“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

On November 4 our country’s president lost his bid for a second term. On that same day—day 367 of the hostage crisis—Iran demanded a quick reply from the United States to its latest set of conditions for the release of the 52 American hostages. For a number of complicated reasons, our State Department refused to give the Iranians a speedy answer. Evidently Iran wants to bring the hostage crisis to an end because of the economic boycott the Western world has imposed upon it, because in January it will have to deal with a new United States president, and because of the military pressure being exerted against it by Iraq. Iraq invaded Iran on September 23; on November 4 also, the president of Iraq proclaimed that his country is prepared to fight a long war for the recognition of its “rights” by Iran.

Actually, my wife has become pretty much housebound. She’s spending her time with the sessions, working on her book of poetry, and painting. For a long time now I’ve been doing it all in the outside world. I’ll summarize the central challenge of Jane’s life, and of my own, by presenting in Note 1 the private, or deleted, portion of the session she held last Monday night. We’ve been quite discouraged at times lately, yet Seth has had a different story to tell. Our struggle, our challenge, and one that’s most difficult for us, is to understand his material as much as possible.

(Long pause at 9:44.) It is probably almost impossible for man to see that he forms the idea of historical context through his own associations and focuses. The heavy, specialized use of so-called rational thought has often caused him to narrow even his neurological recognition of other kinds of experience that might enlarge his view. In dreams there is greater leeway in that regard. Consciousness becomes more familiar with its own inner motion, and even with the kinds of work and actions it performs outside of its usual waking prejudices. The story of the Creation, as Biblically stated, is the symbolic representation of a master event—a legend that became its own event, of course, forming about it whole arts and cultures, religions and disciplines. The same applies to Christianity itself, for all of the seemingly historical events connected with the official (underlined) Christ did not happen in physical reality. They happened at another level of actuality, and were inserted into your time framework—touching a character here, a definitely known historical event there, mixing and merging with the events of the time, until the two lines of activity were so entwined that you could not unravel one without unraveling the other (all very intently).

(Long pause at 9:55.) The Christ story in the beginning was not nearly as singular and neat as it might now seem, for the finally established official Christ figure was one settled upon from endless versions of a god-man, with which man’s psyche has long been involved: He was the psychic composite, the official Christ, carrying within his psychological personage echoes of old and new gods alike—a figure barely begun, comma, to be filled out in time, although originating outside of it (again, all very intently).

(10:02.) Paul (Saul of Tarsus) had his vision. Now the vision (in which Paul not only saw the light of Christ, but heard his voice) happened in the world of fact. It occurred—but Paul did not see, or communicate with (long pause), a person of divine heritage, sent by his father to earth, who lived the life of the official Christ, and who was crucified. Paul had a vision in response to the needs, desires, and dictates of his own psyche as it was connected to the world of his time, following the patterns of stories about Christ that he had heard that had begun to release within him a great yearning that was, in that vision, then, expressed.⁴

(10:13. After expressing a couple of reassuring thoughts for Jane, in line with his private material for Monday night’s session, Seth said good night at 10:15 P.M. “Listen, I came so close to not having this session,” Jane said. Her delivery had been very slow but more intent than usual, and she was surprised and pleased: “How about that? I’ll be damned. I looked the book over today, but I didn’t expect anything on it before next week. I didn’t know I’d get anything to do with Christ. I’ll bet that’s why he didn’t say it was book dictation until the end of the session….”

“Afterward, however, Ruburt does sense certain releases. His steps by the couch are (underlined) firmer. His back begins to arch more naturally. It is very important that he understand and trust such occurrences. He does feel isolated and frightened sometimes under those conditions. You can be of help in just talking to him, or massaging. He can help himself by remembering what I am saying, by exercising gently at such times, and by remembering the miraculous processes within the body that are indeed supporting him.

“He is also on to some excellent ideas on his own.