“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I have no idea, of course, what physical state I’d be in if the Seth phenomenon hadn’t appeared in my life (in late 1963), or if I hadn’t had those sessions to rely upon. And even in the most private-type sessions Seth always wound his material into more public areas, so that we have reams of unpublished (and very controversial) material dealing with the connections between one’s illness and other members of the family, community relationships, and with the very belief systems that underlie all of human activity. The kinds of beliefs we have about people bring about the kinds of illnesses we encounter. That is certainly one of Seth’s clearest messages. The individual is always in a state of change. To name and dignify a group of symptoms only brings them further into prominence, and offers them another framework for permanency.

(9:10.) Seth couldn’t lead my life for me, of course. He couldn’t lead other people’s lives for them (underlined), either—yet through the years I began to feel a greater and greater sense of responsibility for people with physical problems who wrote requiring Seth’s aid, or mine. Their needs—and my own—seemed to blot out the great hope that Seth could and did offer: the infusion of understanding and comprehension that could clear away the old belief patterns that held the individual in bounds.

Since the later 1960s, when my own troubles began, I stubbornly resisted medical assistance. If I had broken a leg I would have gone to a doctor to get it set. I felt that I could handle my particular kind of difficulty alone. (Long pause.) The symptoms were obvious enough: stiffness, slowing down of motion, and general lack of mobility. I could keep track easily enough, I thought, of my own progress as I worked directly with my body, without drugs to confuse the issue, and with no one else between me and the reality I had so cunningly created. How else could I really learn anything? The more middlemen that I entertained between my physical condition and my personal beliefs, the more confused I thought I’d be.

Even in God of Jane, which was published in 1981, Jane presented some relatively late material from Seth to show that he doesn’t independently communicate with others. The idea that he’d done so can be inspiring, however. In Chapter 20 of her book, see Session 876 for August 27, 1979. After explaining how a couple of women (among others) had recently claimed that he had been in contact with them, Seth stated: “Now, I did not communicate with those women—but their belief in me helped each of them use certain abilities.”