“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He responded to his own attraction for her and was able to expand in her direction because she was not an adult. He was essentially childlike in one manner and yet he had little use for most people. Had he lived to see Jane mature the feeling between them might well have dissipated. (Joseph Burdo died in 1948 at the age of 68. Jane was 19.) He could not relate to another adult, and when in his eyes she joined the league of adulthood he would not have been able to retain his strong leaning toward her.

On your plane no action is really simultaneous and so time instantly enters in. You mentioned yourself Joseph—oh see, you can’t hide anything from me—you mentioned earlier—I’m sorry, Ruburt needs a short break. A short one, Ruburt, should suffice.

You mentioned earlier Joseph that you had the feeling that I could refer back to myself almost as if I could turn a later page of a book to an earlier one, and of course this is the case.

But this referral itself involves time. The time that you spend watching such a historic moment takes up an identical amount of time in the present. Therefore one minute of such a past referral costs you one minute of present time. Also you end up short-changed. You give up your precious moment in the present but you do not have a complete moment of the past to show for it.

The action and counteraction is the time trigger. To you this will be almost unbelievable, but on some other planes motion is simultaneous and time unknown. To me time can be manipulated, used at leisure and examined. To me your time is a vehicle, one of the several vehicles by which I can enter your awareness. It is therefore still a reality of some kind to me. Otherwise I could not utilize it in any manner whatsoever. As an example of my good intentions I will end this session.

I felt extremely pleased with your frames of mind this evening. I would continue if I did not have your physical limitations to contend with. For some reason I am able to come through very well, and when this happens I like to take advantage of the opportunity. After all, do you blame me? I admit that I miss you occasionally between sessions, dear friends; and Ruburt, your voice almost reminds me now of your old one.

Besides, you owe me a session, having missed one.

In one sense meeting with you costs me little energy, it is true. On the other hand the effort to communicate explanations does involve very real effort on my part. And so you are not the only ones who grow weary in this respect. As I have said, feeling is action, and in my communications to you feeling plays a strong part.

I have friendships where I am of course. The one thing about your plane that makes it such a tempting field of endeavor for all of us here is of course that we still have ties of an emotional kind, and we attempt, though clumsily, to make contact with friends. As you yourself write letters to friends in strange countries and do not forget them, so we do not forget.

It’s almost impossible, I can see, to talk with you in a conversational manner for purely mechanical reasons. If I speak quickly in ordinary tones through Ruburt you simply cannot write fast enough to take the words down. Some night I will speak to you as I choose for my own enjoyment. We shall have an interchange, and for that one night the notes will get the boot. I promise to speak on fairly personal and inconsequential matters so that you do not miss my pearls of wisdom.

The one thing that pleases me immensely is the way Ruburt can translate at least a few of my humorous remarks and inflections of my natural speech. It is difficult to carry to you at this point but I have hopes of doing better. Ruburt’s voice is an experiment. The immediacy of our sessions would be enhanced if more of my personality could come through. I could go on quite happily, you might say blithely, for hours but I shall not. I would if I thought I could get away with it.

As a man’s voice I fear Jane will sound rather unmelodious. I do not have the voice of an angel by any means, but neither do I sound like an asexual eunuch, which is all I’ve been able to make her sound like all night. And incidentally, Ruburt, you were a good brother at one time. The so-called male aspect of your personality has always been strong, but by this I mean powerful. Without the loyalty that you are learning as a woman your character had serious defects. And there, I said I would not get into anything serious.

Ruburt, if you want a cigarette get one. She’s been walking around with a match in her hand for the last ten minutes. And don’t blame me Ruburt for your oversmoking.

One of the reasons Jane does so well with her male characters—if you insist on notes go ahead—is that she has been a male so many times. She has retained the better male characteristics.

Please don’t ask me to recite poetry again. It was never one of my lines. Ruburt has always been gifted artistically, as you have Joseph. With you, your art talents lay beneath layers of fleshy lust at times. You were exceedingly lecherous in Denmark, and I was not much better.

(I can add one fact to Jane’s account. By experimenting we found that she could make a rapid decisive movement while in this trance or dissociated state, but only with great effort. For example, in the kitchen I had her try to lift an empty cup up from the counter. Jane found that the only way she could do this was to concentrate as best she could on what she wanted to do, then make a supreme physical effort. As a result her hand holding the cup would fly up head high suddenly, then just as suddenly bang the cup back down on the counter.)