“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Because of his particular disposition, Rooney had furnished ideal companionship for our other cat, Willy, who is several years older, and Jane and I had often speculated about the special relationship between the two. Willy had always been the boss. Rooney, incidentally, can be seen in a photograph with Jane on the jacket of The Seth Material, hard cover edition.

(Monday evening’s session concerned the use of hallucinogenic drugs, including LSD, as therapy; no book dictation was involved. Actually, once Jane began speaking for Seth the session went very well indeed, and lasted until midnight. Our visitor is to send us transcripts of the tapes he made. At day’s end Jane and I were exhausted.

(Even so, her use of energy in ESP class Tuesday night was remarkable once again; she alternated between Seth and singing in Sumari throughout the evening.

(Seth had already given the heading for Chapter Ten, but as we sat for the session now I reminded Jane of her questions about group souls, as described at the end of the 637th session. It was another unusually warm night; we had a window open, and were aware of traffic noise. Jane’s delivery was comparatively fast to begin with.)

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

(Even though I said yes, at first break I checked the dictionary definition for oversoul, just in case it might lead me to ask Seth for more clarification. The dictionary discussed the oversoul as the spirit infusing all living things, resulting in the perfect realization of an ideal nature. This is a concept in the nineteenth-century transcendentalist philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson⁵ and others.)

All of this material, I understand, is complicated. It is also difficult to explain. It becomes highly pertinent, however, in many instances of your lives, and affects your daily being and experience. I gave the information [in this chapter] purposely when I did, knowing that our visitor from the psychiatric clinic would be here.

The material that I have just given you is necessary for any understanding of the ways in which massive doses of LSD can affect the individual. Here we are dealing with an artificial and forced method of, hopefully, bringing about physical, psychic and spiritual illumination. Such enlightenment is supposed to lead to better health, self-knowledge, and provide an inner state of peace. Through such therapy, conscience is to be encountered and conquered once and for all.

(“Okay.” In retrospect, Jane and I had been wondering if Monday’s session should have consisted of book dictation — yet Seth was putting that material to use tonight….)

2. Seth notes in part, in Chapter Three of Seth Speaks: “Root assumptions are those built-in ideas of reality … those agreements upon which you base your ideas of existence. Space and time, for example, are root assumptions. Each system of reality has its own set of such agreements. When I communicate within your system, I must use and understand the root assumptions upon which it is based.”

In a recent ESP class session, however, Seth said: “There is nothing more deadly than nirvana. At least your Christian concepts give you some twilight hopes of a stifling and boring paradise, where your individuality can at least express itself, and nirvana extends no such comfort. Instead it offers you the annihilation of your personality, in a bliss that destroys the integrity of your being. Run from such bliss!”

4. I’ve always thought Seth’s term, “value fulfillment,” a particularly evocative one. He was using it not long after these sessions began. In the 44th session for April 15th, 1964, I find him saying, in part, “Growth in your camouflage [physical] universe involves the taking up of more space. Actually in our inner universe … growth exists in terms of the value or quality expansion of which I have spoken, and does not — I repeat— does not imply any sort of space expansion. Nor does it imply, as growth does in your camouflage universe, a sort of projection into time.

“I am giving it [this material] to you in as simple terms as possible. If growth is one of the most necessary laws of your camouflage universe, value fulfillment corresponds to it in the inner-reality universe.”

5. An aside: This was unexpectedly interesting. According to Seth, Emerson is one of the “Speakers” — personalities who, both in the physical state and out of it, speak to man through the ages, reminding him of inner knowledge so that it is never really forgotten. Check Jane’s Introduction to this book, the notes for the 623rd session in Chapter Five, and (added later) the 653rd session in Chapter Thirteen. Also see Chapter Twenty in Seth Speaks.