“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Today I mentioned to Jane that I’d like Seth to discuss any beliefs she might still have that might reinforce feelings that it still wasn’t safe to recover fully. We’ve given up using the pendulum to check out such things, and I wanted to know what might be operating to either slow up Jane’s recovery—which, after all, is still moving along—or perhaps to delay it indefinitely. Jane agreed. Last night in bed she was very sore and uncomfortable in the head, neck, jaw and shoulder areas especially—so much so that she slept late this morning, when finally she did get to sleep after 7 AM. She felt better as the day passed, though, which seems to back up Seth’s contention that her periods of acute discomfort are a good deal shorter these days, and not as intense. A good sign, of course, and one we’re well aware of.

(I hadn’t read today’s local paper until I had a minute to scan it while we waited for the session to begin. Jane had read it, however, yet missed the article I called to her attention. It’s attached to this session as page 302 and describes what seems to be in ordinary terms a senseless and horrendous story: A 20-year-old drunken driver crashed head-on into another auto, killing two people, the father and an aunt, and putting the other five passengers, all members of the same family, into the hospital. Since the article is attached, we can pass up the details here. Jane and I talked about the feelings of guilt and blame that are fated to surround the survivors for the rest of their lives, particularly the teenage children and the drunk driver. It seemed that they would carry a heavy burden for perhaps half a century, say. For my part, although I believe Seth’s contention that there are basically no accidents, I was still torn between understanding of that premise, and outrage that a young drunk could wreak such havoc on a seemingly innocent family of seven people. I didn’t know whether to attempt to forgive him or demand life imprisonment, for example. In short, I thought it grossly unfair that the cause of the accident was still alive—although hospitalized —while two “innocent” victims were dead, with a whole family damaged beyond repair, for life. It seemed too much to bear, and quite unexplainable in ordinary conscious-mind terms. I thought it a classic example that could be explained in Seth’s terms, though—the type of new information that at least could try to make sense out of such seemingly random happenings that we see as so tragic. In that way, then, my discussion of the event touched upon pretty basic premises of the Seth material.

First of all, a few necessary preliminaries with which you are acquainted. In a manner of speaking, your conscious mind, as you think of it, is a psychological convention. In that regard your society, your civilization, your way of looking at reality—all of these at that level also represent highly conventionalized behavior and learned responses.

You organize experience in certain highly ritualized patterns. Your conscious mind perceives these clearly, while you pretend that this official version is all that exists. Your conscious mind, generally speaking, interprets reality according to your private beliefs and those of your civilization. As long as the civilization maintains certain beliefs, then events must be perceived in a complementary fashion.

For example: when you believe that the universe itself is meaningless, and the accidental result of chance, then of course you must also believe in automobile accidents, and all kinds of chance encounters with fate.

While you believe that death represents the end of personal consciousness, then death must indeed seem the ultimate tragedy or surrender. While you believe in conventional ideas of cause and effect, and can discover none in a particular instance, then that event can certainly appear meaningless—perhaps cruel, and certainly the result of an accidental behavior in which all good intent has vanished.

In larger terms, much larger terms, all events are creative. Physical life is a fantastic event, in which all kinds of preferences, feelings, beliefs, desires, and experiences are possible—within of course the physical level.

In the case of your newspaper story, the same kinds of events happened several times in various ways to all of the people involved. At unconscious levels the results were known, and the seeming accident was a planned event—a play ready to happen when all parties involved found the circumstances apt.

(9:49.) In a way they will feel special—saved from the “clutches of death.” In perhaps a manner that appears strange, they will experience a new sense of their own validity, for if they were saved from death, then something—if only the fates—must have found them worthy. This does not mean that they will not feel guilty also at their good fortune, but it does mean that their lives will for them have a special brilliance and a contrast, in whose light they will experience all the other events of their years.

(10:11.) Now all of those motives and feelings were well-known to the participants. This does not mean that they arose often to the conventional conscious mind, yet even then there were fairly frequent-enough thoughts, for example: What will happen if I hit another car when I’m driving? Or how can I get out of this predicament—on the father’s part—while still saving face? How can I die without becoming ill, which I abhor, or without having my death labeled a suicide before my children?

The conventional conscious mind pretends, and pretends well. It pretends that accidents are possible, that death is an end, and it tries to ignore all of the great threads of feeling and intent that do not fit into that picture. It is a game of hide and seek, for emotionally all of the participants in that “accident” were aware of the approaching event, and at the last moment it could have been avoided.

(Our conversation about this during break led me to what I think is an exceptionally good idea for a book—one done even in conventional terms. It would be for the author to conduct a survey of the surviving members of families involved in such accidents, to study the after-effects, see what changes the tragedy had brought about in their lives, their habits, ways of thinking and looking at life—in short, the detailed study of each family case history would comprise an intimate, in-depth probing of all the complicated effects that had resulted from that single tragic event.

(So I felt a keen regret, actually, that the idea, one of the best I’ve ever had, will probably never be used. Neither Jane nor I have the temperament for it, or even the time if we did want to do it. It could be developed as a novel. We talked about the difficulties that might be involved in getting family members to talk openly to strangers, too, about what had happened to them. Some we thought would be glad to, others most vehemently not. Also, how would one explain to a family that with Seth’s ideas in mind certain other family members had chosen, or planned, their deaths? Not an easy thing to do at all, unless lots of time was available, and perhaps an exceptional willingness to learn on the parts of such families. I suppose that part of any such survey could also go into the refusal of certain families to restudy what had happened to them in the light of Seth’s ideas.

Apropos of your remarks: you should do your work, as you used the term, first of all because you both want to do it. As you know, in a fashion you are appealing to portions of peoples’ minds that exist “beneath” the conventionalized version of consciousness that they take for granted. The words are perceived consciously, but the concepts run directly counter to many usual beliefs—not just scientific ones, but to the beliefs that underlie the accepted establishment of the world.

I will go into all that, however, and for now will merely state that the improvements are continuing, and that his trust in them is paramount. I will discuss all of that in detail.