“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

When in the earlier days of our marriage I used to tell her that she had her “symptoms” regardless of what I thought or wanted, she would deny it. Yet I thought she did, and so I was driven to grope for larger understandings. I had to learn that if I shared a marriage in which my wife had developed a chronic illness, then certain portions of me had also participated in that joint creation. Eventually nothing made sense to me otherwise. I believe implicitly now that each one of us does create our own reality. “Interactions with others do occur, of course,” Seth told us long ago, “yet there are none that you do not accept or draw to you by your thoughts, attitudes, or emotions.” (In Chapter 1 of The Nature of Personal Reality, see the 613th session, for September 11, 1972.) And Jane and I are still exploring, still searching—together—for the factors within those larger frameworks of existence which make qualities like illness possible and understandable.

But that simple statement also means that our dream work relative to Jane’s challenges has often been powerfully abetted by Seth in many of the 347 completely private and 159 partially private sessions he’s given us since November 1965. Much of the fascinating and informative material in which Seth discussed various aspects of Jane’s symptoms is generalized enough for publication, and could help others, but because of its very intense personal connotations it’s a project we haven’t started yet. (Not that I haven’t presented excerpts from a few of those sessions in other Seth books.)

There must be a vast amount of pertinent dream information ready for the tapping, however, and maybe with Seth’s help Jane and I can eventually learn more about the undoubtedly therapeutic roles our joint and individual dreams have played as we contended with the challenges posed by her physical difficulties. Many questions arise: Even granting our personal reservations about influences being exerted within our current lives through past, future, as well as other present existences, what about exchanges on dream levels concerning Jane’s symptoms between or among any of our reincarnational selves, our counterpart selves, or various combinations of the two? How am I involved in any of these, and how are Jane’s and my families—and reaching how many generations back in ordinary time? To what extent does Jane’s physical infirmity mushroom into other probable realities through the dream state? I think that Jane herself can deal with many such questions; possibly tuning into them on her own, should she decide to, or through the mediation of her “psychic library.” A book could automatically develop out of the investigation—even, I joked with Jane, a “world-view” book.

As Jane wrote in Chapter 1 of The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation (1977): “Seth maintains that each of us forms a psychic world view, composed of our own ideas, feelings, and beliefs, as we encounter our private corner of reality.” The world view of every creature that has ever lived continues to exist, and can be tuned into under certain conditions. So can the psychic patterns of those now living, and even of those not yet born. Yet none of this means that contact will be made directly with the creator of the world view in question—only the bank of experiences originated through that individual’s unique version of reality. And since world views are far from being static, interactions and combinations involving all time periods take place among them constantly.

She has a lesser degree of double vision these days, but still may require surgery to correct imbalances in her optic muscles. An experimental treatment that’s just been announced, involving injections into certain eye muscles of a drug derived from the toxin of botulism, may ultimately benefit her; the procedure, which apparently has no side effects, can eliminate the need for surgery by encouraging the realignment of the eyes. Jane is still very much against drugs and surgery, though—even while she’s well aware of the contradictions in her beliefs as she continues to take daily the synthetic thyroid hormone and the liquid salicylate medication prescribed by Dr. Mandali. In his session for April 16 (see the essay for the same date), Seth told us that on several occasions Jane’s thyroid gland has “repaired itself,” but we don’t think that has fully happened yet this time. In a recent private session (for May 10) Seth told us: “The gland is activating itself by itself—off and on, so to speak, giving a sputtering effect. Overall, the body is exploring the best rhythm of metabolism, and fitting itself in with the medication.”

(Which makes us wonder: Just how will Jane’s body let us know when it finally wants to divest itself entirely of the thyroid supplement? We’re telling ourselves that that little challenge will automatically work itself out at the right time. We haven’t posed the question to Seth.)

The quotation from Seth just presented will certainly lead the reader to wonder about additional sessions we may have acquired from him since April 16, and from Jane since April 20 (see the essays for those dates). The answer is that we’ve held 13 more sessions—4 of them given by Jane “herself,” and 9 by Seth speaking through her. The last session in that baker’s dozen was delivered by Seth on June 7. Most of the sessions are rather short, and not all of them are strictly personal. For those that do concern us I’ve written lengthy notes, often recording the minutiae of our daily lives for our own reference.

