“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(My mother lives with my brother and his family in a small community in upstate New York, near Rochester, and Jane and I had spent the weekend visiting one and all. During our drive back to Elmira this morning Jane said, “Somebody’s working on Seth’s book, I can tell you that. I keep getting snatches of it. It’s about imagination and beliefs, I think, and how they interact — only there’s a lot more to it. Well,” she added, pleased, “it’s nice to know the work’s being done….”)

In physical life, your conscious mind is largely dependent upon the workings of your physical brain. You have a conscious mind whether you are in flesh or out of it, but when you are physically oriented, then it is connected to the physical brain.

(I now described an effect that had started to bother me after the session had begun; it’s a good little example of the way beliefs can work. No sooner had Seth come through than I became aware of an unaccustomed tightness in my writing hand — a tension that interfered with the automatic formation of the letters and words. I kept the notes going by making an extra effort, but I found it quite distracting to keep thinking about the mechanics of writing while trying to concentrate upon what Seth was saying. The difficulty persisted through the delivery and into break.

(As we talked about our individual hang-ups, Jane said that we had a choice: We could get material on them or continue with book work. Both channels were available from Seth, complete. Although we wanted dictation to continue we were also interested in learning more about our personal questions. Feeling somewhat guilty, we opted for the latter course — but as the material unfolded we were glad we’d done so. Resume at 10:20.)

These beliefs working together, then, bring about a strain in the hand that does the writing. Quite simply, you want to express through the sessions these ideas in which you so believe, and yet you feel or believe yourself guilty for doing so when you cannot describe the same ideas to your own parent.

(With a smile:) I am giving this to you to show you how beliefs work.

I saw to it that he became aware that I was working on our book (this morning). Ideas about it came into his consciousness. In the past, he did not believe that such bleed-throughs should occur, and so in his experience they did not usually emerge. They were there but his belief prevented his recognition of them.

I will from time to time give subsidiary material for Ruburt and also for you, implementing a chapter in the book for your personal use. It is vital that you realize you are working with beliefs in your mind — that the real work is done there in the mind — and not look for immediate physical results.

They will follow as surely and certainly as the “bad” results followed, and this must be a belief: that the good results will come. But the real work is done in the mind. If you do the work then you can rest assured of the results, but you must not check constantly for them. Do you see the difference?

(The members of Jane’s ESP class have been putting the ideas in Personal Reality to good use. Strangely, this has made Jane somewhat impatient, since she can only proceed with what Seth has given so far. She finds herself in the odd position of envying future readers, who will be able to go through the finished work and make use of it as a unit.

(The next morning Jane told me that she and/or Seth “worked on the book all night. Each time I woke up, dictation, or stuff like that, was going on. It was pretty insistent — almost unpleasantly so at times….” She’s experienced such effects before in connection with the book. They aren’t a nightly occurrence by any means, but I suggested she tell herself upon retiring that she wouldn’t be aware of such activity during sleeping hours. We planned to ask Seth about it also.)