“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We discussed that session thoroughly the next day, December 2, and Jane ended up defending herself from what I had written in some of my notes. She showed more animation than I’d seen her display for some time, and I was glad to agree that she made some good points; others I disagreed with. I asked her to type a summary of her remarks for inclusion with our next session. At the same time, I tried to make it easier for her to do the typing itself. I’ve made things for her before.² Recently she had been having trouble comfortably lifting her hands high enough to reach her typewriter as it sat upon either the oak table in her writing room, or upon her standard metal typing table. I took the time to build a lower, very solid table whose top rides just above her knees as she sits in her office chair; she can operate her typewriter much more easily at that lower level. She makes mistakes typing because her fingers aren’t working well, but is anxious to improve her accuracy through working. [Nor is her handwriting as steady as it used to be.] As she typed on December 3: “Rob just made a new wooden typing table, right height, etc, and I am trying it out now. It worked great, want to start up journal, want to start project… want to get sessions started up again too or tell myself so anyhow. “

Our program of discussing Seth’s material, as well as our own ideas—which included our taping suggestions for Jane to listen to daily—had come out of those sessions for December 1 and 3. Obviously, we were trying to encourage Framework 2 activity. I spent the next day rearranging all of Jane’s working paraphernalia in her writing room, following her directions, and that re-creation of her world helped also. “Rob and Seth started us on a new program and though we’ve hardly begun, I do feel some relieved more peaceful,” she typed in part on the morning of the 5th as she sat at her new low table, “yesterday i felt the place clicking about me. P.M. I did a little mail but didn’t really get into the notes which are to be a part of the program. My typing is still pretty poor but do know this will improve. I don’t feel any flow in these notes but I do feel a submerged flow rising and i do feel… centered, more content… as I get this far I feel a definite block of expression and some mild enough panic but recognize the fact that a feeling of repression came as I decided to do my notes… writing down at once and will tell rob.”

Jane’s “early spontaneous Saratoga images,” as she called them, her re-creation of her own past, had continued the next day. I found her visions particularly poignant, because in them she had seen herself as having the full and unconscious freedom of physical motion that the very young so take for granted. I wondered whether a part of her might be viewing her childhood in order to remind her of that mobile heritage, to help her regenerate it in the present.⁵ “see myself jumproping [again]… but the places themselves seem more significant to me [today] rather than people,” she wrote. “they are fairly extensive, in color and i look out from them at the view thus going inside them to a degree; must cover the… time period when I was about three…. vague ideas that when I was around five an older man died in the neighboring house where I’d played on the porch and that someone took me to see the body—my first such experience…. Well, now I’ll read a magical approach session, rob and I together read recent session this a.m….” And she had more strong dreams that evening.

“A dark morning. I feel a definite reluctance about myself and a merging of other feelings. The smell of the heat coming out of the air ducts is faintly comfortable as it blends with the still lingering odor of Rob’s varnish. Suddenly the sunlight splashes out of the sky. My body is sore, arms hurt as I type. Rob it seems to me is utterly silent in his studio. I think of the one experience in particular that I’d wanted to note down: Yesterday’s vision. Yesterday morning I felt a good deal like i do this morning; middling poor mood, sore body, yet aware of the need to break the spell, move about.

“After lunch yesterday with a mild sense of horseplay, Rob had put a piece of fresh paper in my typewriter. Just title it Chapter 1 and start in on a new project,’ he’d said. He went back to his studio and I closed my eyes trying to visualize my [psychic] library;⁹ nothing, I tried again and just as suddenly I saw a woman seated opposite me [at] the living room table.”

Past Lives (to Rob)

“December 9, 1981. Each time I think of beginning MAGICAL APPROACH I feel this reluctance; I’m not sure what bugs me, the copying of records, putting together the days events or what—but i want more of the fun and magic of it for myself, and less hard work. I’d planned a consecutive story line book including some of robs dreams with interpretations yet feel strain there now, showing how this detail or that one fits the picture, this noon it came to me that the approach seemed to rational at this time; i wanted one that was lighter in tone, quicker yet more expansiveso if anything the books technique would be magical itself…. forcing the reader to make some connections from other-than-time frameworks. a possibility came to me of a part 1 consisting of the original abridged sessions one after the other with robs notes included but nothing of mine at all. This followed by a part 2 with chapters following an intuitive shape favoring more association, the sinful self stuff too, showing the portions of psychic motion, could start with a chapter 1 very like the one I have organized and then just have a session or so a chapter until part 2. i don’t know, its a thought…