“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I have difficulty believing it even when I write it—but eight months have passed since Jane held her last session for Dreams, the 928th, on November 12, 1980. The time has passed so quickly, it has been so filled with all kinds of personal, professional, and worldly events for us, that its motion is hard to visualize. During this period Jane gave two regular nonbook sessions [on November 26, 1980, and on January 5, 1981], plus 48 private sessions, so we’ve been busy! Out of that private total, Seth devoted 25 sessions, either completely or in part, to her “sinful-self” material. Jane delivered the introductory session on that subject on March 11 of this year, and I’ll be quoting from it in a note. The next 24 sessions on the sinful-self material came through in a concentrated block from April 14 to July 13. I also plan to excerpt several of those sessions for notes, and to quote a number of times from Jane’s personal journals for 1980 and 1981. In other words, these opening notes for the 931st session are going to be long ones.

Three days later, after a final checking, I mailed Jane’s book of poetry to Tam Mossman at Prentice-Hall. Since she wouldn’t be working with that project for some little time now, Jane’s restless creative mind began to play with other ideas. Even though she often didn’t feel well, a portion of her creativity led her to have dreams of walking and dancing, of being completely healed physically. She wrote more poetry. She painted. And once again she considered a book featuring Seth’s sessions on the magical approach to reality, the series he’d given through August and September of last year.¹²

By July 8 we’d accumulated 61 fully private sessions since Jane had given the first session for this chapter of Dreams, the 919th, on June 9, 1980. [During that 13-month period we also held 10 regular nonbook sessions and one more book session.] As she began to study that mass of private material on the 8th, Jane abruptly laid it aside to spontaneously write a complete outline for a book on Seth’s magical approach to reality. She’d had many such impulses since giving the first session on that subject 11 months ago, and I’d been hoping she would try the venture. Seth had announced as recently as four days ago that he’s heartily in favor of the project. He repeated his approval in our 63rd private session, held on July 13.

In an experience last evening in the dream state, Ruburt received fresh evidence by viewing for himself portions of two other lives—merely snatches of environment, but so dearly filled with precious belongings and loved ones, so alive with immediacy-that he was shocked to realize that the full dimensions of existence could continue so completely in such detail and depth at the same time as his present life.

“They were these: that the entire world with its organization was kept together by certain stories, like those of the Roman Catholic Church; that it was dangerous beyond all knowing to look through the stories or examine them for the truth, and that all kinds of taboos existed to keep us from doing this, since … on the other side, so to speak, there was an incomprehensible frightening chaotic dimension, malevolent; powers beyond our imagining; and that to question the stories was to threaten not just personal survival but the fabric of reality as we know it. So excommunication was the punishment, or damnation … which meant more than mere ostracism, but the complete isolation of a person from those belief systems, with nothing between him or her and those frightening realities … without a framework in which to even organize meaning. This was what damnation really meant. To seek truth was the most dangerous of well-intentioned behavior, then … and retribution had to be swift and sure.

“The church was quite real to Ruburt as a child, through the priests who came (to the house) regularly, and through direct contact with the religious (grade) school, and the support offered to the (fatherless) family. Ruburt’s very early poetry offended Father (Boyle), who burned his books on the fall of Rome, so he had more than a hypothetical feeling about such issues. Many of his fears originated long before the sessions, of course, and before he realized that there was any alternative at all between, say, conventional religious beliefs and complete disbelief in any nature of divinity.

“Ruburt’s creativity broke through to provide our sessions and to release the psychic abilities that had earlier been nearly but not completely repressed.

“His poetry acted in some regards as a stimulator. That breakthrough, you might say, with perhaps some exaggeration, was a lifesaver, for without some such expansion Ruburt would have felt unable to continue the particular brand of his existence. It is not possible to say in words what one person or another looks for in life, or what unique features best promote his or her growth and development. Even two plants of the same kind sometimes require completely different treatments. The sessions, then, opened the door to a particular kind of value fulfillment that was natural to Ruburt’s being. Now to some extent it was that poor, unhappy sinful self, a psychological structure formed by beliefs and feelings, that was also seeking its own redemption, since even it had outgrown the framework that so defined it.

And for me, at least, the reincarnational dimensions behind our present joint situation were heightened by a third association. It lay in the unpublished 874th session for August 22, 1979—the first one Jane held after having finished Mass Events a week earlier. I felt a distinct start of surprise when I came across this passage of Seth’s, for I’d completely forgotten it: “Jane, for example, entered the fetus when it was about three months old, and accepted this as a new life. You waited longer.” I didn’t remember Jane ever referring to that bit of information; certainly she’d never asked Seth to elaborate. I hadn’t either. (That was one of the few times when Seth had called her Jane instead of Ruburt, by the way.)

“Wednesday, July 15, 1981. Last night or rather this morning I had a strange strange dream experience, very vivid while happening, quite important I felt, and now I hardly remember it. The affair involved an excellent TV movie on reincarnation we saw last night. In the dream experience I think I was considering doing a book, a sequel, to the movie—but I was also seeing one or maybe two reincarnational lives of mine, seeing how a belief in reincarnation helped open a sense of the future in the present: I was learning how to visit those lives, which were still happening and for which I think I yearned—without dying in this life. There was a road and other scenes from my past I wanted to paint too; a significant green bottle; people I dearly loved, and Rob might have been involved too. Lots I’ve completely forgotten about people who loved you in particular lives always in some way being supportive; that we’re caught up in time-to-time overlays Seth has referred to in his late book dictation; that rhythmic time overlays happened as various anniversaries or significant events from various lives overlapped, bringing them momentarily closer (like comets) when entries back and forth, and interchanges, are particularly easier.