“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

On Friday, October 9, 1970, I received a letter from a reader, Peg Boyles, about my book The Seth Material. With it she included an excerpt from Living Time by Maurice Nicoll, and another from a manuscript by Alice Bailey. We were expecting company that night. After dinner I watched “Mission Impossible” on television and began reading the Nicoll exerpts which were on probabilities. I did not even look at the Bailey material. The Nicoll pages intrigued me, and I thought of asking Seth about some of Nicoll’s ideas.

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.

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.

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.

Along with the last sentence, I saw an image that is difficult to explain. It was a rectangular object that reminded me of a gadget shown to us once by Jim Beal from NASA that reacted to light and another that reacted to pressure. Both of those gadgets turned all colors and achieved different stages of transparency and opaqueness. So did the object I saw now. It was supposed to represent the moment as we perceive it. The center section of the rectangle was most opaque and the ends most transparent. There were new bursts of noise from downstairs at this point, and the image vanished.

The next morning I typed up the material and went to check the title of the Nicoll book. Then I saw the Alice Bailey excerpt and read it. I was in for a surprise. It contained her description of the method used in scripts she received, and the description fitted my experience so closely that she could have been speaking for me as well.

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.

Using a series of mental exercises explained to me by Seth, I do step sideways — it is as though I am squeezing between two bars, and I find myself back in the bedroom with my father there, again, complaining. This time I change the events from the way they happened the first time, realize how important his problems are to him, smile and send him good thoughts. At once I am propelled into another, similar scene.

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.

In the meantime, Sue began to have a series of dreams dealing with probabilities, the first of them in August, 1970. She wrote the dream down as usual, and called me on the phone to tell me about it. I was astonished. As she read the dream, all kinds of images and ideas came into my mind.

There I see, to my surprise and joy, Jane and Rob Butts sitting talking to some other people. Or are they Jane and Rob? They are older-looking and both look very cynical about whatever they are discussing. I wonder if the town is Sayre, Pennsylvania and if we are all really there or if we have made this place up. The other people go away, and I go sit down next to Jane, and, to my surprise, they do not acknowledge or recognize me at all.

At this point, I am suddenly hit with the the knowledge that this is the dream state of another probability system involving Jane and Rob’s probable selves here. I suddenly say to them, ‘My name is Sue Watkins, and my husband’s name is Carl.’ They give me a rather nasty ‘so-what’ look.

‘Look,’ I say, ‘You and I are in the dream state. I am from another probability system. You know me there. In mine, you kept on with the “messages” and found — I glance at Seth, who is smiling — ‘they were from him and you went on to discover fantastic things about life.’

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.

The affair is also a lesson to you when you think negatively, showing you the results of such negative thoughts, followed without letup — and, in fact, followed in spite of redeeming actions that would change events. The other couple, for example, ignored the contact with me. The negative and bitter qualities of personality came fully to the fore, uncompromised and unredeemed by the fulfilling and creative functions that they had also smothered.

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.