“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(To begin we sat silently at the board, hands on the pointer. As was usual now Jane began to hear Seth within almost immediately. After taking a few words through the board she laid it aside and began to dictate. Her eyes darkened considerably; at times they appeared to contain no highlights.

(This is our longest session to date and at its end we were both weary. Jane smoked 16 cigarettes. Her voice was normal most of the time; she had a few periods of loudness.

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.

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.

The tree does not even build up an image of man, which is why this is difficult to explain. I have no intention of going deeper into this matter than you can follow at this time. Nevertheless the tree builds up a composite sensation which represents say an individual man. And the same tree will recognize the same man who passes it by each day. Beside the recognized outer senses, and the inner senses of which you are just now beginning to gain knowledge, there are other inner and even outer senses, which you are not quite ready to understand.

This is what the ego does when it reacts too violently to purely physical data on your plane. As a result it stiffens and you have, my well-meaning friend, the cold detachment with which you have faced the world. I do not want to digress here. I have certain points in mind for this evening. Nevertheless lest Ruburt thinks he is getting off scot-free, let me remind him that the tree’s bark is quite necessary, cannot be dispensed with—but I will get into that and into Ruburt at a later time.

For instance, this experience in psychic phenomena would seem to be simply an enjoyable, enlightening, but purely impractical happening. If you were as ego bound as you were last year, you would not have had either the time nor energy nor even the inclination for it. It would not have seemed practical.

A job which prevents you from using these abilities is at best a compromise and at worst a soul-stunting experience. At the present time you both are maintaining your physical status very well. If you are worried about social status, I am afraid I am not much help, but I will say this: Things will get better because you allowed yourself to expand. Fear always contracts.

She would have talked the landlord into taking one week’s rent instead of two months’ rent in advance. There is a supermarket three blocks away where she would have gotten a job that would have lasted seven months. At the end of this time you would have had a job in an advertising firm. You would have gotten by very well. You would not have stayed at the advertising firm over eighteen months. However Jane would have worked in an art gallery—this experience was ahead of her, not foreordained but ahead of her in any case. You would have ended up in the same gallery.

Your impulse at the time was the same as Jane’s, if you remember, but you were afraid of the practical aspects. Your parents would have visited you last year, and be strongly tempted to settle in a small town northeast of Miami, where your father would be amazed at the opportunities in his own business. Things have changed. Free will constantly operates. I will not attempt to give you definite so-called practical advice now, but you can learn from this and the paths will be clear.

Ruburt’s strong feeling was correct, his compulsive feeling that you should leave Sayre. At the time a trip to Florida would have been fine, although a meeting with Ruburt’s father on prolonged terms was not a good idea. Had you left Ruburt’s father for Miami you would have done well. Had you, Joseph, offered an alternative to going with Ruburt’s father, Ruburt would have accepted it and you would have done well.

Ruburt sensed the growing explosion with your parents, sensed the frigid growth of your ego, and impulsively had to do something. Had you not left at all circumstances would have been far worse in any case, and your parents might have suffered another, but this time fatal, accident. Ruburt of course did not know this in practical terms but he knew it nevertheless.

(Jane finally became unable to eat breakfast before going to work. She had cramps, and then her thyroid gland began to act up. I had never met her employer, but gradually understood that he had made advances by innuendo. I told Jane to stay home and went to the store and quit her job for her; by chance the manager was not there at the time.

Had you stayed in Miami you would have been ahead of the game, but you are still ahead of the game by getting out. Whenever Ruburt, or Jane, puts up such a fight against you there is good reason. Because Ruburt is trying to learn gentleness this time and because he is a woman strongly attached to you, his respect for you is boundless and in most cases he will give in to what he considers your superior judgment. When despite this the present Jane puts on a strong emotional guise it is because the intuitions push her to this extreme.

The situation would have been much worse. Ruburt was overly weary, and if I may say so, bleary. He would have tried to make a serious mistake at this time. In pity and against his own intuition, he would have tried to move in with your parents. You would have both attempted to support them, with disastrous psychic effects. There is little more I would like to say here. I promise you that neither of you will feel any poor results from tonight’s long session. Please do take a break.

(Break at 11:47. Jane’s voice had become very quiet, quieter than at any previous time. We had something to eat, then Jane resumed dictating at 11:55.)

If you remember, at one time when you had just arrived from Florida she convinced her landlady to give you an apartment with no money down. This was another opportunity out that would have avoided the nearby association with your parents, but was not taken.

By this time Ruburt-Jane was so confused that he would have taken the radio position in Elmira, and here again this would have been an error. In fact Joseph, and I do not say this to make you feel better but because it is the truth, you literally saved her life.

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.

I began this session with a desire to discuss vegetative and plant life. To me, you see, there is no unlife, as you usually consider rocks and pebbles. However I felt this a good time to go into personal background as the session continued. I promise to get back to more philosophical matters, but I did want you to know the dangers and tragedies you have managed to avert, since I also told you of the opportunities that you had missed.