“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(1. We were concerned about Jane’s continuing eye-sinus condition—the protruding and drainage. We didn’t want it to become a lasting thing. What, we wondered, was necessary to bring about a reasonable remission?

(3. Something about my Roman life in the first century AD. Although Seth discussed reincarnation in the last regular session, he gave nothing on that life per se. I was curious.

(We were visited after supper this evening by Leonard Yaudes and Ann Kraky. As we waited for tonight’s session, Jane said she thought that Seth was organizing material about the four of us, our years together at 458 West Water St., and the flood of 1972—but that when we decided upon the questions listed above, Seth changed his tactics: he began to organize that material instead—“reorganizing what he’d already planned, in order to put it all together,” as Jane put it. She could feel the process. I suggested to Jane that she make some notes about the phenomenon.)

I was going to give you some material that you could use, with some name changes, in an appendix for my latest book.

In Turkey you dealt with an order rather than a family—a tribal order, so to speak, with males predominating. It was of a religious and warlike nature, in which the sword predominated. Women had no part to play. Ruburt was the leader of such a group, and you were what could be considered his lieutenant, or closest at hand. The group was given to mystical practices, in which the dictums of Allah were followed—but also those dictums were enmeshed with some old Jewish practices and beliefs.

Moses was considered a saint, for example. The sect was a strange mixture of Mohammedanism, Christianity and Judaism, but it went under the banner of Mohammedanism, and considered Christians in conventional terms as enemies. The Jews were sometimes considered allies, and sometimes not. It was a rich pageantry of beliefs—almost an Oriental Christianity despite the fact that the Christians were considered the true infidels.

Ruburt was used to the unbridled use of power, and at least among the sect his word was law. Reincarnation was also part of the belief structure. It was considered a blight of the gods, for example, to ever return as a woman.

You were great riders, horses being wealth, and collectors of fine gold ornaments. Ruburt was just, as he understood justice. To some extent he felt it a comedown to be born as a woman (as Jane). He also played down physical abilities, for toward the end of that life he became hungry for knowledge, and wondered at his own unbridled use of power.

You were the man again, so for some years he was confused because he felt himself to be, as a woman, in an inferior position to you.

You have been hard on yourselves, for you were used to the instant recognition of your peers, and accepted none as your superiors. In this life you concentrated upon the search for knowledge—and even in that particular past life, power was important only because it was considered the gift to believers from God, and therefore the natural result of knowledge.

This time those followers are provided with information you did not have then, and they are taught to be true to themselves. They are told not to be cruel or fanatical, not to die for the sword, or by the sword. Yet they look to you. Ruburt became overly cautious, however, and your own attitudes helped. To some extent you felt, both of you, that a woman, gifted, needed greater protection. She was not as dependable, nor should she really show her face in public—so to some extent, now, the symptoms took the place of the veil.

You also questioned. You set up a system of balances so that you would think before using your power. This was overdone, however. On the other hand it was reassuring now because in that other life you were afraid of your own impetuosity, together, and had to know you could control it while using your abilities. You have each controlled it. There is no need then to further show yourselves that you can indeed be understanding and compassionate leaders. In that joint venture it made little difference which of you accepted the role that would in one way or another prevent the both of you from misusing power, for the one role would be passive while the other was active.

(10:40.) Give us a moment.... Partially it was the belief that women were more vulnerable, and the social conditions—Darwinian and Freudian concepts—that led him to accept that position, and all the material I have given fits in here. There was also the feeling that contemplation and action were self-contradictory.

In this life Ruburt chose poverty as a background, a mother who was not physically fit, a broken family. You chose parents who in their way were culturally deprived, ignorant of fine music or literature, and temperamentally poles apart. Then you chose a prime ability, not overly valued by society. When the two of you took up together for the reasons given, you decided upon a further handicap, though you had not specifically chosen one.

You were the elder this time, where before you were the younger. Ruburt looked up to you in those days as once you looked up to him. There is no need for a handicap of any kind. You both also had from other existences strong drives toward privacy and secrecy. The television program you saw about monasteries and privacy to some extent applies here, for in the hurly-burly of medieval life there was no privacy for thought.

In some ways the monks and the outlaws had much in common: a desire for privacy, a bent for independence, an unconventional curiosity, and yet a need for some kind of communal existence, for there was no technology to support such people.

Often there was little difference between the outlaws and the monks, and fanatic roving bands of monks often went through isolated communities or farmlands with a vengeance.

To some extent, then, the situation has served you both well for years. Ruburt finally became so depressed, however, about the symptoms that his work was involved—an intolerable situation, presenting an instant dilemma. Neither of you really miss not traveling, not going on tours, or not mixing with the world. You became embarrassed at Ruburt’s condition when others saw it, and you finally became alarmed when you wondered how much the body could put up with.

Above all, neither of you wanted the condition to worsen. That is where you drew the line. No condition is stable, but ever-changing. The entire system of beliefs was based upon, again, fear of the spontaneous self on both of your parts—fear that it would lead you where you did not want to go, as if you and it were separate things, or as if its intents were by nature so divorced from your own that you must set up barriers against its expression except in certain acceptable areas.

(11:47 PM. Jane’s voice was now quite hoarse.)