“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(On Sunday afternoon, August 8, Jane and I attended the funeral of my Aunt Ella Buck in Wellsburg, NY, a nearby small town. Ella was my father’s sister and died at 88. My mother and father and my brother Loren and his wife and son were also there. I had seen very little of Aunt Ella over the years, and Jane had met her twice, as best we can recall. I thought it might be interesting to ask Seth to comment on Ella, so I also mentioned this subject just before the session.

(The session was a quiet one and was held in our small back room. Jane spoke while sitting down, with her eyes closed and in a rather rapid manner, throughout the session. Occasionally she used pauses. Her voice was quiet to begin with, but where indicated it began to deepen. It did not acquire much more volume. This manifestation reminded me somewhat of the deeper voice effect Jane showed in the 172nd session. In that session Seth stated that it would become natural and easy for Jane to speak in that manner.)

Her previous lives were four. Her spiritual existence this time was a very happy one. The personality however was never entirely centered within physical reality, and was able to cope with it only by remaining relatively aloof.

She was connected with your father’s brother in this life. His name was Jay. She was connected with him two lives previously as a very beloved wife.

The [retarded] son represented the result of two main conditions. The woman could simply not bring herself to form a complete construction. Her energies were not directed in a manner that would permit her to give birth to a normal child. She deeply reacted against violence, and was overly sensitive.

She felt that it was her responsibility to have a child, and so she did. At the same time, because of the child’s defect, she managed to produce a child who was relatively free of those pressures against which she reacted. She produced in other words an idiot, who was in his own way supremely invulnerable to the realization of misfortune, a child who would not grow mentally into an adult, and a child who would remain secure in a relatively eternal childhood.

(Here Jane’s voice began to deepen and grow a bit louder. Jane knows rather little about my family history. Seth is correct in stating that my father’s older brother, my Uncle Jay, who is also dead, was connected with Ella in this life; he was very protective toward her, and after he died eight years ago his wife continued to watch over Ella.

The child was extremely gentle in his way, and in his way he is still a gentle child. We are speaking honestly here, and so I will say that she would herself have preferred to dwell in such a dreamlike state herself. She was never a part of her century or her time, and she tried to protect her offspring according to her own limits, by seeing to it that his escape would be a more definite one than her own.

Your Ella, then, reacted against the repressed violence which has always been a part of that family structure as it is composed of its various personalities. She reacted vehemently against this repressed violence. She married a man in whom there was little aggressiveness.

To some extent she resembled her mother. Her vanity, however, was not a characteristic woman’s vanity. Her vanity was perhaps the one characteristic that she shared with other members of the family. She felt she was set apart, but also that she was set apart because she could not tolerate violence. Violence frightened her deeply.

She would not admit the fear, but would change the fear to pride, saying to herself that the world was evil, and she would therefore have little to do with it. And so she did not. She was not a foolish woman. She loved her husband most deeply. She and he shared a quite mystical love of nature and of animals. They would harm no one.

(Break at 9:24. Jane was rather well dissociated for a first break, she said. Her eyes had remained closed, her voice fairly deep but not loud to speak of.

(As stated before, Jane met Ella twice, both times rather briefly some years ago, and has no idea how much she remembers of the visits subconsciously. Jane met Ella’s husband Wilbur once; he died a few years ago. I remember Wilbur as a small gentle man who was a tailor and who smoked strong cigars. He had a white mustache and a gravel voice. I recall that the family accused him of drinking heavily and of not taking care of Ella, although I recall no objective evidence of this. I always liked Wilbur. After his death Ella was moved to a nursing home.

She was gentle, and yet displayed a characteristic hauteur, in that she felt that the world was soiled, and so she would come in contact with it as little as possible.

Your father feels this way also. But he is bitter against it, and wants what it has to offer despite himself. She did not care. She was deeply attached to the other brother. She collected buttons and string and papers, even as she collected animals. To her the buttons almost seemed to have consciousness, and when she was alone she would take out her boxes of buttons and hold some in her hands, and remember the garments to which they belonged, and when she had worn them, and how the weather had been; and she lived in a present that was deeply colored by the past.

