“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

So I was.

(By now, Jane was hearing the answers within, in advance of the board’s spelling. But we continued with the board.)

(“Why was Jane so attached to him when she was a child?”)

Besides normal reasons (Jane dictates:) he was psychically inclined, at a time when Jane was young and herself close to a past life. She sensed his deep and personal inner awareness. It confused and haunted him, since his inarticulateness applied also to thoughts within himself. He felt strongly but could not explain. In his solitary nature he came close to being a mystic but he was unable to relate his personality as Joseph Burdo with the social world at large, or even to the other members of his family. There was a block, regrettably. He felt strongly his connection with the universe as a whole and with nature as he understood it. But to him nature did not include his fellow human beings. The solitariness that besieged him—because it did besiege him—is dangerous to any personality unless it comes after identification with the human race.

(By now as usual Jane was pacing back and forth as she dictated.)

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.

It was an unfortunate defect in the personality. The psychic nature grew in an oddly distorted manner in some aspects and yet remained stubbornly shrunken in others. From early age however Jane drank in his feeling of completeness with nature, and it had much to do with her later development. She now displays in some instances her grandfather’s closed attitude toward people. At times both you and Jane reinforce each other along these lines.

As for your straight lines and curves you realize, I know, that there are really no straight lines and curves, but that they are symbols. Otherwise your dissertation was excellent. Action is solidified, or should I say transfixed, in a painting and yet even in a painting action is never really solidified or transfixed, but continually fluid.

As far as the ink sketch is concerned, do not forget that while your man was imprisoned by his senses, in trying to reach beyond them in your physical universe your man could not perceive anything at all; and yet it is through these very earthy senses that he has a chance to glimpse beyond, or indeed realize that there is a beyond to glimpse.

(Break at 10:25. At last break 35 minutes ago, Jane had already said that she was exhausted. Her voice by now was even rougher, and now as then I suggested that we end the session. But she wanted to continue, mainly because Seth was coming through so well. Jane resumed dictating at 10:27.)

Seeing for example a crowd of people, even if you yourself were among the crowd, you cannot experience the feeling that you were experiencing when the picture was taken, and though you may see before you the pictures of people who stood in that crowd, neither you nor they can see or experience the emotions that they felt. There is much more to be said here. I must move into these things slowly.

(Break at 10:37. I was concerned lest Jane’s voice give out. I urged her to call it a night although we were both eager to continue. We decided to take a short break and then resume briefly. Jane resumed pacing and dictating at 10:40.)

(As I looked down to write I now had the feeling that I was listening to someone else’s voice. If Jane was surprised or upset by this phenomena she gave no sign that I could see. Her manner with this more formal and strong voice was almost that of a lecturer. I said nothing to her about the voice change as she talked on.)

(Pause. Looking at Jane and knowing her natural feminine voice so well, I had to think twice to realize that this other new voice was issuing from her in such volume, and with no strain at all. I don’t know whether I was more surprised at the fact that Jane appeared not at all disturbed by it, or by the fact that it had a definite deep and masculine tone.)

(11:05 PM. Jane’s voice now was perfectly normal. As we laid the board aside she said, “He feels very affectionate tonight—I almost got a lump in my throat. He’s real sentimental. He’d go right on if we went back to the board, he’d go on for hours if we could stand it. He doesn’t want to quit.”

(Jane also said that Seth was quite pleased with the new voice, and that she now knows what he is thinking sometimes, even though he does not relay it to or through her as part of a message.

(“I was going to say that I got a charge out of your calling Frank Watts a fathead, at our seance the other night.”)

I’m afraid I haven’t learned humility yet. On the other hand you knew me before I knew Frank Watts, and my vanity was astounding. You were quite vain yourself, and as a woman you certainly put your present wife to shame as far as vanity is concerned.

(Along in here I had the intention of laying my notes aside, yet the habit was so strong that I continued writing rather automatically. Seth however began to talk faster than I could follow, so for the balance of the session I recorded key words and phrases and filled in between as soon as the session ended, while memory was still fresh. Jane and I agree that the following material is an accurate sum of Seth’s remarks.)

