“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Good evening. It is not that you overuse the intellect as a culture, but that you rely upon it to the exclusion of all other faculties in your approach to life. Period.

The intellect is brilliant, but on its own, now (underlined), it is indeed in its way isolated both in time and in space in a way that other portions of the personality are not. When it is overly stressed, with all of the usual frameworks or rationales that go along with it, it can indeed become frightened, paranoid, because it cannot really perceive events until they have already occurred. It does not know what will happen tomorrow, and since it is overly stressed, its paranoid tendencies can only fear the worst.

The rational approach of course suits certain kinds of people better than others, even while it still carries its disadvantages. You have been living in an industrialized, scientific society, so that the benefits and the great disadvantages of the rational approach appear everywhere in the social and political world. Artists of any kind find such an approach the least friendly, for it directly contradicts the vast thrust of man’s creativity in several important areas. You, however, and Ruburt, do have evidence that hardbed reality is quite different. In the past you have both felt at some disadvantage yourselves, feeling our work to be theoretically fascinating, creatively valid, but not necessarily containing any statement about any kind of “scientifically valid” hardbed reality. (All with much emphasis.

All of this material applies to your lives in general and to Ruburt’s physical condition, because you must be clear in your minds as to your own status in that regard, and much of this material will clear the air and dissolve lingering doubts; doubts that cause both of you — but Ruburt in particular — to hold on to the rational approach in a misguided effort to maintain what he thinks of as a balanced viewpoint and open mind. It seems, because of the definitions you have been taught, that there is only one narrow kind of rationality, and that if you forsake the boundary of that narrow definition, then you become irrational, fanatic, mad, or whatever (all very emphatically).

Now: In one dream when you were asleep, when you were seemingly not rational, when your intellect was seemingly not operating, you perceived information about your past physical environment. You saw your old neighborhood (on June 10, 1980)¹ — the Brenner’s place, with animal and industrial waste all over the yard. Symbolically you saw the situation in your own fashion, but you knew that the Brenner’s property had been polluted. You still have a love of that area. You are in a certain correspondence with it. In a fashion, you keep your eye out for information regarding it.

(9:15.) The dream made its point, whether or not you read the article that later appeared (in the Elmira paper). The dream made its point, in fact, whether or not you remembered it, though you did. You remembered it because you wanted to bring into your conscious range instances of your own greater knowing. The portion of you that formed the dream knew of the pollution; but also knew of the award, the newspaper article, and of your habit of reading the evening’s paper. All of that involves a psychological motion of natural, magical import. It shows you that the rules of the rational world are filled with holes. It shows you that the rational world’s views do not represent the bulwarks of safety, but are instead barriers to the full use of the intellect, and of the intuitions.

Ruburt, having interpreted your dream, looked wide-awake but relaxed through his studio into the kitchen. He thought of asking you to take a snapshot of the table with your camera, showing the partially-opened front door, so that later he could paint the scene. Your camera could not take in all of that, a fact he never thought of. Less than two minutes later, you came out into his studio with the camera that you had not used for months. Ruburt had also been thinking newly about the magical approach from ideas in your own notes² that he had just read. You came out as if in answer. As if to say, “Yes, the magical approach does indeed operate, and this is how.”

Now when you understand that intellectually, then the intellect can take it for granted that its own information is not all the information you possess. It can realize that its own knowledge represents the tip of the iceberg. As you apply that realization to your life you begin to realize furthermore that in practical terms you are indeed supported by a greater body of knowledge than you consciously realize, and by the magical, spontaneous fountain of action that forms your existence. The intellect can then realize that it does not have to go it all alone: Everything does not have to be reasoned out, even to be understood.

This information is factual. I am not saying that I do not use analogies often, or that I am not forced at times into symbolic statements, but when I am I always say so, and even those statements are my best representations of facts too large for your definitions. The intellect, then, can and does form strong paranoid tendencies when it is put in the position of believing that it must solve all personal problems alone — or nearly — and certainly when it is presented with any picture of worldwide predicaments.

(9:36.) The intellect is a great organizer — along certain lines, now — so if this concentration is continued it begins to organize its perceptions and experience along the same lines. It is a kind of misguided attempt to find order by finding data that agrees with itself. It collects evidence, then, to prove its point, because the rational mind, as you understand it, must have an acceptable reason for everything (underlined) (all intently).

In terms of Ruburt’s condition, he often thinks that he is “faced with the evidence” that his condition is not improving, that it is growing worse, that all the evidence says such conditions do deteriorate rather than improve. He sometimes thinks that he is being realistic with such thoughts.

Ruburt has had some release in the past week of the jaw, neck, and shoulder areas. His eyes at times, on three or four occasions, read remarkably better. For some time his ankles and knees have had greater freedom of motion — in certain motions — but all such evidence is ignored, largely — or worse, it is viewed ironically, since he is not walking any better.

(9:56 P.M. As soon as she was out of trance I told Jane the session was an excellent one. I was also quite irritated, because Seth’s information had the ability to make things seem self-evident; from that point one was always left wondering how anything so basically clear and simple could be so easily missed and/or misinterpreted by those who most dearly wanted to put it to use. I’ve experienced these phenomena often in personal sessions, and each time end up resolving to do better next time — to see more clearly, to do all of those things that will easily and effortlessly bring the desired results. Jane often feels the same way, though I don’t think she has so much lately, judging from certain remarks she’s made. Yet this kind of material gives one hope, and considering it can lead to at least momentary feelings of true understanding and concomitant hope, on my part, at least. The thing is, I really believe the information is good, and that it can work, that basically it’s the best kind of information people can get.

(I suppose my own irritation because of the points listed above communicated itself to Jane easily enough. We had a lively and beneficial discussion because of our feelings, though, so all in all the session is a very good one³. I want to arrange my approach to Seth’s latest book, Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, so that I can quote part of this session in a note.)

“As Floyd and I cut across the court I saw that the Brenner’s lawn was despoiled with a mixture of animal and industrial waste, like pollution. ‘What’s that?’ I exclaimed to Floyd, as I saw a large dark shape near the hickory tree. At first shock I thought it was a deer that might have been killed by a car the night before, say. It lay on its side with its back to us. Then to my amazement I saw that the supposed animal was actually the broken remnants of a hollow, life-sized metal statue of a deer that had stood for years in the front yard of a house on Harrison Street, in Sayre, at the other end of town. The house had been owned by the Maynards, who had no children. When my next-youngest brother and I were in grade school, our family had lived a few houses down Harrison from the Maynards. Mr. Maynard had been a carpenter. He and his wife and my parents had been friends. All of us kids in the neighborhood had been fascinated by the deer, which had been painted brown. We had climbed all over it. My father had photographed it.

“The letter-writer described several well-known esoteric organizations that he belonged to — while also asking for personal help from Jane. ‘He wants magic,’ Jane said. Her comment reminded me of some material I’d written last month, and had mentioned to her a few times since — that over very long spans of time the earth and all of its creatures stay the same, relatively speaking, and that only human beings, with their ideas of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ change.

3. And yes, the situation can be reversed, too: Seth can get irritated/frustrated with Jane and me. This excerpt is from the private session of November 11, 1979: “… the same kind of reactions, however, are involved in all activities, and it is sometimes frustrating for me that you cannot perceive the fascinating facets of any event. You still — and I do not simply mean you two alone — do not feel the unsurpassable force that thoughts have. You do not understand that they do form events, that to change events you must first change thoughts. You get what you concentrate upon.”