“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In this last session for Dreams, Seth continued to speak to that all-embracing “you”:)

You have believed that the natural contours of nature were somehow antagonistic to your own existence, so that left in the hands of nature alone you would lose your way. You have believed that in the very framework of your psychology. In your experiences, therefore, all of these things have largely proven true.

Nothing taught that you were creatures. I have been trying to lead you into a new threshold of perception, where the old myths of evolution can be seen as outmoded, ancient or forsaken castles amid a forest of beliefs—a forest that is indeed itself a magically formed one. (Very long pause.) The forest is the world of your imagination, surely, the imagination of your minds, and yet given force and power by the innate creativity that rises up from an inner world that represents much more truly the origins of man and beast. That world has been largely hidden by the camouflages shed by science and religion alike, but in your times the landscape began to appear so dark and threatening, so forbidden and alien to your own desires, that its end seemed all the more inevitable and swift.

(A one-minute pause at 9:23.) You may need some time before the old beliefs become less prominent, and finally fall into their proper decay—a decay, incidentally, that does indeed have its own kind of majesty, energy, and beauty. But the inner natural leanings of all of consciousness within the realms of your being now yearn for constructive change, clearer vision, to experience again their inherent sense of corporal spirituality, physical and psychic grace. They want to sense again the effortless motion that is their natural birthright.

(All more intently:) I hope that this book to some extent or another puts each of you in touch with your own inner psychological motion, your creative breath, so that you are invigorated and sense within your own minds and spirit a new promise, a new intent, and the exhilaration of earthly and spiritual strength. You dwell in a state of natural grace that is quite alive and vital whether or not science decrees that consciousness possesses its own intent. Nature is supernatural all the while, of course.

However, all of our reactions were much more subdued than they had ever been before when she had finished a book, either by herself or with Seth. No matter what other challenges we had created for ourselves over the last two years and four months, the knowledge that Dreams was in process had served as a comforting foundation in our lives. That had been true even during those long delays in its production. We regret that that support is gone. And we know that as the creation of Dreams begins to recede from our immediate perception other challenges will inevitably move forward. Basically, things have come down to our hopes that Jane can keep going from day to day, and that our new credo will offer her support now that Seth and she are through with their book.

A note added a month later: Jane’s journal entry is indeed a last one, for on the 26th of February, 18 days after finishing her work for Dreams, she was admitted to a local hospital for treatment of hearing difficulties, rheumatoid arthritis, and several other afflictions. Jane’s and my hospital experiences have already become so involved that I’ve begun to think of describing them—and whatever they may develop into—in a series of chronologically ordered introductory essays for Dreams, instead of the more conventional introduction I’d been expecting to write. The shocks have been great for us, and are continuing. Without knowing anything, I know that we’ll need much time in which to understand all of the deeply moving and conflicting emotional, psychic, and intellectual events connected with this development. Each day as I look at my lovely wife lying in her hospital bed after years of struggle, I feel the surge of those events—and I see them in Jane, and feel them in her!

In a way our joint world came crashing down upon us on February 26, yet we continue to live amid the welter of our beliefs. Again and again in the notes for Dreams I’ve indicated how Jane and I tried to understand the probable reality we’ve created. With the hospital experience, I’m telling myself that if I can write about the storms of consciousness involving whole nations, I can certainly describe and reflect upon our own storms of consciousness. Jane and I must still have an unbelievable amount to learn, even though I think that in more basic terms certain portions of each individual’s reality are consciously unknowable. As Seth said three years ago: “Consciousness attempts to grow toward its own ideal development, which also promotes the ideal development of all organizations in which it takes part.⁹

What, then, are those “ideal developments” Jane and I are growing toward? Questions like that must intrigue Seth even more than they do us; his dealings with us—but especially with Jane, of course—are as much learning experiences for him as they are for us. After all, here he is, engaged in a “lifelong” process with my wife, and just as dependent upon what he can get through her psyche, as she is upon what she can get from him and then let through to me and to others! What storms of consciousness, as well as peaceful reaches, must Seth travel through in order to help her even as much as he does’? As far as he’s concerned those storms and reaches aren’t physical, but instead consist of intensities of feeling—as they do for us too, basically.

Company projections are that the entire cleanup at TMI won’t be completed until the end of 1988—more than nine years after the accident took place. Current plans are that once the radioactive water is drained from the containment building of Unit No. 2, engineers will conduct remote investigations of the core of the reactor itself. A specially designed video camera will be inserted into the core so that the actual damage to the pencil-thin fuel rods can be assessed; and hundreds of thousands of sonar readings, taken through openings already present in the reactor, will be assembled by computer into images of the core. Several major steps must follow, all of them on an enormous scale: the lifting of the 160-ton metal “head,” or cap, of the reactor; the removal of the upper plenum assembly, the 55-ton mechanism which makes possible the raising and lowering of fuel control rods into the 100-ton reactor core, thus regulating the intensity of its nuclear reactions; and eventually, the difficult piece-by-piece removal of the damaged core itself. Even then, the core will still be so radioactive that most of the work will have to be done by remote-controlled devices. Finally, the cavernous containment building itself will be cleaned, again by remote control.

Yet from the very day of the accident, this question has existed along with each step of the cleanup process, and will continue to do so: What to do with Three Mile Island, that enormously complicated human creation that now has its own consciousness, and that has in its own way exerted the force of that consciousness throughout our civilized world? To dismantle TMI seemingly would solve the “problem”—but only partially, for once born its consciousness will (like all others) continue to live. I repeat, however, that in this country no public citizen has been either seriously injured or killed in an accident at a commercial nuclear facility (as have a few workers).

