as a substitute for aspirin) to control joint pain and inflammation. Both of these products are taken four times a day. The increased glandular activity is also expected to have some beneficial effects upon Jane’s arthritis, and possibly upon her anemia (a condition that often accompanies arthritis). I asked that she be tested for food allergies, since I’d read that reactions to various foods and additives can trigger arthritis, but Dr. Mandali said that “if Jane is allergic she (Jane) would know it”—a position I came to most thoroughly disagree with. But usually, I thought, the trouble with having something diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis is that not only do you have it when you go into the hospital, but when you leave it. Such is the state of the art of medicine in this case, unfortunately.

Because of her much-reduced thyroid activity, Jane often dozes or even sleeps in her chair. She’d very gradually started doing this before entering the hospital, but any physical causes behind her behavior had been unsuspected by us then. I only saw that she could use the rest, since she obviously didn’t feel well generally—but I also thought she was waiting for one of her characteristic surges of creative energy before digging into her next book (of which she always has several going). Our agreement was that in the meantime she was to start checking the sessions and my notes for Dreams; then I was to type the final manuscript. Jane never reached her goal, however. Instead she napped or drifted—even as she does now—while intermittently reading and rereading our material for Dreams without ever doing anything with it.

Seth uses the term “value fulfillment,” as in the title of this book, to imply life’s greater values and characteristics—that is, we are alive not only to continue, to insure life’s existence, but to add to the very quality of life itself.

We do not just receive the torch of life and pass it on as one Olympic runner does to another, but we each add to that living torch or flame a power, a meaning, a quality that is uniquely our own. We do this as individuals, as members of the family, the community, and members of the species. Whenever that flame shows signs of dimming, of losing rather than gaining potential energy and desire, then danger signals appear everywhere. They show up as wars and social disorders on national scales, and as household crises, as illnesses (pause), as calamities on personal levels as well.

(7:20.) It is impossible in our time scheme to intellectually know our own potentials without trying them out, without testing them against the world’s edges. We must activate our impulses and desires, try out our abilities, seek out our strengths by joyfully advancing into the given world of physical energy, physical time and space. In the development of each individual we act and reenact the startling events that brought our own universe into existence. The universe was not created in some dim past, but is newly recreated by our own thoughts, dreams, and desires—so that reality happens at all possible levels at once. And in that living endeavor we each play our part.

(7:35.) As I write this Introduction I am recovering from a group of illnesses, recuperating from a month’s stay in the hospital, and now I’m trying to see where my personal situation fits into Seth’s larger views. That is, the individual is not just a side issue in what people usually call the evolutionary process—but he or she is the entire issue, without which there would be no species, no survival, no exquisite web of genetic cooperation to produce living creatures of any kind whatsoever.

“Well, I don’t know—maybe that’s all I can do tonight,” Jane finally said, with a bit of an embarrassed grin. “It’s hard for me to get into the next part….” But then at 7:45:)

(Pause at 8:05.) My 82 pounds of flesh were hauled, dragged, pulled, and stretched by good-natured but often impatient strangers—nurses and orderlies and aides—and the most private of my physical processes became a matter of public record. What a shocker!

(8:21.) In this book, Seth does discuss to some degree the nature of certain illnesses as they apply to individual life and genetic survival. And there I lay in the hospital for a full month, with physical survival uppermost in my mind—hardly a coincidence. They told me that my thyroid gland was very underactive, and that I had arthritis. They X-rayed my hands but not my knees. One of the blood tests showed that I was slightly anemic. But other tests and X-rays revealed that I had sound lungs—in spite of my smoking—a good heart and stomach and other organs. I laughed.