“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(As the three of us sat at the table sipping wine and discussing Seth, Jane began to get nudges from Seth every so often. It will be remembered that during the 21st session Seth had wanted John to stay as a witness. But tonight, since it was getting late and I had doubts about my ability to keep up with the dictation, I thought it better that we pass up the chance. I also thought Jane would be overly tired. John offered to leave, but I said aloud that we’d rather wait for our regular session time.

(Through this session Jane’s voice was rather stronger and a bit deeper than usual. Her eyes darkened as usual, her pacing was slow. She later told me that at the beginning she was very nervous, since this was her first time before a witness. In addition we had more lights on than usual, and this bothered her at first. But the feeling soon left.)

You know that I have no objections to your friend’s presence, since I stated this earlier. For that matter I welcome a witness, and it is time that you had one—for your own edification, not mine, and it should do my nervous pigeon Ruburt some good.

All this involved an idea of, and I hesitate to say advancement, but an idea of change along certain lines. We have spoken of mental genes. These are more or less psychic blueprints for physical matter, and in these mental genes existed the pattern for your human type of self-consciousness. It did not appear constructed, that is in constructed form, for a long period of physical time however, and we have discussed psychological time as being part of what I will call for now an inner time sense.

This human self-consciousness existed in psychological time and in inner time long before you as a species constructed it in terms of your particular camouflage patterns. For your friend’s sake I will simplify this, saying that human consciousness was inherent and latent from the beginning of your physical universe.

There are many times that our paths have crossed, and that is why I wanted you here, and why you happened onto the art gallery where Ruburt is employed. Not that free will is not involved, because it certainly is involved. Only that old friends have a way of meeting. And I was not joking when I spoke of a predisposition to gout, for you have also been lecherous in your way.

Indeed like you, my dear Joseph. In your case, Joseph, and I have said this many times, you overcompensate now for past, shall I say fleshiness, by a most unnecessary esthetic and self-punishing attitude. Philip on the other hand is performing no such compensations, except for the one instance of choosing a good-looking wife and therefore permitting himself to treat her kindly.

This was in Belgium—and I will not be tricked, my dear Joseph—it was in Belgium in 1632, and our Philip in a rather sensational case for the times actually brought this husband to a village trial, a particularly unusual occurrence at that time. His name was Yolanda Schrav—

S-c-h-r-a-v-a-n-s-d-a-t-t-e-r. He was at the time 33 and had been caught in an act of shall we say indiscretion, for which he was severely and unjustifiably beaten. Unjustifiably because the pigheaded husband was, forgive my pun, a bore. And he now, as John, is familiar with this previous husband in a business relationship.

Humanity’s so-called supreme blossom is the human ego, and this is at times a poisoning blossom indeed. As I have said before, there is nothing wrong with the ego. The point however remains that man became so fascinated with the conscious ego that he ignored the part of himself that made the ego possible, and ignored the part of himself that gives to the ego the very powers of which he is so consciously proud.

(Break at 11:28. Jane said that while delivering this material she once again lost track of herself and her surroundings completely. She was not aware of John, myself, or the room. This was the first occurrence of such depth since the 23rd session. Jane had of course met my eyes many times as she paced back and forth rather slowly; her voice had been rather strong. Resume at 11:35.)

Now the point I wanted to make is that again as I have said, in the same manner that psychological experience is real and vivid and yet cannot be seen or touched or examined in your laboratories, so is inner data from the inner senses vivid, though it cannot be seen or touched.

This involves, to begin with, an almost impossible task. Data from the inner senses is vivid, it is reliable, it makes an impression upon the conscious individual. It is your insistence upon translating this material into physical terms that causes your difficulty. You do not insist upon seeing, feeling or touching a psychological experience, and yet you do not say that a psychological experience does not exist because you cannot hold it in both hands.

Why then do you insist that an inner experience such as telepathy or premonition does not exist because you cannot hold it in both hands? And yet in many instances such cases can be corroborated by others in a manner in which a purely psychological experience cannot be corroborated.

There is no way of measuring the inner experience, or the psychological experience rather, of someone who has lost a friend in death, but you do not deny that such an experience exists. Yet if two people see, in your terms see, the same apparition, then instantly we must speak in terms of the weight of the apparition seen, the color of the eyes. For any so-called extrasensory perceptions you insist upon twice the evidence, and under circumstances when the evidence is vivid in its own terms and must be translated first, before you will accept it, into the alien outside senses, which simply are not equipped to receive it. This is for Philip’s edification, I hope.

(Jane said then she had felt for some time that Seth was more emotionally involved with me than with her. However, she had never mentioned this, to the best of my knowledge.

(In bed finally, Jane received two brief notes from Seth, rather incomplete. The first concerned condensed time; that is, in what may be a split second to the entity, the incarnated personality will experience a time duration of say, 70 years. The second note was a joke of sorts: Just because Seth apologized, I was not to get a big head.