“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I was totally alert and critical at the time, focused at a high point of concentration, though, in that all of my attention was pivoted expectantly. The experience was fascinating and increasingly enjoyable. Earlier, I’d sipped beer as I watched television. Now the half-full glass was beside me. I drank some now and then, and also smoked. A strong sense of exhilaration was present, as was the feeling of great energy. There was no feeling that any particular personality was giving me the information, yet there was the certainity that the words were being delivered from somewhere or someone outside my own reality. They didn’t seem to well up from inside me, but to be dropped down into my head.

At the same time, the people in the apartment downstairs got company. They came tramping and laughing up the steps just beneath my open window. Suddenly, the sound of traffic also bothered me. I’d been unaware of it only a moment before. Now, the cars went rushing through the rain. All of these sounds merged together, intensified, while each retained its own unique quality.

Great as these things are, there is a totality of experience and sensation that includes them all, a vortex that contains and transforms these infinite parts. I know that of which I speak. Yet, each minute event immeasurably increases not only itself but all other events, bringing into birth by its own actualization an infinitude of novus actions and events, an unfolding or multi-dimensionalizing of itself, an initiation into dimensionalization. For all versions and possibilities of each event must be actualized in the limitless multiplication of creativity.

Any one moment in physical time then is a warp, opening into these other dimensions of actuality, and any one moment can be used as a passageway or bridge. The act of crossing will be reflected in a million other worlds, but these reflections will be themselves alive and the act of perceiving itself will create still another vortex of actualization.

The soul is too great to know itself, yet each individual portion of the soul seeks this knowledge and in the seeking creates new possibilities of development, new dimensions of actuality. The individual self at any given moment can connect with its soul. There is initially a sideral movement of consciousness, a dropping away sensation.

Seth touches my shoulder, smiling. He tells me that I am to do something else and gives me a long, friendly lecture. The content is lost now, but I think it had to do with my own psychic development. Then Seth says, ‘In the earlier dream demonstration tonight, your father had problems of his own, and you ignored them. The whole house was aware of your feelings and absorbed them. It will be aware of them for some time.’

On hearing this, I feel sorry and eerie, as I imagine the house actually absorbing my ill feelings. Seth then says that I can do the whole scene over by a simple method of stepping sideways into physical reality; he tells me that this is easier than I might suppose.

In this experience, it is Thanksgiving Day. My mother’s family is here also. I am in the sunroom watching my father take food from a buffet set in the dining room. My mother and her sister are in there, talking. Suddenly my father becomes angry, throws his plate onto the rug and grabs another. My mother begins to cry. I remember probabilities, however, and instead of becoming upset myself, I send my father thoughts of peace and health. I know that now the scene will not happen this Thanksgiving in physical reality — that I have helped choose another more positive one. The scene ends. I feel as though I have been both watching and participating. I hear Seth remark: ‘You learn well, and manipulate equally well.’

I half waken and then drift into a recurring scene from an old childhood dream: There is a killer fog behind us, and we must get down a snowy path to home before the fog gets us. We are struggling past a large factory, when all at once I am sitting with Jane as Seth again, watching the snow dream as if it were a movie. I say, ‘Of course,’ and realize that I can relieve the people in the snow. Suddenly I feel the shell of my physical body for what it is — my own creation — and am aware of how much more I am. I go back into the snow scene. We all make the safety of the house, and I wish all the characters in the dream peace and safety from the killer fog. They will never have to fear it again. I wake up.

(NOTES CONNECTED WITH DREAM: I had the feeling that this was a demonstration of the many ramifications of probabilities in physical reality and in the dream state. Seth seemed to be an old friend there in a gentle, guiding way; almost as if he were a film projectionist, directing the film or experiences.)

Sue couldn’t wait to tell me about the dream. We were both pleasantly astonished. Probable realities seemed like such an esoteric idea that we really hadn’t hoped for much practical experience with it. But you’ll see shortly, this was only the beginning.

You did very well. Now, because you are interested in probabilities, you will have many more experiences along these lines. We will hopscotch back and forth with our friend Ruburt, for this is also one of his main lines of interest. Your own experience can be used to benefit the class at large, for you must be led to see that you can alter physical events in such a way. You must be led to see that there are other dimensions of reality.

He spoke with such rich understanding humor that everyone laughed, including Shirley. Through this entire period, Seth spoke on probabilities in our own private sessions, as well as in class. He was halfway through his own book, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul which he is completing now and in which he gives further methods that can be used to experience probable realities.

I feel very protective of them. Somehow, I begin a discussion of the Seth Material with them and go into a talk on physical reality and such, and discover that a few years ago, they had received some strange messages through Jane from ‘someone claiming to be a dead spirit.’ ‘But it was ridiculous,’ Jane says, ‘so we dropped it.’

At this point I hear a number of voices calling to me and I experience a false awakening, and know it, where I am lying in bed in a strange room but realize I must get up and write this experience down. I think then that this must be the astral system of my own probability system and that I have returned safely. I see Carl next to me, and I relax, fall asleep and wake up in my physical bed.