Even if those sessions can’t be quoted in these essays because of the obvious space limitations, I can note that Jane and Seth each continued to develop the themes already laid down in the sessions that have been presented. What they really signify for the long term is (as I wrote in the essay for April 16) a continuing program of intense study for Jane and me—and yes, for Seth, too—as we seek to better understand our chosen commitments in our present physical lives. Our questions reflect those that everyone has, whether consciously or unconsciously—and among them is that eternally human “Why?” behind each event that we know. The material in the sessions is exhilarating, painful, enlightening, perceptive, frustrating, and maddening by turn—and sometimes, it seems, all of those things at once. We’d like to publish much of it, even though it’s hardly all flattering, and even though some of it, because of our ordinary human limitations, may not be very useful in everyday life. For if the information arouses such mixed emotions in Jane and me, surely it will do so in others too, serving as an impetus or goad to learn more even while it highlights one’s strengths and weaknesses. You create your own reality. The anger I’d felt at Jane and myself when she began recording her sinful-self material (see the essay for April 16) has long since dissipated. I won’t claim that residues of it may not be buried within my psyche (and within Jane’s), but it’s very difficult to stay mad when one agrees with the simple but most basic and profound idea that you do create your own reality.

Of course these essays reflect our particular chosen stances in life, both with and without the Seth material. I know that to some we’re sure to have appeared slow in putting to use much of the material, but in a most basic respect we’re way ahead in the situation: If we hadn’t almost instantaneously begun to encourage the flow of information from Seth when Jane started to express it some 18 years ago, and to write it down, then it wouldn’t even exist—at least in its present form. So we do take credit for doing some things right. Learning experiences can show themselves in a vast number of ways, then, and independently of sequential time, too; and if Jane and I don’t like certain aspects of the realities we’ve created, we can try to change them, together and separately.

Our joint concentration has become like a brilliant light directed upon first one event and then another. Because Jane still requires regular care, our sleeping patterns remain much more evenly divided between the daylight and nighttime hours (see the essay for April 16). Since I can no longer work for hours at a time on the Seth books, or with the Seth material, I’m training myself to “put out” copy in concentrated bursts of energy that are usually of an hour’s duration, say. I work around these creative outpourings by ministering to my wife, running our house and the many errands connected with our daily living, handling our publishing affairs, seeing visitors—expected and unexpected—and trying to answer at least some of the mail, which is threatening to accumulate beyond control. Once again I’m becoming aware of my dreams, and so is Jane. I haven’t been able to get back to painting since Jane left the hospital, and I’ve had to hire help to mow the grass. Nor have I resumed the midnight walks I used to take over the hilly streets of our neighborhood; I used to look forward to seeing the shadowy deer as they moved down into the streets from the woods north of the hill house. Jane’s nurse now visits but twice a week, which is all that’s necessary (my wife’s decubiti are under control, for example).

So, although I think that Jane has made some “remarkable gains” during recent weeks, I also think that basically she has yet to resolve the entire issue of her illnesses—or even whether to continue physical life. Seth put it beautifully a couple of months ago in the session for April 12—the first time Jane spoke for him since leaving the hospital—and I return to it again and again. See the essay for April 16: “The entire issue (of Jane’s living) had been going on for some time, and the argument—the argument being somewhat in the nature of a soul facing its own legislature, or perhaps standing as a jury before itself, setting its own case in a kind of private yet public psychic trial. Life decisions are often made in just such a fashion. With Ruburt they carried a psychic and physical logic and economy….”

Obviously, Jane’s deliberations over whether to continue physical life are much easier to appreciate when she’s depressed and/or physically uncomfortable, and during those times I can sense the fluctuations in her examination of her psyche. Portions of her are still quite deliberately thinking it all over, I’m sure, although she doesn’t mention this outside the session frameworks she provides for Seth and herself.

I should add that I don’t think Jane has started to “set … aside” the medical interpretation regarding her “arthritis situation,” as Seth suggested she might do when he came through on April 12. (That session is presented in the essay for April 16.) Any decision Jane makes about altering the deeply set beliefs involved in her condition will require the cooperation of a number of portions of her psyche, including her sinful self, and it appears that at this time neither of us is ready to try achieving that kind of overall effect. Our fear of failure undoubtedly plays a strong part here. Ironically, Jane’s sinful self is one of the main creators of and participants in her illness syndrome, so any beneficial changes she can bring about will first call for a major shift in the attitude of that very stubborn portion of her psyche. It will be a triumph indeed if and when we can create an alteration like that. And all of this presupposes that each of us will be ready to draw “new facts” into our daily lives from Framework 2.

Apropos of the material I’ve been covering in these pages, I want to close this essay with quotations from two sessions that I’ve always thought are among the best Seth has given. These sessions still live, and in them he reinforces the idea that each of us does create our own reality. Both can be found in Chapter 1 of Personal Reality.