“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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

3. When the leaders of Iraq ordered the invasion of Iran 14 months ago, they expected to win the war in three weeks. They proclaimed that the war had really begun over 1,300 years ago, at the battle of Qaddisiya in A.D. 637, when Moslem Arabs drove the Persians, who are Indo-European, from Iraq. (Iraq was called Mesopotamia then, and until 1935 Persia was the name for Iran.)

Sometimes there is / no reply at all, as if /
my voice itself / turns into mist / or is lost in /
the waves pounding / until it seems / I am indeed /
abandoned, / separated from / some forgotten self /
who has gone elsewhere / without me, / so that the gulf /
between us / is so distant / that messages sent back /
and forth / now take so long / to reach me /
that only future / generations / of myself /
would be here to / catch their meaning.

Then I hear— / as I think I did / this morning— /
some response / that says, / “Who do you think / sent me /
on such a journey / if not yourself / who said, /
‘Don’t worry / about me. I’ll make out / but hurry— /
go while the tide / is full and take /
advantage of its motion, / to which I’ll add /
all of mine / I can afford to lend. / Let yourself be carried
where the flesh / in its sweet cowardice / would be afraid to
follow.’ / And so I did.”

And a rush of motion shifts / my dry wrists /
minute yet violent, / so that I startle (shudder) /
who have been / motionless so long. / The spidery shell that /
holds my heart / is lifted at one edge /
as if by a sudden wind / and coiled / dry tendrils /
of nerves and muscles / unwind themselves. /
My color changes, / my white parchment / skin turns coral, /
minute wrinkles disappearing. / My shape begins /
to fill out again / as I sense a / strange self returning… /
more swiftly now / mind-stroking / the giant waves /
of the unknown / mental sea.

“Effects continued on Sunday. Once my right arm suddenly moved out to the left, throwing my pack of cigarettes I was holding to the floor with sudden energy. Then late Sunday night I watched TV, dozing off a few minutes at a time—I came to, frightened, to find myself half off the couch and on the floor, trying to get onto my chair; yelled for Rob, who was in another room. He helped me back. Then a long dream experience in which my body was clearing itself.”

“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.