“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Three months ago, way back on August 13, following the outline she’d written on July 8 for The Magical Approach to Reality: A Seth Book,¹ Jane began work on the first draft for Chapter 1 of that project. That same evening she held the final session, the 935th, for Chapter 10 of Dreams. Since then she’s given but two short private sessions, on November 9 and 12. All through those weeks her physical states had fluctuated considerably. Seth reassured her in both sessions. In the first of the two he remarked that “Ruburt is still dealing with spin-off material following or resulting from his sinful-self data….” In the second one he stressed that although Jane was still afraid of spontaneous bodily relaxation, “[Ruburt] is safe, supported and protected—that is, of course, the message that he is trying to get through his head at this time.” Before going into our chronology of personal events for those three months, however, I want to continue my brief study of the affairs—really the consciousnesses—involving Three Mile Island, Iran, and the war between Iran and Iraq. I last dealt with those subjects in the first, 933rd session for Chapter 10.

Ever since the accident to the nuclear reactor of Unit No. 2 at TMI, 31 months ago, the reactor’s great containment building and an auxiliary structure have been flooded with highly radioactive water. [It grew to be over eight and a half feet deep in the reactor building.] Utility engineers now have in operation a filtering system to decontaminate before storage the nearly one million gallons of water in the two buildings. The job is to take around nine months; the processed water will finally be disposed of in 1983; the filters holding the radioactive material will be trucked to facilities in Idaho and Washington State for testing and storage. Yet to come are the removal of the reactor’s cover, its damaged core, and the decontamination of the buildings themselves.

I’d never seen Jane hesitate for so many months over beginning a new project, as she had with Magical Approach. Usually she just plunged right into her latest creative inspiration, and that she hadn’t done so this time was to me a clear sign of her long-range, general physical-emotional state. I continued to reassure her [as Seth did also] after she’d finished Chapter 10, for I was deeply frustrated and concerned for her. There wasn’t anything else I could offer that she would affirm. As the weeks passed she denied more than once that she was depressed. Watching my wife over the years, I’d long ago come to feel that I was observing someone who was following a chosen course with incredible ability and determination. Nor is it contradictory of me even now to note that Jane’s path is quite in accord with her basically innocent, mystical nature—for her acceptance of her nature makes possible her explorations of it in her own unique ways. When she does mourn her impaired state, it’s still never with that tired old question directed at a supposedly unjust and uncaring nature: “Why me?” She just keeps trying to grapple with her challenges.

Early in September—magically appearing as though from another reality, for we’d quite forgotten about the situation—we received through Prentice-Hall six copies of the reprinted Dutch-language edition of Seth Speaks. This time the publisher in the Netherlands, Ankh-Hermes, had not cut Seth Spreekt.⁷

Right after that Sue Watkins called from her home in upstate New York to tell us that she’d just received from Prentice-Hall her first printed copy of Volume 2 of Conversations With Seth. She’s to send us an autographed copy after more reach her. Both Jane and I congratulated her on producing a fine pair of books. Even though we could hardly be called impartial, we knew that in her long account of much that had taken place in Jane’s ESP classes, Sue had produced superior work both for herself and for us, through her viewpoint offering new dimensions and insights concerning what all three of us—four, counting Seth!—had been, and still are, trying to do. Our copy of Conversations did arrive from Sue early in October. Seeing it cheered Jane—yet my wife continued to hassle [as she put it] her efforts on Magical Approach, asking herself again and again whether she really wanted to do that book. Her intuitions always affirmed that she did. It was often difficult going for her, though: Magical Approach still wasn’t flowing the way she wanted it to.

Then on October 23 Jane’s creative contentions led to her “attend” material—in which she picked up from Seth that her only responsibility in life is to herself: “Attend to what is directly before you.” Seth told her that she bore no onus to save the world. In relief, Jane wrote a short poem to accompany Seth’s message, then wrote further that she “realized that like many I’d become afraid of faith itself.” I’ve presented this cluster of material in the frontmatter for Volume 1 of Dreams. Her insight helped both of us. However, she hadn’t had a session, regular or private, in over 10 weeks [since August 13], so on October 27 she recorded in her journal the continuance of her daily creative struggles: “And once again I’m way behind in sessions and writing. This A.M. I ‘worked’ from midnight to 3—without getting anything done. I wonder about the advisability of the entire project [Magical Approach]. Where had the magic gone? Where was my inspiration? Those were my thoughts when it occurred to me that I should be writing them down, because they’re part of the whole picture. I felt better….”

