“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I’ve noted that many of the sessions in this personal series will not be complete, but deleted excerpts from published sessions. Often over the years Jane and I tried to balance the subject matter of the sessions as Seth sought to help us in whatever way. This approach included what I thought Jane allowed him to say.

I never saw my wife blame Seth because she had her symptoms, nor did I ever refuse to help her hold the sessions until she got rid of them. Almost unconsciously, it seemed, the three of us were committed to creative growth in spite of all obstacles, whatever their cause or nature, or the amount of camouflage time involved.

Nor again, in presenting these private sessions and Jane’s and my travails, am I looking for sympathy. Instead, I’m passionately interested in presenting our work with Seth so as to contribute in whatever ways possible to our understanding of this reality we’re all creating together. And, dear readers, the participation of each one of you in those efforts help make that possible. I thank you, one and all.

Professional writing was simply outside of their experience. They did understand that we had a creative relationship with the arts, and that we obviously loved each other. For whatever psychological and psychic reasons, the lack of communication on that score between the two “sides” suited both. I don’t remember Jane and me showing my parents any of the Seth material, for example, and trying to explain what we were searching for within it. For all of the six years that we held the early sessions, we never mentioned them to my parents as we sought to go our own way. Nor did we discuss with them the information Seth occasionally gave us about them. For that to be possible, my parents would have had to understand what the Seth material was all about. There was no animosity about the situation, let alone conscious curiosity about what to do, on either side, although now I think there must have been at least an unconscious telepathic understanding and acceptance among the four of us.

Jane was still productive during much of that last stay, however. With Seth she dictated, if slowly, The Way Toward Health. For herself she dictated poetry. I read to her the fan mail I brought each day, and between the two of us we kept up with answering it. She had periods of modest motion improvement, but they didn’t last. Various medications helped a little (with side effects at times), but the medical establishment had no cure to offer. Jane obtained her greatest relief from the daily baths that were given her so lovingly by staff members. We became friends with a number of them; they helped us celebrate birthdays and holidays in 330. At no time did we tell anyone what we were writing about, or its sometimes nonphysical source, so to speak. Staff knew only that Jane dictated to me often, that we got a lot of mail, and that I kept copious notes. We had a few visits from local friends, but it didn’t take us long to learn that many people avoided hospitals as much as possible. We could hardly object to that: after all, for whatever strong personal reasons Jane had done her best to stay out of the hospital, and I had acquiesced to her decisions. People out there in the world had their own challenges.

The checks kept arriving as Jane’s health very slowly cotinued to deteriorate even with all of our creative activities in 330. As the months passed I became more and more consciously caught up in the signs of her approaching physical death. See the final sessions and notes in The Way Toward Health, which I published in 1997, 13 years after her passing. Questions? There was no end to them, and there still isn’t. Like, why had I stayed way later than usual on the night of her death—so late that I fell asleep in my chair beside her bed after she had fallen asleep? Usually I left 330 before 10 PM. When at last I startled awake, Jane had died, at an estimated 2:08 AM on Wednesday, September 5, 1984. How did my dear wife react, feel, at the moment of her death? In the minute AFTER her death? How did Seth respond in those same fleeting intervals? How did the two of them greet each other, and perhaps join? Had he spoken with me after those precious first moments, could Seth have given me information that Jane, for whatever reasons, hadn’t wanted us to acquire from or through him? Did Jane, did Seth, watch me make the two pen-and-ink drawings of my beautiful wife as she lay so quietly in her bed, at peace at last? (I still plan to do paintings based on that art.)

A month later, in Session l68 on July 7, he did tell me that the work was an excellent likeness; Jane had liked it from the day I began working on it. And why hadn’t I ever painted the two of them together? I could even insert myself into the art, since I’m the third member of the triumvirate. In short, I believe there’s no end to our abilities in whatever reality we choose to create and explore.

For whatever reasons, she had resolved along the way to do her own thing in her own way—with two exceptions. She went to Andy Colucci, a dentist (and friend) who had his office around the corner from where we lived on West Water Street for routine cleaning (she had perfect teeth); and on rare occasions one or both of us visited Sam Levine, a doctor who had his office on the ground floor of his building next-door to 458. We’d see him for an inoculation, say, or treatment for a cold. Did Doctor Sam ever hear Seth’s booming voice in the summertime, when windows were open, or the uproarious racket made by the members of Jane’s ESP class on Tuesday nights? Yes he did, he told Jane, but he didn’t understand what was going on—only that there were many extra cars parked in the neighborhood on Tuesday nights. And Jane wasn’t about to explain: “Hi, Sam. Hey, I’m speaking in a trance state for this nonphysical entity called Seth—a guy I knew in Denmark three hundred years ago. I wonder if you can help me deal with some of my symptoms, as I call them. They might be connected with my psychic work…” Not a chance! Doctor Sam was a very kind but reserved Jewish doctor who helped many people on a daily basis. Yet I do think that even if he hadn’t accepted Jane’s mediumship per se, still he would have recognized it as being a portion of her psyche.

At the hill house Jane and I used to see such birds, but soaring and circling high above, perhaps with their superb vision searching for small birds and animals. We never saw one behave as Laurel described. A sign of a message from the universe, she said! I thought of trying to paint a portrait of a hawk or an eagle. I thought of its enormous beauty and energy, the creative energy that sustains us all, in whatever form we choose to create and to live by and with. Thank you, Laurel and Jane and 458 and 1730 and our guests, for reminding me of that as I bring this introduction to The Personal Sessions to an end—even while I feel its persistent challenge to grow into a book of its own. Maybe someday...?