“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

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.

I mentioned before that some people court exciting and dangerous sports, living quite purposefully on the edge of death, and choosing to taste life spiced exotically by the ever-present sprinkling of ashes. Others might say that such behavior is neurotic, but in larger terms such a phrase is meaningless. In the same way, however, some people do live their lives so that its light is experienced in contrast to death in a different fashion—so that the rest of the years’ experiences are seasoned by that earlier taste of death.

The children were also obviously involved, and the accident would give them a new lease on life, for they had sensed an overall pervading sense of despair that lay at the family’s center stone, so to speak.

Relatively speaking, they had become spiritually listless. In their own ways they felt that perhaps life had no meaning. Brought so close to death, their own youthful strength rose, and while the tragedy will haunt them, still they will wonder that they were spared—and therefore seek for the meaning of their existence.

The father in many ways wanted to save face, so that his death should indeed appear accidental, and the result of someone else’s fault beside his own. He did not want to live into an old age—but more than that, life had lost its flavor for him. He had sired his children, loved as well as he could, done his job—but there was no contemplative life to look forward to, no greater love than the one with his wife—and that love while conventionally sound enough, did not content him.

He was looking for someone like the young boy, someone whose actions would result in his death, but in a death without malice, a death that would in its way serve an important purpose. For the “accident” saved the young man’s life, and this was our father’s final gift to the world. The boy was inclined toward suicide. He would not have taken anyone with him. He wanted to die, but also in an indirect fashion, in that he could not consciously shoot himself, while he could kill himself in an event that seemed to be accidental.

He had nearly killed himself before in the same fashion, and also when not drinking. The accident gives him a specific event upon which to lay his guilt, but coming so close to death, his own instincts for life were rearoused, so that he is literally given a second chance.

(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.