“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.

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.

The inner tree continues to grow because the bark is flexible. Man lets his ego face the outer world as does the tree bark, and this is its purpose. Nevertheless the inner self, like the inner tree, must have room to expand. The tree bark makes allowances for good weather (here Jane pounded the table) though bad weather is repulsive to the bark. Nevertheless the bark makes whatever adjustments are necessary and is flexible. Forgive me if this is a trite analogy, I almost hate to say it, but it bends with the wind. It does not bend when there is no wind. Nor does it solidify, stopping the flow of sap to the treetop for fear the dumb tree, not knowing what it was up to, would bump its head against the sky.

(Break at 11:13. Jane was tiring by now, and also smoking too much. During break we discussed our experiences in Florida a few years ago. We spent some months at Marathon, in the Keys, with Jane’s father. Driving back to Pennsylvania we passed through Miami. Jane wanted to stay there and I liked the idea, but since I had only thirty dollars I was afraid to chance a strange city with so little, and we headed north to my parents’ home in Pennsylvania. Jane resumed dictating at 11:20.)

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.

The opportunity was waiting. I do not tell you this to make you feel badly, only to show you once again that you should trust your impulses, because in your particular case your ego has overbuilt its defenses.

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.

(The Mr. Burrell referred to here was Jane’s employer, the manager of a supermarket in Marathon where Jane worked for a few weeks as a cashier. It was a job she hated.)

It was this that Ruburt sensed and that caused the emotional explosion. Mr. Burrell would have come to the trailer to tell—and I will say Jane now—that she did not have to pay the 17.50 short on her register. Jane’s father would have asked Mr. Burrell to go to the bar for drinks. The fight would have been started by Jane’s father. Midge, I believe that is her name, would have flirted with Mr. Burrell. You would have been painting in the trailer. Jane would have gone with her father, since I think this particular bar was only a short distance away.

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.

Since she was unable to explain this in logical terms, not understanding it herself, this triggered the cured, psychologically-caused thyroid condition into new activity. She set up the worse fuss of which she was capable to get out, and thankfully for you both she succeeded.

(Nor did I understand what was happening, beyond the obvious fact that she was coming to hate the job. I was doing some samples for a business venture with a relative that offered a chance of rather handsome monetary rewards if successful; our agreement was that Jane would hold a temporary job in the meantime.

(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.

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.

You’re far ahead for leaving Sayre to begin with, regardless of anything else. The most long-lasting tragedy would have occurred had you stayed there. The same sort of a possibility will not exist again. You avoided it together. Jane did push for the Elmira move, feeling instinctively that Sayre was a mistake.

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.

Inheritance is extremely potent in this case. Your father represents a most tragic example of impulse frozen into inactivity, and practicality which was never practical but molded him into immobility, his powers so encased by fear that he could not manipulate in the physical environment at all.

(Break at 12:20. We were both tired. Jane’s voice was hoarse. This was our longest session, and I thought she might be losing her voice. But she wanted to continue for a little while. Resume at 12:29.)

Her Walter Zeh comes in here very definitely. However it is too late now to go into details. The circumstances were so unusual that more leeway is permitted. That is, she, Jane, got away with more without guilt because she was so threatened.