Following her latest self-renewal of faith, Jane started to notice some physical improvements. One very unusual way these showed themselves began on the evening of October 31, when four younger people who had been members of ESP class visited us from New York City.⁸ They’d been scouting the Elmira area for other ex-students, to see if any of them had old class tapes of Jane speaking for Seth and/or singing in Sumari; they had had some success in their searches, but we didn’t play any of the tapes that night.⁹

Jane and I thought it most interesting that within 29 days [in October] various events—the arrival of Volume 2 of Conversations, Jane’s coming through with her “attend” material and poetry, the visit of her former students, and even her contentions with Magical Approach—had helped her rejuvenate her sense of physical ease and well-being on at least three separate occasions. She wrote more notes, more poetry. We kept trying to encourage her new motions, of the kind described in Note 8, but they began to taper off.

At the beginning of these notes I wrote that three months passed after Jane finished Chapter 10 of Dreams before she held her next session—a private one—on November 9. In that short session Seth sought to add his reassurances to Jane’s own, and to mine as well.¹⁰ On the 12th Columbia was launched as scheduled, but only after another delay caused by the failure of an electronic decoding unit. Then within a few hours after lift-off, the shuttle’s crew had to deal with the malfunction of one of the ship’s three fuel cells. Mission officials decided that for reasons of safety Columbia would land after a two-day flight instead of staying up for the planned five days; the 83 orbits were reduced to 36. The crew did successfully test the orbiter’s multijointed robot arm, however. In the meantime, on the evening of the 12th, following his suggestion that she resume the sessions on a twice-weekly basis, Jane spoke for Seth in another private session. That one too was short.¹¹

They hadn’t resumed by session time. Jane leaned back on the couch with her feet up on the coffee table, and I sat facing her with my notebook propped up on one knee; the fireplace was only a couple of feet in back of me. Soon after 8:20 Jane began to “feel Seth around.” Right away I learned that the session was to be one of her slower ones. I’ve indicated just a few of the many long pauses she used in trance.)

Not this evening—but I will have material for you there, and on Ruburt shortly, when some new insights on his own will allow me to make further points than those I could make at present. End of session, and my fondest good wishes.

10:01 P.M. Jane vaguely remembered Seth’s puzzling continuation of book work after he’d said dictation was over for the evening. I told her I thought he’d triggered his extra material himself through talking about our species’ couriers. I’m pleased that he said Jane is such a one. I don’t remember him describing her before in just that way; it’s another insight into her chosen mystical-psychic role in physical life “this time around.”)

7. In Chapter 2 of Dreams, in Volume 1, see Note 1 for Session 885, which we held on October 24, 1979. Through a series of misunderstandings, the people at Ankh-Hermes had published an abridged translation of Seth Speaks without having permission for the cutting from Jane and me. We still feel regret that the company had to go to all of that extra expense in order to publish a second edition of the book. I also wrote that “all concerned must wait for at least another year before a full-length version of Seth Speaks will be published in the Dutch language.” Actually, almost two years passed before we received our copies of the new edition.

Very briefly: More so than Jane is, I think, I’m intrigued by and susceptible to nostalgia. I create a feeling for it. I used to equate the emotion with sentimentality—but leaving aside the basic merits of the latter, I’ve come to understand that nostalgia, growing out of its inevitable counterpart, memory, represents a facet of Seth’s idea of simultaneous time. For if past, present and future exist together (and continue to develop), then I see nostalgia as expressing a legitimate searching by the conscious mind as it seeks to grasp that the past exists now, and is not “dead.” The quest for nostalgia is one way to bring the living past up-to-date. The yearning I feel each time I drive past the apartment house Jane and I lived in for 15 years, just west of the business section of Elmira, represents my conscious reunification of the past with the present, and even a projection of both into the future in ordinary terms.

When I look up at those three high, old-fashioned bay windows that illuminate the living room of Apartment 4, on the second floor of that house, I visualize Jane sitting behind them at her oak table, thinking and writing, intrigued and comforted by the busy patterns of people and automobiles traversing the intersection she looks down upon: Walnut and West Water Streets. And behind those windows, at night in that living room, she paces back and forth for hours at a time after she begins to speak for Seth in December 1963. She holds ESP classes there. Accordingly, then, a Jane Roberts Butts and a Robert F. Butts live in that apartment I’m creating. I think my nostalgia for those days reinforces our activities in larger realms of consciousness, as well as in our “present” joint reality, in which my wife is now chair-bound.

