“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Saturday, Feb. 1, while doing some other art work, I had a vision. This was of my present younger brother Dick during his life in England in 1671. I saw very clearly the front upstairs bedroom in which he slept, and the bed in which he died as a boy of 9. I made a very quick sketch of this mental picture with a ballpoint pen. Jane and I both liked it, so I matted it. When this session began I had the drawing propped up on the bookcase so Jane could see it easily as she paced back and forth.

The drawing is very good. There were three beds in that room. Dick slept in one, the bed that you have pictured. His eldest sister slept in another, and a young brother in the third. There was also a smaller bed in which a maid slept. The family was not rich by any means. The maid was a relative of Throckmorton’s. In the beginning she worked for the family to save a decent dowry. However she was no beauty, and Throckmorton never really managed to pay her much above food and lodging.

She also contracted diphtheria and died at the age of 17. She was the daughter of Throckmorton’s half sister. You know her in this life as a relative of, I believe a niece of, your mother’s. You will recall that your mother, your present mother, was Dick’s oldest sister during that life.

The early death of the maid during that existence has overshadowed her present circumstances in her particular case. Because of her death at 17 she finds difficulty in adjusting to womanhood, though she was a female during her brief English life. Nevertheless she was not able, or is not able, to bear children this time.

Dick was born in 1671 and died at the age of 9.

Patricia was the maid, died two years later. Approximately five years after this, the oldest sister went to France; first to a small town outside of Paris and then to Paris, where she lived with French relatives. In this capacity she saved a dowry, working for a very short time for friends of these relatives, and adding these earnings to the goods given to her by her father. As I mentioned earlier, she did marry a cavalry officer, and bore him many children.

These windows were not open however, except in periods of stifling heat which came seldom in England. This room was the front room and not as spacious as your sketch would make it appear. The mattress was straw but the bed itself was the best bed in the family, handed down from Throckmorton’s father. Throckmorton and his wife, Lessie, usually slept in it. It was given over to Dick because of his illness.

The top coverlet was an heirloom from Lessie’s family. Outside of the room there was a rickety staircase. On the other side of the staircase was a much smaller room where Throckmorton and Lessie slept during Dick’s illness, with a younger boy who was 3 at the time. The stairs led downward to the shop.

Behind the shop was another room that served as a kitchen and, you might say, parlor. In any case it was the family’s social room. Behind this was a storeroom with earthen floor, and a shed. An imbecilic boy sometimes did errands for Throckmorton about the shop. He slept in the shed. Lessie had already had and lost 4 children. One actually lived to be 18 and was born when Lessie was very young. The others died in childbirth or in the first year. Throckmorton had wanted a son to carry on his shop. The child who died at 18 would have been such a boy, and Throckmorton never really recovered from the lad’s death. He died incidentally of pneumonia: took sick and died within three days.

A marriage had already been planned between this boy, whose name was Delton, and the daughter of another shopkeeper.

Throckmorton resented the fact that his eldest was a daughter, and it was for this reason that she was allowed to make the journey to France. She was 23 and unmarried. Since her parents had not married her off, and as she was somewhat of a strain on the family income, Throckmorton gave her a cash settlement. Lessie gave her goods, garments, material and some jewelry, and the parents bid the eldest good-bye.

Much love was bestowed upon the boy, Dick, and at his death Throckmorton was all the more bitter against this eldest child. Nor was there any love lost on the young woman’s part. She was temperamentally different from the other members of the family. The house was filled with mourning when Dick died. The 3-year-old boy lived into old age, turning into a prosperous tradesman dealing in wools and textiles. I am unable at present to tell you what Throckmorton’s shop actually dealt with.

(At this moment I had a mental picture of the sign outside the shop; I was wondering whether Seth could now tell us more about it.)

As I mentioned earlier, the sign out front was of a wooden spoon. The maid, or poor relative, was attached strongly to the boy who survived Dick. She never married and did not live to see womanhood. At times I will return to this material.

They were drawn to each other because of those previous ties, and yet in that past life this daughter was extremely cruel, particularly in speech, to Throckmorton. Sensing of course the bitterness that he felt because she was not a boy—incidentally this is a strong subconscious motive—this caused her to bear him three sons to help allay his bitterness. She gave him these three sons as a gift or sacrifice; and when it seemed he would not accept them as such she turned against him, made too much of the sons to pay him back. The relative who is now your mother’s niece contributed to some degree to the unrest in the previous family as it existed in England. The young relative was very jealous of the older daughter for her position in the family, and for the dowry which was hers.

Her clothes were hand-me-downs from the daughter of the family, and since the maid was quite a few years younger than the daughter the clothes fit her poorly. She was glad to see the dissension between the father and the daughter. This time the present personality of the maid tries to make up for the jealousy, and for many quarrels that she initiated secretly between Throckmorton and his daughter, by malicious tattling and playing one member of the family against the other. I suggest you take a brief break, if this material hasn’t already broken you up.

