“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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 evening was different. You were polite to your guest, and I recognize his presence. You were not, however, as polite with me. Ruburt was dubious about a session with company present but willing to go along. You know that I have no objections to your friend’s presence. For that matter, I welcome a witness, and it is time you had one for your own edification, not mine, and it should do our nervous pigeon, Ruburt, some good.

Human self-consciousness existed in psychological time, and in inner ‘time’ long before you, as a species, constructed it. For your friend’s sake, I will say this as simply as possible: Human consciousness was inherent and latent from the beginning of your physical universe. I suggest a brief break, and do not crack up into pieces. I give you this slight evidence of my humor, Joseph, simply to show you that I am not, after all, one to carry grudges.

“It would be the simplest explanation, and I’d be a lot less bewildered if I could think that was it,” Mark said. “But the answers were just too specific, too on time, too direct. I’ll tell you, I’ll make out a statement to that effect.”

I delight in astounding the present personalities of old acquaintances by letting them know we have known each other before. It is a failing of mine, but I enjoy it. … There are many times that our paths have crossed, and that is why I wanted you here and why you happened onto the art gallery where Ruburt is employed. Not that free will is not involved, because it is. Only that old friends have a way of meeting. And I was not joking when I spoke earlier of your having a predisposition to gout; for you have also been lecherous in your way.

Belgium in 1632, and our Phillip, in a rather sensational case for the times, actually brought this husband to a village trial — a particularly unusual occurence at that time. Her name was Yolanda Schrav. …

Schravansdatter. He was thirty-three at the time and had been caught in an act of, shall we say, indiscretion, for which he was severely and unjustly beaten. Unjustifiably because the pigheaded husband was, forgive my pun, a bore. … I must admit that this brings us far afield from our discussion of evolution.

Humanity’s so-called supreme blossom seems to be the ego, which can be, at times, a poisoning blossom, indeed. There is nothing wrong with the ego. The point remains, however, that man became so fascinated with it that he has ignored the parts of himself that make the ego possible, and he ignores those portions of himself that give to the ego the very powers of which he is so consciously proud. …

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.

During the next days, I regained my positive frame of mind. Several times, flashes of concepts came to me while I was house-cleaning — sudden intrusive patterns of thought accompanied by a feeling of intellectual and emotional illumination. I felt at these times as if new information was being “popped into my head,” or rather, into my whole being. And I knew that, mentally, I only retained a part of it. These experiences made me accept the telepathy episode in the last session, though I still wasn’t sure of the agent involved.

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,

That ability is also growing on your part, Joseph, and with you, it will involve visionary data, as you call it. And another word about our material; Ruburt’s mind is an excellent one and well given to serve our ends at this time. There is a reciprocal agreement here, a give and take, quite different from your friend’s idea of psychological invasion.

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.”

But we spent the weekend rearranging furniture. Rob stacked some bookcases, bought vertical dowels for the top, and arranged the whole affair in front of the door so that we had an inside entry hall. We used the bookcases for the books on psychic phenomena that we were beginning to collect and started some potted philodendron vines between the dowels. The minute the bookcase was in place, I felt more at ease. We’ve changed its location several times but never removed it. Today the vines go to the ceiling. I know now that if it hadn’t been for this divider, we would have moved long ago. Just the same, with the attitude I had at the time, I’m glad I didn’t know about the letter that was to arrive the next day.

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.

In a dream, I have said, you can experience many days while no corresponding amount of physical time passes. It seems as if you travel very far in the flicker of an eyelash. Now, condensed time is the time felt by the entity, while any of its given personalities live on a plane of physical materialization. To go into this further, many have said that life was a dream. They were true to the facts in one regard, yet far afield as far as the main issue is concerned.

The dream world has its own reality, its own ‘time’ and its own inner organization. As the entity is only partially concerned with its personalities after setting them into motion, so you are unconcerned with this dream world after you have set it into motion. But it exists.

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.