“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

At times the ego can hold you in a tight vice, which the dissociation breaks. This is what happened after your exercises. You have been doing very well, for you, in allowing yourself psychic freedom. However conscious fears cause the ego to tighten its grasp and some effects of this nature were starting up again. This is why I suggested that you begin these exercises now. The fact that the fearful ego was beginning to tighten explains your reaction to the exercises. The ego can build up around the subconscious vitality like a glacier, and these exercises melt it away. Even the prickles in your neck are like tiny picks chipping away at icy fears.

However in some other manners the experiences of the tree are extremely deep, dealing with the inner senses which are, and properly, also properties of treedom. There is something here difficult for me to explain clearly. The inner senses of the tree have strong affinity with the properties of earth itself. They feel their growing. They listen to their growing as you listen to your own heartbeat. They experience this oneness with their own growth, and they also experience pain. The pain however while definite, unpleasant and sometimes agonizing, is not of an emotional nature in the same way that you might experience pain.

The awareness of plant life lies along these lines. In a deep trance there is oblivion afterward, that is the subject though fully aware of what is going on while in deep trance, can remember nothing of it afterward. The awareness of plant life is also like the awareness of a subject in deep trance. Except for the suggestion and stimulus received by regular natural forces on your plane, the plant life does not bestir itself in other directions. But like the subject in trance, our plant is aware. Its other abilities lie unused for the time and latent, but they are present.

In drawing up his list of so-called natural laws, I have said that man decided that what appeared to be cause and effect to him was therefore a natural law of the universe. Not only do these so-called laws, which are not laws, vary according to where you are in the universe, they also vary according to what you are in the universe. Therefore your tree recognizes a human being, though it does not see the human being in your terms. To a tree the laws are simply different. And if a tree wrote its laws of the universe, then you would know how different they are.

They deal with finer distinctions than you know now, being somewhat of the nature of your body’s ability to sense another person’s aggression. As your body senses temperature changes so it also senses the psychic charge not only of other human beings but also, believe it or not, of animals, and to a lesser extent it senses the psychic charge of plants and vegetative matter. Your tree builds up a composite of sensations of this sort, sensing not the physical dimensions of a material object, whatever it is, but the vital psychic formation within and about it.

It was for this reason that Jane was antagonistic to Mr. Burrell from the beginning, and filled with panic. What set her off was not the disappointment over the teaching job, which fell through, but the sequence of events, such as Mr. Burrell’s advances and her subconscious knowledge of her father’s nature.

Even Loren’s dillydallying with trains is a compensation for the envied, almost magical to him, abilities of an older brother. If you can understand this you will see his natural desire to supersede you in the affections of your mother. He never could compete with you in this respect, and it has made its mark. If he seems womanish at times, fussy and vindictive, it is for this and other reasons—not your fault in any way yet nevertheless a fact.

When I said that you saved Ruburt’s life I meant it quite literally. In a sense, Ruburt saved your parents’ lives by insisting that you leave Sayre when you did. Any other mistakes you both may have made are more than made up for because of this. Jane’s father is still in danger of losing his life violently, but if he survives the next five years he will die a natural death, before 70 I believe. (67).