“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“Now: Generally speaking, Ruburt enjoys our sessions, and considers them with a natural zest.

Painting is really unalloyed fun for Jane. Not that she doesn’t have her failures, but her work has greatly improved since we met in 1954, and in ways that I hadn’t foreseen for her. Indeed, I now think that my wife is a better painter in her way than I am in mine. This doesn’t mean that I’m knocking my own abilities in any way. Jane is freer. She works in oils, acrylics, and watercolors. When painting she knows a release from time, care, and responsibility that she doesn’t experience otherwise—and surely that pleasure emphasizes qualities of living that Seth has always stressed. Her painting is her unhampered creative translation of the Seth material into pigments instead of words. Because of her defective vision Jane sees perspective differently than I do, yet achieves her own kind of depth with her “instinctive” designs and color choices. Her art contains a charming, innocent, mystical freedom that I envy. She’s produced many more paintings than I have in my own more conventional, more plodding way [although now I’m working faster than I used to]. I think that any assessment of her writing and psychic abilities will have to include a close study of her painting. To me, the lessening of Jane’s physical mobility has resulted in a strong compensating growth in her painting mobility. I also think her painting reflects her free physical motion in her dreams. Hardly accidental, any of that. I’ve seen her turn almost automatically to the relief that only painting can give her.

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 now it must be plain to the reader that Seth’s material on the sinful self—any sinful self, or all of them—could very well be considered the other side of his information on the magical approach to reality. I was all too aware of an uncomfortable dichotomy. Indeed, how irritating it was, I thought, that for Jane and me at least the magical self seemed to be so far removed from daily reality, while the sinful self was so close! Reaching out to the magical self could be thought of as some theoretically attainable goal—but the sinful self was right there, functioning within the most intimate areas of personal life. For how many others is the same situation true? Seth, I knew, would simply say that the magical self is just as real and close as any other self. The challenge for the individual is to know and to believe that, to clear unwanted growth from around the magical self so that it can bloom unimpeded….

“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.”

Along with our shock came elation. Here, we congratulated ourselves, lay bared all of those beliefs and motivations that for years had been hidden and operative beneath Jane’s symptoms: Here were the real reasons—now we could eradicate her physical hassles! Jane’s own sinful-self revelations certainly complemented Seth’s, which in turn, we thought, were the other side of his material on the magical approach to reality.

“Now Ruburt is undergoing some profound therapeutic changes. Probabilities at each point intersect with your time, and those probabilities are psychologically directed so that, in your terms once again, he is at an excellent intersection point, where the prognosis is excellent. Tell him I said this. And you are both responsible, for both of your lives merge in their fashions.”

Now why didn’t I orient all of this introductory material around that session, instead of following the course I did? Why has Jane’s physical condition deteriorated so much since then, and why haven’t we been able to prevent that slide? The possibilities for having helped her seem boundless in retrospect, with at least some of them certainly being better than the way we chose.

Now that we’re up to date, let’s begin the 931st session, which we sat for at 8:37 P.M. on Wednesday, July 15, 1981, as usual:

It developed, however, that Jane’s reincarnational adventure might end up doing double duty: Not only had it given her insights concerning her sinful self, but now she picked up from Seth that his remarks about it could result in dictation for Dreams. She’d been looking over sessions for the book at various times lately, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised. She asked if I’d mind work on Dreams this evening, and I said of course not—that she and Seth have the absolute freedom to talk about anything at all. If Seth did discuss her experience, Jane replied, it would be in connection with “time overlays.” She wasn’t nervous about going back to Dreams. She said that dictation for it wouldn’t mean she was giving up on private material, or on her projected book on the magical approach, either.

Now, good evening.

Earlier I mentioned several times that we must reach a point at which you are able to see around the corner of seemingly contradictory material,²¹ and this is one of those occasions. (Long pause.) Time overlays present you with a picture in which you have free will—yet each event that you choose will have its own time version. Now those time versions may be entirely different one from the others, and while you certainly initiate your own time version, in terms of usual understanding there is no true place or time in which that version can be said to actually originate (again with emphasis).

Now while it seems that your world contains more and more information all the time, your particular brand of science is a relatively narrow one, in that it accepts as valid only certain specific areas of speculation. The areas outside of its boundaries become taboo, so that the realm of the unknown is no longer the material universe or the mysteries of space, but the interior universe and the mysteries of the mind as these are experienced or suspected to exist outside of those official areas. To that degree, the unknown is more feared by science than it ever was by religion.

“Finish checking copy-edited manuscript of God of Jane this afternoon. Feel this important…. As I finish, I realize how much physical activity and energy is required for even that seemingly sedentary task, for I’ve been uncomfortable, sitting, switching my weight, body soreish, eyes not seeing properly and so forth…. But in some newish way I seemed to understand how much seemingly mental work is dependent upon physical vigor, flexibility and so forth; and then rather strongly—emotionally it came to me that I’d thought it my duty to clamp down physically, to cut down mobility in order to … have mobility as a writer; that is, to sit down, cut down on impulses, distractions, to make sure I’d ‘do my work,’ pursue my goal undeviatingly; that new [book] contracts instantly led me to that kind of behavior and that I really see that such behavior carried to its extremes would end up smothering my writing, defeating the purposes it (seemingly) meant to protect. But I did fear that impulses and body motion were … distractions to work…. Now I see how much impulses are conducive … to just typing, for God’s sake; imagine typing and seeing with ease, just thinking about what I’m thinking about, instead of trying to get my fingers on the proper keys. I feel as if I’m on to something here … feel some relaxation. If this is the case, the entire process could be changed around quite quickly, of course, toward mobility. I’m not writing here tonight about the reasons behind such behavior—many ideas—but did want to get something down now….”

