“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

“Will she be … fully materialized on another plane before she dies in this one?” Rob asked. It was difficult for him to ask questions and take notes at the same time, but if possible, he wanted the questions answered before he forgot them.

“But you don’t think it’s true?” Rob asked.

“Who knows?” I said. Later I started a poem on the idea, but couldn’t follow it through. “I can believe that almost anything is possible, theoretically or … philosophically,” I said. “When I think of the same thing in practical terms, apply it to life, that’s when I pull my horns in.”

But the deeper questions were now implied in ordinary events as I went about my day. Springtime again — the release of energy, the flowering of a landscape that, by all appearances, had been dead and nearly lifeless only weeks before. The implied promise of recurring life contrasted drearily with the few things we knew about life while we were in the flesh — much less free of it.

Then strange dull sounds; commotion. Startled, I went to the window, hardly able to believe my eyes. The police were shooting down the starlings that always nested in the treetops. Real fury rushed through me. My eyes brimmed over with tears. I stood at the window and dashed out this poem — far too emotionally unrestrained to be aesthetically a good one but an excellent example of my feelings at the time.

“Do unto others, I tell you.”
He wanted to say more
But they carted him off.
The good people laughed.
On the ground was a puddle
Of the idiot’s tears.

One man bent to wash his hands in it
And saw
The skin peel off like dirt,
But the lawn was full
With the falling corpses of the birds,
And when he cried out, no one heard.

The reason is rather apparent: If you know that a situation is ‘imaginary,’ you are not going to come to grips with it. This way, you have your actors taking the situation as it seems to be but looking about in amazement now and then to wonder how they got where they are, who constructed the sets and so forth. They do not realize that the whole thing is self-created, nor should they in the main, since the urgency to solve problems would dissolve.

Rob was all ready to ask, “Well, how come you’re letting us in on the secret?” But he never had a chance to ask the question.

Ruburt was upset, and with good reason. … It goes without saying that a bird’s death is inevitable, but a cat killing a bird does not have to juggle the same sort of values with which a man must be concerned. For now, suffice it to say that to kill for self-protection or food on your plane does not involve you in what we may call for the first time, I believe, karmic consequences.

Only that she will regain periods of lucidity, but overall, her condition will not improve.

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.

It is not my voice, but a representation or approximation of it. Furthermore, in your terms, I do not have a voice. …

No. Today or rather late this evening, before 2:00 A.M. in the morning, she will undergo a severe crisis, and rapid deterioration of brain tissue will result. The last struggles of the ego will take place. It will finally understand, however, that it will not be dumped aside but taken along as itself, independent as always, to stand beside other independent egos each of whom represents facets of the entire entity …

She stayed here several months, without ever showing any signs of violent behavior. But her mind deteriorated more and more. She thought she was getting threatening letters.

She’d almost tear the apartment apart looking for the threatening letter that she was sure had come in the mail. She was so persuasive that the first two times this happened, I wondered if she was getting threatening mail, as unlikely as this seemed. I suggested that we open her mail together each day, but then she still insisted that the letters came — slid beneath the door — and, of course, she always misplaced them or lost them. So, for a while it was touch and go. I was very worried about her.

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.

He looked right through me, taking no notice of me at all. Since we were acquaintances, I was indignant. “Sam,” I said again, but he walked briskly past. I looked at him fully in the face, running ahead of him, ready to confront him with “What’s the matter with you?” But, instead, I realized that he didn’t see me. He never saw me at all.

Now I was really frightened. Was I a ghost? The warm sunlight was everywhere on the lawns, and the shadows were real. There was no doubt that this was the physical world. Then why didn’t I show up in it? Suddenly I remembered the jolt I’d felt at the base of my neck … had I had an attack of some sort? Maybe I was delirious? But I was thinking rationally.

In the meantime, the doctor got into his car and drove away. I stood there, yelling at him and wondering how I would get home. Then suddenly I thought: “Could I be out of my body?” But how, since I didn’t remember leaving it? Quickly I looked at the house. The street number wasn’t visible, and I was in the middle of the block, away from street signs. At that moment, I felt another sharp jolt at the back of my neck and instantly found myself back in my bedroom, fully alert and awake.

All kinds of thoughts flooded to my mind. Consciousness was independent of the body — Seth was right — and if that was true, then there was no reason why he couldn’t be what he said he was: an independent personality, out of the flesh. But why hadn’t I caught on sooner? And why hadn’t I run up to see if the house mailbox had a name on it? I couldn’t wait till Rob came home so I could tell him what happened.

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.