“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After the last session, I told Jane that I was most intrigued by Seth’s assigning two headings to Chapter Ten, but the dilemma was hardly very complicated.)

When large doses of chemicals are used, the conscious mind is confronted full blast with very potent experiences that it was not meant to handle, and by which it is purposely made to feel powerless. (Pause.) Faced with the exterior nightmares of wars and natural disasters, the conscious mind is still directed outward into that world with which it knows it was formed to cope. In periods of great physical stress it draws upon the powers of the body and inner self to perform remarkable feats of heroism — that leave it wondering afterward at the power and energy of the self in crisis.

Its own stability and awareness can be vastly deepened and strengthened. In times of seemingly calamitous encounters with nature, individuals may find themselves amazed at their capacity to relate with other people, but in the artificially induced psychic disaster area of massive LSD therapy, the situation is reversed. Consciousness finds itself in a crisis situation; not [because of one coming] from the exterior world, but because it is forced to fight on a battleground for which it was never designed and cannot understand, where basically counted-upon allies of association, memory and organization, and all the powers of the inner self, are suddenly turned into enemies.

It is made vulnerable to all those forces it was meant to lead, while being stripped of its natural logical abilities — indeed, of its very sense of identity. (Intently:) There is nothing exterior against which it can work, and no framework in which it can get balance.

He was filled with joy as he observed this reality. He knew that in the physical world the puddle was flat, but that he was perceiving another just-as-solid reality; a larger one, in fact, in which that rain creature had its being.

For a moment he saw double worlds with his physical vision. While the experience was exhilarating, it could have turned into a “nightmare” had his conscious mind not clearly understood; had he walked outside, for example, and found himself encountering living creatures rising out of each rainy puddle; and if for the life of him he could not have turned the creatures back. As it was, it was a beneficial experience.

He saw it physically, yet could find no physical cause for it. It lasted several seconds and disappeared. As soon as Ruburt saw it he leaped back. The last line in the poem he had completed just before dinner spoke of a light that would illuminate both worlds, one of the soul and one of the flesh. Consciously he thought the light must have been caused by lightning, even while he knew with another portion of himself that that was not the case.

A moment later the line from his poem came to him, and he made the proper connection. The conscious mind was disturbed for a moment but it assimilated the data. The meaning of the light will become even clearer through Ruburt’s dreams,³ the intuitive continuation of the poem, and physical example.

(“After supper Rob went out to get groceries. I don’t know the time but it was dark and raining hard, with flashes of soundless lightning. It was quite warm for February. I thought about going for a walk, but didn’t…. Immediately after the two experiences that Seth describes in this session, involving the rain creature and the light, I added this section to Dialogues:

and was it real?

so my mind was blank.

Yet I was caught, transfixed —

till it was so full it pulsed —

was still dark.

and there was no beam of light

I know the puddle was natural,

Give us a moment… The cat would have died that winter. In your terms it was a probable death. In a part of his reality he did die that winter. In your reality, you kept him alive. He had been closed up in that house over there, and went wild and terrified.

(Four years ago this winter it was damaged by fire. The family living in it was moved and the shell boarded up — with Rooney, as a kitten, trapped inside. A passer-by heard his cries days later and freed him. The house has since been torn down.)

Ruburt was somewhat afraid of the cat, considering him wild and caged originally, as his own mother had been in his interpretation. Ruburt therefore felt obligated to help Rooney, who did not really have any love for him — just as in his earlier years he [Jane] had felt obligated to help his mother.

The cat was aware of this in its terms. It became heavy like Ruburt’s mother, but no longer threatening. You finally had it fixed. If Ruburt’s mother had been unable to bear a child, then Ruburt would have had a different mother and a different background, granting that Ruburt had come alive.

The cat was a male. You and Ruburt originally called it Katherine, however, when it was still a kitten, and before you finally succeeded in coaxing it into your house. Rooney got into neighborhood scrapes, as Ruburt’s father did in bars in various parts of the country. The cat knew of the identification but was willing to trade this for several years of additional physical life, in which he also learned to relate to gentleness for the first time.

Ruburt’s mother was very much afraid of cats, particularly black ones. Now and then Rooney and Ruburt passed symptoms back and forth. The cat was not a passive receptor, however, and also learned from his encounters with your neighbor downstairs (who also has a cat). Many of Ruburt’s feelings about his mother are buried in Rooney’s grave. Rooney, though, is free of a distrust that he had carried with him this time, having to do with his background in that house across the way, and was grateful for those additional years you gave him.

He was also symbolic of Ruburt’s own harsh childhood, and to some extent then conquered simply through the natural passage of events.

With the death of Ruburt’s mother last year, Rooney’s purpose was fulfilled for Ruburt. Rooney even did a final service, for through his death Ruburt faced the nature of pain and creaturehood that his mother’s life had so frightened him of.

(12:08. Jane didn’t remember any of that material. Seth had referred to probabilities and hinted at reincarnation in connection with Rooney, I realized as I scanned the notes, but before I could ask about such relationships he returned with a page of information for Jane on a different subject. Then when she came out of trance again, Jane said, “He’s got stuff on Willy, too,” but she was tiring. The session ended at 12:21 a.m.)