“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This is Jane’s first “regular” session in four months. It’s a nonbook one, and I’ll comment later on why I’m presenting it in Dreams. Right now, I just want to note that since she gave the last session for this book, the 919th on June 9, Jane has come through with a series of 15 private, or deleted, sessions—13 of them on what Seth calls “the magical approach to reality.”

I plan to mention certain secular affairs that I’ve kept track of while Jane has been producing Dreams, but mainly these notes will deal with personal and professional events in our own lives. I’ve organized most of the material in a roughly chronological order. Some of it I took from Jane’s daily journal for 1980, some from my own notes and files, and some from private sessions. Portions of it came from Dreams itself. And we put some of it together simply through our conversations.¹ I also remind the reader that everything described took place within the overall context of an extended presidential campaign in this country.

Jane resisted lying down a couple of times a day to get some relief, although usually I was able to talk her into doing so. For many complex reasons she refused to go the conventional medical route, as she always had—and I felt [and still do] that my own hang-ups in that area prevented me from helping her as much as I should have. Instead, Jane insisted upon trying to use her abilities to help herself. I grieved to see my wife in such distress, but ultimately could do little beyond helping her get as comfortable as possible. Among other things, I bought her a water-filled cushion for her chair. It gave her some relief, but she needed much more help than that.²

Jane’s worsening situation through June and July, then, prepared her to accept my suggestion that Seth could help her. She put aside the first session for Chapter 9 of Dreams, and began Seth’s sessions on the magical approach to reality. As Seth remarked on August 6, when he gave his first session on the subject: “When Ruburt finished his project [God of Jane], he found himself with all of that time that was supposed to be used. He also became aware of his limitations, physically speaking: There was not much, it seemed, he could do but work, so he took the rational approach—and it says that to solve the problem you worry about it.”

I was delighted when Jane began to show physical improvements almost at once during those early August days, and so was she. It’s not contradictory to note that during August and September, following his regular schedule of twice-weekly sessions, Seth methodically presented some very exciting concepts. So closely do those 13 sessions fit together that it’s most difficult to give excerpts.⁵ Seth’s magical-approach material represents one of his best efforts to help us, as well as others. Jane’s difficulties certainly inspired them, but their creativity also goes beyond our own needs. And as soon as I realized she was going to continue the series for a while, I jokingly asked her what was going on: “What do you think you’re up to, hon? Are you doing a book within a book, or what?” My wife didn’t answer yes or no, but I could see that she was pleased, and that she was thinking about it. The title of the new book would be automatic: The Magical Approach to Reality: A Seth Book.

It’s not that my mind knows less
than it did before, but that
its reason finally deduced
the magic of its source, and
sensed beneath the logic of its
ways the deeper spontaneous order
that powers its own thought.

See Note 7, in which I used Jane’s poem as a focus around which to offer certain pieces. Indeed, more and more as I worked on these notes for Chapter 9 of Dreams, I saw how necessary it was that I write an Introduction for the book itself—to create a framework for the presentation of all of the material in it from our private and professional lives. Of course, I couldn’t yet know everything that such a project ought to contain. Jane had mentioned a number of times that she’d help me with it. And she was playing around with the idea of a Seth book on the magical approach.

One of the tactics leaders in the West are still pursuing is to organize world opinion against the Soviet stay in Afghanistan and the war between Iraq and Iran. Jane and I think that both situations, furnishing as they do large-scale frameworks for the almost endless convolutions of consciousness, may persist for many years, with no formal resolutions materializing. Russia may simply annex Afghanistan as the years pass. Perhaps the Iraqi-Iranian war will subside because of the exhaustion of those countries. I speculated that the overall revolutionary and fundamentalistic consciousness of Iran is like a creative vortex, surrounded by other great national consciousnesses that are strongly resisting its policies for their own creative religious and political reasons. A look at a map will show what I mean: Iran has Iraq and Turkey on its western border, with Russia to its north and Afghanistan on its east; Pakistan lies on Iran’s eastern border also; south of Iran, across the narrow Persian Gulf, cluster the mix of large and small wealthy states on the Arabian peninsula. The Moslem Kurds of Iran and Iraq, minority peoples with strong roots in eastern Turkey, are rebelling against the military forces of their respective countries; and Pakistan has become a place of shelter for refugees from Afghanistan. That whole area in the Middle East, then, is a stew of emotions, actions, and consciousnesses.

I admit that for some mysterious reason of my own I let Bill Baker, as I’ll call that youngish individual, fool me when he knocked on our back-porch door yesterday afternoon. He was very well dressed and very well spoken, and I didn’t pay enough attention to the doubts I sensed when he told me about hearing voices in his head, and asked if Jane did the same thing with Seth. I said no. After introducing him to my wife, I went back to my writing room. I could understand what they were saying by concentrating upon the murmur of their voices from the living room, but I seldom did so. She almost called me, Jane said later, when she realized that Bill Baker is a disturbed⁹ person. He told her he’d been hospitalized several times for mental problems, and demonstrated his ability to speak very fluently a “nonsense” language he cannot decipher. [Later I remembered hearing a bit of that.] Our caller had received a number of pages of information from Jesus Christ. He described how he’s relating the Seth material to his sexual fantasies involving young girls, and detailed other instances in which he’d been strongly rebuffed when trying to physically actualize some of Seth’s ideas. There was more. Jane caught him in a number of contradictory statements.

