“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Yet every so often in this series I’ll be including sessions that are also of more outgoing subject matter—more like the sessions in Jane’s published Seth books. Later volumes of The Personal Sessions will also include a whole book that Jane delivered for me on the great l7th-Century Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn. This book has never been published. It’s not a Seth book, but one of the three “world view” books from highly creative people in the arts that Jane tuned into on her own as gifts for me. The other two are The World View of Paul Cézanne (1977), and The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher: The World View of William James (1978). When we get to the Rembrandt material in this series I’ll offer my interpretation of Jane’s very interesting world-view material.

It was no accident, Jane and I often said, that we were so quickly attracted to each other. Not only because of our simple love for one another and our mutual interests—but even then, I came to understand, because we could intuitively sense the fine creative adventure in consciousness that was to become the Seth material. (We didn’t give a thought, however, to anything like reincarnation, let alone to such connections involving us.) Even now, 18 years after Jane’s death in l984, I’m as committed to our work as ever. I have no reasons or motivations to present myself as being really cautious or asking my wife to be careful as she began to unleash the great flow of creativity that was to follow. I welcomed it after my first hesitance at accepting her themes in Idea Construction, and as it created its many-faceted path through our lives. On November 26, 1963, when Jane and I received those first incoherent “messages” on a borrowed Ouija board, our world views began to change, to enlarge. And more and more the Seth material became as deeply intertwined with my visual art as it did with Jane’s written art.

At the end of the first day of the group’s most interesting visit. Richie and Yvette left to return to Connecticut. Jim and Debbie and Winter and Theresa left for the Holiday Inn in Elmira, New York, 15 miles across the Pennsylvania border. At the Inn in 1997 and 1999 Laurel and I had been guests at well-attended Seth conferences organized by Lynda Dahl and Stan Ulkowski. Our rich memories of those gatherings are nourished each time we drive past the Inn on our way to the hill house. We met our guests at the Inn the next morning, and the six of us drove in our three cars to a nearby country restaurant for breakfast. Then, with Laurel driving and our friends’ cars following, we traveled up a steep and winding hill just outside the city to not only a fine view but to Quarry Farm, an old-fashioned but large and elegant wooden homestead where Mark Twain had done some of his finest writing. No admittance, private property, a sign proclaimed, so we stood in the driveway just off the road to study the farm and its open and peaceful setting. Then back down into the city and to the campus of Elmira College. Jane had lectured to a class in creative writing at the college after the publication of Seth Speaks in 1972.There on the school’s green sward stood the small many-windowed gazebo that Mark Twain had worked in during his summers at the farm; it had been relocated to the college long ago. Not surprisingly it was locked, but still easy to inspect—and also to just accept as the people of Elmira and those in the college went about their daily activities. Mark Twain had been one of Jane’s favorite writers.

That night in Sayre, and the next day, Laurel mentioned her near encounter with the hawk or eagle several times before we finally got down to really discussing what had happened at 1730. I drew a crude map of the house and its grounds as seen from above. The front of the house, facing Pinnacle Road, cannot be seen from where all of us were standing in the driveway to the side and in back of it. On the map Laurel showed me how the bird had suddenly zoomed into view low over the house from Pinnacle Road, and then flown even lower toward the two women near the back of the second car in the driveway. Laurel exclaimed now about the bird’s enormous wingspan as it had seemed to fly right at her. It had made no sound except for the rush of air through its wings. Obviously my wife hadn’t been prepared for its seemingly friendly behavior.