“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Since I knew so little about the time of Christ, it’s taken me a while to do the extra reading necessary so that I could write appropriate session notes. Sue Watkins, a member of Jane’s ESP class and our personal friend, has been very helpful; she has loaned me books on the period so that I could be sure of historical references.

(Jane and I were tired from our recent activities and might have missed the session, except that she didn’t want to interrupt the rhythm we’d built up. Sue sat in as a witness. All of us expected an easygoing session — one that might touch upon current events involving the three of us, from a very ill feline, say, to our impromptu Friday evening “reincarnational dramas.” But we certainly didn’t expect Seth to continue the material he’d begun in his book relating to biblical times.)

(The Essene group generally known would be the Jewish sect in the Holy Land during the time of Christ, early in the first century. Historically they are thought of as a peaceful group.)

(9:46.) There was some jealousy, then, from certain members of the Essenes at John’s progress. At one time John attempted to join various divergent groups together as one brotherhood, but he failed. The failure weighed heavily upon him. Fire is seldom gentle, and John the Baptist was as filled with fire as Paul.

Now these were men filled out like sails with the energy of their roles, yet they had to have the personality characteristics of their time. They had to appear as men before men, before Christ could proclaim himself as anything beyond the natural man.

The entanglements were those that were necessary in the context of that religious drama. They were creative in that they bore within them the only seeds that could grow, in your terms, within that place and that time. (More heartily): Now, we do not have to be so formal. Book dictation is over.

(To Sue): I talk to this one in the dream state often. I do not want to take up all your waking time besides.

(This was the first time Jane had written anything while in trance. Actually she was making some small diagrams or symbols, moving the pen quite deliberately, squinting down at the paper.

Some of the distorted records have been taken as fact, and it is a good joke to realize that the Vatican holds some of these. At the time, the church believed that these records could harm it. In the case of these particular errors, the records instead could have helped the churchmen, but they did not have the sense to know the truth from the false.

(10:20. Sue is used to hearing Seth speak more rapidly in ESP class, where tape recorders are used. I don’t record Seth usually but make direct verbatim notes, using my own kind of shorthand; this saves much time later when I type up the material. Still, Seth often speaks fast enough in our own sessions to keep me writing at top speed.

Words, therefore, are often used to cover up as well as to reveal. Great efforts are taken so that knowledge is kept, often, from a majority and for a few. In Biblical times this was all the more true. Literary devices themselves served as formalized methods of seeming to indulge certain information, while actually offering instead falsified data. No question in those days was answered directly (emphatically) — not by those who were at all literate.

(10:55.) All professions, to one extent or another, had such fashions. The records meant life or death if they were discovered at the wrong time. Falsifications were often put in simply to lead any readers astray if the books fell in the wrong hands.