And Bill Baker has benefited from reading the Seth material, I said, since now he reasons that some of his ideas are “core beliefs” that he’s created—and so can change. “Where would I be without the Seth material?” he’d asked Jane.

I am making generalizations here, but each individual case should be looked at in its own light. Such people as a rule, however, have an exaggerated version of the self (pause), so idealized (long pause) that its very existence intimidates practical action. They are afraid of making mistakes, terrified of betraying this sensed inner psychological superior. Usually, such an idealized inner self comes from the acceptance of highly distorted beliefs—again, concerning good and evil. You end up with what can amount to two main inner antagonists: a superior self and a debased self. The qualities considered good are attracted to the superior self as if it were a magnet. The qualities that seem bad (underlined) are in the same fashion attracted to the debased self. Both of them, relatively isolated psychological polarities, hold about equal sway. All other psychological evidences that are ambiguous, or not clearly understood by either side, group together under their own psychological banners. This is a kind of circular rather than linear arrangement, however, psychologically speaking.

(Long pause at 9:44.) Such people are afraid of their own energy. It becomes assigned on the one hand as a possession of the superior self—in which case it must be used for great adventures, heroic deeds. On the other hand, the person feels unable to use energy in a normal fashion, since in the ordinary world no venture could live up to the superior self’s exaggerated ideals. The person then becomes frightened of pitting himself against the world, or committing himself to ordinary actions, since he feels that in the light of such comparisons he can only debase himself.

The term “schizophrenia,” however, covers multitudinous experiences—some such people are quite satisfied with their condition, find their own niches, are able to support themselves, or have means of support. Others live in an atmosphere of constant fear of their own condition, while at the same time they are excited, as soldiers might be in combat. Some can be quite functional in society, and the condition in any case is highly variable, covering people who are simply social misfits to those who are in deep psychological trouble.

The personality can indeed put itself together in multitudinous fashions. There is great leeway in the use of inner and outer perceptions, and the manners in which these are mixed and matched to form an acceptable picture of reality at any given time.

(Seth added a few sentences of personal material for Jane, then ended the session at 10:40 P.M. Jane’s delivery had often been very animated and forceful, and I told her she’d done well. I was going to joke with her by asking if this was a “fill-in” session, but decided not to. I felt that except for our own time limitations, Seth could have given much more material on the whole subject of mental illness.)

2. When Jane and I married on December 27, 1954, we promised each other that neither one of us would interfere with the other’s creative approach to life, no matter what resulted from the actions we individually chose. We have kept those promises for the 26 years we’ve been together. Of course, we couldn’t possibly have foreseen the great variety of challenges that lay before us. Nine years were to pass before Jane began coming through with the Seth material. She’s certainly given me the complete freedom to be myself, and I’ve floundered often. So has she. Yet as the years passed I still had to learn the obvious—that Jane’s creative powers are inextricably a part of her whole approach to life, including her symptoms. How could it be otherwise? That doesn’t stop me from desperately wanting to help her. I’ve tried, in many ways. She’s helped me often. Jane even agrees with me that she’s a very stubborn lady—albeit an extremely creative one—who’s determined to go her own way.

When they’re published the reader will be able to see that she touched upon her physical hassles in Chapter 17 of God of Jane, for example, and referred to them in her Introduction for Mass Events. She didn’t actively object when I began to mention them more extensively in the notes for Dreams. But as Seth said in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, while discussing her goals in life: “The power of his (Ruburt’s) will is indeed awesome, and he is just beginning to feel it.” In that volume, see Session 713 for October 21, 1974. And in larger terms, if Jane is at all correct in her expression of the Seth material, then each action we’ve taken in connection with her symptoms has been valid and creative, just as each action we have yet to take will be.

“Important misunderstandings involving time have been in a large measure responsible for many of Ruburt’s difficulties, and also of your own, though of a lesser nature. All of this involves relating to reality in a more natural, and therefore magical, fashion. There is certainly a kind of natural physical time in your experience, and in the experience of any creature. It involves the rhythm of the seasons—the days and nights and tides and so forth. In the light of that kind of physical time, there is no basic cultural time … which you have transposed upon nature’s rhythms.

“Being your own natural and magical self when you dream, you utilize information that is outside of the time context experienced by the so-called rational mind. The creative abilities operate in the same fashion, appearing within consecutive time, but with the main work done outside of it entirely…. When you were both working on your projects, your cultural time was taken up in a way you found acceptable. When the projects were done, particularly with Ruburt, there was still the cultural belief that time should be so used (underlined), that creativity must be directed and disciplined to fall into the proper assembly-line time slots.

“There is much material here that I will give you, because it is important that you understand the different ways of relating to reality, and how those ways create the experienced events.