The reason that Dick has had the same father twice is simply that he died at such a young age, before the relationship could be worked out between the two. Dick’s wife was also alive in England during Dick’s short life. She was the daughter of a baker who lived across the street, and was one of the boy’s playmates. The two children were very fond of each other. Both with warm and sunny dispositions. They were attracted to each other at that time, and renewed that relationship in this existence.

There was choice also on her part, that is, they chose to be reborn at approximately the same time so that their ages made them contemporaries. In many cases such as this, one or the other waits a longer period of time, being born as a child to the other party. These things fit together very tightly. They are interwoven, and yet loosely applied.

If your mother or father found continued life together completely unbearable, which incidentally they do not, then in all likelihood one of their entities would suggest through the inner senses that the relationship be discontinued. If the advice was not heeded, and as the situation grew worse, a danger point would arise beyond which the personalities could not safely continue their association.

After this point was passed, and all inner warnings went unheeded, then to one or another, little by little, or perhaps in flashes, clear pictures from the past would rush to the personality who was no longer strong enough to hold them back. Almost instantly the present ego of the personality concerned would set up countermeasures against what it would consider an invasion. The past’s inner data would be turned into delusions, fantasies and so forth.

The entity in this case would be compared to the mind. The brain would be more or less what it is, that is, the brain of the present personality existing on a camouflaged plane. As the brain gives orders and communicates messages to the various parts of the physical body, so would the mind or entity do in like manner. The mind would contain all data having to do with past existences and intertwining purposes, problems and relationships, but it would only give such data to the brain as was necessary for its present existence.

(Jane received this remark on January 23, 1964, according to her notes, just as she was dropping off to sleep: “If you would identify yourself with your entity instead of with your present personality, you’d be a lot better off.” It woke her up and she immediately wrote it down.

(There came a knock on our door just as I finished asking this question. This was our first interruption during a session. Our living room opens on the hall entrance so we thought we could be heard through the door. Jane broke off her dictation; not knowing exactly what to do we answered the door.

(It was John Bradley, a medical-salesman friend whom we saw occasionally when he was in town. The three of us seemed to get along well and we had some interesting evenings of conversation on many subjects.

(It was now 10:45. We asked John if he could come back later, explaining that we were doing some research on ESP for Jane’s book. John thanked us but said it would be too late and that he would see us next time. He said he believed in ESP. Both Jane and I were glad to see John, and later we discovered that both had the impulse to ask him to stay, but did not for fear the other would rather not. And of course Jane and I were wondering what effect, if any, the interruption would have on her ability to continue the session. But John no sooner closed the door upon leaving, than Jane resumed dictating.)

Your eager, bungling friend was an acquaintance in your immediately past lives, making late contact with you now. He was a sort of educated medicine man in those days, peddling many potions supposed to arouse erotic passions in weak and fainting Victorian ladies. He had seven children, a wife of almost obscene girth, and a child called Stephen who was a pharmacist or doctor. His name was Cronton the Third.

He knew you both slightly. You came in contact with him at various times. His wife Geneva—that is not Geneva the city, G-e-n-e-v-e-v-a (spelled out)—came to Ruburt to contact a dead brother. Geneveva was wealthy, upright and homely. Your friend was four years younger than she, five times poorer, and ten times more ambitious.

They married over the objection of her family. He actually had a small pharmacy which he ran himself, in Boston. On the side he sold whatever merchandise idiotic men and women would buy to secure lovers. Behind the respectable scenes such concern was high, and many a good churchgoer let ministers in the front door while they collected bottles supposedly filled to the brim with fleshy incentives in hidden back rooms.

He died in 1863, fat, widowed, and fairly prosperous. He choked to death on a prune pit. Since he was short of breath and fairly portly and filled with gout, this isn’t as silly as it sounds. He was 82 or 83. He should watch his drinking habits closely in this life as he has a predisposition toward gout, and drinking to excess can lead in this direction. And I don’t care what your doctors say.

I believe that you are far enough along so that you could work with an observer present, providing the observer was someone with whom you felt comfortable. This is as you wish. That is, it makes no difference to me. If Ruburt becomes uncomfortable, then of course you would not have a good session. Since I make no effort to control Ruburt in any way, I have no idea how he would react.

If the observer was someone you both trusted, the fear of failure would not enter in so strongly. I tried to tell you both that your friend was welcome to stay, but could not get through the strong conscious static at your end.

Frank Watts, dear inquisitive Joseph, is resting, and he needs it. You are right in supposing that I ran after him, grabbing his shirttail so to speak, in our beginning sessions. And yet, you see, it was easier for him to make contact for me in the beginning than it was for me to do it myself. He was simply more open to your plane. There are many things, naturally, that I have not explained to you simply because of the time involved on your part. Needless to say there is great fluidity and variety and challenge on the part of personalities and fragments and personality fragments.

(It was 11:15. As usual Jane and I wanted to continue, but we were both so tired we decided against it. Jane then received this:)