“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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?

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.

(9:18.) The arthritis situation is as I gave it (in a number of private sessions), but you are still faced with the medical interpretation of that situation, so that it is up to Ruburt to set it aside. [...]

(Long pause at 7:46.) If Ruburt once found himself imagining that he must be strong and perfect enough to help solve everyone else’s problems, now he found himself relatively helpless and “undefended”—that is, his physical condition put him in [such a situation]. [...] It could not survive such a situation.

I could write many windy pages about the mysteries of life, I suppose, and how each of us does the best we can, although often we may not understand what we’re doing; but what I really want to do is simply note that in her case, fortunately, and even if she may think she’s failed in certain major areas of life, Jane has achieved some remarkable insights into her own situation (as I have into mine, being her marriage partner). [...]

[...] The way had been illuminated by Seth himself in his private sessions, with his discussions of her sinful self and related challenges: Those sessions, the publication of the two books, Jane’s personal sinful-self material and her worsening physical situation, all combined to serve as a complex trigger. [...]

For Jane’s situation continues to be a time of testing. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

[...] That such feelings are rearoused in us at this time is hardly coincidental in view of our lifelong habits and belief systems; our tendencies toward secretiveness and our desires to be as self-sufficient as possible—even with Jane’s very dependent situation. [...]

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. [...]

[...] 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.

[...] The diagnosis—which I mentioned in my first session (on April 1)—gave a pinpointed, specific cause: a severely underactive thyroid gland, a situation that in no way contradicts Seth’s own larger interpretation of my physical state.

[...] Mysticism is still overwhelmingly regarded as a profoundly religious expression, and one that’s hardly practical, but in my opinion neither of those situations applies to Jane. [...]

(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. [...]

[...] I’m sure he’s quite entertained by the whole situation—yet also compassionate toward the human strivings involved. [...]

[...] But it’s even possible that all together Marie, Jane, her grandfather, and I set up the original situation before the physical births of any of us—and in some probable reality (if not in this one) we did do just that! [...]

We’ve presented lengthy quotations from Seth on his Framework 1 and Framework 2 material both in his Mass Events and in Jane’s God of Jane. His discussions on the subject are an excellent example of how a very creative idea, capable of helping many people, can arise from an attempt to deal with a personal situation—for on September 17, 1977, Seth introduced his Frameworks 1 and 2 concept in a private session designed to help Jane contend with her physical symptoms.

There followed many sessions, both regular and private (or deleted, as we sometimes call them), in which Seth discussed Frameworks 1 and 2. As can happen when we’re consciously too close to a deep-seated situation, some little time passed before Jane and I realized the obvious: It wasn’t that we were unable to tune into Framework 2, say, for help in effecting a healing for her in the joint reality we’d created in Framework 1—but that in physical reality we were drawing from Framework 2 exactly what we wanted to, even if often on unconscious or unwitting levels. [...]

[...] We haven’t discussed these with her doctor, either—clear signs of the secretive aspects of our own natures—but Jane believes she’s had a number of part-hallucinatory, part-psychic experiences as a result of the thyroid-medication situation.

[...] But he was a neurologist, and we saw less and less of him as it was determined that his special skills wouldn’t be of continuing help in Jane’s situation. [...]