“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I worked on the essays in succession, just as they’re given here, although I found myself adding to the earlier ones as I moved into the later ones. In terms of length alone, it soon became obviously impossible to write all of the material for any piece on the date given. Even by going back over them, however, I couldn’t discuss everything I wanted to: The essays could have easily grown into a book of their own. This weaving things together to make them “fit” is only natural for one of my temperament, but I didn’t alter any of my original copy—that I’d have refused to do—and I kept intact those first spontaneous descriptions of the events attendant to Jane’s physical difficulties, as well as our deep-seated, sometimes wrenching feelings connected to them. I did not look at Seth-Jane’s Dreams itself while writing the essays, in order to avoid having them overly influenced by work in the book. Instead, we want all of this preliminary material to show how we live daily—regardless of how well we may or may not do—with a generalized knowledge of, and belief in, the Seth material.

Granted that our species’ best human understanding of “the mystery of life” and of the universe is exceedingly inadequate, still Jane and I do not think that nature is totally objective, indifferently cruel, or simply uncaring, as science would have us believe. (We also have deep reservations about the theory of evolution and its “survival of the fittest” dogmas, but this isn’t the place to go into those subjects.) Far more basic and satisfactory to us are the intuitive comprehensions that this “nature” we’ve helped create is a living manifestation of All That Is, and that someplace, somewhere within its grand panorama, each action has meaning and is truly redeemed. [...]

That all seeming divisions reflect portions of a unified whole is surely one of our oldest concepts, growing, in those terms, with us out of our prehistory as we struggled to grasp the “true” nature of reality. [...]

[...] (These theories are themselves quite incomplete, since at this time they incorporate only three of the four basic interactions in nature: electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. [...]

[...] If reincarnation is to be considered, their disturbed relationship this time might reflect past connections of a different yet analogous nature, and may also have important effects upon any future ones. [...]

So the belief in man’s sinful nature persisted in my mind, a constant reminder of man’s ignorance of his own nature. [...]

[...] The entire issue 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. [...]

[...] He is returning to activity at his creative, naturally therapeutic pace, no longer afraid that he is going too fast—or will—but shown only too clearly that activity and motion represent the only safe, sane, and creative response [to life’s challenges].

[...] Yet she also used her “symptoms” to intensify her focus upon those abilities, and to reinforce the strongly secretive aspects of both of our natures. [...]

[...] As he presented them, his concepts dealt with the spontaneous, rambunctious powers with which nature was endowed. [...]

[...] The whole world of nature is an irrepressible, expressible area of expansion. [...]

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. [...] Whatever reservations she shows—her conscious inhibition of impulses, for example—are learned devices that are literally protective in nature. [...]

[...] 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….

(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. [...]

(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. [...]

In later years it’s become impossible for me to close my eyes to the multiple pressing differences that exist between Seth’s explanation of the nature of reality, and of our own private experience of it. [...]

If life has such great potentials, as Seth maintains, if it began—and begins (and continues to begin) at such rich creative and productive levels—then why did our experience so often make it seem that we struggled against unknowing or uncaring cosmic forces, or that we were at the most so ignorant of our own source and creativity that our hands were tied, or that we were forever shut off from our natural heritage?

And: “The magical approach takes it for granted that the human being is a united creature, fulfilling purposes in nature even as the animals do, whether or not those purposes are understood. [...] The magical approach takes it for granted that the means for development are within each individual, and that fulfillment will happen naturally. [...]

[...] Given our present ideas about the limitless nature of consciousness, we think our joint quest has been underway since before our births—by choice—and we expect it to continue for the rest of our physical lives. [...]

[...] By its very nature a future life cannot be proven—records checked, and so forth. [...]

[...] Hook up those two factors with the quite natural concern that at least some events in any life to come will inevitably be unpleasant, or worse, and we have at least three powerful restraints, or psychic blocks, inhibiting awareness of future lives. [...]

[...] It’s easy to see how, in Jane’s case at least, the church’s teachings about sin began to grow as the innocent child started protecting her spontaneous natural mysticism—that prime attribute she’d chosen for exploration in this life. [...]

[...] (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.

[...] Once again I note that in my opinion Jane’s dependency represents, at least in part, a search for a “redemption” that encompasses other motivations and realities than those concerned with “just” our temporal lives; that indeed, her impaired state grew out of her mystical nature itself (but was hardly caused by it!).

[...] 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. [...]