“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We were ready for the session early this evening, for a change. I told Jane I hoped Seth would discuss a dream she’d had last night. It involved the two of us and was very optimistic; I was sure that in symbolic terms it dealt with our work. Seth did analyze the dream at the end of the session, so that material is deleted from the dictation on his book.

(With the approach of 9:00 Jane began to acquire a typical bearing. She became quiet as she sat waiting, and started glancing sideways from lowered eyes; she seemed to be alert for a certain subjective signal. Then she told me Seth was “around” and that the session would begin in a moment. When she took her glasses off and placed them upon the coffee table before her, she was in trance. Her pace was quite slow at the beginning.)

(Jane was speaking intently as Seth, her eyes wide and very dark. She made a series of large circular motions in the air.)

I was once a mother with twelve children. Ignorant in terms of education, far from beautiful, particularly in later years, with a wild temper and raucous voice. This was around Jerusalem in the sixth century. The children had many fathers. I did my best to provide for them.

My name was Marshaba. We lived wherever we could, squatting in doorways and, finally, all begging. Yet in that existence, physical life had a contrast, a sharpness greater than any I had known. A crust of bread was far more delicious to me than any piece of cake, however well-frosted, had ever been in lives before.

When my children laughed I was overwhelmed with delight, and despite our privations, each morning was a triumphant surprise that we had not died in our sleep, that we had not succumbed to starvation. I chose that life deliberately, as each of you choose each of yours, and I did so because my previous lives had left me too blasé. I was too cushioned. I no longer focused with clarity upon the truly spectacular physical delights and experiences that earth can provide.

Though I yelled at my children and screamed sometimes in rage against the elements, I was struck through with the magnificence of existence, and learned more about true spirituality than I ever did as a monk. This does not mean that poverty leads to truth, or that suffering is good for the soul. Many who shared those conditions with me learned little. It does mean that each of you choose those life conditions that you have for your own purpose, knowing ahead of time where your weaknesses and strengths lie. (Pause.)

In the gestalt of my personality, as in your terms I lived later richer lives, that woman was alive again in me — as, for example, the child is alive in the adult, and filled with gratitude comparing later circumstances to the earlier existences. She urged me to use my advantages better.

(“Okay.” 9:55. Jane had no images of the woman Seth had been discussing. She remembered how, in early sessions, Seth had talked about a minimum of three reincarnational existences for most entities — and how “scandalized” she’d been later when she began to realize that Seth had lived many lives. Now, she finds that the idea of simultaneity of “reincarnational” lives is quite acceptable; this fits her emotional and intellectual temperament. When the sessions began, Jane was especially bothered by what she called the trite and popular ideas about reincarnation, mixed up as they were with ideas of good and evil, punishment, etc.