Originally, she collected the buttons to help him in his business. His family was large and scattered. He took great pains in his work, but he was also frightened; and the world confused him and he chattered, again like a squirrel. But they were very free in their own way, and your father’s family never forgave them for this freedom.

Your father wanted it but would not pay the price for it. Your mother would never think of it as freedom, but as slavery, so she had no use for either of them. She never understood the desire for freedom from worldly concerns that is part of your father’s nature, and of all your natures. It was because your father was not willing to pay the price that he was attracted to your mother, although other elements also entered in here.

For part of him was determined to gain worldly success, and he was always caught between wanting freedom, but he would not pay the price, or wanting worldly success for which he was not willing to pay the price. So that part of him that wanted success was attracted to your mother, who also wanted the same thing, and he spoke to her with that part of himself only. So in the beginning she did not know about this other part of him.

He did not tell her because he knew she would have had no part of him. So when she discovered this other part of him she felt betrayed. To some extent she was, since she had been honest with him. Then when she discovered that he was not willing or able to go either way, or pay either price, she was enraged and embittered, and did not think of him as a man. So she hated this sister of his and thought: was this, this squalor, what he wanted? And she looked at Jay and was envious, and hated him for being the sort of man she wanted and did not get.

For your father was a great pretender in those early days; a dude and even a braggart, and he hid the part of himself that was aloof and sensitive, and wanted freedom. So he could be successful in no direction, for he did not know who he was.

She did not have that sort of sensitivity, but she was more honest than he.

(Break at 9:54. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her pace had been rather fast, her eyes had remained closed. She had no offhand conscious memory of hearing about Aunt Ella’s penchant for collecting buttons, although she could have heard it easily enough from my mother, for instance.

(Alice is a cousin to my family although we barely know her. Ella was greatly attached to her, I believe, and the two women spent some time together in the same rest home. Alice was a missionary in Korea for many years. She left the home where Ella was staying a year before Ella’s death. At the funeral Sunday we heard that Alice, at 80-odd years, was still alive, traveling about the country at the moment in connection with the sale of some property.)

Another point I wanted to mention. Your father told himself that your mother, as a young woman, was sensitive and intelligent because she was beautiful. You can reread the earlier material given on your family’s past lives, and you will see further involvements.

You Aunt Ella was much less frightened of death than anyone might suppose. She loved life, if not the world, but she did not believe that death was really an end. She felt her will nearby. For several years she had begun to retreat from this existence, and as she did so she became happier.

Your parents did not understand her when she spoke to them because they were both afraid to understand. There was nothing wrong with her mind. She simply did not bother focusing her energies upon practical matters, particularly during the last years, but she was quick spiritually.

She picked up hints and signs. She responded to warmth in people, and was somewhat childlike in this manner, but she would not pay any attention to a sharp tongue. She would turn her directions elsewhere. As people can turn their backs, she would turn her inner self away.

His own fear is somewhat a danger. It is much less than it was, and your relationship has done much to better that situation. I will at some time say more. Ruburt’s love for you, his ability to love in general, is his protection. So he has nothing to fear.

(End at 10:30. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her pace had been somewhat slower; her eyes had remained closed and she had remained seated.

(When Jane began to speak again she was lying down; she had stretched out to relax for a moment after the regular session. Now she removed her glasses, propped her head up with one hand, and began to speak from this prone position. She had briefly used a prone position once before, in the unscheduled 129th session, witnessed by Judy and Lee Wright. Now, her voice was quiet, her eyes closed. Resume at 10:33.)

(End at 10:45. Jane blinked several times, squeezing her lids shut, then was out of her trance. Her eyes had stayed open until the end. She had been dissociated as usual. While speaking she had been aware that her eyes were open.