“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In our case though, Rob and I usually have no direct audience (not that we can see anyhow), and those few hours spent in trance have an impact on my husband and me — and upon the world — out of context with the actual time expended.

As Seth I’ve produced five previous books: Seth Speaks; The Nature of Personal Reality; The “Unknown” Reality, Volumes I and II; The Nature of the Psyche; and The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, and Seth is halfway through a sixth book: Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment. These beside my own twelve books. Seth doesn’t answer mail though, or do any typing, and so as a result of those trance hours Rob and I spend a good deal of our conscious energy dealing one way or another with the effects of that trance life.

In the summer of 1980 I missed Seth sessions for nearly two months. I was finishing work on one of my own books, The God of Jane. Rob was preparing Seth’s The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events for publication. We were both caught up in the same events as most other people were during that June and July — the hotter-than-usual nights and days, the drought in parts of New York State that touched our area lightly, the TV news drama as the political parties argued and planned for their conventions. Some nights the (singing) bugs in the small back woods were louder than the sound of our television set. The same heat that made me groan with dismay turned Rob into some version of a south-sea island native. He looked supercool in his cut-off denim shorts; his long hair curled into natural corkscrews, his light durable frame seeming to luxuriate in the heat while my light durable frame turned into a sponge that added ten pounds of fatigue.

I was between projects after The God of Jane. In the meantime I’d read over the 17 chapters of my unfinished novel, Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time, and looked over groups of notes for possible books, but nothing hit the spot. I asked for some ideas from my “natural spontaneous self,” and on August 5, 1980, I dreamed that a moving van with me in it was itself being moved by a larger vehicle ahead of some planned time. There was a squabble over seating arrangements which was finally resolved. I took that to mean that I would shortly be on the move again creatively, and to be prepared, so I had Rob help me move all my writing materials from the small breezeway where I’d finished The God of Jane, into the new patio back room, as a gesture of being ready to start over.

So on August 6th I sat in the patio-room with fresh paper, fresh typewriter cartridge, and hopefully fresh mind, looking over my interpretations of Rob’s latest dreams. It was a very hot August afternoon. The pieces of the world fell neatly into their proper places. The pictures of the moments clicked together as they usually do, each instant precise, yet leading into another. The motion seemed to be all exterior, from the too-warm wind that blew into my small studio from the back hill, to the shadows of moving foliage outside that flickered across the floor.

I was glancing at one of several pages of notes that Rob had written. At the lunch table I had remarked that a particular correspondent of ours wanted “instant magic,” and my comment led to Rob writing some notes. As I started to read these notes at random this particular portion caught my attention … Rob wrote:

Something in his words struck me in a new fashion. Rob and I often discussed such subjects. He was saying that we were immersed in “magic” no matter what we called it, that manifestations of telepathy, and so forth, were just places where our magic “showed.” For some reason as I finished reading … I felt inspired. Or rather, I felt an inner psychological motion happening — a movement as definite, yet subtle as the shadows that flickered on the floor. A change of balance — a vital but usually-hidden psychic action that instantly changed me and the afternoon.

As I recognized the feeling of inspiration, I glanced idly toward the kitchen. The sight of the table struck my fancy, plus my view of the front doorway, with the green foliage showing through the open threshold. I thought about doing another painting of the scene; I hadn’t done any painting in months. Then I thought of asking Rob to take a snapshot of the table area, so that I could paint it later. Not two minutes passed before Rob stood at my door with his camera! He’d bought a flash gadget several months ago to use with it, and he hadn’t tried it out yet. Now he told me he had one exposure left, and he wanted to take a snapshot of me to use it up.

My feelings “clicked;” the incident was significant; and it seemed to fit in too perfectly and meaningfully into the events just previous, as if saying “yes, you do operate magically” … and this is an example of how those perceptions work. If Rob hadn’t come in at that point, I wouldn’t have known that my thought about cameras had anything to do with his thoughts or activities at the same time. So how often do our thoughts relate in one way or another to the thoughts of others?³

I told Rob what I’d been thinking just before he came in. My hunch is that because of my state of mind — interpreting Rob’s dreams, and my reading of his notes, I was in a particular kind of correspondence with him, or with his state of mind, that facilitated the inner communication. We talked about it.

Suddenly I had a whole bunch of thoughts that I wanted to write up regarding this … “magical orientation” Rob was speaking of. Seth’s “Framework 2” would be this magical area, of course, I thought. Yet except for the beginning of that (part) of Seth’s material, Framework 2⁴ never really got through to me emotionally. Somehow Rob’s few notes did, or maybe I was just ready. The magical orientation to reality would include intellectual activity. That went without saying, but the way of relating to life would be completely different too; the way of dealing with problems or health difficulties; of achieving goals and so forth would be drastically different. The word “action” would mean something else than it does, too.

Rob’s notes helped me realize that all of this wasn’t as alien as it usually seems. The magical orientation might be in direct conflict with our training in this and most present cultures. But it would be part of our natural way of looking at the world — a way that has been overlaid by our belief in the “rational” way of doing things. That way was proving to be not so rational at all, incidently. But I thought there would be things in each person’s life that could be used as guideposts, to a magical kind of orientation. …

I took the fan into the bedroom, the coolest room in the house, sat down on the edge of the bed, and began to write down my own feelings about Rob’s notes (and) the camera affair — and what I called the Magical Connection.

Around 4:00 the temperature hit 92 degrees and I thought of putting the session off. Rob and I took an hour’s nap, though, and ate supper at the coffee table while watching the evening news. I wiggled around a lot trying to get comfortable while the “cool as a cucumber” Rob said what a great day it was. And finally, just after 8:30 I began to feel Seth around.

It was okay. After the layoff, there was Seth poised psychologically once again (for over the thousandth time). At the threshold of my mind those “psychic gears” turned. Rob was ready with his notebook and pen. I took a sip of my wine and ice. The fan whirred. A slightly cool breeze came in through the open doors and windows. Then I took off my glasses, “turned into” Seth, and began to speak. Bare legs propped up on the coffee table Rob sat, pen poised, and the session started.

5. See Rob’s painting of Jane on the following page.