“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

During her early years Jane had naturally and deeply loved her mother, and tried in every way a child could to please her—yet she became ashamed at the treatment she was receiving from Marie, and for the most part kept it a secret while growing up; we’d been married for some years before I really began to understand the depth of her feelings on that score. Why, Jane’s sinful self even felt guilty, Seth told us, because of her abusive treatment by Marie—assuming that it must have been bad, that it deserved all those years of psychological assault!

Jane’s overall symptoms worsened, and I sensed connections between her situation and the arrival of Mass Events. As of June 2 she hadn’t walked for six and a half months, even with the aid of her typing table. That very day a crisis appeared: In the bathroom, and for the first time in all the years of her physical troubles, she couldn’t manipulate well enough on her feet to get back into her wheeled office chair over by the sink. I carried her—and that act was a deep blow to the stubborn self-reliance that is so characteristic of each one of us. I was dismayed, as Jane was. As if to atone for my own frustration at a deteriorating situation, when typing that evening’s session [the next day] I inserted a statement of my love for my wife. I was to learn that that simple reinforcement greatly affected her, as it had me when I wrote it.¹⁴

If we had been appalled when Seth began giving his version of the beliefs her sinful self held, we were even more so when that self began to express itself “personally.” And once more I had to guard my own expressions of frustration and anger; those emotions were so mixed up with my love for my wife that I even developed a perverse, almost black humor about the entire situation. Then Seth came through with another session on the same subject while Jane’s sinful self was in the midst of its own revelations! But she simply had to get that final, direct message from that portion of herself by herself; except for that one session, she even made Seth figuratively stand aside while she did so. But Seth himself was delighted with her breakthrough.¹⁶

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.

As many have supposed, particularly in fiction, love relationships do indeed survive time, and they put you in a special correspondence. Even if you were aware of reincarnational existences, your present psychological behavior would not be threatened but retain its prominence—for only within certain space and time intersections can physical actions occur. The more or less general acceptance of the theory of reincarnation, however, would automatically alter your social systems, add to the richness of experience, and in particular insert a fresh feeling for the future, so that you did not feel your lives dead-ended.

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.

(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.

I do not necessarily mean that full-blown pictures of other existences would necessarily come into your mind, but that in one way or another you would receive a support or change of mood as those loved by you in other lives [in] one way or another sensed your need and responded.

“Lately I’ve been working with ideas of safety, saying and believing that I AM safe, secure and supported and that I DO trust my natural spontaneous motion. NOW as I write some old dumb stuff comes emotionally to mind—my mother saying that I’d destroy those I loved or some such nonsense. But it’s as if I always felt that spontaneously, left alone, I’d end up taking away people’s comfort blankets, and I felt bad about that, even while I knew that those philosophic blankets were wormy, had to go. And I do see that I’m offering something far better….

“Outside of that context, none of those fears make any sense at all. In a large regard the church through the centuries ruled through the use of fear far more than the use of love. It was precisely in the area of artistic expression that the inspirations might quickest leap through the applied dogmatic framework. The political nature of inspirational material of any kind was well understood by the church. Ruburt well knew even as a child that such religious structures had served their time, and his poetry provided a channel through which he could express his own views as he matured.

“He did initiate a small religious order in the 16th century, in France, and he was in love for many years with the man he met in his dream (five evenings ago)—a cleric. The love was not consummated, but it was passionate and enduring nonetheless on both of their parts.

“The name Normandy comes to mind, and the name Abelard. The dream came to remind Ruburt of those connections, but also to remind him that his life even then was enriched by a long-held love relationship. The two corresponded frequently, met often, and in their ways conspired to alter many of the practices that were abhorrent yet held as proper church policy.

“Your love for each other is large enough to withstand any natural expression of aggression or resentment on either of your parts. As mentioned earlier, because of Ruburt’s background he feared abandonment often. It seemed to him that he did not offer what most men expected of women, so that if he wanted a good lifelong companion he had to tread lightly. He felt that many of his own characteristics were considered disadvantageous in a man-woman relationship.”

As Jane finished delivering that passage for Seth I felt like interrupting the session to most strongly protest her poor assessment of herself, but I didn’t. Instead, later I added my rough statement to the session. Besides expressing my love for Jane, it reveals other churning emotions:

“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.

“Part of my physical hassles come from fear of the unknown, once I realized I was gifted in that direction—that certain friends we’ve made here represent loved relationships of reincarnational origin, that offer support now if I accept it.

I told Jane after the session that her material brings up innumerable questions—that just from our side, in physical reality, the variety of connections between the living and the “dead” has to equal the number of individuals on earth. For instance, I’d wondered, as I read her paper, how often does the newly deceased person’s meeting loved ones from other lifetimes “dilute” the love he or she had felt for the mate, say, who is left behind this time? How ironic, that the one still physical grieves for the departed loved one, while that newly dead individual is joyfully becoming aware of connections with other existences, other loves….