“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Not long after finishing Monday’s notes, then, we sat for the session. I didn’t feel too well. Within a few minutes, however, I noticed that I was becoming quite relaxed. I sat with this notebook on my lap but didn’t exert myself to open it. My arms and legs, and head and neck, began to feel looser and looser. “It looks like I picked up a suggestion about relaxation,” I told Jane. “But I’ll be okay. I want to have the session,” I said in answer to her questions. She sat opposite me, smoking, waiting to go into trance. My head flopped back against the couch. “Wow....”

(I insisted I could take notes okay, even as the feeling deepened. The malaise became more profound. I didn’t feel like writing the notes I wanted to about what was happening. Indeed, I didn’t even feel like taking the cap off the pen. The sensations were extremely pleasant—and heavy, yet looser and looser. My eyes closed. I sat motionless for minutes at a time, bathing in a most beneficial, relaxed state. It was actually one I’d been trying to approximate ever since I’d begun to feel bad after finishing checking all the page proofs for the books we have coming out this year. But when I’d told myself I wanted to relax, I’d had no idea such a profound state could be obtained. I had approached it in a casual way through self-hypnosis: the same lax, heavy looseness in the limbs when I made the effort to move. I savored the experience now because I felt at a deep peace and my body was almost free of aches and pains. But at the same time I wanted to know more.

(My state persisted—so much so that I felt like a long-distance runner nearing the finish line. I was engaged in a contest to see if I could help Jane get ready for bed, set the alarm and the electric blanket, turn out the bedroom lights and open the curtains and a window—all before I gave out in a heap on the bed. Indeed, I lost my balance twice while helping Jane undress, and each time collapsed on the bed beside her, to her evident concern. Nor were those episodes painless, for in one of them I put an unnatural strain on the deltoid muscle in my right shoulder. [I’d injured the shoulder last summer while pulling on the starting cord for the lawn mower; it’s bothered me ever since, although not steadily.] The pain was intense, although not as bad when I’d first hurt the muscle. I struggled to rouse myself enough so I could take pressure off the arm; I was afraid I’d re-injured it. So even in that state of deep relaxation, in which I could move only with effort and concentration, I learned something that I fully realized at the time: Even though I was far out on a “trip” of some sort, I could still feel pain. My muscles weren’t magically healing themselves, nor was I undergoing any kind of overall healing that might confound my own beliefs, or those of medical science. Not that I’d thought I was....