“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Animals and Trees in the Interior Universe
Excerpts from Sessions 17 and 18

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.

I was less than impressed with Malba and with the session. For one thing, I distrusted the “prediction” that the Seth Material would be published.

“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.”

“She didn’t say you had to. Only that you could if you wanted to. See what Seth has to say about Malba in our next session. I’ll ask him to comment, if he doesn’t on his own.”

Actually Seth opened the seventeenth session with a brief mention of the affair, saying,

The entire session ran three hours, and most of it was devoted to the ego and the subconscious and to their relationship to health and illness. While Rob’s back was vastly improved since Seth’s reincarnational sessions for him, he still had some bad days now and then. We’d been in the habit of blaming difficulties on the subconscious.

The largest segment of the session dealt with personal matters connected with Rob’s earlier illness. This led Rob to wonder what had caused our three animals to die shortly before the sessions began.

I was crushed by this material when Rob read it to me after the session. We were both completely unacquainted with such ideas, yet, intuitively, we accepted them. Ever since, we’ve been very aware of the effect our behavior and moods have on our cats and have observed the same reinforcement or lack of it in other people’s relationship with their animals.

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.

Following Seth’s suggestions, Rob began doing a few simple yoga exercises, and the night before the eighteenth session he used self-hypnosis to relax his muscles. The results were so immediate and excellent, and Rob was so limp when he finished, that both of us were amused. He looked so like a before-and-after advertisement. Before he began the exercises, he was very uptight, with sore muscles and a repressive body pose. Afterward, he was like some happy rag doll. Seth began to comment on this in the beginning of the next session. As usual, he used our personal experience as a basis for some excellent information with great general application.

(Excerpts from Session 18, Wednesday, January 22, 1964, 9:00 P.M.)

(To begin, we sat silently at the board, hands on the pointer. Almost at once, Jane began to hear Seth mentally. After taking a few words through the board, she set it aside, stood up and began to speak for Seth as she paced about the room. Her eyes darkened considerably. At times they seemed to contain no highlights. This was our longest session to date, and at its end we were both weary.)

Very good, if you are referring to the hypnosis session. Your condition following this and your first exercise bout should show you how badly you were in need of the treatment. When I suggested that you dissociate, incidentally, I didn’t mean that you should break up into pieces. …

Much of the session had been directed to him. He sat, taking notes, as Seth dictated, stopping now and then to stare at him as he made a point. The session continued until nearly 1:00 A.M. The rest of it went into an analysis of the previous ten years, and was directed at both of us. All of this was fascinating, incidentally, and full of psychological insight that greatly helped us both.

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.”

“Do you realize that the entire session contained more psychological insight into me and more hints into my behavior than I’ve ever received in any way whatsoever? And that Seth just used me as an example to make more general pertinent points about the personality?” Rob grinned. “If it didn’t bother me, I don’t know why it’s bothering you.”

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.