“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The reactions are beautiful examples. First of all Ruburt was worried, somewhat, concerning your own reactions when you found that you now had a new engagement for Friday evening, after already planning to cancel a previous one, in order to have some free time for yourself, and he felt to blame since he had already made a commitment to Mark—rather unwillingly, by the way. But it will harm him in no way to help Mark in his endeavor.

I decided to mention this since he is at the point now—I am speaking of Ruburt—when he will not accept the superficial reasons given by the ego for many reactions, but seeks to discover deeper causes. There was also some other problem here, in that Ruburt feels, as you do, and quite rightly, that Mark is in over his head, psychologically speaking.

Mark, in attempting to help this other young man, may indeed end up helping himself, for it will turn him outward. But the situation also has other dangers. Because of Mark’s background, subconsciously he fears Negroes; and the fear is so great, unfortunately, that it becomes a fascination. He is repelled and fascinated at the same time.

Such is not exactly the case. The child exists within the man, yes, but he is not the same child. The memories that he thinks are the child’s memories are not memories of a particular event that happened to the child. That is, they do not contain a precise picture of any particular incident that occurred. Each incident is recreated when the memory of it arises, but the memory is changed with each recreation, and subtly changed.

There is no point where the child ceases and the man begins, and no point where the young man ceases and the old man begins. These are states happening simultaneously, but perceived in slow motion within your system. Not only are they perceived in slow motion, but they are perceived along one line of focus only. The focus is indeed intense, but so limited in scope that it is relatively impossible for you to keep your attention upon the self except in the most inconsistent and fleeting of ways.

You no longer perceive the past, therefore you think that it has vanished, and the self that you were has gone. But that particular moment, any particular moment, that you think of as the past, existed before your egotistical perception of it, and is constantly being changed by you, even when you no longer consciously perceive it.

Some systems experience time exclusively in terms of probabilities, in which the self experiences a particular moment most thoroughly, where continuity is achieved not through a continuity of moments but a continuity of self, as it experiences all the various events that exist as probabilities for it in any given instant.

You merely skip along the surface, and this is all right. But do not regard this hopping from moment to moment, as from stone to stone, as the approximation of time as it actually exists. The nature of perceptions determines the experience of time.

(It was now time for the 32nd Dr. Instream test. As usual Jane sat quietly with her hands raised to her closed eyes. Her pace became quite slow, broken by many pauses of 15-30 seconds. She had been smoking earlier in the session but did not do so now. Resume at 10:10.)

(See the tracing on page 219. Seth goes over much of tonight’s test data, but in order to avoid mixing my notes with his I’ll give the usual interpretations Jane and I made first.

(“A disturbing event in the month of June, ’64.” Jane said she thought this referred to an episode when she should have visited the dentist, Dr. Colucci, but did not. She keeps a brief daily record of activities, and verified her idea. In her notebook she found a record that on May 31,1964, she woke up with a swollen lower left jaw. I thought it a bad tooth. At this time, not having practiced self-hypnosis consciously, Jane had a great fear of dentists. Instead of seeing a dentist she visited our doctor next door; he put her on a series of antibiotics that lasted for four days, on into the month of June 1964. The pendulum told Jane the swelling was psychosomatic and not a tooth; the doctor agreed, eventually, and Seth did too, in the 59th session for June 3,1964. See Volume 2.

(“A round object.” I thought this referred to the large round light over the dental chair, but it could also refer to many other things.

(As soon as the session ended Jane said she did indeed remember seeing Dr. Colucci as soon as Seth mentioned that she would. Dr. Colucci’s office is but four doors down the street from the M.D. she visited. Seth was quite amused in giving this information.)

For lately you could not make a hill, and as a result later you went to a gasoline station for gas. This was too broad an association for your purposes, but legitimate, and it should give you some idea of how these things work. For often quite legitimate associations such as these must be bypassed for more specific data. Nevertheless this particular impression does show the evidence of clairvoyant data.

Now, they were wrong, but there was a connection here, in that Mr. Fell had recently had throat difficulties. Ruburt picked up the connection with the mouth, you see.