“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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

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.

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

You perform far more actions in a day than you recall. You do not know how many times you lift your arms, speak a sentence, think a thought. With the kind of consciousness you possess, an overreliance upon conserving principles could then end up in a reduction of life’s processes.

“Right now I just want / to stand up whole / and walk across /
the beach,” I said. / And arm in arm / we did, /
smiling our double-single smile.

“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.”