“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In more specific terms, I’m organizing this rather short exploration of Jane’s death around these items; a loose chronology surrounding her writing of Seth, Dreams … in 1966-67, and our unsuccessful attempts to sell the book; my acceptance of the survival of the personality after physical death; a waking experience involving my sensing Jane very soon after she had died; a metaphor I created for her death; a dream in which I not only contacted her but gave myself relevant information; another metaphor for Jane’s death; my speculations about communication among entities, whether they’re physical or nonphysical; a letter that could be from the discarnate Jane — one that was sent to me by its recipient, a caring correspondent whom I’ll call Valerie Wood; a note I wrote to Sue Watkins about the death of her mother; some quotations from a published letter of mine; Jane’s notes concerning the relationship we had; and, finally, the poem in which she refers to her nonphysical journeys to come.

I think that I’ve had a number of waking and dreaming experiences in which Jane and I have communicated with each other since her physical death thirteen months ago. So have others. I’m offering two such events of my own, and one from the friend I’ve never met in person, Valerie Wood.

I first heard from my unseen correspondent, Valerie Wood, not long after Jane had died thirteen months ago. I sent her one of the cards I’d had printed, giving a few details about Jane’s death and stating my determination to carry on with our work. Valerie responded with some poetry relative to Jane’s passing, and my reactions to her death, that I interpreted at once as being very evocative of Jane and me. At the time I didn’t know what to believe about the source of the material, even while I found it reinforcing my own contacts with Jane. Were Valerie’s messages from her own subconscious? From Jane’s world view? From Jane herself?

I wrote Valerie that she was gifted psychically and suggested that she might cautiously proceed with learning more about her abilities, to whatever extent she chose. Valerie is thirty-eight years old, and lives with her husband in a western state; they have two children. She works part time in the field of education. She is developing her gifts through study and practice. During the year she sent me a number of messages “from” and about Jane. Some of them subjectively feel right to me; they effortlessly mirror or echo the way the Jane I lived with for almost thirty years often talked and wrote. In fact, at times I found the similarities between the contents of those messages and my ideas of Jane’s own ambience to be striking.

Valerie’s material raises as many questions as it gives answers for, of course. Are her messages really from Jane, or is she “only” telepathically picking up from me what I want to hear, and flashing it back to me from her trance states — as communications from Jane? An unbelieving scientist would say that Valerie is hardly in touch with a discarnate Jane, since science doesn’t accept survival of death. Nor would the idea of reaching Jane’s world view be considered, or telepathy from me, for both of those concepts are scientifically unacceptable. The most parsimonious view — the simplest, stingiest one — would be that through studying the Seth Material Valerie subconsciously divines the replies I want from my dead wife, and in all subjective innocence comes through with her trance messages for me, to fit my own stubborn belief in Jane’s survival.

I may be projecting my own fears here, but I don’t agree with the scientific rejection of all portions of the schemata listed above. The objections don’t feel right to me. They question not only Valerie’s sincerity and performance but my own, as well. I keep thinking about the twenty years of ideas and study that Jane and I put into the Seth Material. Surely my contacts with her, and the work of gifted, dedicated people like Valerie, show us human potential in very challenging ways, hinting at how much we have yet to learn about our individual and collective consciousnesses. And out of my own selfish need and longing for my wife, who is dead, I want people to read her books so that they can understand her great contributions.

Right now, though, I want to present a message from Valerie that she received upon awakening at 6:30 A.M. on September 6, 1985 — some six weeks ago, in other words, and a year and a day after Jane died.

Just as received from Valerie Wood, and with her permission,

“Rob,” Valerie wrote at the end of her material, “I hope this has meaning for you, and whether it is Jane’s, or my subconscious words, it is beautiful, wise and useful — best to you until next time.”

Indeed. A commitment is required upon my part in this case: I think that Valerie’s message for me is from Jane. A possible qualification of that belief can be that the material is interwound with data Valerie picked up from Jane’s world view, where Jane wouldn’t have necessarily been involved — only the body of her personalized and emotional experience in physical life. I cannot objectively prove either of those pro-positions. Yet I have my own intuitive proof, because I strongly feel that the contents of Valerie’s message fit very well both the physical and the nonphysical Jane Roberts.