“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

So if I insist that I’ve communicated with Jane at times, then I’m obligated to consider statements from others claiming the same thing. But in ordinary terms, even if my wife’s death has left me more open and vulnerable to psychic possibilities, I still shrink from offering any sort of blanket assurance. (“Yes, I’m convinced that you have reached Jane, just as I have.”) I’m not contradicting myself when I note that perhaps — and I’ve suspected for a long time that ultimately this is correct — it is true that on some far levels of consciousness and communication that we do not (or even cannot) understand at this “time,” each person who is so inclined to do so has at least touched a Jane who responded clearly enough. She will continue to do so. In this view, those elements in such messages that have no meaning for me can be only distortions on the part of the medium or the letter-writer or the poet. I do think that communication among entities, whether they’re physical or nonphysical, is always going on, and from every conceivable angle and in every way. Hardly a new thought, yet grasping it, or even speculating about it, is to touch upon a portion of the mystery of life. (And from where you are, Jane, what do you think of my very cautious approach?)

I began thinking about and working upon this Introduction for Seth, Dreams … late in October 1985. As I reread the book I learned that Jane devotes considerable portions of several chapters to material involving our friend, Sue Watkins — her adventures with dreams, projections, and probable realities — and also refers to her in other chapters. Sue published her two-volume work, Conversations With Seth, in 1980-81; her father died two years later. I’ve already referred to Laurel Lee Davies, the young lady who now works with me (and is helping especially with proofreading and answering mail). Ever since she arrived from the West Coast in August, Laurel had wanted to meet Sue, who lives in upstate New York. The three of us finally did meet — a few days after Sue’s mother had died on October 19. Two nights earlier, Sue had had a very strong precognitive dream concerning her mother’s death; she plans to discuss that event in the book she’s writing. Laurel made a card for Sue when we heard about the demise of her mother, and left room inside it for me to write a note. Here’s what I spontaneously produced.

I couldn’t believe it when I realized that my wife had been dead for a week. As I lived and worked in it, our house looked the same as it ever had. In spite of my sorrow, I presented a cheerful face to the world; I talked and joked, and did everything I was supposed to do. I also discovered what must be a very common phenomenon: Those who knew of Jane’s passing became instantly self-conscious when we met. I felt their embarrassment at their damned-up sympathies, and their fear of the same thing happening to them. They didn’t want to hurt me further. Amazingly, I found myself offering comfort to them, to help them surmount such barriers so that we could talk. My visitors reminded me anew of how private an event Jane’s death is for me, yet how universal it is. How many uncounted quadrillions of times has that transference from “life” to “nonlife” taken place just on our planet alone? And I don’t believe that anyone has tried to cope with questions of life and death any more valiantly than Jane did.

“To me,” Jim wrote, “it would be a special opportunity for you to make whatever statement you might wish about Jane and her work. It would also be nice for the many readers of Jane’s books to have a chance to hear from her partner, who so beautifully and critically assisted in the birthing of the Seth books.

The part of you who dreams is the ‘I’ as much as the part of you who operates in any other manner. The part of you who dreams is the part of you who breathes. This part of you is certainly as legitimate and necessary to you as a whole unit is, as the part who plays bridge or Scrabble. [...]

If man does not know who breathes within him, and if man does not know who dreams within him, it is not because there is one self who acts in the physical universe and another who dreams and breathes. [...]

While I sleep and lie stretched out,
Eyelids closed and pupils dark,
Who walks wide-eyed downstairs
Through the door in the cold night air,
And travels where I have never been?
Who leaves clear memories in my head
Of people I have never met?
Who takes these trips while I
Never lift one inch from bed?
Who dreams?

In your quiet unguarded moments, you still say, ‘Who breathes? Who dreams? Who moves?’ How much easier it would be to admit freely and wholeheartedly the simple fact that you are not consciously aware of vital parts of yourself and that you are more than you think you are.

Actually, the board first gave a few messages from a personality called Frank Withers, who insisted that he had known our neighbor, Miss Cunningham. I didn’t take this very seriously at first, but he also said that he knew an elderly woman who worked with me at the local art gallery where I had a part-time job. [...]

[...] Those of you who read my two other books in this field know that the experiments were astonishingly successful and led, through the Ouija board, to our first contact with Seth.

[...] The first Sarah, who died at seventeen, never went. [...]

“They boiled the water for soups; this killed a lot of germs, so they were actually healthier than other communities who had more water, since a good deal of it was polluted. [...]

“Who knows?” I said. [...]

[...] And behind all these questions there was the big one: Was Seth really a personality who had survived death? [...]

[...] 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.”

[...] This way, you have your actors taking the situation as it seems to be but looking about in amazement now and then to wonder how they got where they are, who constructed the sets and so forth. [...]

[...] Nor was he a close friend, merely a good acquaintance who lived out of town and visited Elmira only when his business required it, about once every six weeks.

[...] And if I may give away some secrets, he was beaten by one pigheaded husband who had a snout to match!

There is no way of measuring inner experience, or the psychological experience, rather, of someone who has lost a friend in death, but you do not deny that such an experience happens. [...]

In the beginning particularly, there is always a distortion of such material by the person who receives it. [...]

Supposedly it was here where she met her husband, who was a foreman in the plant. [...]

[...] She was highly amused at the plight of the clergymen of different faiths, who had died, because the circumstances were so different than those they had expected.

[...] He would in no way lose consciousness of who he was, and he would perceive these experiences again, somewhat in the same manner that you perceive heat and cold. [...]

[...] 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 midplane contains a conglomeration of fragments … who have not attained sufficient knowledge or manipulability to progress further at this point. [...]

[...] And the tree will recognize the same man who passes it by each day.

“Who knows? [...]

[...] The relatives refused to help, seemingly out of fear of Miss C herself, who had always been quite independent with them. [...] Jane finally contacted another doctor who arrived at midnight and authorized Miss C’s hospitalization.

[...] Usually, they have been invisible to your plane, as the few who fell into the apparent past were invisible to the people of the past.