“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.

Yet American specialists on Iran do not believe that even those two severe decimations of its leadership will result in the collapse of the Iranian government. In their opinions none of the guerrilla resistance organizations would be able to run the country—deal with its growing economic difficulties, say, or its other great challenges. Nor, despite Western fears, does the Russian-oriented Tudeh, Iran’s Communist Party, seem anxious to take over; instead, the leaders of the Tudeh are supporting the government [at least so far], just as the armed forces do. Despite the appearance that the revolution in Iran—made up as it is of all of those diverse consciousnesses—is feeding upon itself in very destructive ways, in ordinary terms, civil war does not appear to be likely. Yet. And the Iraqi conflict goes on.³

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.

Through all of our challenges, we were aware of at least some of the incredible variety of positive and negative world events in the news—the bombings and the peace talks, the sports contests and the religious controversies, the national strikes and the latest developments in the arts. Amid the economic difficulties in our own country, and after a number of often very expensive delays, the second flight of our shuttle spacecraft, Columbia, came due on November 4. Of primary importance was to be the testing in space of the 50-foot-long remote-control robot arm, which had been designed to place satellites in orbit and retrieve them for service and repair. Only seconds before lift-off, however, computers shut down Columbia’s flight because of a drop in pressure in oxygen tanks. Then clogged oil filters were discovered. The launch was rescheduled for November 12.

We have an excellent stone fireplace in the living room of the hill house, and often during the winter months I used to build a fire in it at suppertime; we ate while sitting on the couch. Jane and I really enjoyed all of the deep implications conjured up by the wood fires. We had the fireplace cleaned a couple of years ago, however, and with that break in routine I gave up using it: By then my time had become so taken up each day with what seemed like an endless list of things to do—with trying to help Jane, with working, with running the house, with answering the mail and so forth—that I just stopped making fires.

Dreams often serve as the frameworks in which sudden remarkable insights appear that later enable a man or a woman to envision the world in a way that was not earlier predictable. The world’s activities always include the insertion of surprising events. This is true at all levels of nature, from microscopic to macroscopic. As I have said before, all systems are open. The theories of both evolutionists and creationists strongly suggest and reinforce beliefs in the consecutive nature of time, and in a universe that begins in such-and-such a fashion, continuing on to such-and-such an end—but there are horizontal events that appear in the true activity of nature, and there are horizontal entry points and exit points in all experience. These allow for the insertion of unofficial new energy, the introduction of surprising events. Period.

(9:50.) Now: Ruburt is that kind of courier. There are many in all areas of life, and this involves not only an excitement on the part of your own species, but the same kind of curiosity and excitement on the part of other species as well. Again, most difficult to explain—but those connections that exist between all species and the environment are themselves affected. The horizontal communications stretch and expand to allow for later developments in terms of probabilities, for consciousness always knows itself in more than one context, and it is possible for nature to experience itself in ways that would seem to be most improbable when the properties of conservation and learning are at their (underlined) strongest spring.

(“Do you want to say something about all of those vitamins Jane is taking these days?” We had talked about this earlier today.)

There are plenty of more immediate challenges. For example: The staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has asked the operators of more than 40 nuclear plants to check for cracks in the walls of the vessels encasing their pressurized-water reactors (which are the kind installed at TMI). Evidence is accumulating that the vessels are becoming embrittled by neutron radiation from the reactors much more quickly than their designers had anticipated. Small cracks have been found, but not all areas are reachable for testing. A rupture of a typical pressure vessel could result in an uncontrollable release of radiation into a containment building not designed to handle such a situation. If the building itself was breached, the escaping radiation could cause some 48,000 deaths, 250,000 nonfatal cancers and injuries, 5,000 first-generation birth defects, render 200 square miles uninhabitable, require decontamination of another 3,200 square miles, and damage other properties worth many billions of dollars. No protection against that kind of accident has ever been required by the NRC. The forces of consciousness at work would seem to be incredible—beyond our grasp.

Rather ironically, not all Moslems want the Americans to leave the Middle East, as the terrorists have announced they must do. And the government of Iran, in spite of its great hatred for our country, is pragmatic enough to join it in a very efficient exchange of large sums of money; these transactions, in part to settle business claims against Iran, are a portion of the arrangements made last January to free the American hostages.

The other part, / dispassionate, / flows together /
with the waves / past world and rock / dispersed as mist, /
beyond impediments / uncaring / while my heart /
in the fragile shell / calls out, / “Come back /
dear counterpart. / I am exhausted, / near dying, /
a partially empty / shell, paper-thin / with all my /
life alive / and flaming / only in my head / but nearly /
unstirring. / How can you leave me / in such a state, /
vulnerable / and exposed?”

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.”

“Nor will you have to.” / The voice is clearer now /
until it sounds / from my own mouth / (vibrant, loud) /
no longer distant. / We chatter half / the night together /
while I shake / the webs of remoteness /
from fingers and toes. / My shell / grew soft as a web /
then it fell apart / and was whisked off sighing /
in the morning / wind. / All around us /
the beach gathers the / precious images /
that leap up suddenly / in the dark, coming in with /
the tide that unites / the tides of the heart.

My counterpart says, / “Those treasures / are marked with /
your name / and will be arriving / each day for a while, /
marvelous surprises / from the most mysterious / of places. /
But I’ve grown wiser too— / how good to find you /
waiting for me here. / No journey is worth /
disturbing our harmony, / the self’s unity, /
and to the undivided / self / all journeys / are possible.”

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.

8. Our four visitors had become our dear friends long ago. I was sure that, by arriving just when they did, they contributed much to Jane’s latest improvements. They offered enthusiasm and faith and reinforcement to both of us, and renewed in us a fine nostalgia for old, seemingly more innocent times—even though all of us knew that that was illusory: Basically, those class days, those class years, couldn’t have been any more innocent than any other times; it was just that hindsight helped!

“Some really beneficial and odd developments are taking place in my physical condition,” Jane wrote, “generally starting last Saturday night (October 31) when the kids visited from NYC—students I haven’t seen in nearly two years. During their visit I noticed that my right leg, propped up on the coffee table, would suddenly fall very quickly and unexpectedly to the floor. Then they left. When company had gone I talked to Rob and nodded and dozed—then again my leg suddenly dropped and entire body turned independently of my will or intent to the left. This happened several times. Then in a moment of dozing I suddenly found my body moving forward, half standing, with strong energy and more or less natural motion—all by itself.

(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.)

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:

“I did briefly give him a message (on October 23, 1981): Attend to what is before you, for it is there for a reason. In each person’s life, and in your own, at each and every point of your existence, the solutions to your problems, or the means of achieving those solutions, are always as apparent—or rather as present—within your days as is any given problem itself. What I mean is quite simple: The solutions already exist in your lives. You may not have put them together yet, or organized them in the necessary ways. The solutions in Ruburt’s case lie in all of those areas with which you are normally concerned—the mail, the sessions, the psychic abilities. When you attend to what is there with the proper magical attitude of mind, then the altered organizations can take place.

“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.

“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.