As I finish this note—and Dreams—I believe it quite safe to predict that whenever this book is published the reader will find that the general situation in the Middle East is essentially the same: The consciousnesses of the countries involved, then, will continue to resist all outside overtures to “sanity” that do not help perpetuate the exploration of their long-term goals. In the Middle East (as anywhere else on our planet) there’s plenty of “time” for peace later! There are endless variations of peace to be ultimately explored, to be held in delicious abeyance, to be savored by each consciousness there, no matter how great or small, like the knowledge of a fine wine or a rich dessert still to come….

Even the damage that potentially can stem from a peacetime nuclear accident, as at TMI, can be great indeed. In Note 1 for Session 933, in Chapter 10 of Dreams, I speculated about nuclear energy being an earthly analog of the illimitable loving being of All That Is. Now I believe that it is. My conviction was triggered late the other night after I had been struggling with this note. I relaxed by watching a television travelog; I saw a great waterfall in an isolated jungle setting; the cameraman zoomed in on the foaming, surging water leaping at the base of the waterfall—and staring at that eruption of energy I suddenly realized the obvious: It’s not the force of any nuclear reaction that we fear, but the consciousness of the event. We must mature quickly enough to learn to “control” the contradictory potentials of the nuclear energy that we’ve helped guide into being. We have barely started to use that great power for peaceful purposes. I believe, then, that unwittingly we’re translating compartmentalized glimpses of All That Is through the extraordinary consciousness of nuclear energy. Isotopes of some of the elements involved with that energy have “half-lives” of millions of years—far longer, quite possibly, than our species will exist in those terms of time. Those reaches of time are so great, so timeless, that I see them as another earthly analog of All That Is.

According to Seth, and Jane’s and my own experiences, each individual is a member of a group of “counterparts”—each is psychically connected to other men and women alive on earth now, in various countries, who are exploring related lifetime themes in ways that no individual could ever do. Counterparts may or may not meet, yet all share intuitive connections. Although Seth hasn’t gone into the idea yet, I believe that events have counterparts also, just as does any “living” organism, whether human or not. The counterpart notion is Seth’s timeless version of his concept of consecutive incarnations. (And yes, I think that events have reincarnational histories also, but in this note I’m confining myself to the counterpart thesis.)

Moreover, I believe that counterpart relationships do exist between wars and nuclear energy. (Such associations also apply to large geological and geographical events, for example, and I wish I had the time and space to go into those!) But if Jane and I, say, as counterparts are exploring certain long-range connections through our own adventures in consciousness, then the consciousnesses of related major events must have much greater abilities and desires for fulfillment. Consider the following group of events as seen through a narrow window of ordinary time; consider the moral, economic, and diplomatic impact they have had—and are still having—upon our own national interests (let alone the interests of other nations). These events must interact with each other on many levels: The revolution in Iran came to a head with a change of leadership in February 1979, after a ruler long favorable to the United States had been deposed; the accident at TMI took place in March 1979; the American hostages were taken in Iran in November 1979; Russia invaded Afghanistan at Christmastime 1979; and less than 10 months later Iraq invaded Iran. This list can either be expanded almost indefinitely, or compressed—but, I think, these events and states of being all are psychically related. Many fascinating connections could be traced out.

The ordinary violence involved with these events leads me to comment upon the theological concept of privation theory, and the military one of perception theory—for again, I think the two are closely related, not only to each other but to the points I’ve made in this note. In mundane terms, both represent longstanding distortions in perception of the great basic creativity of All That Is. I suggest that the reader review Seth’s material on the basically creative use of violence as I quoted it in Chapter 10; see Note 2 for Session 933.

I don’t mean at all to put down everything we’ve created in our world, and to proclaim that Seth’s concept of All That Is is the magical solution that mankind has been searching for throughout his existence. I do mean to relate the self-created elements of our interior and exterior, individual and mass worlds to a larger whole of consciousness. It’s inevitable that we’ll grow. How we’ll grow is the question!

Ironically, as individuals and nations we talk about casting off old beliefs while cherishing them as long as possible. Why have large segments of consciousness chosen to operate in such a fashion? I think we’re creating a probable reality in which consciousness has the absolute freedom to explore all facets of itself—every one we can think of, and therefore create. Within our national orientations, within our religious and secular, scientific and artistic structures, we are choosing to go to the extremes of “good” and “bad,” and to deal with the consequences, all stewing together in what seems like an impossible mix of reason and emotion, learning and joy, pain and violence, and life and death. Naturally, many of us don’t like certain facets of our creations, yet we must deal with all of them if we are to make any sense out of our reality. Otherwise, our growing will be too limited; we’ll remain slaves to our animosities.

I do think that through her mystical understanding and interpretation of our probable reality, Jane has indeed offered much to us, and that she will continue to do so. We’ll have to resolve our great challenges through voluntary group and international efforts, though. No one nation or entity can impose its way of consciousness upon the rest, without violating the very concepts it’s trying to espouse for one and all.

In Note 3 for this session I referred to what I think are a couple of earthly analogs of All That Is. To Jane and me, our species’ venturing into space is another such analog: Our physical motion off the planet is certainly an objectified version or translation of our tentative explorations of inner space. In conscious terms, we have barely touched upon the fantastic inner complexities of All That Is, from which all else emerges, and which for a number of reasons we still fear.