“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You will join me as I have joined others.
No physical form or physical thought
can express my existence.
The term love, with its message
of caring for another,
is the most important of our
messages in the physical.
Seth Two is to me now what Seth was to you.
I am a step higher but not removed.
Yet, I have changed enough since “my
death” that it is difficult,
at times, to relate to your existence.
The love and the emotions you feel are
the connectives between us.
My love for you has not changed but expanded
in a way you do not comprehend.
Physical needs are for physical beings,
and I understand and know this.
Touch is important at your level.
My new or returned mind loves you more
deeply than in our earth time together,
but it is also much more
understanding of physical need.
When I said, “Be for me as I would
be for thee,” I didn’t mean to limit you.
Be the physical person you need to be,
as you are physical for a limited and
for a purposeful reason.
Enjoy physical reality between others,
for the mind endures and exists
beyond your understanding and existence.
I love you as you were
and as we will be.
Your now is for you to enjoy.
I never judge your actions, and this
I repeat with love and utmost understanding.
Be yourself and in being yourself
you will be for me as I would be for thee.
You do well and I watch you often.
Continue to love physical life
while you are physical.

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.

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.

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.

Since very often the vitality or stuff of the universe seems as innocuous as air … then look for what you do not see. [...] What you see clearly with the outer senses is camouflage. [...] I am saying that what seems vacant lacks camouflage, and, therefore, if this is explored, it will yield evidence.

[...] The inner senses deal with realities beneath camouflage … and deliver inner information. [...] As the senses of sight, sound and smell appear to reach outward, bringing data to the body from an outside observable camouflage pattern, so the inside senses seem to extend far inward, bringing inner reality data to the body. [...]

[...] It involves immediate perception of a direct nature, whose intensity varies according to what is being sensed. It involves instant cognition through what I can only describe as inner vibrational touch.

[...] We had great trouble with the name ‘Decatur.’ This is my interpretation of what she said, and now I wonder if I made a mistake. [...]

[...] What happened? [...] What difference could it make that we ever sat in this room, or had sessions, or moved furniture, or stroked the cat? [...]

[...] Consciousness was independent of the body — Seth was right — and if that was true, then there was no reason why he couldn’t be what he said he was: an independent personality, out of the flesh. [...] I couldn’t wait till Rob came home so I could tell him what happened.

[...] “And what excuse could I use? If I knew what the street was, I could at least say, ‘I thought I saw you on such-and-such a street.’ “

[...] What you get is a hasty twisting of channels, a rather inept and sometimes rather disastrous attempt to pick up such information with the outer senses.

[...] … The development of the inner senses will not blot out physical reality but allow you to see it more clearly for what it is, and, therefore, you will be able to manipulate camouflage patterns better. [...]

Still, I didn’t know what to make of the material Seth gave us on dreams and the personality that night. [...] We were to discover that the dream universe was far more valid than we had ever supposed, but what Seth said then sounded like nothing we had ever read or heard before.

It was in this session that Seth made the analogy of the “weird creature with two faces,” one turned to physical reality and one to inner reality, both conscious and aware, each representing one facet of our consciousness.

[...] Mark offered to leave after I explained as best I could what was happening, but I said that we’d rather wait for the next regular scheduled session night.)

What he sees is something between a horse and a dog and resembles neither. The craft retains what it can of its original structure and changes what it must. [...]

[...] My voice had been undergoing changes, becoming more similar to what we now call the Seth voice — deeper, lower, richer in tone than mine and more masculine. But on this particular night, Rob watched, amused, while Seth told him in no uncertain terms what he thought of my experiment — using my own lips to do it! [...]

[...] On the other hand, I only knew what had been said when the trance (or the fun) was over. It was a terrific change for me to suddenly have to rely on someone else — even Rob — to tell me what “I” had been saying for a period of two or three hours.

[...] The earthly viewer attempts to correlate what he sees with what he supposedly knows or imagines possible, in the little he understands of the universe.

I hope you see what I have done here. [...] This is what I mean by fifth dimension. [...]

[...] What else could consciousness do? What could mine do? [...]

“What did it feel like? What do you think about it?”

[...] Almost from the beginning, however, I did anticipate what the board was going to “say,” and the poem is as valid as any strictly factual statement I could make about those sessions — if not more so.

[...] Like other experiences of this nature, it was intrusive, in that it seemed to have no connection with what he was doing or thinking at the time.

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

[...] The part of himself that did ‘teach’ him to see still guides his movements, still moves the muscles of his eyes, still becomes conscious despite him when he sleeps, still breathes for him without thanks or recognition and still carries on his task of transforming energy from an inner reality into an outer one. [...]

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. [...]

[...] 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.

[...] I thought sardonically, “A guest from another layer of reality is one thing, but do you really want your friends to meet him?” Finally my nervousness was so apparent that Rob asked me what was wrong. [...]

[...] (No one knew what we were up to, for that matter, except for one close friend. [...]

[...] This sensation was so strong that I put down my sandwich and took off my glasses, because I literally didn’t know what might happen next. [...]

[...] And Malba didn’t sound terribly bright; at least Seth is intelligent and knows what he’s talking about. But what’s the use in speaking for anyone else? [...]

But when I read the session, I thought of Rob sitting there, listening to what I thought of as criticism, while his wife paced the room “telling him off” in another voice and supposedly for another, invisible personality. [...] “I mean, suppose that’s really what I think, subconsciously — the idea that your ego is too rigid at times and closes you off. [...]

“Oh, that’s what the sense of outrage is about,” Rob said. [...]

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