“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

That note is Jane’s last entry in her journal for the year, and she did not date it. Although she told me she had enjoyed having the vision, she said little about it and made no notes. I made a mistake: I should have insisted upon a detailed oral or written account from her, and made my own notes if necessary. I did remember her describing an older woman in shabby clothes, whose lips were moving as though she was talking to Jane; there was no sound. The vision had been very brief but quite real. Note that Jane had felt herself transported from her writing room into the living room. Regardless of any of that, however, my attempt to use direct positive suggestion to help her cut across her doubts and concerns failed. She didn’t start any new long-range writing project.¹⁰

After the holidays Jane worked on several small acrylic paintings of flowers that friends had given us for Christmas. She wrote a few notes and tried some poetry; her handwriting continued to be unsteady; she still made many errors typing. However, she also began to occasionally manifest an upsetting new development—a slight tremor in her voice. I then realized that each time I heard that certain agitation her speech slowed down slightly. We thought the voice effects were connected to her hearing and vision difficulties, which also fluctuated to some degree. Jane was concerned and not concerned, and once again I saw in her that innocent acceptance of the reality she was creating—the one I often had such trouble understanding [as well as my own participation in creating it!]. Not that she uncomplainingly welcomed this physical challenge, but that she overlaid its arrival with a frame of mind in which she kept going as best she could. I tried not to alarm her as we talked, while mentally I speculated about whether the vocal changes could be a further sign of her withdrawal from the world. Before we held the private session for last December 1, I had admitted to her my fear that she was gradually cutting down on her communication with the world.¹¹

And so for the first time that I could remember, Jane actually said that she was considering medical help, even if only under certain conditions. Just recently she began having difficulties with occasional double vision and with hearing. The latter impairment has already cut down on our communication, for almost automatically these days I think twice about speaking to her unless we’re face to face. (The last time in Dreams that I mentioned trying to get her to accept medical care was five months ago, in June 1981: In Chapter 9, see the opening notes just preceding superscript number 18 for Session 931.)