“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

On the screen we saw a parade of citizens expressing shock, sadness, and outrage, frustrated by the knowledge that it had all happened before—not only in our country but around the world—and that it would happen again many times more. It became almost a cliché for people to wonder what was wrong with people: Why do those who attain prominence often attract those who want to destroy them? I think the Seth material contains some penetrating insights into such questions, but those ideas aren’t nearly well-enough known to help on a national scale. Seth didn’t comment upon the shooting, It wasn’t that he couldn’t, or wouldn’t—but that Jane herself is basically so innocent, so repelled by the violence involved in such episodes, that she often chooses not to go into the subject. I thought she might later in connection with other material, however; this had been the case when Seth discussed the mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978.¹¹

“After supper I discussed with Jane the question I’ve been keeping in mind for Seth, concerning what her sinful self may have learned since we began this series of sessions. I said it was essential to communicate to her sinful self [so named by Seth for convenience’s sake only] that its performance has been very destructive to Jane, and that it must release its hold. I want to know that self’s attitude toward the fact that Jane is now helpless as far as her physical survival is concerned—she can no longer take care of herself without my help, and this obviously implies that if her condition continues to worsen to the point of death, her sinful self will die also. I want to know what it ‘thinks’ about such a contradictory situation. No matter how it must reason or react, that self has to be concerned about its own survival—but in what ways, and based upon what knowledge and reasons? Of course we have some answers now, but I want more.”

Such usually unconscious knowledge is of great benefit to the species itself, so that at certain levels, at least, the knowledge of the species is not imprisoned within any given generation at once, but flows or circulates within the overall larger reincarnational picture. Probabilities are very much involved here, of course, and it is easier for particular events to fall within one time sequence than another.

In the culture that you know, such information remains hidden from you. Your main belief systems lead you to feel that your present life is singular, unsupported by any knowledge of prior experience with existence, and fated to be cut off or dead-ended without a future. Instead, you always carry the inner knowledge of innumerable available futures (emphatically). Your emotional life at certain levels is enriched by the unconscious realization that those who love you from past or future are connected to you by special ties that add to your emotional heritage and support.

(9:25. With many pauses, but all intently:) Ruburt has had particular difficulty, however, with “the theory of reincarnation,”²² because as it is usually described, it seemed that people used it to blame as the source of current misfortune, or as an excuse for personal behavior whose nature they did not otherwise understand, and it has been so maligned. Its reality, however, serves to generate activity throughout time’s framework as you understand it, to unite the species, to reinforce structures of knowledge, to transmit information, and perhaps most of all to reinforce relationships involving love, brotherhood, and cooperation between generations of men and women that would otherwise be quite separate and apart from each other.

8. Jane woke me up often while she was having this very revealing experience, and each time I tried to comfort her. Note how she expressed from another perspective the power of her early religious training, as well as religion’s fear of the power of the unknown—and how even now she still has to deal with those factors in her search for knowledge.

“The point at which such a situation happens is of course internal, and it may or may not have anything to do with the quality of material, but with its nature. Each society—or each system of knowledge, for that matter—has its own taboos built in, and most of these imply abandonment by the community. A firm bonding with the parent ideally implies, however, that the child will not be abandoned, despite parental anger at any given time.

“Now remember that Ruburt’s mother used phrases like: ‘I hereby disown you,’ and: ‘You are hereby disinherited,’ and: ‘I consider you no longer my daughter.’ Such situations increased Ruburt’s sense of not being safe, yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for he did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as he might otherwise. The time would come, however, when the old bondings had to be encountered, for they simply could not hold the newer larger frameworks of understanding. The ideas of the so-called sinful self represent several layers of activity, then—troublesome aspects of belief structures that are shared by millions in your society, and by certain levels of Ruburt’s personality. He is now trying to assimilate a greater framework, to become bonded to a higher sequence of knowledge.