“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“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.”

“Ruburt does not owe me anything. If he decided not to have sessions, or not to operate in the so-called psychic arena, this does not mean that he would be a failure in any way. He does not owe me a sense of commitment. The material I have given on his health I will, however, stand behind, whether or not it is difficult for you to understand, or whether or not you can bring yourselves to accept it.

“I do admit that from your standpoint—or viewpoint—that it may be very difficult to accept some of the statements that I make [which] appear perhaps even to be directly contradictory to your observation of Ruburt on a daily basis, and to his own experience of himself.

(More and more slowly:) “Most of that should be obvious to you. The stresses and strains are in a fashion not simply those of one person and that person’s relationship with his own nature. Those (underlined) issues are compounded by Ruburt’s understanding, as of now, of other people’s lives as they write to you. At the same time, he does not deal directly with such people, so he cannot follow through, for example, as a therapist might. His class gave him some direct encounters through the years as he personally helped to direct others, and could watch the results through their achievements or behavior.

“He certainly expects more of himself than is required, and I have given a good deal of such material, several months back, I believe. I will, however, sort through his experience with your questions in mind, and see what other information I can give you. The other comments are simply handy bandaids, so to speak, but are extremely healthy along the way. When he feels panicky your loving touch—a light quick massage or embrace—acts as quickly on the nervous system as anything else, and far faster than any medicine. Animals even have long been aware of such immediate therapeutic action.

But I was afraid as I thought of what could happen to her while she kept on working. We talked about starting up another daily program of reading and discussing Seth’s ideas. It’s not that we disagree with him, really, or find his material unacceptable. It is that we cannot make it work for us the way we want it to—that is, to evidently supersede deep and powerful inner goals. Probably, also, there are things left unsaid because Jane may unwittingly block them. I told her that Seth had said nothing at all about what I regard as the central conflict: the one between her sinful self, so-called, and her spontaneous self. I even agree that our challenges may well be successfully handled in one or more other probable realities, that in those terms that’s an entirely acceptable way for us to learn. Such a course, however, may leave us with something much less than the solution we want in this reality. And there must be resolutions possible here too, I do believe. Where is our faith? We have much to learn.

Very clear in Seth’s material, I told Jane after the session, is his message that it would be a great mistake for us to give up the highly creative endeavor of the sessions, regardless of whether they were ever published. I said that I was delighted to retract the observation I’d made before the last session—that on deeper levels she didn’t want to hold the sessions any longer. I added that once again we could try searching the creative matrix of the symptoms themselves for the solutions to her challenges, and mine as well, for that is where those solutions will be found.

7. Seth not only designed his material in this excellent session to help Jane and me, but others as well. In my opinion, he also answered my wife regarding the note she’d written earlier in the day (see Note 6, above). Aside from all of those points, however, I think it quite remarkable that despite her physical hassles Jane approached the rolling cadences, the inspired certainty of delivery, that she’d achieved over two years ago in some of her sessions for chapters 1 and 2 of Dreams.

“In a manner of speaking, Ruburt’s physical condition represents the bruises, the wounds inflicted upon any individual in his or her long journey (long pause) toward a greater comprehension of life’s experience. In religious terms, you begin to glimpse a promised land—a ‘land’ of psyche and reality that represents unimpeded nature (again, all very intently).

Jane initiated Sumari in ESP class, and largely let it go when we ended class and moved to the hill house four years later. As with her speaking for Seth, her greatest power and drama in singing was engendered in class. For the most part in our regular, private, and book sessions, Seth speaks to me with a quieter, businesslike energy; I always feel his vigor and humor, but he isn’t nearly as loud or quick or boisterous as he was in class. Jane was obviously sensitive to the infusion of energy from 30 or more people during those gatherings, and through her Seth responded masterfully. The same was true of her singing, when she ranged from the most delicate soprano trills and nuances to powerful, much deeper emanations.

15. Seth may think that his own term, “value fulfillment,” “is woefully inadequate to express the nature of life’s diversity, purpose, or meaning,” but over two years ago, in Chapter 2 of Dreams, he gave what I think is an excellent interpretation of that quality. In Session 884 for October 3, 1979, he came through very emphatically in one of Jane’s best sessions: