“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.

As I finished the first page, Rob came out, passed me and went into the kitchen. I was surprised that he didn’t know without being told, as he usually does, that something was going on, and I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Finally I managed to say, “Hon, don’t bother me.” It took great effort for me to withdraw that much energy away from what I was doing. But, instead of understanding, Rob began emptying the garbage into paper bags. The crinkley sound seemed magnified tremendously and had a new dimension as if it were ripping up space, crinkling the edges of space in the kitchen. Later, Rob said that he never heard me speak to him and questioned whether I’d really spoken. I thought I had, of course.

Nearly three more pages of dictation followed, coming in the same way as before. Because of the nature of the material, I thought I might be shown how to enter a probable moment from the present one. Initial instructions were given, though only preliminary, but I was ready to follow them. Now the speaker was addressing me, where the earlier monologue had been impersonal. At this point, unfortunately, our company arrived. I was really disappointed, but shook my consciousness to set it back to daily things, and with only a moment of reorientation attended to my guests.

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.

(Here came the first interruption. … Rob came into the kitchen. The dictation stops, or rather, it was still there, but I couldn’t get it. It resumed after the interruption:)

Each probable event is changed by each other probable event. There is constant simultaneous interaction. These ‘separate’ probable systems do not operate isolated from each other, then, but are intimately connected. All systems are open. The physical moment is transparent, though you give it a time-solidity. You see it as opaque.

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.’

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.

I have also been visiting our friend, here, but we have a very scary soul indeed, for she ran the other way. You think of the body as a warm house indeed, and you are loathe to leave it.

I then observe how haggard they look. Jane is much heavier and is wearing a black long-sleeved turtleneck. Her hair is fuller but quite gray. Rob looks extremely tired and is sitting in a slouch; his face is not fat but fleshy — almost dissipated. He is smoking one cigarette after another. They both look bitter and not very happy.

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.’

‘You were somewhat younger-looking there, too — she is about forty and you, Rob, are fifty in that place, but age doesn’t matter to you there. …’

I nod and we walk out of the restaurant — Seth trailing along behind. We walk down a shaded, quiet street and turn in at a large white house with a screened lower porch. There is a large tree to the left of the porch, and a weedy driveway leads back to a large white barnish-looking building with double top-hinged doors. We go up a set of outside stairs and into an apartment which seems to have a large living room. Rob is about to haul out some paintings — they seem to be landscapes — when he groans in agony and nearly falls down in pain from his back, apparently. He manages to lie down on the floor and I try to show him some yoga exercises for it, but he brushes me off. I suddenly feel desperate to do something for them before it all ends.

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 Sue read the dream to me, I didn’t know what to say. The York Beach couple! With odd feelings of disquiet I let myself remember. The episode is included in The Seth Material, but it was one of the strangest events of our lives.

They looked like bloated, bitter copies of us, at a later age. The woman was much stouter than I but bore a striking resemblance to me. The man could have been Rob’s twin, but older, with a face marked by disillusion. They frightened me badly. I kept thinking, “God, we could end up looking like that,” and, in a strange way, I felt that they were us, in some terrible future.

I poked Rob, and told him what I thought. Then suddenly he just stood up, said, “Let’s dance,” and dragged me out onto the dance floor. A moment earlier I’d seen him grimace with pain. The band was playing a twist, and we didn’t know the dance. For that matter, up to that point we hadn’t gone out much and rarely danced. I resisted, but Rob wouldn’t take no for an answer — very uncharacteristic of him.

Later the couple just disappeared as far as we were concerned. We thought they might have left while we weren’t watching them. But from that night on, Rob began to improve. We danced all night, and now dancing is one of our favorite activities. We knew that something had happened very important to our lives, but we had no idea what was really involved.

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!”

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.

(Seth gestured humorously enough, but then quieted and leaned forward in a mood of emphatic seriousness.)

What I want you to see here is that the communications do not just operate in a vertical, ascending or descending fashion, but horizontally, in those terms.

The experience brings up several points that have not been discussed in connection with probabilities. Because you are born physically into your system, you take it for granted without thinking of it that you are born in the same manner into other systems. This may or may not apply, but it is definitely not applicable to the system of probabilities as a whole.

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.

At York Beach, originally. They contained, therefore, all of your fears, for you foresaw that in this system you could become such people — not that this was inevitable, but definitely probable and more than possible.

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.

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.

You had planned for this as a temporary arrangement — six months, at most, to save money — then you were going to paint full time. Instead, however, you stayed, supposedly to aid your parents, but this was largely an excuse because you were afraid to take the chance and paint full-time and also afraid to give up the regular money, even though you had no rent to pay.

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.

Now, in the life of each personality there are, of course, moments of deep crisis and decision, where a personality decides upon one of various possible choices. These moments are not necessarily conscious at all, and the choices are not necessarily conscious, though often they rise to consciousness. But by then, the inner work and decision has been done.

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.