“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The couple, Carol and Fred—not married—related to us a most “far-out” series of events leading to their finding out where we lived. The odds against such a series of happenings must be very high. The heart of the chain of events resulted in their meeting Miss Dineen on the sidewalk in front of Rubin’s bookstore as they were putting money into a parking meter. Miss Dineen told them they needn’t do so on a holiday, and the conversation among the three of them took off from there—culminating in Miss Dineen remembering that she knew us when Miss Callahan was alive, etc.—all of this after Carol and Fred had asked Miss Dineen if she knew us.

(These notes hardly do justice to the string of events that led to Carol and Fred meeting Miss Dineen—from the couple’s leaving Watkins Glen, motoring to Elmira, deciding upon how to find us, asking a policeman finally for directions to a book-store, going to the wrong bookstore—Rubin’s—just as Miss Dineen came out of the religious bookstore almost next door, Miss Dineen first directing them to 458 West Water, then remembering that we’d moved, etc. This list is not complete, but could be fleshed out should we ever want to; we have the addresses of Carol and Fred on file.

(It wasn’t until after the Canadian couple had left us, actually, that the implications of what had happened began to sink in. I thought the odds alone staggering that it had happened at all. During their visit the woman, Carol, several times expressed the thought that she returned the second time, to see if we were home, because “it was meant to be,” or words to that effect. She also said that if we hadn’t been home, that was meant to be also. Carol had met an individual named Ron who had visited us here at 1730 two years or so ago—not long after we’d moved in, incidentally. Jane and I haven’t seen Miss Dineen except once soon after Miss Callahan’s death at least 10 years ago. Personally, I do not think I would know her if we met.

(I told Jane after the session that the affair involving Carol and Fred, plus the session material itself, had seemed to give me a firm grasp on the Framework 2 reality; I’ve already begun putting the new appreciation into use. Half of it simply involves feeling in new ways, I think, an extra confidence... for the coincidence, so-called, of the meeting on the street between Miss Dineen and the couple is just too much as far as I’m concerned.

I want to use this as a case in point, showing how desire brings about its own fulfillment when possible. Anything possible is probable. The young lady wanted to see the both of you vividly enough so that that desire, with no effort on her part, was a reality in Framework 2. Miss Dineen likes people, and would be quite lonely were it not for the desire to meet with and enjoy other people. She particularly enjoys unusual people, or foreigners, and chance encounters. Otherwise she is a rather solitary person—but her desire for such encounters exists with no effort on her part in Framework 2.

Using such “a psychic computer,” information was sorted and resorted, probabilities examined, some discarded because the conditions were not apropos. Miss Dineen this evening was looking for a small adventure. She met two delightful strangers—near-foreigners. She will tell the story to friends. The meeting then originally was “planned” in Framework 2. In case your young visitor—the woman (Carol) now—did not meet you, she had insisted in her mind that she would meet someone who knew you or had some personal connection somehow.

At the last moment, however, before you left, Ruburt made up his mind and told you to unlock the porch door. (When Carol opened the screen door, she let Willy Two out, but picked him up easily.) Miss Dineen remembers you kindly also because of Miss Callahan, of course.

The organization in Framework 2 is entirely different than your ordinary experience. Events are put together in a different fashion. Neither Miss Dineen or the young woman planned the physical events directly as they occurred. They did not think of detail, and details were arranged more beautifully and precisely than would be possible in conscious physical terms. The details just seemed to fall into place.

(10:19.) This sort of thing happens frequently with Miss Dineen, and consciously she is drawn toward areas of town, for example, in which certain individuals are shopping or strolling, so that while she visits few fashionable establishments, she enjoys a series of seemingly unrelated, pleasant encounters with strangers.

She did in fact go to a bookstore, but in so doing she killed two birds with one stone, so to speak, for she found your address in the phone book, but also just happened to run into Miss Dineen—and that was something that only a thorough canvassing of the town might produce.

Had he been living, he would have sought Ruburt out, you see, and they would have gotten along famously. You and James would also have been excellent friends. The three of you missed each other in time. In other frameworks, however, you are friends, hence Ruburt’s book, and your first attraction to James’s writings.

That James however is, of course, as he says the William James that he was —and yet is no more the same William James, as the child and the adult are one person and yet are not. Consciousness can be put together in many ways, and you use your own consciousness in ways that presently at least escape you, even though the results may be quite objective. The encounter and Miss Dineen and your friends, again, is a case in point. The meeting was real in your terms, yet the manipulations of consciousness behind it were largely unknown.