“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We have had more enthusiastic responses. Now this is a preliminary. The rest will follow as you are ready for it and if you rush up in rage against me then I will leave Ruburt to face it. So listen. Now consciousness is a beautiful, personified, precarious thing. You cannot really see it or feel it or touch it and yet you know its characteristics. The cat taught you to love again and to open up again. You were also close to hiding within your home with the cat and ignoring physical reality. The love which was awakened is to be directed in other areas, and you may speak when I am finished, but for this one time I will have my say.

The cat awakened your love. You knew this was to happen and you chose the means. Now, in so doing, you also gave affection to the animal and awakened within it characteristics it did not have earlier. In other words, you stretched the extensions of its own awareness and consciousness. You brought it up, to put it very simply. The consciousness of the cat grew and developed. You taught it communication. Now I am not speaking in words of physical communication but you opened up its awareness. Now though it seems to you perhaps at this point tragic, the facts are that the real tragedy would have occurred had the cat lived, in your terms, and had you curled up in it, in your house on the corner, and turned your love inward to the animal rather than outward, for there are people who need it.

When you think in terms, for example, of remarriage or when your children urge it upon you, then you think in terms of yourself. You do not think in terms of those who need love and affection and who are more lonely than yourself, lacking children, and who are looking for not only affection but the simple courtesy that another individual can show by recognizing their existence. You were not able to translate or transform that love outward. At the same time you extended the consciousness of the animal, it became more than it was. Its consciousness was ready to leave and adapt another form.

Listen. You have also formed the reality of your children and it is a good reality. Listen. You have also helped many others. Many you are unaware of having helped. You also help the members of this class without knowing, but your love for the animal was becoming ingrown. Now, the animal went on as a youngster leaves the house and grows up. You aided in the evolution of its consciousness, then allow it its freedom. You will meet its consciousness again in another form.

You knew, and I am not implying, I am not implying guilt. You knew what was going to happen when you let the animal out at that corner. The animal felt no pain. It left its body immediately. You aided in the development of its consciousness and it helped you by renewing your love; but as the animal changed its form so also now this reawakened love must look outward.

(To Rachel after break:) Now, your husband had a horror of old age. Now, give us a moment—he much preferred leaving his body when he did. He was particularly frightened at the idea of living to an old age. He feared mental disability in old age. He wanted to be free of the body before that time was reached. Now in the two lives immediately previous he stayed with the body at one time until he was 87 and at another to the age of 92 and at a time when such age was quite unusual. He determined that in this life he would leave at the height of his powers and so he did. This was not pre-determined. It was a decision that he made.

You also, however, had connections in past lives, very strong ones. Now, give us a moment here. You may ask whatever questions you have either at another class or later, but give us time to pursue this now. You were members of a group. The campfire that you have experienced in class is connected here. He was a leader of a band of men and women. You were an itinerant traveling tribe. At one time you were his son and at some time I will give you particulars, dates and places. Now I am concerned with your state of mind, not with the state in which you lived. At another time he was your daughter and you were the father. There was an over-protectiveness involved in all of your relationships, an exclusiveness. He was interested in music and the piano. He was afraid for his fingers and his hands. You had several existences together where you were involved with plants and flowers, hence, in this life, your love of flowers and the business that you had.

Now, I will tell you a secret, but I will tell our regular students the great horror, the fear, that existed in the mind of our friend, Joseph, during the tour. He was afraid I would raise my voice and he did not know whether or not the microphones would shatter and so I spoke quietly and decorously but it is difficult to show the vitality of consciousness when I have so few methods available without using the vocal cords in joyful abandon.