“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.

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.

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.

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. …

1. Jane Roberts writes in The God of Jane: “Since late 1963, I’ve clocked approximately 4,000 hours of trancetime, during which the Seth sessions have been held twice weekly. … My trancetime is more concentrated than regular time. I’m not unconscious but conscious in a different way, at another level … This state of perception has nothing to do with classical pathological dissociation; and its products — Seth’s five books — display a highly-developed intellect at work and give evidence of a special kind of creativity. In those trance hours I ‘turn into someone else.’ At least I am not myself to myself; I become Seth, or a part of what Seth is. I don’t feel ‘possessed’ or ‘invaded’ during sessions. I don’t feel that some superspirit has ‘taken over’ my body. Instead it’s as if I’m practicing some precise psychological art, one that is ancient and poorly understood in our culture; or as if I’m learning a psychological science that helps me map the contours of consciousness itself … after all this time, I’m finally examining the trance view of reality and comparing it to the official views of science and religion. …

“This is almost always an exhilarating experience, like riding some perfect gigantic ninth wave of energy, knowing exactly how and when to ‘jump in’, and feeling absolutely safe and supported even when embarked upon such a strange psychological flight. But the energy and power of this wave carries me above and below usual reality, sweeping me into contrasts that are microscopic and macroscopic by turns.”

Jane had been speaking for Seth for six years when she posed for me. I don’t regard my unsigned effort as being a finished work. It was just the best I could do at the time.