“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In those terms I have my own proofs of survival, just as Jane had — and as she still does. We always had far too many questions about such matters to be satisfied with the very restrictive “answers” that our religious and secular establishments offer. I cannot believe that in matters of life and death my psyche would be so foolish as to indulge in wish fulfillment, relaying to me only those ideas it “thinks” I want to consciously know. Each time I may feel my own ignorance about even our own physical reality, let alone other realities, I fall back upon my own feelings and beliefs. I have nowhere else to turn, really, nor did Jane. As Seth told us in a number of ways (and to some extent I’m certainly paraphrasing him here), “Never accept a theory that contradicts your own experience.” Jane and I found much better answers for ourselves, even if they were — and are — only approximations of more basic, and perhaps even incomprehensible, truths. My unimpeded, creative psyche intuitively knows that positive answers to its questions exist, that otherwise it wouldn’t bother to ask those questions within nature’s marvelous framework, that nature is alive and, as best we can sensually conceive of it, eternal. My psyche knows that it makes no sense within nature’s context for the human personality to be obliterated upon physical death.

Without taking into account here the essences of other life forms, do I think the human personality survives physical death? Considering the loving, passionate “work” that Jane and I engaged in for more than twenty years, of course I do. No other answer makes intuitive or consciously reasonable sense to me. I think it quite psychologically and psychically limiting to believe otherwise, for such beliefs can only impede or postpone our further conscious understanding of the individual and mass realities — the overall “nature” — we’re creating. I think that all of us seek answers, and that our searches are expressed in our very lives.

After Jane’s death I became extremely busy. I had to cope with my grief, and one way I chose was to immediately begin keeping elaborate records in and writing essays for a series of “grief notebooks.” I told no one about the notebooks, or the three drawings I had made of Jane as she lay in her bed right after her death. I was obligated to spend many months finishing a Seth book — Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment — that we had started way back in September 1979, long before she went into the hospital; as I had planned to, I resumed work on that project the day after she died. (Jane was cremated the next day, in a process we had agreed upon several years ago.) I also worked upon two other books we collaborated upon after she had been hospitalized. There were many legal matters to attend to, much mail to answer, and more to keep up with.

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.

[...] It was difficult for him to ask questions and take notes at the same time, but if possible, he wanted the questions answered before he forgot them.

[...] I knew, even then, that I had to find my own answers — that each of us does. [...]

[...] Either that, or Seth and the material — still so strange to me — were giving answers that I refused, so far, to accept in practical terms.

“Mrs. Butts, Mrs. Butts,” she’d call, and when I answered my door, she’d say, “Come, see. [...]

“Seth answered each question I had the minute it came to mind,” he said. [...] He answered them in order.” He shook his head. [...]

[...] When Rob explained briefly about Seth before the session, he’d asked Mark questions he’d like answered. [...]

[...] “But the answers were just too specific, too on time, too direct. [...]

A Spontaneous Session and Some Answers
Excerpts from Sessions 22 and 23

[...] Then, beautifully clear, with rich humor, came the answering mental message: “Are you gluttons for punishment?”

[...] He wants his answers given to him in a way that his conscious mind can understand. This is our twenty-fourth session, and I am still trying to give you the answers.

[...] Was this an attempt at an answer?

[...] I remember thinking that no book of etiquette even written could give me an answer.

[...] Although we took the first few answers through the board, from the beginning Jane received them mentally also. [...]

[...] He expected a fairly brief answer. [...]

And suddenly I “knew” the answer and saw a dark landscape from above. [...]