“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(These notes will recapitulate two rather surprising events. While we were having last Saturday’s session, someone knocked on our door; I didn’t answer it and they left. Sunday they returned: Rusty and Dr. Hal from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on their yearly visit to us with a cheesecake. As the four of us talked for an hour or so two things emerged. Dr. Hal had a teacher many years ago, a woman, who used to walk with William James; indeed, he read part of his Varieties of Religious Experience to her. James also discussed his own psychic experiences with this woman. Hal told us her name but we forgot to note it down. Interesting, that this information would come to us just as Jane is preparing her James manuscript for Prentice.

(The second bit of news is that Rusty met the president of Prentice-Hall recently. This individual—again, name not recalled—listened to a talk Rusty gave in an auditorium, explaining some of Seth’s ideas along with her own interest in the tarot. After the program Prentice-Hall’s president told Rusty that listening to her had helped him better understand Jane’s own work. But this meeting took place last summer, and we’ve had no feedback from anyone at Prentice-Hall.

(The second event took place starting at 8:15 PM this evening. We were visited by a youngish couple from London, Canada. They too had knocked at our door earlier —while we were napping this afternoon. The knocking woke me up, but I saw them pulling out of the driveway so let them go. Jane and I ate supper with the lights off and the blinds drawn, but by the time she went to work Jane decided to turn on the lights in her writing room, and see them should they return. A most fortunate decision on her part.

(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.

(The encounter with the Canadian couple was so recent that as we sat for the session it hadn’t occurred to Jane and me to hope that Seth would discuss the affair, or to even ask that he do so. I was impressed by the meeting on the street, but equally taken with the fact that Hal had known someone who’d known James. Strangely, in all of this the meeting of Rusty and the president of Prentice-Hall hadn’t registered as strongly with us, though we recognized that it could be an event originating in Framework 2. Oh yes—the president is involved with Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship, which may have been his motivation for attending Rusty’s talk to begin with.)

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.

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.

So far, you have been hesitant—Ruburt particularly, but both of you—to release or express that desire for normal physical flexibility on Ruburt’s part. And, also, you would have compared his present condition unfavorably with the desired end, simply involving yourselves in contradictions.

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.

I am trying to make conscious to you methods that you use beautifully unconsciously and well in other areas of your living. Our young woman selectively interpreted her experience with the interpretation of names, for example, as given this evening—but that selectivity led her exactly where she wanted to go, and in certain terms she actually did ignore any data that did not lead her in a desired direction. So, while it may seem impractical, you do the same thing when you selectively pay attention to Ruburt’s improvements and selectively ignore areas of difficulty. You build a new orientation, which then becomes the actual one.

It is impossible to be consciously aware of all such motions. There has been new activity in the knees, in those joints that would allow him to kick out in such a fashion (gesturing with leg). This can cause some feelings of instability when he is walking—but the body must also try out its positions when he is on his feet. If you concentrate upon the improvements you will see that some sensations that at first appear uncomfortable are not detrimental at all, but a part of the body’s recovery. He favored certain portions of the neck and shoulders. The tension on the neck tendons is loosening, and this definitely affects the eyes. Placing your desire in Framework 2 will automatically, however, minimize stages of change, and automatically take care of many details in a much more pleasant fashion. Again, obviously, suggestion plays an important part.

Give us a moment.... Ruburt should tell you, as you told him, when he finds himself in a particularly blue mood, or projecting negatively, but he does catch such situations better than he did. That release of desire is all important, however. What I have given you this evening can be of the utmost help. And trust your own Nebene material.

You must not wonder how, or dwell upon details. It is the overall pattern of behavior we are after here. I am not telling you to be blind in daily experience, but I am telling you how daily experience is formed.

In its own way, the James connection happened in the same fashion, for your desires and beliefs go out in all directions in time. Your context outlive your deaths. The particular connections here are too complicated to try to explain, but they do involve James’s intense interest during his life in the future of his own work, and in the state of the psychic field of the future.

I am sometimes at a loss for words, believe it or not, for often explanations make things sound more difficult than they are. All of this happens quite naturally. To some extent or another after death you retain psychic connections with anyone you have ever met during a lifetime. The connections can be strong or weak, some important some trivial, but they form a psychic network, so to speak.

The living people, so involved in this network, will have their own other encounters, of course, but again through a psychological selectivity. You can be aware after death of those encounters also. There are implications I am not expressing adequately, and it may be impossible to do so.

In a manner of speaking, the gentleman’s (Hal) visit, while Ruburt is doing the James book, completes an intent on James’s part that he had in life. The event, again, in a way is even separate from Ruburt’s present connection with James, but followed as a result of James’s living curiosity regarding highly gifted mediums that might exist after his death.

(It may be that I’m quite intrigued by the understanding that in Framework 2 one doesn’t have to be concerned with the details—that desired goals are being arrived at in ways we may not easily grasp—but that the work is being accomplished. This understanding, faith, if you will, in such a process can then be seen as quite a leap in understanding for me, with my love of detail.