“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.

(However, neither of us had the slightest idea that Seth himself would use the account—which Jane hadn’t read, don’t forget—as the subject matter for his first delivery tonight. I d say he did an excellent job of it. And his work in turn led me to what I think of as an exceptionally good idea for a book, which I’ll describe at first break.)

You form your own reality or you do not, so let us look at your newspaper story.

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.

(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?

(10:15. Jane’s delivery had been fast and sure throughout, the material unexpected but excellent. It would be most interesting, I told Jane, if eventually we could manage to check out some of Seth’s material on the surviving members of the family discussed this evening—after the wounds had healed, and provided any of them would be willing to talk about what had happened. Personally, I’d not try it for fear of prying, nor do I think Jane would.

(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.

The books reach people in many fields of endeavor, and they strike a strong chord. They begin to play new notes of consciousness that change reality to whatever degree from the inside out.

(10:51 PM—At break we’d also expressed our fears about Jane’s progress, beside talking about the book idea. Jane was especially concerned that every time she improved so far she’d regress because she’d touch upon certain hidden fears that she’d adopted as protection against the world. I added to the discussion by noting that I was deeply concerned that she’d reinforced her own self-doubts through what I said about the world myself, over the years. Sort of a vicious-circle idea.