“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Bill Baker left soon after learning that Jane no longer holds her ESP classes. The episode reminded us once again that many of our visitors are seeking help of one kind or another, and that we hadn’t had the remotest idea that this would be the case when Jane began her psychic development late in 1963. Sometimes we’re not sure whether the people are simply rebelling against the help offered by establishment disciplines [especially when that “help” is partially or wholly ineffective], or are more aware than most that some individuals, like Jane, have other “psychic” dimensions of personality that can be asked for information. Yet, I told Jane, look at the excellent letters we’ve recently received from psychiatrists, mathematicians, and “ordinary” folk engaged in a variety of endeavors.

There are countless instances where “schizophrenic episodes” occur in otherwise normal personalities, where for learning purposes and periods of growth the personality sorts its parts out, and helps them enlarge their frameworks.

(Long pause at 10:24.) Physical perception gives you a necessary kind of feedback, but it is also based upon learning processes, so that from a young age you learn to put the pieces of the world together in acceptable fashions. In a way, under certain conditions, some schizophrenic situations can give you righter glimpses of inner psychological mobility, a mobility that was focused and directed as you grew through childhood. Schizophrenia represents a kind of learning disability in that particular respect.

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.

“I use the word ‘methods’ because you understand it, but actually we are speaking about an approach to life, a magical or natural approach that is man’s version of the animal’s natural instinctive behavior in the universe. That approach does indeed fly in direct contradiction to the learned methods you have been taught.

“You never asked me.” Jane’s reply had a familiar sound. Checking later, I learned that she’d given me the same answer about Seth’s material on Jonestown. We used that information in Mass Events. [When that book is published, see Note 3 for Session 835, dated February 7, 1979.]