“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

10
Seth Meets an Old Friend in Our Living Room

This was to be the first time Seth really spoke to anyone else. I was half reluctant to hold a session and half curious as to how Seth would handle other people. I was also quite nervous. The session was actually a breakthrough in many respects, as these excerpts will show. I’m also including some of Rob’s preliminary notes.

(As we sat speaking with Mark, Jane finally told me that Seth wanted to have a session since we had missed last night’s regular one. Seth also wanted Mark to stay. But tonight, since it was getting late and I had doubts about being able to keep up with the dictation, I thought it better that we pass up the chance. I also thought Jane would be too tired, after the exhausting time she’d had last night. Mark offered to leave after I explained as best I could what was happening, but I said that we’d rather wait for the next regular scheduled session night.)

(This statement, Jane told me, made Seth angry. She insisted that I get pen and paper, and, so, the session began. At its end will be found a copy of Mark’s statement.)

Mark sat there, considerably startled. I was in trance, of course, but, knowing him, I can well imagine how he must have stared at me as I strode back and forth speaking in that deep Seth voice and talking to Rob in such a manner. When Rob explained briefly about Seth before the session, he’d asked Mark questions he’d like answered. Mark said that he was interested in the connection between consciousness and evolution. Now, almost immediately, Seth said:

More material was given than the excerpt just included. Actually, Seth spoke steadily for an hour before our first break. When I came out of trance, Mark was staring at me intently.

“Seth answered each question I had the minute it came to mind,” he said. “Rob gave me a piece of paper. I intended to write questions down as I thought of them, but I never got the chance to do it. He answered them in order.” He shook his head. “Seth did. Or you did. Somebody did. I’ve never heard or seen anything like this!”

Was Mark right? I wondered. “I’m quite willing to admit that telepathy might exist,” I said. “But if I have any part in it, I’d like to know what’s going on and how Seth did it — or how I did it.”

“What will I call, uh, Seth, in my statement?” Mark asked and Seth interrupted,

You may call me Seth, Mark. Although, in case you are interested, your entity name is Phillip. And because you are such a good witness, I must admit that I knew you in the past. I consider you an old friend, and we shall, to some extent, renew an old acquaintance.

Indeed like you, my dear Joseph, Seth said. In your case, as I have told you, you overcompensate now for past fleshiness by a most unnecessary self-punishing attitude. Phillip, on the other hand, is performing no such compensations, except for one instance of choosing a good-looking wife and therefore permitting himself to treat her kindly.

He was in a different position when he was a woman, Seth said with obvious humor. And if I may give away some secrets, he was beaten by one pigheaded husband who had a snout to match!

“When did this happen?” Rob asked. He was trying to lead Seth on again. Mark just looked from one of us to the other.

“Wait. Let’s get the spelling on that,” Rob said, and Seth nicely spelled it out.

The session continued. I had long forgotten that we had a visitor. My previous nervousness was like a dream. I was aware of nothing except of a great supporting energy and, someplace far off, the room in which my body walked. Mark sat there fascinated, Rob told me later, his salesman’s smile replaced by bewilderment and determination. He was to attend many other sessions. Whether or not he and Seth were friends in a past life, they became good friends in this one. Some excellent evidential material was to be obtained through sessions with Mark several years later. He was to recall Seth’s warning to cut down on drinking because of his predisposition to gout; he came down with gouty arthritis.

But that night, Mark insisted that Seth had read his mind and listened spellbound as Seth told him about the inner senses. None of us suspected that Seth would give Mark detailed information about the inner organization for which he worked, or help him understand personal problems, or delight in telling him what had gone on at sales conferences that Mark had already attended — or with a great rush of humor tell him the exact amount of a new raise he had just been given. All of that was in the future.

That night, Seth emphasized only the importance of inner reality and the validity of the inner senses that made nonphysical knowledge available whenever we were ready to admit it. Once Seth smiled broadly and said,

It was midnight before the session ended. After it was over, and our salesman friend left for his motel in a nearby town, Seth came through with a few personal remarks for Rob. We had already gone into the bedroom when I felt drawn to go out into the front room to my desk. Standing there, silently, I felt Seth near. My mind was a whirl. I knew that I felt that Seth was near, but, intellectually, I was full of questions. Had Seth really read Mark’s mind, or had Mark just wanted that to happen and convinced himself that it had? Did I feel Seth, or was I indulging in fantasies of a highly dangerous nature?

Rob, wondering where I had gone, suddenly stood beside me. Already in trance, I guestured to the paper and Seth began to speak:

The emotional feeling of this brief statement was alive in the room when I came out of trance. We just stood there, staring at each other. Then, as if to break the mood, mentally I heard Seth make a joke to the effect that Joseph was not to get a big head just because Seth had apologized. Then all feelings of Seth vanished, and we went to bed.

I did a lot of thinking in the next few days. As I worked at the gallery or at my book or did my house chores, the last session kept coming to mind. If Seth had read Mark’s mind, this was an excellent progression. If not, then Mark had deceived himself, and Seth had gone along and taken advantage of the deception. And if Seth was a personification of my subconscious, then this would be an excellent example of subconscious fraud.

