“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.

Moreover, the choice of presenting the material in essay form proved to have one virtue that was more valuable than all the others combined: It allowed us to delve into the events I describe, and “our deep-seated, sometimes wrenching feelings connected to them,” a little bit at a time. Those situations might have been too devastating for us otherwise, too emotionally threatening, too charged for us to present them with at least the minimum amount of objectivity required by the written word. Many of the events and feelings evoked such deep implications of trial and challenge for Jane and me that we were often left with strong feelings of unreality: This can’t be happening to us. At our ages (52 and 62, Jane and I, respectively), why have we created lives with such nightmarish connotations? Why do I have to leave my dear wife alone in the hospital each night, so that I feel like crying for her when I go to bed by myself in the hill house? Why can’t we be left alone to live lives of peace and creativity? And how many millions and millions of times through the ages have other human beings on this planet felt the same way—and will yet? Why are our lives ending like this, when we feel that simply getting through each day is an accomplishment?

Could one return to that 12th-century life, even as an observer, what would the traveler find? An individual—and one not about to surrender his or her identity to anyone, or have it thought of simply as a manifestation of some “future” self! [...] The traveler could hardly move in on one of his or her own personalities! Interesting question: How would our 20th-century individual react when told by a visitor from the year 2355 (for example) that he or she represented one of our futurian’s “past” lives?

[...] This would be the case even when the subject is very unhappy with present challenges, and is trying to assign their origin to events in one or more former existences. All well and good to announce that one was a serf some 900 years ago—but one is much more likely to be either tuning into minute signals surrounding the actual physical and mental reality of the serf (poor fellow), or to be picking up on elements of that individual’s personality as they’re associated with the serf’s whole self or entity. Either possibility makes it much safer—and much more entertaining—to proclaim one’s serfdom.

My main point is that I also feel, without having asked Seth, that the farther one travels ahead in time the greater the play of probable realities and probable lives he or she encounters. To venture into such a skein requires that one constantly picks and chooses among them—for each move, each thought, even, can launch the traveler into a different probability. [...] (What if one doesn’t want a probable reality they choose? But that must happen all of the time!) The uncertainty perceived here by the conscious self, however, can act as a great restraint toward knowing a future life or lives—just as much as might the fear of tuning into one’s physical death ahead of time in this life. [...]

[...] Surely one’s death to come is a much more personal and penetrating prospect—a much more frightening one—than “facing” any past-life deaths one may encounter: Those deaths have already happened! [...]

[...] When they spoke to Rob and me I tried to listen, but my hearing was still so poor that it was nearly impossible to make out one full sentence at a time. [...] But one doctor soberly told me that I’d never walk again, or even put my weight upon my feet again, unless I underwent a series of joint-replacement operations—if, he cautioned, I proved to be a “proper candidate.”

[...] True, the amount of money required for such surgical possibilities was staggering, but insurance of one kind or another could be found to carry the cost. (We didn’t have nearly enough money, but could qualify for adequate insurance by fulfilling the terms of an 11-month waiting period.) But regardless of cost, one orthopedist saw me staying right in the hospital—now that I was there—until the entire procedure was finished. [...]

(A one-minute pause at 9:13, eyes blinking, then closing.) One doctor told me that my body’s mobility would be bound to change for the better as my thyroid gland …

[...] What does one do when the insert begins to wobble? [...] (One can always claim that being able to walk for even four years is a lot better than not walking at all!) Jane and I also read that through experiments with animals medical designers are working to perfect an artificial knee joint with porous surfaces, to promote better bonding of bone to metal; it could last 15 years or more. [...]

One small way in which I wanted to begin that quest was for me to teach Jane to write—print, actually—with her left hand, which functions much better now than her right one does. I thought this might be relatively easy for her to do, since she’s often voiced her suspicion that she’s one of those born “lefties” who at a very early age were forced to begin writing with their right hand. [...]

[...] He found a mixed world, one hardly black or white, one with some considerable give-and-take, in which under even the most regrettable of circumstances there was room for some action, some improvement, for some … creative response. [...]

[...] On occasion I was consciously aware of thinking how easy it might be on certain levels to let my desires drop one by one—there seemed to be few left in any case—and to let myself simply drift off into an unastonished death.

[...] Then with bewildering impact I found myself one day almost entirely deaf. [...] I certainly hadn’t planned on one sense suddenly turning off.

