“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

On January 17th, Rob and I tried another experiment together. This time, we decided not to have any “format” or particular plans but to leave ourselves open to whatever might happen. Before long, I began to speak for a personality called Malba Bronson, who told Rob that she had died in South Dakota in 1946 at the age of forty-six. The session lasted for an hour and a half; my voice was halting, with many pauses. I sat there, in the darkened room, hearing the voice as if it came from a great distance, feeling a mild astonishment.

“It sounds too melodramatic,” I said. “The Seth Material will be published, and you’ll help the world — it’s too much! We’ve only had sixteen sessions! I mean … well, I’m not some poor deluded idiot with the idea that I can solve the world’s problems. And Malba didn’t sound terribly bright; at least Seth is intelligent and knows what he’s talking about. But what’s the use in speaking for anyone else? This way I’m trying to figure out if Seth is independent or not … [and] worrying about a Malba, too.”

“I know, but I didn’t particularly want to speak for someone else. I wanted something that I could observe, too. When I’m in trance … well, that’s it.”

The midplane contains a conglomeration of fragments … who have not attained sufficient knowledge or manipulability to progress further at this point. They may be at various stages of development, but, usually, they have attained only a fair level of achievement. They have not excelled, neither have they ‘failed.’ They are working out problems of their own. They are not as yet committed to the next plane of their advancement.

Dissociation puts the power back where it belongs. Daily methods of dissociation are extremely practical. … You will notice within a few weeks’ time an added energy. So-called impulses on your part are often blocked because you do not consider them practical. But the subconscious knows its own meat and its own sauce and the best means for its nourishment.

The viruses and infections were, of course, present. They always are. They are themselves fragments, struggling small fragments, without intention of harm. You have general immunity, believe it or not, to all such viruses. Ideally, you can inhabit a plane with them without fear. It is only when you give tacit agreement that harm is inflicted. To some degree, household pets are dependent upon your psychic strength. They have their own, it is true, but, unknowingly, you reinforce their energy and health.

Your dog’s illness was incipient. You could not have maintained his health for many years in any case. I would like to make it clear that animals do have energy to maintain their own health, but this is reinforced as a rule by the vitality of the human beings to whom they may be emotionally attached. The fact is that you were unable to give your dog the added vitality at a time when he needed it most. There is no need to blame yourselves. It was beyond your control at your stage of development then.

The interior universe had its influence even as far as pets were concerned! The whole concept fascinated me. Seth showed us in the next session that not only animals but all living things had their primary existence in this inner world. He also carried on with his discussion of the ego and health, giving an excellent analysis of the ego’s relationship to the personality as a whole. I took what he said to heart and found myself opening up, becoming more free and creative. In this session, he also spoke about the consciousness of trees in such a way that I was never able to look at the trees outside of my window with the same old detachment. Through the sessions, the whole world seemed to come alive.

The inner senses of the tree have strong affinity with the properties of the earth itself. They feel their growing. They listen to their growing as you might listen to your own heartbeat. They experience this oneness with their own growth, and they also feel pain. The pain, while definite, unpleasant and sometimes agonizing, is not of an emotional nature in the same way that you experience pain. In some ways, it is even a deeper thing. The analogy may not be perfect, far from it, but it is as if your breath were to be suddenly cut off — in a manner, this somewhat approximates pain for a tree.

The tree is also aware of its environment to an astonishing degree. It maintains constant awareness and the ability to adjust itself in two completely different worlds, so to speak — one in which it meets little resistance in growing upward and one composed of much heavier elements into which it must grow downward. Man needs artifical methods to operate effectively on land or in water, but the so-called unconscious tree manages nicely in two worlds as diverse, certainly, as land and water, and makes itself a part of each.

Now, in a deep trance the subject, though fully aware of what is happening in the trance, may remember nothing of it afterward. The awareness of plant life is also somewhat like that of the subject in deep trance. Except for the suggestion and stimulus received by regular natural forces on your plane, the plant life does not bestir itself in other directions. But like the trance subject, our plant is aware. Its other abilities lie unused for the time, and latent, but they are present.

A tree knows a human being also … by the weight of a boy upon its branches … by the vibrations in the air as adults pass, which hit the tree’s trunk at varying distances, and even by voices. You must remember what I said earlier about mental enzymes and my remark that color can sometimes be heard … The tree recognizes a human being, though it does not see the human being in your terms. It does not build up the image of a man, but it builds up a composite sensation which represents, say, a given individual. And the tree will recognize the same man who passes it by each day.

As your own body senses temperature changes, it also senses the psychic charge, not only of other individuals, but of plant and vegetative matter. Your tree builds up a composite of sensations of this sort, sensing not the physical dimensions of a material object, whatever it is, but the vital psychic formation within and about it.

If, for example, our tree bark grew fearful of stormy weather and began to harden itself against the elements, in a well-meaning but distorted protective spirit, then the tree would die. This is what the ego does when it reacts too violently to purely physical data. As a result, it stiffens, and then you have, my well-meaning friend, the cold detachment with which you at one time faced the world.

Nevertheless, lest Ruburt thinks he is getting off scott free, let me remind him that the tree’s bark is quite necessary and cannot be dispensed with. But I will get into that, and into Ruburt, at a later time. Take a break, and then I will have more to say about the bark that barks too loudly.

The idea of dissociation could be likened to the slight distance between the bark and the inside of the tree. Here we do not have a rigid bark, as you should not have a rigid ego. We have instead a flexible bark, changing with the elements, protecting the inner tree (or inner self), but flexible, opening or closing in rhythmic motion. …

But when I read the session, I thought of Rob sitting there, listening to what I thought of as criticism, while his wife paced the room “telling him off” in another voice and supposedly for another, invisible personality. “I worry that it’s just a psychological trick,” I said. “I mean, suppose that’s really what I think, subconsciously — the idea that your ego is too rigid at times and closes you off. So I simply adopt another personality to tell you so. Then I wouldn’t be responsible and you couldn’t talk back.”

And I was forced to smile back sheepishly. “As long as Seth talks about philosophical stuff, I don’t mind, I guess. But when he starts going into us, into personal habits and behavior, it gets kind of close.”

“Uh-huh. Not really.” I said. But in the beginning, at least, I wasn’t used to probing psychological analysis directed at Rob or myself from an invisible personality — or anyone else. Now we wonder how we managed to function effectively without all the knowledge about ourselves that we’ve received from Seth through the years.

The material on trees fascinated me, though. Vegetation was not just alive, but aware. And yet, in a strange way, the world was also in a trance. The session inspired the following poem that I wrote a few days later.

Deep is the sleep
Of the moss and the pebble.
Long is the trance
Of the grass and the meadow.
Footfalls come and footfalls pass,
But no sounds can break
That green-eyed trance.