“Do you think Seth is deceptive?” Rob asked. “If you do, you should quit the whole thing.”

“No. But even though I think telepathy is possible … I can’t quite believe that in a trance state, through me, another personality read someone else’s mind — that’s it!” I said. “I’ve put my finger on it. Besides, I didn’t like Seth taking you to task in front of Mark. And that made me question if I was really far more disturbed than I think I was because you didn’t help with Miss Cunningham the other night. What a beautiful and sneaky thing to do! Have a secondary personality give you the dickens over it — and in front of company — with me supposedly in the clear, taking no responsibility for it at all.”

In this particular period, we had Seth and the Seth Material only — twenty-six sessions — and thus far, no evidential material at all; there was nothing to go on except our experience and faith in ourselves. I’d always trusted myself as a writer. As a psychic, I felt on very shaky ground for a while. Yet Rob always managed to help me see things in perspective, and this time, he again helped me maintain faith in myself and my abilities.

Rob felt my attitude was rigid, and it was, of course. Yet, I’d made some progress. In the twenty-seventh session, February 19, 1964, Seth told us we could dispense with the Ouija board completely. Up to that time we’d used it to open sessions. He said,

Rob smiled, amused by Seth’s rather cavalier advice to keep the board. It belonged to our landlord.

When your training is much further advanced, we may be able to take certain shortcuts, Seth continued. It is difficult for me to have to string this material out in words and for you to record it. You see, it is possible, in theory, for you to directly experience a concept-essence of the material in any given session. This would involve the utilization of most, if not all inner senses, operating as a whole cognizance field. You cannot perform such an achievement yet.

(Rob’s notes: I had to ask Jane to repeat the last few words of the above paragraph. As soon as I did, a startling thing happened. Jane-Seth began to talk in a very loud and exceptionally vibrant voice, as if an extra charge of energy was suddenly made available. This strong voice persisted, though it did drop some in volume as the session continued.)

The session went on as Seth gave Rob some excellent psychological insights into his own behavior, and tied this is with early experience in this life, and with relationships with his present family in past life existences. The strong voice continued, and once during a break, Rob asked me how I felt. “Like a full sail, filled with energy, carried on, full blast,” I said.

Then, toward the end of the session, Seth made a suggestion about our living quarters. Our living room is very large — opens from the apartment house hallway and runs down to three large bay windows at the other end. I always worked at my table in front of the windows. Seth suggested that we shield the door to the hallway with a room divider.

Then, room by room, Seth commented on our physical arrangements. He suggested that the bed be placed with the head at the north, for example, and made other comments. He said that many of my needs were really based on fears which would have to be faced as time went by, and he discussed several of them in the session. Then he said,

“Well it does have humorous aspects,” Rob said. “I could hardly keep a straight face, hearing Seth make the suggestions and knowing ahead of time what you’d say. He knew too — it was funny.”

The letter upset me considerably, yet it also objectified some of my own doubts. They were out in the air where I could at least deal with them. As far as we could tell, for all of my stewing and hemming and hawing, there were no alarming changes in my personality. I was doing twice the creative work I had done earlier. I was satisfied with the quality of the Seth Material; it was far superior to anything I could do on my own. If nothing else, I thought the sessions presented a way of making deeply unconscious knowledge available on a consistent basis.

In the meantime, we held our twenty-eighth session. In it, Seth assured us that the sessions were constructive and made many comments quoted in The Seth Material about the nature of the subconscious, repeating that he was an independent personality.

Still, I didn’t know what to make of the material Seth gave us on dreams and the personality that night. Was it symbolically true or practically true or both? When it was typed, we both read it over several times. We were to discover that the dream universe was far more valid than we had ever supposed, but what Seth said then sounded like nothing we had ever read or heard before.

It was Session 28, February 24, 1964 and our second session without the board. Seth was right; I had grown anxious wondering just when to dispense with it in a session and let him speak, yet it represented something solid and real that helped the transition take place. Now I just sat there until suddenly I fell into trance and Seth began to speak.

It was in this session that Seth made the analogy of the “weird creature with two faces,” one turned to physical reality and one to inner reality, both conscious and aware, each representing one facet of our consciousness.

I was going to mention the furniture arrangements that we embarked upon during this time but find that a few excerpts from this same session give a pretty fair picture. They are pertinent for several reasons. Seth seemed to know how we could best utilize our surroundings to serve conscious and unconscious needs. We’d been in the apartment three years when the sessions began, yet in a few session comments Seth managed to clear up several points that we had had never settled.

“And now … the objects represent inner things we don’t recognize, and when we move them around, we rearrange the inner feelings too; or vice versa. But suppose Seth starts really telling us how to arrange stuff. I mean, whenever he wants to. …

“I knew you’d think of that,” Rob said. But I had nothing to worry about. After “settling us down,” making the few changes that seemed to be of such great help, Seth left all housekeeping problems to me.