(Note: All of the photographs of Jane that appear in The Seth Material were taken in the living room of Apartment 4 early in 1970; glimpses of the room appear in those shots. The first and last photos show Jane before the bay window that faces the northwest, with the trees and the backs of the houses lining the east side of Walnut Street in view.)

We always liked the idea, however, that others were recording class events and were keeping tapes for us if and when we wanted them; we also liked the idea that it was safer to have the tapes scattered about instead of being kept in one place. In class Jane might have listened to portions of a tape as it was being made, or immediately after class was over, but seldom would I hear her playing the same tape later—if we had a copy of it, that is. She’s fascinated to hear herself speak as Seth, and sing in Sumari, but she always wants to move on. I simply have never devoted myself to collecting tapes. I don’t want to overstate the issue, but neither does Jane pay that much attention to a book once it has been published. She does reread various private sessions, usually those in which Seth discusses matters relating to her symptoms. Until this year (1981) she would occasionally replay one of the few tapes we’d made together, or use our recorder when writing poetry. She gradually gave up working that way, however, as it became more and more difficult for her to exert enough finger pressure on the recorder’s keys.

10. Seth dealt with our personal challenges for almost all of this session on Monday evening, November 9. After supper Jane had announced that she wanted to try for a session—she didn’t know whether it would be private, for Dreams, or on other material. She’d just finished rereading a number of book sessions. She was both nervous and impatient at the prospect of her first session since last August. Here are excerpts:

“Ruburt is still dealing with spinoff material following or resulting from his sinful-self data,” Seth said, “and this material generally follows the lines of development that are fairly obvious in the poems and notes [he has written] since that time.

“He knows what I am referring to. Some small portions are not as yet typed, and should be, for the typing alone of that material will act as an impetus. The entire sinful-self material should be reviewed. He did indeed become afraid of faith itself.

“The body, again, does possess such a natural faith, and it has nothing to do with esoteric methods, and so forth—but, again, deals with a kind of self-evident biological knowledge. There is a more emotional charge connected with those issues, hence the temporary feelings of panic, for example. These should be discussed. I will have further pertinent material to add to the overall category of Ruburt’s situation, but I am simply making this evening’s session to give him a sense of immediate direction.

“I know how to quicken the impetus of the psyche, to give it a gentle nudge in the proper direction, to insert a hint of reassurance, and with this session that is my intent. The sinful self’s material serves as a small psychic source at the moment: That is, he still reacts to it, and the same material may appear from different viewpoints.”

“A belief in a ‘god who provides,’ by whatever name, is indeed a psychological requirement for the good health of the body and mind. Ruburt did not want to face such issues. (Long pause.) He felt that they opened the door to all of organized religion’s psychological quicksand of emotionalism. The sinful-self material is doing its work, opening the necessary doorways of desire and intent. When Ruburt has typed those small later poems, the path will seem much clearer to him. The innocent self is being uncovered.

“Ruburt is dealing with quite profound material involving the self’s relationship with its source—this material being worked out in your current situations. The solutions will automatically lead him not only to a solution in practical terms, but toward the areas of development that he has been seeking (emphatically), while being afraid of them at the same time.”

Jane smiled after Seth had left us. She was pleased that she’d had the session: “I still get scary after a layoff.” She knew what material Seth wanted her to type. I should note our disappointment that those strange, new and quick bodily motions she’d experienced just a week ago had soon tapered off. See Note 8 for this session.

11. These insights from the material Seth gave Jane and me on Thursday evening, November 12, show how he continued to try to help us help her:

“His ideas as he tried to explain them to you earlier this evening are excellent. They revive him psychologically, particularly with your help, as he discusses them. The sinful-self material is ‘timed’ in its own fashion so that although there is a good deal of material already written, its effects are periodic—that is, they are clued to spring into even greater insight, which may not be apparent at any one given time. It is important that he tells you when he does feel panicky. However, the feeling itself does not last long. Relaxation, again, is a part of the creative process.

“I hope to finish our book (Dreams) regardless of your publishing plans and so forth, and at this general point that will be beneficial to our friend as he sees some daily accomplishment made in that area. (Long pause.) I want Ruburt to see, however, that healing is taking place, that he can trust his own mind and body, and that all portions of the self are being dealt with, whether or not such is obvious at any given time. Our material on such points is not fiction. Unfortunately, in your society you need every good suggestion you can get, to offset fears and negative conditioning.

“[Ruburt] does not have to publish a book every year on the button. The creative material will flow. It flows as a result of his own characteristic nature. It is safe to express that nature. It is even safe to explore that nature, and it is safe to allow himself to take some comfort in the source of being.