[...] Put very simplistically, this “quantum approach” allows for the theme that each of us inhabits but one of innumerable probable or parallel worlds. Even the theory of evolution is invoked, for those other worlds are said to evolve in parallel with the one we inhabit. Yet there is no answer within quantum mechanics as to how or why one’s personal identity chooses to follow a certain probable pathway, and consciousness per se is not considered. (Some physicists, however, have implied that subatomic particles—photons—communicate with each other as they take their separate but “sympathetic” paths.) Pardon my irony here, but Seth has always dealt with the ramifications of consciousness and maintained also that we do not inhabit just one probable world, but constantly move among them by choice—and by the microsecond, if one chooses.

[...] There are as many possibilities—and probabilities—as one can think of. [...] 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. [...] And Jane’s resolve, her will that, according to Seth, “is amazingly strong” (in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, see the 713th session for October 21, 1974), may buttress the understanding and determination of one or more of her counterparts in this life; she may meet (or have met) such an individual; another may live across an ocean, say, with no meeting ever to take place in physical terms.

I’ve written these passages knowing, of course, that many of Seth’s points and our own are at best theories, if very intriguing ones. [...] Very abusive responses are also involved, as well as surprising near-illiterate ones.)

[...] All is one, basically, as he knows—and can feel—far better from his vantage point than we can from ours. [...]

[...] Decubitus ulcers: one of the first terms we’d added to our rapidly growing medical vocabulary—and one of the more stubborn afflictions for a human being to get rid of once they’ve become established. [...]

[...] Then we sat quietly side by side at the round card table we’d placed at one end of our battered old couch in the living room. [...] The whole creative intimacy of our hill house was one that we’d enjoyed many times; we desperately wanted to return to that same ambience many more times.

[...] After answering approximately 50 letters one weekend, the next weekend I could barely hold a pen to write my name. [...] A few days later I wound up in the emergency room of one of our local hospitals—and there, all too quickly I became familiar with the medical profession’s battery of testing paraphernalia. [...]

[...] (Pause.) Some kind of white gum, or glue, had been rubbed into my scalp through my hair to improve the electrical contacts, and when the test was finished the attendant simply grabbed one area of the equipment and pulled the entire mess off my head in one motion—which felt like my entire scalp was coming off. [...]

[...] 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. [...] That is certainly one of Seth’s clearest messages. [...]

This whole miniature tempest is almost enough to make one wonder: How come those other people made their “Seths” known after Jane began to speak for her Seth, and to publish the Jane-Seth material? Being inspired to use one’s own abilities is a perfectly understandable development that we can be very happy about. [...]

A third point came up this morning, one we’ve talked about often lately. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

[...] We’d found it to be an exceedingly difficult one for a number of reasons. [...] Jane herself was displaying a stoicism (I’m afraid to write “acceptance”) regarding her condition that I’d have found unendurable were I the one experiencing it. [...] For now I understood that freedom of motion was at least one true reflection of an individual’s creative potential.

[...] There was no doubt as far as I was concerned that every one of our standard explanations for life (pause) were relatively useless now, regardless of how much they might have helped or hindered us in the past.

[...] I, for one, was afraid that such an arrangement would not only demonstrate our acceptance of the fact that Jane was really caught in a terrible, permanent situation, but that it would end up destroying us psychologically and creatively.

Finally, since I opened the first essay with a line from one of Jane’s songs in Sumari, I think it appropriate to close the last essay with Sumari, too.

While you were
sleeping,
all the cupboards
of the earth
were filled.
Mother Earth
sought out each
need.

While you were
weeping,
your tears fell
as sweet rain
drops on small
parched hills
that rise in worlds
you cannot see,
though you are known
there.

While you were
sleeping,
Mother Earth
filled all the
cupboards of your
flesh
to overflowing.
Not one atom went
uncomforted
in worlds that
are yours,
but beyond your
knowing.

[...] 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. [...] 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.

[...] I believe implicitly now that each one of us does create our own reality. [...]

[...] “During those frightening-enough hospital episodes I learned under combat conditions, so to speak, how to trust my body,” she wrote one day—an apt-enough analogy, I think.

She’s also done her first two colored-ink sketches, using one of the 4” × 6” watercolor pads I’d bought for her last year. [...]

[...] I still had only that one great line she’s interpreted for me in English: “Let my soul find shelter elsewhere.”

[...] On the one hand there was the Seth material itself, and Seth’s performance in his books.