“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.

After finishing my reading, I may have watched television for a few moments. Then I went out to the kitchen to wash a pan that I’d left soaking in the sink. As I did this, suddenly a concise clear stream of words came through my head: “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 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.

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.

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.