“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

If there’s anything I like to see
It’s a bunch of pudgy God-fearing grown men at it again,
Shooting down the starlings.
I mean, crazy man. Go, go, go.
Why not have a band play and give balloons away?
There’s nothing like killing birds
To clean up the business section.
We could feature a Starling Day, for our centennial celebration,
Such elation as the city fathers
And other pot-bellied elders
Did their best to keep the city clean.
We could give ice cream away to the kids who killed the most,
The hosts of observers could yell the cheer:
“Oh, it takes such courage and it takes such brawn
To drop the blackbirds on the County House lawn.”

I wrote four more poems of varying merit about that one event and behind the whole affair was defiant recognition of the value of any consciousness, whatever its form. And the deeper question: Why was it ever annihilated, at least in our terms? Why was life constructed to be destroyed? I knew, even then, that I had to find my own answers — that each of us does. And yet at that point, I felt duty-bound to question my own experiences, Seth and the sessions because I refused to hide in self-delusions.