“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

1. Eight weeks later, I’m presenting only a summary of my very long notes for this private session, which Jane held on Tuesday evening, December 1, 1981. The notes stemmed from the unexpected discussion we began at about 8 o’clock, a few minutes after Jane had told me she wanted to have a session on herself. I returned to the living room and found her leaning back on the couch, asleep—and with a lighted cigarette in her hand. A long cone of ash fell into her lap as she woke up with a start: “I never never do that when I’m here alone!” she exclaimed, chagrined. Yet she dozed again when I went out to her writing room after her office chair, which I use while taking notes for the sessions. I thought her sleeping after saying she wanted a personal session was a poor sign. Yet I think that in this session Seth reached core beliefs of ours that we have yet to fully grasp, let alone surmount. He can do better for us only if Jane allows him to, but after we’ve struggled for so many years I’m no longer sure that she can.

I explained that lately I’ve been thinking about what can happen when a person chooses to be born with very strong gifts, but then discovers that for whatever reason or reasons he or she cannot use them, or has to pay a high price to do so. At first I thought it contradictory that such conflicts can arise within nature’s framework—then I realized that they must happen all of the time, and so, actually, are natural after all. I used to think that nothing could keep an individual from showing a great ability. Now, I told Jane, I realize that things are far from being that simple. The use or nonuse of an attribute can have as many ramifications as there are human beings who possess whatever version of it: ranging all the way from being completely buried in a life, to being simply left alone, used just “as is,” or thoroughly transformed in expression.

(Very long pause beginning at 10:21.) “The statements I have made regarding the innate nature of the spontaneous self can be of the greatest service if they are accepted. You are trying to redefine the very definitions of personal identity—no easy task. Not just Ruburt alone, but the people of the world are, one way or another, now in the process of just such a redefinition. It is impossible to assign some time element to that (underlined) kind of assignment.

“Left alone, the self knows how to utilize such rhythms. If you trusted the characteristics of the basic natural person, you would not need such sessions as ours, generally, in the world at all—for such knowledge would be part of it and implied in its cultural organizations, and the daily habits of the people.”

“It is the adult’s version of childhood knowledge, the human version of the animals’ knowledge, the conscious version of ‘unconscious’ comprehension. I told you that Frameworks 1 and 2 were actually united. They seemed to be so disunited that it is almost impossible to discuss them using any other terms. To understand that much alone, to comprehend the simple idea of Framework 2’s indisputable existence is strongly important, however.”

I have come to feel that I should have encouraged Jane to speak and sing much more often in Sumari, either when we were alone here at the house, or on a Friday night, say, when we had company. I gave up doing so partly because I hesitated to add to her pressure to perform, whether or not the material might be recorded, and partly because, except on rare occasions, she didn’t offer to sing—or to have a session—as she used to spontaneously do in our downtown apartments.