“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.

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

(9:01.) In private living and in so-called evolutionary terms, however, life necessitates the intrusion of surprising events, unforeseen actions, leaps of insight or behavior that could not come alone from any accumulation of knowledge or simple conservation of energy, but seem to suggest entirely different new developments.

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.

(9:43.) There are considerable changes that occur under such conditions in man’s subjective experience. Man’s feelings about himself change too, but little by little his trust in unpredictability grows. He is more willing to assign himself to it. The species begins its own kind of psychic migration. It begins to sense within itself further frontiers and the possibilities for action. It begins to yearn for the exploration of mental lands, and it sends portions of itself out as couriers.

(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.

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.

2. The cleanup costs at Three Mile Island are now projected at more than $1.5 billion, and will continue to increase. Many government officials and private analysts now believe that if the operating risks associated with nuclear power generating plants do not ultimately shut down many of them, their economic dilemmas will. I don’t know whether the nuclear power industry in the United States will die, but it’s in great trouble: Various studies show that around half of the 90 reactors under construction could be replaced by more economical coal-fired plants, containing excellent pollution-control equipment. By the late 1980s power from those new nuclear plants will be 25 percent more expensive than it would be if generated from coal.

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.

6. My ever-present concern for Jane would certainly have turned into outright fear had I seen at once the long, untitled poem she wrote on August 26, concurrently with her work on the second chapter for Magical Approach. She didn’t put the poem into its final form, and she didn’t show it to me. Not that she tried to hide it. Neither of us may tell or show the other everything—I just hadn’t been present when she wrote the poem, and she let it lie in her 1981 journal, where I “accidentally” came across it some time later. Even when I did find the poem I became sad, then frightened, then more hopeful as I read it, and I knew at once that I’d have to insert it here in Dreams. For Jane had been depressed when she wrote her poem. Perhaps it was her poetic art of expression that helped me identify so strongly with her emotions, but I suddenly felt that even I had never really understood the myriad depths of her challenges and her reactions to them. In the poem I saw expressed anew her ancient fear of abandonment, along with her dilemmas over her lack of mobility—and my fright was engendered by what I thought were signs that she might choose to leave this physical reality for good. To die. (I’d had similar feelings seven months before she held this 936th session: In Note 13 for Session 931, in Chapter 9, see my comments following the excerpts from the private session for April 15, 1981.)

Something in me / ebbs and tides, / as if I let myself /
for a while / be washed away / out to sea / while leaving /
some spidery shell / upon the shore / dry and shriveled, /
scarce alive. / [yet] with fierce / mouth and eyes /
half alive. / But ah, that half / is passionate /
and filled with / life’s yearning.

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?”

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.”

I scarcely remember / but recognize the voice / and feel /
some distant tide of motion / turning back, /
some mythical self / carrying / a million messages /
beyond the known / and exotic treasures back /
to where I’m waiting.

Little by little / my strength arouses. / My muscles unravel /
which have been / folded tight, / saved for future use, /
and I sit up now / running brittle fingers /
through my sun-dried hair. / I say, “We went too far /
my friend. / From now on we’ll / have to go together /
just out as far as I can / walk or swim—or I’ll go /
mind-traveling with you. / But I won’t stay home /
alone again, / appliances turned down / halfway, waiting.”

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.”

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.

9. Jane held her ESP classes for seven and a half years (from September 1967 through February 1975). Those gatherings were disrupted almost seven years ago, when we moved from our downtown apartments into the hill house, and for a number of reasons we did not resume them. Strange it may be, but Jane and I have never conducted a search for class artifacts, as our friends had just been doing, and as other former students had done before. We grew up without modern conveniences like portable tape recorders, of course, but even so our natural creative desires had always been to express ourselves graphically, in written and printed words and in drawn and painted images. They still are. In addition, Jane’s impetus is to continue driving forward; that’s her way, even though each project grows—as it must—out of the past. (I’ve shown in Dreams that many of her physical symptoms have resulted from conflicts between those spontaneous urges, and entrenched beliefs that revolve around her sinful self and tell her that such activity is wrong.)

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.

“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.

(To me at 9:14:) “I will also have comments concerning your own reactions, and I suggest—but only suggest—that again your usual two sessions a week be held, as a framework for the therapeutic endeavors.

“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.”

“Now: It is the effortlessness, the spontaneous relaxation, that worries Ruburt, in that it is not specifically decided upon at any given point, but seems to happen by itself.