“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Already I was putting my notebook aside. Our black cat, Rooney, was scratching at the door of our living room. Jane sat waiting half in trance — a feeling she later described as “weird” — while I followed the cat down the hall. Before I got back inside the apartment our paperboy arrived; by the time I finished paying him Jane was out of trance. Resume finally at 9:27.)

Certain images have been used to symbolize such a transition from one existence to another, and many of these are extremely valuable in that they provide a framework with understandable references. The crossing of the River Styx is such a one. The dying expected certain procedures to occur in a more or less orderly fashion. The maps were known beforehand. At death, the consciousness hallucinated the river vividly. Relatives and friends already dead entered into the ritual, which was a profound ceremony also on their parts. The river was as real as any that you know, as treacherous to a traveler alone without proper knowledge. Guides were always at the river to help such travelers across.

It does not do to say that such a river is illusion. The symbol is reality, you see. The way was planned. Now, that particular map is no longer generally in use. The living do not know how to read it. Christianity has believed in a heaven and a hell, a purgatory, and reckoning; and so, at death, to those who so believe in these symbols, another ceremony is enacted, and the guides take on the guises of those beloved figures of Christian saints and heroes.

(Pause at 9:48.) Then with this as framework, and in terms that they can understand, such individuals are told the true situation. Mass religious movements have for centuries fulfilled that purpose, in giving man some plan to be followed. It little mattered that later the plan was seen as a child’s primer, a book of instructions complete with colorful tales, for the main purpose was served and there was little disorientation.

(10:00.) The Arab was a very interesting character, by the way, and to illustrate some of the difficulties involved, I will tell you about him. He hated the Jews, but somehow he was obsessed with the idea that Moses was more powerful than Allah, and for years this was the secret sin upon his conscience. He spent some time in Constantinople at the time of the Crusades. He was captured, and ended up with a group of Turks, all to be executed by the Christians, in this case very horribly so. They forced his mouth open and stuffed it with burning coals, as a starter. He cried to Allah, and then in greater desperation to Moses, and as his consciousness left his body, Moses was there.

He believed in Moses more than he did Allah, and I did not know until the last moment which form I was to assume. He was a very likable chap, and under the circumstances I did not mind when he seemed to expect a battle for his soul. Moses and Allah were to fight for him. He could not rid himself of the idea of force, though he had died by force, and nothing could persuade him to accept any kind of peace or contentment, or any rest, until some kind of battle was wrought.

I called upon Jehovah, but to no avail, because our Arab did not know of Jehovah — only of Moses — and it was in Moses he put his faith. Allah drew a cosmic sword and I set it afire so that he dropped it. It fell to the ground and set the land aflame. Our Arab cried out again. He saw leagues of followers behind Allah, and so leagues of followers appeared behind me. Our friend was convinced that one of the three of us must be destroyed, and he feared mightily that he would be the victim.

(The Crusades consisted of a series of military expeditions sent out by the Christian powers in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, to recover the Holy Land from the Moslems. While Seth was giving the data, Jane said, she wondered what an Arab would be doing in Turkish Constantinople in those days. I explained the geography of the region. Presumably, such a traveler could have reached Constantinople [now Istanbul], by an overland journey across Turkey, which lay north of the Arab lands, or by sailing the eastern Mediterranean around Turkey, through the Dardanelles and so into the city. Distances in the Middle East are comparatively short.

(“All right.” Jane’s voice was now quite hoarse and weak; I believe she would have been forced to stop in a few more moments. This is one of the very few times, in seven years of sessions, that she has had any voice interference.