“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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

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.

The communications themselves are often a kind of psychological or symbolic code, such as might indeed be used in military intelligence. If the messages were to be clearly deciphered and understood, then of course the game would be over, for the one to understand the message would be the united self who [had] felt the need of such camouflaged self-troops (hyphen) to begin with.

(Long pause at 10:08.) Give us a moment…. Remember, we are dealing with a scattered force, various elements of the personality sent out to do different tasks—and in a fashion they are caught between the superior self and the debased self. There is, then, no clear line for action to follow. It must also be camouflaged. Instead of clear impulses toward action that intersect directly with consciousness, you have bursts of impulses that emerge as orders to act, coming from another source, or from other sources. These may appear as voices telling an individual to do this or that, as “automatic” commands through writing, or as perceptions that would be called hallucinatory. In this way the individual need not take responsibility for such actions. They do not seem to be coming from himself or from herself. The terrible possibility of failure is there to that extent, in that situation, momentarily relieved.

1. I don’t mean to imply that it was particularly easy to assemble these notes. It took me days. Sometimes over the years, in my frustration at being unable to find a certain line or passage in a session, or in something Jane or I have written, I’ve ended up thinking that I merely imagined its being: “It doesn’t really exist at all,” I’ve told myself, “so why am I wasting my time looking for it?” Yet once I start hunting, it’s difficult to stop until I’ve exhausted all reasonable chances of finding what I want. Even a thorough indexing of every paper we have in the house, including each page of the Seth material, often wouldn’t locate the kinds of references I need. To suit me, I’ve told Jane more than once, the index would have to be practically as long as our lifework itself. I’ve gone through those episodes a number of times. (So have others, according to their letters, even though the books are indexed.)

“I believe a great memory must be involved here, one that on deeper levels is coupled with a shortening of time as we think of it. Seth-Jane’s abilities remind me of material I wrote recently on how certain portions of the psyche must very shrewdly and carefully construct dreams in advance, so when the dreams are played back they render just the right messages to the other part or parts of the psyche that need them. I’m not being contradictory here when I write that dreams are also spontaneous productions.”

“He need not feel that all sessions must be book dictation, nor feel that he is in any way negatively responsible, as he sometimes does.”