“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

5
Excerpts from Sessions 15 and 16

In the next session the following night, Seth launched into the nature of my last trance experience and used it as a stepping stone for his first real discussion of the nature of human personality. As the session shows, Seth apparently decided that it was time to take me in hand. From here on, he would continue to comment on my trance experiments and teach me to regulate them.

This is the first of several key sessions included in this portion of the book as introductions to the interior universe. The material is included because of its importance in understanding the later concepts on dream reality and the methods of perceiving inner data.

(Excerpts from Session 15, Monday, January 13, 1964, 9:00 P.M.)

(We began, as usual, by sitting at the board. A foot of snow had fallen since Sunday night. Although we took the first few answers through the board, from the beginning Jane received them mentally also. We did not ask a question to open the session.)

(Here Jane’s voice began to get louder and to deepen as she paced back and forth. Although there was quite a change, her voice did not reach either the depth or volume of the previous session.)

As for the writing, it was by an unorganized, unformed, possible personality of Ruburt’s that merely took the opportunity to show itself and supercede the strong hand that has always dominated it. … Joseph, your part in these sessions is extremely important. Without your participation they could not have begun, nor could they continue. Because of our past alliances, the three of us are closely bound together …

During break, my voice returned to normal. We sipped some wine. Rob began talking about schizophrenia, and then the session resumed.)

(In an earlier session, Seth said that while on vacation in Maine, we both unwittingly created two images — versions of ourselves — and then reacted to them. See The Seth Material.)

Joseph, when your hands grow tired of taking notes, I do wish you would volunteer to take a break and relieve me of an ever-growing compassionate concern for your physical condition. Surely after our pleasant chat the other evening, you should know that nothing of this sort would offend me. I would much prefer more broken-up sessions if they are necessary, than sessions in which I see myself as a torture master.

(We took a break here. Rob said that his fingers felt as if they were falling off. It was almost 10:00 P.M. and Seth had been speaking quite rapidly since the beginning of the session at nine o’clock. We started up again in ten minutes, and once more, my voice began to deepen.)

Now, there are various types of dreams and dream fragments. I will follow this through later on, since in these beginning sessions I am giving you what may be considered as a broad outline to be filled in. These dissociated states often occur in sleep, when the ego is quieted. At such times it is very possible for your present personalities to be visited by others such as myself, but only on the bidding of the entity.

“I really felt that someone else was here, that Seth was looking out the window,” Rob said, when the session was over. “It was … nostalgic.” He told me what had happened.

As Seth continued to explain the inner sense and the unseen reality beneath the objective world that all of us know, I began to understand a little of my situation. And, of course, Rob and I both began to experiment with the inner senses. These experiments gave us first-hand information that was invaluable — especially to me. The next session cleared up several points I had been wondering about and gave us several clues as to how the inner senses could be used. It also includes a brief mention of flying saucers that I didn’t delete because of its obvious general interest. Again, Rob’s notes are inserted whenever they help explain the text.

(Excerpts from Session 16, Wednesday, January 15, 1964, 9:00 P.M.)

(This morning at breakfast I announced suddenly, to Jane’s surprise and my own, that light was a mental enzyme … We started tonight’s session sitting at the board as usual, without asking questions.)

Rob grinned. “Credit my subconscious then. I didn’t sit down and figure it out. The thought just came to me this morning. There was something I wanted to ask you, though. Why do Jane’s eyes appear to be darker and more luminous when she’s delivering your messages? Our cat’s eyes had that same look in the last session.”

We didn’t realize it at the time, but in these early sessions, Seth was gently leading us down the “garden path” — it became more difficult to think of the world in the usual terms, for example. Even though I had come to no conclusions as to what Seth was or wasn’t, the Seth material itself fascinated me. Its source in Seth made it only too clear that other channels of information and experience were open to us beside those we had known earlier.

As a result of the following sessions, for instance, we began “testing” physical reality for its subjective yields. We no longer took for granted the normal day with its succession of moments. Instead, we tried looking at time itself in a new way, practically speaking. We tried to experience it differently, particularly after the nineteenth session and an experiment in self-hypnosis that Rob tried on his own.