“It certainly seems that the best way to get specific answers is to ask specific questions, and the rational mind thinks first of all of something like a list of questions. In that regard, Ruburt’s response before such a session is natural, and to an extent magical, because he knows that no matter what he has been taught, he must to some degree (underlined) forget the questions and the mood that accompanies them with one level of his consciousness, in order to create the proper kind of atmosphere at another level of consciousness—one that allows the answers to come even though they may be presented in a different way than that expected by the rational mind.

“What we will be discussing for several sessions, with your permission jointly—and, I hope, with your joint enthusiasm—will be the magical approach to reality, and to your private lives specifically, in order to create that kind of atmosphere in which the answers become experienced (underlined).”

7. At first some of these excerpts might seem quite diverse in content from one another, but with Jane’s poem in mind I intuitively chose each one for inclusion here. I’d wanted to show the first two items for several years, and surely the reader can divine how they’re related to the poem and to Seth’s material on the magical approach to reality. The next three excerpts are either from, or are directly related to, later sessions in the “magical” series.

“Life as we know it is excitement; highly organized—excitement at all levels, microscopic, macroscopic, psychic. It is the result of the relationship between balance and imbalance, between organization and ‘chaos.’ It is excitement ever in a state of flux, forming psychic and material knots. It is explosive yet filled with order; it becomes so filled with itself that it explodes in the same way that a flower bursts; the same principle is acting in a hurricane or a flood or a murder or the creation of a poem, or the formation of a dream; in the birth and death of individuals and nations. We instinctively know that disasters mimic the birth and death of cells within our bodies—we instinctively know that all life survives death, that death is the bursting of life into new forms, hence our fascination with accidents and fires. The psyche itself leapfrogs our beliefs at usual conscious levels, and sees us as a part of all life, excitedly forming all kinds of complexes which then fill themselves to the brim, exploding, escaping the framework only to form another. The emotions themselves can sense this when we let them, and grasping that sense of excitement can show us a glimpse of the even greater freedom of our own psychic existence, which flows into us as individuals and then bursts apart that short-lived form into another, as the excitement of individuation leaps from life to life.”

“My own ideas must be colored to some extent by my place in time also, and middle age seems to be an excellent spot for such a study because theoretically time stretches as far ahead as it does behind. That is, there is as much anticipated time as there is remembered time.

“In childhood we have little past time to remember. We seem to come from darkness, taking our parents’ memories on faith for proof that there was time before our birth. As we grow toward old age, we have past time to play with—we know where we came from in usual terms—and the darkness that once seemed to stretch behind our source or origin seems to be our destination. Certainly an examination of the mind and reality from the standpoint of old age will be invaluable.”

“Ruburt’s state of mind was in (telepathic) correspondence with your own state of mind, even as you are in some kind of correspondence with your old (childhood) environment, so in these cases you have a free flow of information at other levels.

“Now when you understand that intellectually, then the intellect can take it for granted that its own information is not all the information you possess. It can realize that its own knowledge represents the tip of the iceberg. As you apply that realization to your life, you begin to realize furthermore that in practical terms you are indeed supported by a greater body of knowledge than you realize, and by the magical, spontaneous fountain of action that forms your existence. The intellect can then realize that it does not have to go it all alone: Everything does not have to be reasoned out, even to be understood.”

“Seth, of course, not only dictates his material—the session—but must keep the whole session in mind while doing so, so that each sentence as he delivers it makes sense compared to its predecessors and those to follow. Quite a feat on his part, and Jane’s, when one stops to think about it. How is this possible? Seth has no script to go by, nor can he refer during the session to my own notes to check up on what he’s already said.

E. From my opening notes for the 13th and last session in the private series on the magical approach to reality. Jane gave the session on Wednesday evening, October 1, 1980—just five days ago:

“Of course, I thought, in ordinary terms the vast potential of the Seth material is fated never to be developed. No matter what Jane and I do in our joint reality, this is so. She could hold sessions 24 hours a day for the rest of her life, and still not exhaust Seth’s potential store of information. We’ve had many indications that his material is multichanneled, as when Jane has felt him ready to discuss any one of a number of subjects on any given occasion. I call that feeling, that awareness, a pale indication of what Seth means with his theory of probable realities—for like probable personalities, the unspoken channels he has available are certainly real whether or not they’re actualized in our physical reality.

“I can envision Seth’s material expanding almost endlessly just on a day-to-day basis, as he deals with events in the lives of Jane and me—and this idea conveys nothing about news of his reactions to and interactions with events on various levels of his own reality, plus other realities he may be able to reach. In Chapter 8 of Dreams, when I asked Seth what he was going to do for the rest of the evening (in our terms), he replied: ‘I am going to refresh myself by diving into some new concepts, for there are new concepts for me also, of course, and I dive into them from many positions all the time as well.’ (See the conclusion of Session 916 for May 14, 1980.) Think of the questions one could ask him relative to just this one statement! Such provocative assertions leave behind them unsatisfied voids of curiosity. Actually, most of his information does, regardless of subject matter. But obviously, if Seth did take up every moment of our temporal lives with personal material, all else would be probable.”