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.

(“Oh. We thought he was quite happy now.”)

(The following is from Jane’s account of the events of the evening of January 10, 1964, when she induced a trance state, or a rather strong state of dissociation, within herself. It was written on the morning of January 11.

(I had an extremely strange and uncomfortable experience last night. Worse, I don’t know what initiated the odd condition in which I was in for some three hours. Beyond doubt it was some sort of somnambulistic state, I think a sort of self-induced trance. The thing that worries me is that I wasn’t trying to put myself in a trance as far as I know.

(Yet for my book I tried crystal gazing, using a round glass vase filled with water. I saw nothing but the usual reflections that could be expected. When Rob finished work in his studio at around nine, I told him about the experiment which was unsuccessful as far as I was concerned. I mentioned that the experiment was fascinating because of the natural effects of reflection, etc., and as far as I know I was myself at this time.

(As nearly as I can recall it was then that I began to feel strange, as if something were going to happen. I put this feeling down to imagination. Almost at once I felt dissociated, drowsy, and sat in the rocker without rocking. My eyelids felt very heavy, my head slumped sideways. I could hardly keep awake but at the same time my senses were extremely acute; I could hear every sound in the house. Rob asked what was wrong. I answered that I felt very odd and unlike myself.

(My body was very light, weightless it appeared. I was conscious of no muscular weight or pressure at all. Particularly my shoulders were affected; my arms and hands felt like water or air. Rob told me to get up. He was beginning to feel worried. I could hardly rise from the chair, he had to help me to the couch. I didn’t feel physical enough to move.

(I felt as if I were heading into a very deep trance state of some sort, which I was fighting off. And yet I thought that I was supposed to be experimenting, and was tempted to go along with it. Fear got the best of me. While I stopped myself from going into a deeper state, I wasn’t able to snap out of what I was in.

(Rob made coffee for me. I didn’t believe I could lift the cup. When I finally did my motions were extremely slow, as in a motion picture played slow. It seemed impossible to exert any pressure in the physical world at all. Rob made me drink two cups of coffee; I stood with my head out the window in the cold night air. Nothing seemed to help. I was thoroughly frightened by now, yet thought that I could snap out of it if I really wanted to; and knew how to.

(Rob thought the concentration of writing a statement on how I felt would help. Instead my efforts showed what a crazy state I was in. My handwriting just wasn’t my own. No pressure was exerted on the pen. The writing was wavery, very small, and grew even smaller. My prose expression was nothing like my own, childish in fact. Thought or messages or bits of conversation popped to mind and I wrote them down in this weird script.

(My condition: A feeling of weightlessness, of inability to function in the physical world, yet because my motions were so strange this gave Rob the impression that my limbs were heavy; to me they were light as air. I felt relaxed to the ninth degree. Yet all the while my senses were amazingly alert and I conversed with Rob more or less normally. My body seemed to have no physical resistance. When Rob took my hand it was very wet and floppy.

(A few quotes from the three handwritten pages Jane attempted while in the trance state… Most of this writing was extremely small and quite unlike her normal hand. Twice she made determined efforts to write larger; when she did she wrote very large and with much force, and the letters leaned at odd angles and had a stiff feeling to them. She also tried twice to use the typewriter. The first time, at about 10:45 PM, she could not exert enough pressure to use the keys; the second time at about midnight was more successful, but still uneven in pressure and lacking punctuation and capitals.

(I was sitting at my desk when I began feeling funny. I don’t know how. Then I sat in another chair & felt funnier. My hands felt very light & so did my shoulders. Light then almost as if they were not there at all.

(Jerry never should go there I’ve told you that, Mary. Forget the whole thing, there isn’t any need to get angry. The trolley went without him and the weather was poor. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, don’t blame yourself honey. 1913 May 8 PM. N.Y. City corner of 6th and —

(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.)