“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.

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.

Here is an exact copy of that material, delivered October 9, 1970 between 8:00 and 9:30 P.M., referring to Living Time by Nicoll.

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.

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.

After a few minutes the dictation resumed, this time taking off from the first point of interruption:

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.’

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.