“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(By 8:45 this evening, Jane could feel Seth “pushing at her,” ready to begin. And at the end of the session three hours later, while in bed, she caught additional phrases from Seth but promptly shut them off. By then she was very tired.

(Jane was already receiving Seth within, so she laid the board aside and began to pace and dictate, as usual.)

I’ll go along with your little joke about Malba Toast of the midplane. Malba of the midplane was your apt description. Actually Malba herself was a not-too-intelligent woman who died in 1946 in South Dakota, as she said.

I know you are rather concerned with the differentiation between planets and planes. I also know your mind is filled with ponderous questions, like an endless chasm filled to the brim with heavy rocks. Certainly you didn’t expect those huge radio stars to be cute little RCA transmitters? They are not quite that. I am in a quandary, and I admit it, as to which matters you would prefer I discussed first. I gather all sorts of weird projectiles thrown at me with vibrant force. Dreams, yours and Ruburt’s, your flying saucers, some of your visions, planes, planets and radio stars. You’d think surely that my first name was Encyclopedia. Just call me Psych for short, and spell it P-s-y-c-h.

As far as Jane’s levitation dreams, I myself was her delighted but inept teacher. In the dream state she did beautifully. Awake she had leaden feet. There were also two other teachers, but I will go into these at a later date.

(I’d heard sounds like water dripping in my studio, and had been looking back toward it from my desk in the living room. Recently we’d had a heavy storm, and sometimes this was followed by a leaky roof.

A trip of course was the easiest method and Ruburt hit upon it. Daily methods of dissociation are extremely practical and beneficial. You will notice within a few week’s time, if not sooner, an added energy. So-called impulses on your part are often quelled because your ego finds them impractical. The subconscious knows its own meat and sauce, and the best means for its own nourishment.

(But it was easy to see why I had been squirming.)

I suggest you take a short break. Reread the material and I will continue. And if it seems I am lighting into you while leaving Ruburt more or less unbothered and intact, it is only because Ruburt’s particular disagreeable early circumstances made dissociation a necessity for survival, and therefore it was learned at an early age.

As far as smoking is concerned, dear Ruburt, I don’t want to break your heart. However you will find yourself dispensing with the habit in the very near future. I am amazed that Joseph smoked as long as he did. This was after all an uncharacteristic excess for him this time.

(Yesterday Jane remarked that she had always wanted a drawing done on our kitchen wall. The kitchen is very small, but on the spur of the moment I used a brush and black waterproof ink to do a quick sketch of a tree on a limited space next to the windows. It was much fun to do. The tree appears to have a floating quality on the light yellow wall, especially at night, and has added a new dimension to the room.)

(Mr. Clauss is an instructor in art at Elmira College. It was to his class that Jane spoke on censorship in art and writing—and also ran into “a Frank Watts in poet’s clothing,” as Seth called him, in the form of another guest speaker.

(“Seth, Jane has wanted to know what was going on here in the house during the time our dog Mischa died, and when the two cats also died.”)

The particular atmosphere surrounding your personalities just prior to the animals’ deaths was destructive, short-circuited and filled with inner panics. I do not want to hurt your feelings. This is, I am sorry to say, a natural occurrence on your plane. The fact is that the animals caught your emotional contagion, and according to their lesser abilities translated it for themselves.

In the cats’ deaths both cats inherited the peculiar illness, which was a virus, that killed them. In the case of the first cat, you were able to reinforce its strength and maintain its health for quite a while, and then you needed your energies for yourselves. The second cat barely enjoyed such reinforcement at all, and quickly succumbed.

Your dog’s illness was incipient. You could not have maintained his health for many long years in any case. I would like to make clear, of course, that animals certainly do have energy to maintain their own health, but this is strongly reinforced as a rule by the vitality of human beings to whom the animals are emotionally attached. The fact is, you were not able to give your dog that added emotional vitality at a time when he needed it most. There is no need to blame yourselves. It was beyond your control.

(Our dog Mischa was 11 years old when he died of kidney failure.)

Animals, like people, sense when they are a burden, and the dog sensed that he was a burden, and also something of a nuisance. I would have preferred that you did not ask me this question, but since you did and since you both loved the dog, it deserves an answer.

Dissociation will blot out negative suggestions and is extremely beneficial. Nor is it difficult to achieve. It was impossible, Joseph, for your parents to even be decent when you returned from Florida for the same reason that you and Ruburt were unable to help your Mischa in his time of need. You were using all available energies to fight nervous projections, and therefore could not help maintain what was real.

This is certainly contradictory. Fantasy left you cold. I say this icily. Intellectually you would have no part in it, yet your imagination spun its fantastic web despite the fact that you believed in neither fantasy or web. Your artwork showed promise from the beginning. Your imagination was rich and varied. But you so feared your present mother’s sense of exaggeration, that led often to sheer though unwitting lies and dishonesty, that you denied the capacity of the imagination lest it also lead you into ways of deceit.

This of course happened at a young age. At the same time as a young child you almost adored your mother. This led to these conflicting feelings toward freedom of the subconscious and of the imagination. Reinforcing this unfortunate circumstance, we have the carry-over distrust of impulse from the Denmark existence. Ordinarily the last life before this would have adequately compensated for the Denmark experience, but the mother situation in this life reawakened the fear of giving in to impulse, and tended to overstrengthen the desire for discipline, which was based on fear.

Also her strong feeling that you should borrow money and get an apartment or flat or whatever you call it, was the best advice you could have been given. She was vehement and in tears over this on one occasion. Again this did not seem a practical solution. Looking back, can you not agree with me that it was a much more practical solution than the one you ultimately chose?

For your ego Joseph the unspoken but strong advice you gave Jane, who was carried away in Elmira at the radio station, this advice was excellent and saved you both much pain. However, she heeded it, therefore it helped you both. Had you heeded hers in Miami or even later in Sayre, you would have saved yourself what really can only be called an agonizing blow. If you are not completely exhausted then take a break and I will continue. If you are way down by tonight’s lecture you may call it a day.

Your Malba spoke correctly when she said that this was a lifetime project, and you know me well enough by now to know that I am going about it in my own way. You will get your life readings in due time, and other material in which you are interested, and still other material in which you will become interested. I felt that tonight was the time to go into this particular material. You must realize that just your personal data is a project in itself, and just to cover this one life at that.

It is true that because Ruburt is now a woman, and because Ruburt dislikes his own mother so vehemently, that some problems do arise between the two women. That is, Jane and Joseph’s mother. Nevertheless this can be handled. As for your life before this time Joseph, this is hardly the time to go into it. It was however relatively calm.