“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The essay form gave us chances for at least a minimal study of the various forms our creative learning experiences have taken to date. We quickly agreed that we’d been setting up the illness syndrome for years, yet the deep emotional shocks accompanying its physical developments seemed to come at us like attacking dark birds zooming in from another probable reality. We learned. We adjusted in ways that a few weeks previously would have seemed unbelievable to us—and, ironically, as must often happen in such situations, once we’d moved into our new joint reality, it appeared that those particular challenges had always been incipient for us.

The essays contain many insights into the meanings the whole experience with illness has had for us, and will continue to have for many years. Our lives have been irrevocably changed—by choice—and not for the worse, either. Jane and I used our wills to intensify our focuses in certain areas. And I’m sure that as the reader works his or her way through the essays, it will become quite apparent that I wrote them just as much for Jane and me as I did for others—all in our ceaseless attempts to better understand, to grasp a bit more firmly, those mental and physical adventures that we’re trying to delve into “this time around.”

Until she became so ill that she was practically forced to go into the hospital, I’d always felt that my wife’s single-minded yet literal focus of intent was capable of lasting however long it took to reach a particular goal—whether for five minutes or fifty years. Her illness led me to question that premise, but now it’s back in place. [...]

[...] 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. [...] (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.

[...] In spite of her horror at the medical practices and suggestions she’s encountered, and in spite of her dismay at the physical damage the arthritis has caused in her temporal body, Jane will give up nothing until she—and/or her whole self—get out of the entire illness syndrome exactly what she wants to get. [...]

[...] Obviously, we made our choices in that respect long ago: As far as the deeply charged subject of Jane’s illness was concerned, we decided to keep most of our dream work on intuitive and unconscious levels. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

[...] 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.

(7:35.) 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. [...]

(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. [...]

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 others I am the one who becomes ill! [...]

[...] Forty-one days have now passed since Jane left the hospital, and this passage of “time” alone has given us more perspective on the whole affair of her illness, and on our beliefs, intents, and desires.

However, Jane and I don’t particularly think that in our present lives we’ve been that greatly influenced by any successes, failures, or illnesses chosen from other lives except in the broadest of terms: general bodily and personality characteristics and abilities, say. [...]

[...] For us, the learning processes were there for the changing anytime we decided that a physical illness was “wrong.” [...]

[...] Over and over Marie told Jane that she was no good, that the daughter’s birth had caused the mother’s illness. [...]

[...] That mutual illness obviously became a deeply charged subject for both of them. [...]

[...] We hope that eventually our “fan mail” will serve as the foundation for a study concerning the ways in which society reacts to new ideas, through the viewpoints, say, of science, philosophy and psychology, religion, the “occult,” skepticism, generalized deep curiosity, and mental illness. [...]