“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

11
Seth Keeps Track of Miss Cunningham

A few nights following Miss Cunningham’s hospitalization, we went to visit her. We had never been inside the hospital before. As we went inside, I stopped dead. There in front of me was the lobby I had seen in my July dream — complete with the glassed-in gift area. I told Rob on our way to Miss Cunningham’s room.

This time we both stopped in dismay. There sat Miss Cunningham, tied in bed, her eyes wild, her hair tangled. She was incapable of any communication. As I stood there, suddenly I “heard” Seth tell me, mentally, that my dream had forseen her condition which would lead to her death.

Our living room seemed twice as cozy that evening, with the warm lights and Willie sleeping on the rug. But I said to Rob, “Look, Miss Cunningham was as rational and bright as either of us not too long ago. What happened? How do we know it won’t happen to us?” And the comfortable room suddenly seemed a facade. In years to come, where would we be? What difference could it make that we ever sat in this room, or had sessions, or moved furniture, or stroked the cat? So I didn’t feel like going into a trance.

Yet, at nine o’clock, as always, I “clicked out” and Seth began to speak. Immediately he began to discuss Miss Cunningham, and my dream.

At the precise time of Ruburt’s dream, Miss Cunningham was deciding to leave this plane of reality. Ruburt received the message directly. The unwillingness on Miss Cunningham’s part represented her present personality’s protest against the change that a deeper part of herself deemed necessary and proper.

It was Miss Cunningham’s discovery that she needed operations on both eyes that caused this deeper decision. When Ruburt learned about the projected operations, he leapt to the conclusion that this was the meaning of the dream. Subconsciously, however, he knew that far more was involved. Part of the subconscious fantasy in the dream was valid, representing a watered-down version of the actual communication — for example, Miss Cunningham’s dark apparel.

Miss Cunningham had been preparing herself for her own departure since she heard of the possible operations. Yet consciously, she was ignorant of her own inner decision.

She did not remember him … as she taught his children. He admired her very much as his children, one in particular, found her an excellent teacher. Frank Withers considered her a friend, attaching more importance than she did to her influence upon his children. But beyond this, Miss Cunningham’s present personality has been gently disentangling itself from this plane of reality — and she simply did not remember him.

The shock of birth is worse. The new personality is not entirely focused, and it must make immediate critical adjustments of the strongest nature. Death in your terms is a termination but does not involve such immediately critical manipulations. There is ‘time’ to catch up, so to speak. Already Miss Cunningham’s vital core of awareness is appearing on another plane, and she appears there as a wondering, but not frightened, young girl.

“It’s a nice thought,” I said later to Rob. “I mean, that Miss Cunningham just leaves this old body of hers behind and appears someplace else as a young girl.”

So the first spring of the sessions came, a cold bright March. Miss Cunningham’s apartment door became a stimulus to my constant questions. Every time I passed it, I wondered again: Was she transferring her consciousness to another level of reality? Would she survive death when it came, in meaningful terms? And behind all these questions there was the big one: Was Seth really a personality who had survived death? And would I really ever know?

I’d identified all life with the birds, of course. Miss Cunningham, Rob, me and all the people that we knew were surely getting shot down; falling through time, we were dying in a descent that we couldn’t understand or control. Either that, or Seth and the material — still so strange to me — were giving answers that I refused, so far, to accept in practical terms.

“All right. Could you say anything about Miss Cunningham’s condition?” Rob asked.

Actually we didn’t get up to see her for some time. In the thirty-third session, March 9, Seth told us that April 15 would be a critical date for Miss Cunningham, but that is all he said.

Both of us had been wondering about the crisis Seth had mentioned for Miss Cunningham on April 15. As it happened a regular session night fell on that date, and, having heard nothing, Rob asked Seth if there had been any distortion in the message.

On April 23, I met Miss Cunningham’s niece in the hall and asked about her condition. “Oh, didn’t you know?” she said. “We had to take her to a nursing home. She became so violent that the hospital called and told us we’d have to move her. She upset the whole floor, ran screaming up and down the halls, threw dishes at the nurses and was completely irrational.”

For a moment I didn’t know what to say. It was almost impossible to imagine Miss Cunningham indulging in such behavior. Then I remembered the date given by Seth, so I asked as casually as I could, “When did all this happen?”

Miss Cunningham stayed in the nursing home for a short time when the family was notified again that she was unmanagable, and that other arrangements would have to be made. Once she ran out of the place in her nightgown, out into the busy street in the middle of evening traffic. Not wanting to commit her, the relatives returned her to the apartment, in care of a part-time housekeeper.

During this period I was trying the psychological time exercises suggested by Seth, and often, just when I got started, Miss Cunningham would interrupt me. One day I went into the bedroom where it was quiet, closed my eyes, lay down and began clearing my mind of thoughts for my psy-time exercise. Several times Miss Cunningham came to mind: I wanted to ask her doctor about her condition but hesitated because I wasn’t a member of her family.

Then the screen door opened. Dr. Levine, Miss Cunningham’s doctor, came out on the porch. He stood talking for a moment with a woman who remained inside. I thought: “I might as well ask him about Miss Cunningham anyway, regardless of what’s going on.” So I waited; in a moment, the doctor came down the steps. I walked over to him and said, “Hi Sam. Could I talk to you for a minute?”

“The impetus must have been your desire to ask Sam about Miss Cunningham,” Rob said.

We had no idea then that I would be involved in still more startling episodes with Miss Cunningham, but I grinned, looking out the window. I’d been on my first real “field trip.” I didn’t have to take everything Seth said on faith alone. The psychological time exercises suddenly took on greater significance. I was ready now to really use the inner senses. And almost immediately after this, Seth began his discussions on the nature of dream reality and the methods that would let us explore it for ourselves. If I could leave my body and go out into the physical world, then I didn’t see why I couldn’t leave it and explore the inner one.