“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(A note: The Democratic National Convention is in its third day. As I typed away after supper, I could tell that Jane was listening to the speeches on TV in the living room. Then I realized I’d goofed: Last Saturday, our local paper had carried a short article to the effect that a psychic we’d heard of had predicted recently that Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia would obtain the Democratic nomination for president, after a deadlock between Carter and Kennedy developed at the convention. I read the article and called it to Jane’s attention. I’d meant to save it, but instead the paper ended up bundled up with the trash for pickup this morning. Since the Carter forces won the fight to keep the convention “closed” during its first, Monday session, this assures Carter the nomination on the first ballot. Thus the psychic is wrong in the prediction, which evidently obtained national circulation.

(9:14.) In the same way, some private-life decisions or events may appear disadvantageous to the intellect for the same reasons, while instead they are also self-corrective measures that you are not able to perceive because of your beliefs. The rational approach, as it is now used, carries a basic assumption that anything that is wrong will get worse. That belief of course is highly detrimental because it runs against the basic principles of life. Were this the case in your terms of history, the world would never have lasted a century. It is interesting to note that even before medical science, there were a goodly number of healthy populations. No disease rubbed out the entire species.

(9:44.) It is certainly too simple to say what I am going to say, yet it is almost as if you would be better off turning the entire rational approach upside down, taking it for granted that all of its assumptions were false, for they are indeed more false than true (intently). Again, you see, the divisions are arbitrary on your part. The intellect is, again, the result of highly spontaneous processes of which it itself knows nothing, and the intuitions that are considered so undisciplined and unreasonable are based upon calculations far more spectacular than those of which the conscious mind can conceive. The intellect could not follow them, so the distinctions are not basic: They are the result of beliefs and habitual usage. Therefore, of course, I speak of them separately, as you think of them.

The magical approach takes it for granted that the human being is a united creature, fulfilling purposes in nature even as the animals do, whether or not those purposes are understood. (Pause.) The magical approach takes it for granted that each individual has a future, a fulfilling one, even though death may be tomorrow. The magical approach takes it for granted that the means for development are within each individual, and that fulfillment will happen naturally. Overall, that approach operates in your world. If it did not, there would be no world. If the worst was bound to happen, as the scientists certainly think, even evolution, in their terms, would have been impossible, of course — a nice point to put somewhere (all intently).

One note: Do have Ruburt tell you how he is doing moodwise, for now you can help him there. He must realize that relaxation is also a part of the creative process. Left alone, he would do “the right thing.” We will continue this discussion at our next session, and in the meantime be on the lookout for other hints and clues that will bring you a better idea of the magical approach.

1. When I wrote these notes on July 17, I hardly expected that several weeks later Seth would so effectively “put them in their place,” so to speak, as he enlarged upon his discussion of the magical approach:

“Anyhow, each morning when I scatter birdfeed in the driveway of the hill house, the cardinals and the mourning doves, the chickadees and the blue jays and the other birds are waiting in the nearby Russian elms, the oak tree, or lined up on the telephone wires. Their behavior is the same each morning. If Jane and I and our house evaporated between one day and the next, and our lot was magically transformed into its native habitat, the birds would simply switch to ‘natural’ seeds instead of consuming the sunflower seeds, millet and other grain products that our marketplace so conveniently packages for them.

“Would those feathered species remember us? Why impose our concerns and habits upon them?

“The rabbits in our neighborhood would continue to live as usual without our help, although they might miss nibbling upon the leafy vegetables in the local gardens. The fish and all of the complex minutiae of the local river bottoms would go on living as they always have. The deer I see in the woods north of the hill house would continue to bound through the brush and among the trees. They’d live the same as ever, since it’s illegal for us to feed them — although they do like to move down the hillside at night and sample certain shrubs we have kindly planted about our houses.

“In vivid color, as usual: I dreamed that in New York City I had gone back to my first love, drawing comics. Not comic books, however, but a syndicated fantasy-adventure story to be run in color and take up a full Sunday newspaper page. Very unusual. I saw my art for the first page, perhaps half again as large as the printed version would be, lying on a flat drawing table. It was in black ‘line’, but also with flat washes of color. For comic books, I had drawn only the black plate. The printer had furnished the color plates.

“I was not conscious of my age, 61, in the dream, nor do I remember anything about being committed to draw a daily strip also. I had a much younger assistant who reminded me of Tom Lantini, an artist friend who had been a year behind me in Sayre High, our hometown school in Sayre, Pennsylvania. In the dream, I’d left certain areas blank in the panels making up the Sunday page, and my nameless assistant had done the art to fill in those places. My main character, a male who wore a tight-fitting Superman-type costume with a flowing cape, occupied a space several panels high right in the middle of the page — quite a daring concept for a comic layout. I knew the character type well because in the early 1940s, in ‘real’ life, I’d been one of the artists who had drawn the very popular comic-book hero, Captain Marvel. My dream character stood confidently facing the reader — except that I’d omitted drawing his head! My assistant had drawn the head, though, on a small separate piece of board, and protected it with a piece of tracing paper. I thought the head was too small, but well done, quite youthful with curly black hair and handsome features, as one would expect such a magical character to have. I also saw that the head was almost too youthful for the strong physique of the character I’d drawn, although I wasn’t critical of this. All that remained was for the printer to fit the head and the body together. I sat at the drawing table examining the assistant’s work.”

“Another great dream of Rob’s. In our sessions lately Seth has been talking about the natural self or natural person, saying that it is also the magical person. In this dream Rob is in the process of working out that idea, visually. His closest connection to magic would be his comics experience when he drew Captain Marvel — a magical character. The resulting image, in two parts, shows that the idea is almost completed in his mind, just needing to be put together. In the dream he sees himself returning to the comics, only the Sunday edition (special), and the superhero character is much more prominent than the comics would ordinarily have it; the smaller head representing, I think, the idea that the intellect’s place is smaller or of a lesser nature than he earlier supposed. At dream’s end Rob says that the head was almost too youthful for the body he’d drawn — maybe a reminder that the natural person is younger in ways than the intellectual self. I think that Rob is himself in the dream, represented by the super character as the magical self; and also that he is the assistant who had prepared the figure’s head.

“Difficult to recall, and what I do recall makes no sense to me at all. In vivid color: I dreamed that Jane and I were eating at a little table in an open-air restaurant or cafe-type setting. It was a beautiful summer day. Our friend Mary came up to us. She was by herself and I don’t recall her saying anything to us. She was carrying a large sketch pad, perhaps a 22-by-30-inch size. One would expect the pages of the pad to be white, ready for drawing. Instead, as Mary lifted the cover of the pad, holding the pad out for Jane and me to see, we saw that the top page was covered by a lovely large floral pattern of leaves and flowers, as one might see on bedsheets these days. I examined several pages of Mary’s pad and saw that all of them were covered by the same design, in reds and greens, etc. The pattern made the pages of the pad quite useless for their ordinary purpose. I woke up several times with this dream in mind, telling myself to remember it.”

“Mary shows us the large sketch papers in an open-air restaurant — a setting where physical needs are satisfied in public. The open air specifies this public aspect, meaning that Mary’s ideas are connected with social values wanting her needs satisfied in a socially acceptable public fashion. This would refer to her recent marriage. …