“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At 8:00 PM Jane and I both tried psychological time, before taking a brief nap. I experienced nothing that I could recall, but Jane received snatches of tinny music, as though it was being played on an old rickety piano.

(Bill barely had time to get his coat off and take a pencil and paper I offered him so that he could take his own notes, when the session began. As usual Jane was nervous before 9 PM. She began dictating in a fairly strong voice, and somewhat more rapidly. I had the feeling she was a bit nervous because of the witness. Her pacing was rather fast, her eyes darkened as usual.

(It might also be noted that Willy, our cat, jumped up on Jane’s lap a minute or two before the session began. Jane said it was the first time in all of the sessions that Willy had done so; evidently, if he sensed Seth’s presence, he was not perturbed.)

This one, that one, is one of your favorites, and one of Ruburt’s, and for that reason I myself do feel a warmth. I would suggest that Mark also exercise himself in the use of psychological time. He should progress fairly rapidly. His impulsive nature is actually somewhat more restrained in this life than it was in the previously past life. Nevertheless, one of the problems for the personality is still the need for a more disciplined ego.

He was erratic. You might say that Mark was too erratic to be erotic. He at that time was fairly wealthy, and gave away much money in a subconscious attempt to make up for the aggressive and cruel male existence just previous. The choice in the past life of a woman’s personality represented a somewhat understandable weakness on his part, and yet it also represented bravery in a sense.

(Break at 9:39. Jane was fairly well dissociated. Bill had noticed that at times he would be quite aware of what Jane was going to say before she gave voice to it.

Art of any kind is extremely important as a way of paying off debts, that is psychological debts. When you were a woman, Mark, and wealthy, you gave away money. Now like Joseph and Ruburt, you give away parts of yourself, fragments of yourself, made more or less into living psychological forms that according to your ability are free from not only time, but free from many of the defects of your own present personality.

Any art form touches the generations. Karma can be worked out in many ways, and here again we return to Mark’s earlier male oriented, aggressive personality. This time, through the creation of beauty in paintings, he more than makes up for past errors; not only because paintings certainly should possess beauty, but because they instill positive creative thoughts in the mind of the beholder.

(Seth’s mention of Ed Robbins, who now lives in New Paltz, NY, struck me as rather strange. Ed and I became acquainted first by mail when we were both doing free-lance commercial art work. At the time, many years ago, we did not meet. Later, while I was living in my hometown of Sayre, PA, I received a phone call from Ed inviting me to work with him on a project in Saratoga Springs, NY. This time it was a syndicated comic strip. Indeed, Ed introduced me to Jane the day after I moved to Saratoga, where I lived for about a year in the mid-fifties. Within a year Jane and I were married. Then for some time we did not see Ed; the last time was during an overnight stopover in New Paltz, when Jane and I were on our way to York Beach, Maine, on vacation. It will be recalled that it was in the dance hall at York Beach that Jane and I saw the projected fragments of our own personalities, that Seth dealt with so extensively in the 9th session, of December 18, 1963. [See Volume One.]

The impulsiveness on Mark’s part is in many ways an excellent and usable quality that can be built upon, but discipline of a mental and psychological nature must be used to give him direction, purpose, and a sense of continuity. In his case this is extremely important. He has not married, and as a merry bachelor many times myself, I applaud.

For example, having as a mother a woman who has once been your wife is rather bewildering, and certainly can lead to all sorts of psychological uneasiness. Nevertheless my sense of humor to the contrary, Mark is coming along extremely well. The earlier errors are being somewhat over-compensated for, but he will be the gainer in this respect.

You, Joseph, were the pudgy, hairy-chested and lecherous landowner, and the town was Triev. Your son was an artist, and certainly prances up and down now in the person of your Ruburt; and at the time you had no understanding nor use for art as any man’s profession; and let it be said that in this respect Ruburt treats you much better than you treated him.

You, in the act of deflowering the fair maiden, who incidentally had already been deflowered many times before. This story is truly one for the ages.

As you mature and gain in knowledge, you do not obviously grow fatter; in other words, these qualities take up no space. They are not even visible in your space. Physical growth exists in terms of your sense of continuity, and therefore is projected into space and time. The evolving mind takes up no space. The personality takes up no space. You cannot look at it, or feel it. You can merely see its results.

In art, you manage sometimes to put into a framework of space something which usually has no existence in space. The crucifixion has no existence in space. It has no existence basically in time, in that it did not occur to any particular person, per se, at any particular time per se. Nevertheless it is a reality on your plane, and it exists within it.

The painting is in a room with three windows, in a large building. It was not stolen but misplaced. The reasons are many. One of the main reasons is one that has to do with Mark’s own personality and psychological makeup.

(Break at 11:01. Jane was dissociated as usual. The painting Seth referred to is one that Bill lost last summer, while or after it was being shown in a sidewalk art exhibit here in Elmira. Bill has looked for it many times, and finally enlisted the aid of the police, to no avail. I had mentioned the subject during last break, saying that perhaps Seth would discuss it.

(While Jane was delivering the material on Denmark and Triev, Bill said that he recalled quite vividly his experience with his “lost town” episode. This involves a time when Bill was 11 years old. Out walking in the fields and woods just north of Elmira, he came upon an old-fashioned-looking town. It was quite small; he remembers a blacksmith shop and a few other buildings, and people in odd clothing. A few weeks later, attempting to return to this strange place, he could not find it. He never has found it, although at odd times he has attempted to over the years. It made such an impression on him that he never forgot it. He is now 25, and a school teacher. He first told Jane and me about his experience a year or so ago.

The town was indeed Triev. However, he projected only that portion of the town with which he was at one time intimately concerned. His name was Grand Graley, G-r-a-n-d G-r-a-l-e-y.

The family had been living in Denmark for two generations. He left for Spain at the age of 32. I will go into more of this material at another time. I covered it this evening by way of variety and diversion.

Our next session will return to other material, as we have so much of our outline to be covered. I am pleased that you have been more faithful in your attempts to use psychological time; and I am most pleased, Joseph, with your development as a whole these past months.

May 23rd will represent another, and perhaps the last crisis as far as Miss Callahan is concerned. I would advise Mark to go ahead with his plans to find an apartment, but to look over all aspects of any particular apartment that he has in mind, foreseeing difficulties of a temperamental rather than practical nature with the landlord. This would have nothing to do with practical arrangements, but would rather be a more or less mutual antagonism that would rise up between them in a little time.

(Last night, Thursday, April 23, 1964, while trying psychological time before dropping off to sleep at about 9:30 PM, I had two separate and distinct visions.

(The second vision came, I believe, soon after the first one. This time I saw within quite clearly a kind of framed screen with rounded corners, such as a TV screen. The vision was of a bald male head, off center on this screen to my right as I looked at it. The border of the screen cut off a portion of the head but I could see both eyes clearly. The rest of the screen, to my left, was empty, appearing to be a milky white blankness.