“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.

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

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

Jane seems to be considering a switch from our Monday-Wednesday session routine to one of Tuesday-Thursday.

Early this morning we heard strange scratching sounds on the other side of the closed fireplace damper. These soon became intermixed with a series of musical chitterings and chatterings. A bird, or birds? We didn’t think so. Next we speculated about squirrels, since there are plenty of them living in the woods out back—yet the sounds didn’t seem quite right for one or more of those creatures, either. The noises stopped after an hour or so.

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.)

(8:49.) Many people might wish that I would add many more methods to help you study dreams and their nature. In such a manner also dreams suggest nature’s spontaneous order throughout the centuries, and allow you to look at the species in a truer light. Your lives, for that matter, are dependent upon the curious relationships that are involved. Colon: You would not get by for one day if the conserving principles and the unexpected did not exist exactly as they do. There is so much you must learn and remember in life, and so much you must spontaneously forget—otherwise, action itself would be relatively meaningless.

(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.

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.”)

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.

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.

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.

“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.