“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….

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.

I could add much material from Jane’s personal past to supplement just the session excerpts given here; perhaps the two of us can explore those fascinating connections in a later work. Right now I’ll make just one point: The priest, burning Jane’s books in the backyard of the house she lived in, taught the growing girl in most specific terms that she had to protect her natural abilities and her inquiring mind even from the very institution—the Roman Catholic Church—that she had so strongly identified with.

“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.

For the first time ever since Jane began the sessions over 17 years ago, in December 1963, I got the chills when Seth delivered a passage—for when he remarked that without some such creative psychic expansion as the sessions “Ruburt would have felt unable to continue the particular brand of his existence,” I surely thought he meant that Jane could have chosen to die. I didn’t mention this to her after the session, and she seemed to have no such reaction when she read the typed session the next day. We did talk about a number of highly gifted people who had died at young ages; indeed, we’d often speculated about what further contributions such individuals could have made had they chosen to continue living physically. In ordinary terms, it’s easy to say that those early deaths were wasteful—but not, I said now, from the standpoints of those involved. Great variations in motivation, intent, and purpose must have been operating, but each person had done what he or she could do in this probable reality—then left it. Jane agreed that Seth had come through with excellent material. I told her I didn’t see how it could be any better.

“It is no coincidence that you have been relatively free of that concept in its traditional religious connotation—you worked that out in your Nebene existence to a large extent, and because of your own preparations for a life in which you are now involved.”

(Seven and a half years ago, Seth had referred to a version of myself living in first-century Rome: “So Joseph ‘was’ Nebene, a scholarly man, not adventurous, obsessed with copying ancient truths, and afraid that creativity was error; authoritative and demanding. He feared sexual encounter, and he taught rich Roman children.” In Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, see Session 721 for November 25, 1974. One might say that I’m still obsessed with truths—as I take down the Seth material, for example—only now I call them timeless rather than ancient or new.)

15. I tell Jane that each book she does is her best—and I mean it each time, for each one is. The Seth books sell better, however, than do her “own” books: How to Develop Your ESP Power, Adventures in Consciousness, Psychic Politics, Cézanne and James, her Oversoul Seven novels, Dialogues and Emir. (See the opening notes for this 931st session, as well as Note 10, for my description of the demise of Emir.) Now Jane adds God of Jane to her list, with If We Live Again to follow in a few months.

One can also say that the Seth books are a step farther removed than Jane’s are from the immediacy of life as we conceive of it. Even with the elimination of the Seth element from them, Jane’s own books would still represent a remarkable overall achievement, and had she never given expression to the Seth material I’m sure she would have developed her abilities in ways quite unknown to us now. Within her basic creativity lies the source of Seth as we are to understand him in our temporal reality. Her expression of Seth is an adjunct to that creativity, as he is the first to acknowledge.

“I now want to put the sinful-self material in a larger spectrum,” Seth told us in part. “Ideally, infants ‘bond’ with their parents, particularly with the mother but with the father also, and they bond with the general ideas of their society. This offers the sense of safety in which the youngster can then feel free and curious enough to explore its world and the nature of reality.

“Now Ruburt had only one parent available most of the time, and he did not feel secure in that relationship—a situation chosen ahead of time, now. There is great leeway in the nature of such bondings…. With some people, they are so secure that they provide an overall, fairly permanent inner and outer framework. Ruburt’s relationship with his mother left much to be desired. The bonding did not secure him that vital sense of safety, and he felt threatened by abandonment. His bonding to the cultural beliefs of religion was very strong to make up for that initial lack. The sinful-self material represents those ideas that were a strong element in his original belief structures. The ‘troublesome’ material remained relatively inactive until his curiosity and ability led him to actively challenge those ideas while [he was] also in a situation where the natural fear of abandonment might be suggested. At certain points, the assimilation of new information is so qualifiedly different from the original belief structure that in order to assimilate it the personality is left for a time between belief systems.

“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.

“His idea of a project on the magical approach now is excellent, for it suggests a new concentration or focus.”

“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.

“How a belief in reincarnation and immortality added support to life, so that it didn’t seem dead-ended. That I could relax now, admitting and realizing that I did have certain fears per the sinful self’s document (instead of pretending that I didn’t). Because brought into the light I really could handle them and see how they originated. Stuff on how society operated, whether it knew it or not, on a reincarnational basis, and how association was many-lives-thick, so to speak. Only these are thoughts I’m left with, connected to the experience while I’ve forgotten the events themselves, and the scenes that were extremely colorful and emotionally charged.”

22. Although Jane has had “particular difficulty” with the theory of reincarnation, both through Seth and in her poetry she’s always kept psychic windows open through which she can view and express reincarnational ideas and emotions. Poetically, this will be obvious when If We Live Again is published late this year. (Probably in December. We expect to receive from Prentice-Hall the page proofs for the book, for our review, any day now.) In her poetry the young Jane was using ideas akin to reincarnation before she even knew the word—subject matter that was strongly disapproved of by the Catholic priests who visited Jane and her bedridden mother at home.

I’ve noted before that Seth himself has no reservations at all about expressing reincarnational material. Listening to some of the tapes students made in Jane’s ESP class—in the early ‘70s, say—I hear Seth being allowed to spontaneously give regular students and first-time visitors often quite detailed and penetrating insights into their other lives; explaining how events and emotions from other existences can intermix with their counterparts in present lives. Jane still picks up such information from others, but now she seldom expresses it through Seth. I think her deep concern about leading others astray, related as it is to her early religious training, is the inhibiting force here. Then see Notes 9 and 19 for this session; their contents show that she hasn’t closed a certain window into the dream state, either.