“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

Why do we have jobs at a hospital, when Jane was so afraid of them while she was physical? I interpret our employment there, and her joyful mood, to mean that from where she is now she no longer fears hospitals and the medical establishment — that she’s moved beyond that deep apprehension she began to build up around the age of three, as her mother became gradually, and permanently, incapacitated with rheumatoid arthritis. I think that my own much more pleasant earlier experiences with the hospital in Sayre, including my doing free-lance art work for some of its doctors, helped me place the locale for this adventure there, rather than at the hospital in Elmira, where Jane died. In addition, we lived very happily in Sayre for several years following our marriage.

October 13, 1984. Jane has been dead for thirty-eight days. It has finally come to me that the dark tunnels of those streets I run on, with their mysterious implications of the unknown, and the fear of the dark that such streets can generate, are physically oriented metaphors for the transition Jane has made to another reality. In our terms, the tunnel shapes lead to an unfathomable new reality that is supposedly filled with the light of the universe. That light is symbolized by the streetlights shining through the tunnels every so often, and hinting at that great brilliant reality beyond. This metaphor is particularly apropos at this time, with the trees still carrying their thick growth of leaves — yet later in the fall it may become even more applicable as the leaves drop and the streetlights, poor as they may be in comparison to the light of the universe, can shine through a little more brilliantly.

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.

The fact that the fearful ego was beginning to tighten explains your reaction to the exercises. [...] Even the prickles in your neck are like tiny picks chipping away at icy fears. [...]

[...] However, when the ego becomes involved with fears, it ceases to be an effective tool and becomes instead a hammer hitting you incessantly over the head. [...]

[...] For a certain amount of time, according to your condition, they automatically create the patterns of fear that belong to the ego.

These fears do not belong to what you think of as the subconscious. [...]

[...] The inner senses led him into a reality he could not manipulate as easily as he could physical camouflage, and he feared what he thought of as a loss of mastery.

[...] Like many others, you feared the inner world so strongly, even though you were somewhat acquainted with it through your art, that nothing but panic would force you to try that invisible knob. [...]

[...] … It was a defect on the receiving end that caused fear on your part. [...]

[...] One point, however: conscious fear is usually the main hindrance as far as inner data is concerned. [...]

[...] I can’t afford to give you any predictions at this time, for fear that you’ll distort them, and then it would seem that I was to blame.

[...] He remembers having learned to read, but he does not remember having learned to see, and what he cannot consciously remember, he fears.

If there’s anything I like to see
It’s a bunch of pudgy God-fearing grown men at it again,
Shooting down the starlings.
I mean, crazy man. [...]

[...] He said that many of my needs were really based on fears which would have to be faced as time went by, and he discussed several of them in the session. [...]