After the Seth sessions began, Seth told us that we, ourselves, had created the images of the couple, projected all of our negative attitudes into them and then reacted. I didn’t know what to think of this explanation at the time. Later as we explained the nature of personality and its creative potentials, I saw that this was precisely what we had done.

Seth told us that such images have a definite reality, but we certainly weren’t prepared to hear that someone else encountered our York Beach selves in a dream! “To create them with all our negative feelings was bad enough,” I said to Sue, “but then to cast them loose on their own!”

“Ask Seth about it,” Sue said. It happened to be a session night night anyway, and without being asked, Seth suspended dictation on his own book to give us the following explanation:

Now, this is not dictation [on Seth’s own book], but it is some material that Ruburt can use in his dream book. I want to comment, therefore, on the experience of your friend, Sue Watkins, and its connection with the probable universe.

The couple do exist, probable selves of your own in a different system. Your friend, in developing her own abilities, has become involved with activities in probable fields and was drawn to the couple emotionally because of her emotional connection with you in this system.

You see, they quite envy you. However, they were unable to take advantage of your knowledge because of the condition of their own psyches. The affair served to remind them once more of my contact with them, to make them think twice, and it also serves as a new stimulus for further contact.

We attempt to save even the shadows of ourselves, and we create light in even the darkest recesses of our own hidden fragments. To that extent and in those terms, we are our own redeemers.

To a large extent, you see, you and Ruburt were also responsible for the contact, for were it not for your own present experiences, your relationship with me and your friendship with the girl [Sue], the help would not have been given to these probable selves of yours. So one portion of the self lends a helping hand to another, in the same way that I give you a helping hand.

At the same time, the experience was meant as a moral lesson to your Sue Watkins. She sees you in a physical reality as people she respects and admires. Through the probable experience, she was able to see what could have happened to you in this system, had you given in to negative thoughts and feelings and not been persistent in your work and efforts.

Now, Ruburt has also done the same service for a probable Sue in another system of reality, though in an entirely different way. And you [Rob], incidentally, have helped a probable Carl [Sue’s husband] in the same manner, using his creative abilities. The probable Carl, in other words, has strong creative abilities, and you have helped him understand this.

The couple, the probable Robert and Jane Butts, came into being at York Beach, as given in the earlier material. They disappeared from your view, but energy created in such a fashion, as you know, cannot be negated and must continue along its own lines of development.

From this standpoint these are fragment personalities; therefore, they have your memories up to that point of their initiation, and they continued on from there. They were seen by you as far older, as you interpreted, created and then perceived bitterness and negative attitudes. To them, however, they were the age that you were at the point of their breakoff. Such personalities can be created and are created under varying conditions too many to enumerate.

At the same time, however, you must understand that these probable selves were also created because of your own great hopes, hopes you felt you could fall far short of; so they were ‘born’ with the same hopes that you had at that time, but they were personalities that were overburdened with fears.

Having created them because of your abilities, you then perceived them as objectified apparitions in physical reality, when Ruburt immediately made the conscious comparison, and resolved that you should never end up looking like them … or filled with the bitterness that was written in their faces. The conscious notice, therefore, was all you knew of the deep unconscious creative endeavor and psychological mechanism that brought them into existence.

Even weighed down by fears and negative attitudes, they retained their own close relationship, but they were not able to help each other and were united by bitterness against the world, as much as by love for each other.

Ruburt’s creative ability quickly deteriorated, for bitter attitudes shrivelled up the source of the creativity. In that reality, you returned from York Beach, gave up your apartment in Elmira, returned to Sayre, lived for some time with your parents, [and] commuted to your Elmira job to save money.

There is no need to go further into their history, but I assure you that it was in keeping with the characteristics that you gave them; and remember, these were your own strongest fears. With all of this however latent, you see, they had your potential. I was able to make an inadequate but definite contact, and their existence can still be changed and altered, for they have free will, as you do.

Unconsciously, you are aware of their progress, as unconsciously they are aware of yours. You saw to it that they would be helped. Remember that regardless of anything, you gave them existence and consciousness, a gift of creativity, and potentials that they will try in their own way to fulfill. Their experiences have been different from yours. Their fulfillment, when they achieve it, will, therefore, be of a different nature, bringing out facets of activity that will not exist in your circumstances — their meeting with your friend [Sue], for example.

It’s one thing to accept the idea of probable systems and probable selves as an exciting intellectual concept, and quite another to accept the practical considerations involved if you think of probabilities as plain facts of existence. Quite frankly, I didn’t expect any of us to have practical experience along these lines, thinking that any probable realities were beyond our reach. But we weren’t finished yet, and I doubt that we are now. As you’ll see, Sue kept in touch with the probable Rob and Jane in her dreams. Through our experiences, the concept became a reality with which we were confronted.