“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I realize that I am dreaming, and tell myself to go to another probability system. I am standing by Chamberlain’s Dairy outside Elmira, but the scenery doesn’t change, so I will myself to Jane and Rob’s apartment. The next thing I know, I’m there.

There is little furniture, and the walls are a dull beige. Artist supplies and papers are piled in disarray; someone is obviously moving into the place. Jane and Rob stand by the window. The plant room divider always in their apartment is gone. The room is very bare and barn-like.

Jane’s face is somehow softer than in the last encounter, and Rob seems more relaxed too. ‘The what?’ Rob asks.

Rob and Jane look at each other. Jane says, ‘No.’ But somehow they both seem more like themselves, as I know them in daily life.

‘Rob does,’ Jane laughs. ‘I don’t like to.’

At this point, I look up and see Seth sitting on some crates, very much heavier-looking than in the portrait Rob did of him — swarthier, in dark khaki clothes and boots.

The two of them don’t answer me. They seem to be sharing a secret. ‘Look,’ I say again, to explain. ‘This is a probable system of reality, one of many. In the one I come from, I also know Jane and Rob Butts. Do you remember that?’

Here Seth turns to me and to some others who now appear in the room. Neither Jane or Rob see Seth or the others, although Seth is gesturing and his voice is audible, at least to me.

‘Jane also has produced a lot of work, ’I say. ‘She has two books out and is now on a third.’ I looked around at the disarray, and the unframed paintings that are stacked about. Rob nods at them, rather proudly, and we exchange looks of congratulations.

Jane lights a cigarette and tries to be flippant. ‘Isn’t that funny!’ she says. ‘Just today Rob was on the phone, and had to hang up. He said, “Seth is coming, have to hang up.” Then he didn’t know what he meant. We figured that it was a slip of the tongue of some kind. But we wondered about it.’

In the meantime, one of the other people with Seth speaks with him. One is a large, jolly-looking monk. I also notice that Rob’s back seems much more comfortable than at our first meeting. ‘You’ll go on and develop your own way in this probability system,’ I say. Affection seems to well up among us.

Apparently Rob and Jane were moving into the same apartment my Rob and Jane have lived in for years, but in another probability.

Sue has had several other short dream encounters with the York Beach couple and in each they seemed more confident and assured. Now, when she comes to our apartment, she senses this other Jane and Rob moving about just beyond the focus of our normal perceptions.

According to Seth, children actually try out in dreams the various courses open to them. Speaking to Rob in Session 282, August 31, 1966, he said:

Seth told us that Rob’s doctor probable self was a Doctor Pietra. As mentioned in my earlier book, we tried to contact him — so far, without success. Some years ago, Rob did do some medical artwork and was astonished at his success. He has no conscious knowledge of wanting to be a doctor as a child, but in painting he always emphasized body structure and form.

But what is the point of all these probable selves? What do they have to do with the development of personality as we think of it? Seth is still discussing probabilities in his own book, so we don’t have all the answers, by any means. One night, Rob asked Seth how our own egos had changed as a result of our sessions, however, and Seth used the question as an opportunity to give us more information about personality and probable selves.

To any of them, the others would seem to exist in a probable universe, yet all are connected. All of you did not have the same parents, for example, and there are portions of probable situations existing in your own parents’ separate lives. [To Rob:] In two probable realities, your mother did not have children. You do not exist in these. In some, she married but not the man you know as father. A psychological connection exists between that first son in that other system and yourself.