“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

If, as Jane dictated in her session for April 17, “We live in a world slung between our dearest hopes and greatest fears,” then surely it can be said that she’s chosen to delve into at least some of her “greatest fears.” Her present impaired condition is certainly generating powerful physical and psychic conflicts and challenges, and it’s my personal assessment that she’s dealing with these in her own unique way. That way is different from anybody else’s way. I think that if parts of her psyche “fear those fears,” other parts do not—or that at least they chose to confront them, and actually began doing so many years ago. Otherwise Jane’s “symptoms” couldn’t exist on any level. Nor am I implying ideas of predestination. The chances here for exploration are very extensive, of course. And I still implicitly believe the quotation Seth gave on April 16, 1981, over a year ago now: “In that larger picture there are no errors, for each action, pleasant or not, will in its fashion be redeemed, both in relation to itself and … to a larger picture that the conscious mind may not be able presently to perceive.”

Our attitudes, then, may point up our unconscious strengths and weaknesses when it comes to our acceptance and use, or nonuse, of at least portions of the Seth material. We may be more “prisoners,” or more deeply rooted in our times and concepts, than we like to admit. Consciously, however, Jane has never been overly enthusiastic about the idea of reincarnation to begin with. I’ve noted in other books that she seldom talks about it. She was brought up as a Roman Catholic, and more than passionately embraced that faith. Yet she was early subjected to the church’s rigid opposition to the whole idea of reincarnation because, strangely enough, even in her very youthful poetry she dealt with the forbidden subject (although not by name). Jane does believe that long ago she left behind the church’s dogmas on reincarnation. She doesn’t want to use the concept as a crutch; her caution stems from other beliefs, on which I’ll quote her shortly. (As for myself, while growing up I knew nothing of reincarnation beyond its name.) But we’ll be the first ones to agree that in certain Seth sessions, and in her very evocative poetry, Jane has encouraged her intuitive and creative selves to seriously discuss reincarnation. This is very evident in her second and latest book of poetry, If We Live Again: Or, Public Magic and Private Love, which was published in December of last year (1981). From the beginning of Section 3 of “I Am Alive Again”:

I am alive again,
remembering a thousand seasons,
arranging and rearranging
Aprils and Septembers
in my mind’s transparent vase
and placing it on the shelf
of my attention—
a miniature still life.

So if Jane undergoes illness in this reality, in another she does not—but in between those extremes she also explores all stages of her illness in a series of probable universes, flashing among them in “no time at all,” basically…. In some of those realitites I accompany her in various relationships. In others I am the one who becomes ill! In some I don’t even physically coexist with her. But as Seth has said, since I live with her in this probable reality from which I write, then my existence is always at least probable within any of her realities. The same applies to me from Jane’s standpoint. And although Seth hasn’t said so yet (that I remember), I also think that within the spontaneous plan of probable realities each of us—anyone, that is—explores all aspects of sexuality and parenthood at the same time.

“Each cell believes in a better tomorrow (quietly, with amusement). I am, I admit, personifying our cell here, but the statement has a firm truth. Furthermore, each cell contains within itself a belief and an understanding of its own inevitability. It knows it lives beyond its death, in other words….”