“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Considering Rob’s and my relationship — the challenges, joys, hopes, strains and our own personality characteristics. Maybe the whole thing is — reacting to ourselves individually and to the other person — experiencing our own personal reactions and then reacting to them — then reacting to the other person who experiences the same processes in himself. We … creatively keep altering ourselves and our mates. We can’t be ‘perfect’ at the start because the processes include changing events. There’s bound to be some lopsidedness to our growth, as we form psychological ‘art’ throughout our entire lives — or learn to live … artistically. Each person in such a relationship changes constantly in relationship to himself and the other person, until — hopefully? — by death you’ve used the characteristics of your own personality the best you can. Merged them with your mate’s so that between the two of you, you get a new creative mixture in a kind of psychological multiplication … You try different ways of using your own traits, etc.

That vision reminds me of a letter of mine that has just appeared in Reality Change, a magazine its editor is devoting to the Seth Material, and publishing in Austin, Texas. At her request last September, I briefly described my feelings a year after Jane’s death. I mentioned how worthwhile it would be to throughly study the continuous global healing processes that I believe constitute one of the earth’s major forces, so that we could consciously use them to “help our species lead itself into new areas of thought and feeling.” Now I enlarge upon that idea by stating that such processes should be studied amid the earth’s even larger life-and-death cycles — those making up that “flickering gentle glow” my mythical observer would see from space. I think that eventually we’ll regard all life upon our planet — or upon any other — in such terms, that we’ll be led to do so by our own needs and creative curiosity. Beyond that will lie our exploring, as Jane did, the more basic nonphysical nature of reality.

My own imperfect recollection following Tam’s request that I look for it was that Seth, Dreams … was an unfinished collection of records, ideas, and chapters that Jane had struggled with for several years, without selling it. Instead, what I found in a box in the basement was, to my amazement, a completed manuscript — a full book ready to go, one as fresh as it had ever been, and my wife had struggled with it. What emerged as Laurel Davies and I searched Jane’s and my records, including early Seth sessions, was a long story of our doubts and gropings in an area in which we had no guidance except for our own explorations. Seth, Dreams … was rejected by three major publishers while Jane worked on it during 1966-67. She was still an unknown in the field; by mid-1966 she’d had only one small psychic book, How to Develop Your ESP Power, published. Our subject of interest itself was largely denied validity by the social, psychological, and scientific establishments. We were still operating alone, then, even though Jane had been speaking for Seth for about three years. In spite of all of her questions, however, her strong creative vitality — her intuitive insistence upon using her most unusual abilities — kept her focusing ahead, and I helped her as much as I could. I’m still astonished when I think of what Jane was to accomplish in the next few years.

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.

[...] And another word about our material; Ruburt’s mind is an excellent one and well given to serve our ends at this time. [...]

Then, toward the end of the session, Seth made a suggestion about our living quarters. Our living room is very large — opens from the apartment house hallway and runs down to three large bay windows at the other end. [...]

Also, Ruburt has experienced and used dissociation in his work, though to a lesser degree, before our communications and knows how to handle it… Our relationship will enable you both to deal more adequately with the outside world. [...]

[...] However, Joseph, while I admit I came uninvited and while I understand the reason for last night’s absence, I took it for granted that we would have our missed session this evening. [...]

[...] The assassination of JFK took place just after our sessions began. [...] And yet, inside our small, lighted living room, we both felt we were making important inroads, gaining invaluable insights and finding a point of sanity amid a chaotic world.

[...] 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.

“This thing will never work,” I said.
“We must be out of our minds,”
But we weren’t, at least not yet.
The cat smiled but didn’t say anything.

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 preferred to think of our psychic experiences as emphasizing, instead, the unknown abilities of our present consciousness. [...]

[...] I mentioned this experience briefly in How To Develop Your ESP Power, but here I’m including Rob’s notes which provide a fuller version of the event and our attitude toward it at the time.

“Our road map does not list a town called Decatur in either North or South Dakota, nor any town with that high a population in that area. [...]

Using the inner senses, it would be as if, instead of seeing the various houses, our man felt them. [...]

[...] She told Rob that our work with Seth was a lifetime project, that we would publish his manuscripts, and help spread his ideas. She also informed Rob that I could contact the deceased for their living relatives if I wanted to, emphasizing that a good deal of trial and error would be involved as both of us learned to use our psychic abilities.

[...] 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.

[...] See what Seth has to say about Malba in our next session. [...]

[...] This led Rob to wonder what had caused our three animals to die shortly before the sessions began.

[...] I told Rob on our way to Miss Cunningham’s room.

Our living room seemed twice as cozy that evening, with the warm lights and Willie sleeping on the rug. [...]

[...] 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.”

[...] And the deeper question: Why was it ever annihilated, at least in our terms? [...]

[...] Because of our past alliances, the three of us are closely bound together …

[...] Surely after our pleasant chat the other evening, you should know that nothing of this sort would offend me. [...]

(Still in trance, I turned off the brightest of our two lights, then opened the blinds. [...]

And as far as assimilating our old Frank Withers, don’t let me lead you too far astray. [...]

[...] Later in the day he matted it and put it on the bookcase just before we began our twenty-first session.

[...] The session, the twenty-second, was one of our first spontaneous sessions. [...]

Our regular session was due the next night and lasted, as usual, from 9:00 until after 11:30. [...]

Then, just as Rob was about to ask how we could really perceive the inner realities, Seth began to discuss the second inner sense, giving us a valuable tool for our subjective dissections. [...]

[...] Only one experiment using the tape recorder showed us that our usual procedure was the best one. [...] He congratulated us on our “twenty-fifth anniversary,” and said jokingly, You will be much older by the time I am through with you. Most of the session was a discussion of ordinary subjective states emphasizing the fact that these could not be pinpointed in a laboratory or understood simply by the use of the ordinary scientific method. Yet, they are vital elements in our lives.

[...] The friends present had no idea we were involved in any psychic work, and the subject never came up in our conversation. [...] We hadn’t even told our families.) In the middle of that innocuous evening, Rob suddenly had three experiences that were quite startling at the time and rather frightening. [...]

[...] I was balanced on the arm of our davenport, talking to our company. [...]

[...] Usually in our sessions, one inner sense is in strong operation. [...] This is our twenty-fourth session, and I am still trying to give you the answers.