“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Last night April 23, Monday, Rob suddenly got super-relaxed and really floppy before our scheduled Seth session. In the meantime though as I went into the john, I started to pick up some of the things Seth was going to discuss, and after Rob began his odd relaxation, I got more. As best as I could I told Rob what I was getting. We decided not to have the session—I don’t think Rob could have taken notes anyhow; besides I wanted him to take advantage of what was happening.

(This is more or less what I was getting, and told Rob, though I’ve probably forgotten some things. That Rob was having a “body vacation” or that his body was taking a vacation, a rest; and that the contrast between his floppy state and his usual one would let him know how tight he’d been.... Something about us not taking vacations….and even not wanting to rest between mental creative projects; that Rob had his stomach troubles when he needed a rest....a vacation of some sort could have prevented that....but since we prefer to do things differently, we should frequently arrange changes in our lives....that we control....changes in the house, routine, hours....or even a week off to do the house or yard or whatever.... The mind wears the body out sometimes....and then the body sends signals of distress....

(We should consider such changes as a part of our working life, to provide refreshment; otherwise we just stew because we’re not “creative or working” or whatever....even furniture rearranging or changing whole rooms to different functions can be considered a vacation of a sort, and while I’ve always felt guilty at involving Rob in changing furniture—but do, anyhow. Seth said this was good sense and impulse on my part....

(The idea being since we refuse to take vacations like other people [really before I was physically bothered] we have to have our own equivalent which can be any of the above mentioned at different times. I think there was quite a bit more that I’ve forgotten.)

(The first portion of these notes—as indicated—was written after supper on Monday night, preparatory to what I thought would be the regularly scheduled session for the evening. However, the session wasn’t held. Let me explain.

(Jane was quite upset because of all the time she spent on the calls this morning, plus the visits this noon by F. Longwell and H. Wheeler. Nor did I accomplish much. I mowed some grass, worked with the pendulum, helped Jane walk—she’s still taking steps—and wrote these notes. The pendulum insights may be most valuable, however.

(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.

(Soon I didn’t care, though. My condition became so totally relaxed that any conscious and deliberate movement was forgotten unless I made a strong effort to exert myself—to pick up a piece of paper, to lay this notebook on the coffee table, say. Fortunately I’d put the cats in the cellar before the session so I wouldn’t have to do it later. Jane was obviously concerned. “Are you all right?” she kept asking, and I hardly replied. This was easily the most complete experience of its kind I’d ever known, and it was deepening.

(As soon as she saw that I couldn’t take notes. Jane began describing to me what she’d started to pick up from Seth about my condition. I was both very interested and so far out in my own world of sensation that I could hardly comment. I was taking a “body vacation,” she told me. She said much more, which she wrote about briefly Tuesday afternoon at my request. Her notes are inserted at the end of my notes. Seth, Jane said, would explain the whole thing in the next session, whenever that would be held.

(Jane sat on the couch in her usual place to my left. By now I was far out of it: I doubt if I could have moved except in the direst emergency. As Jane talked I fell asleep a number of times. She said I snored so loudly that she had to turn the TV volume up in order to hear the programs. During half-waking periods I was conscious of my lower jaw continually dropping, so that I sat with my mouth gaping open in a most uncharacteristic manner. I slept through deep, immensely enjoyable and totally saturating periods of relaxation. After a while my arms began to twitch and jump spasmodically without my conscious volition. These reflexive reactions continued for some time, even later in the evening when I began to come out of the heavy sleep periods. But while they were happening I cared not at all.

(Jane, hungry, ate cookies and drank a glass of milk I’d set out for myself before the session. Lately during sessions she’s been sipping red wine. When I could speak coherently, I offered her the piece of cornbread I’d set out with the milk, but she refused it. By now, I was conscious enough to sit with her through the balance of a dated mystery movie starring Rock Hudson. [He was caught as the murderer, finally.]

(When I finally tried to get on my feet to get Jane more milk, however, I realized that my situation was far from over. I staggered around in the kitchen, taking six-inch steps with more than a little effort and caution. My knees felt loose as could be, but the muscles in the legs were heavy and stolid. I poured more milk for both of us, and ate the cornbread, half asleep as I did these things. When we decided to retire I shuffled about the house, cleaning up and locking doors and windows as Jane made ready for bed. I could have cheerfully collapsed at any time. I bumped into walls and door-jambs, or leaned on tables for support for minutes at a time. I yawned deeply and wished only for bed, over and over again.

(When finally I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, I was more than a little disoriented—for a face confronted me that I hardly recognized. It was almost that of a stranger. I finally figured out why that mirror image confronted me with such an unreal quality: All the muscles and planes of my face were super-relaxed and smoothed out, so that the face at once looked both younger and older than its real age. My jaw hung. In the bedroom, I muttered to Jane that I hadn’t recognized myself.

(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....

(But nevertheless, I knew I was having a most beneficial experience, and one that might very well head off other, deeper troubles. This I understood quite clearly. I believed Jane-Seth’s material about my being on a “body vacation.” It was impossible for me not to believe it, considering that I’d felt so poorly since early in the month, and that I was so much better right now. I just hoped more beneficial results would flow from the experience, and I was appalled that I’d been that badly off, that “tight,” so that my body greatly needed such a drastic kind of relief.

(I slept at once. although Jane lay awake until about 2 AM. I felt many reminders and remnants of the experience throughout the next day—Tuesday—especially in the arms and legs: They were often loose and floppy, with a peculiar lightness and ease of motion in the joints particularly. At my request Jane wrote her account of the non-session events of last night, and it’s attached. I noticed more signs of the same sort of relaxation before tonight’s session was due, and wondered if I could focus upon Seth clearly enough, or write fast enough. After a number of hesitations, which only confused Jane as to what I really wanted to do, I sat for the session.

First of all, a note of history: the material Ruburt got on you on his own was excellent, though unfinished. You looked at the world and saw that it was wanting. You yearned to give it some standards of excellence – standards, however, that could be applied to the entire area of living, to personal relationships, to politics, to social events, to philosophical thought.

On the one hand, you pursued your version of what was expected of you. You went to school, became a commercial artist, and did very well at it. Now you liked that work, Joseph – not only because of the art, but because of the communication that was involved. Particularly when you drew animals, you could use them as symbols for noble virtues, but in any case it was the means of communication, a communication that to some extent could bridge the particular emotional troubles people might be having at any given time.

You became discontented, however, drawn yourself toward fine arts. Yet even these involved a highly specific nature. The world of art galleries is highly esoteric in its own fashion. Beside this, however, you were still searching for some direction that would allow you the greatest opportunity to provide at least a glimpse of the kind of excellence that you always carried as an ideal in your mind. That impetus was always with you in this life.

(Long pause.) The two of you mixed and matched your characteristics, and put them together in such a fashion that they would jointly form a completely new kind of creation, in terms of art and psychology, and this was bound to produce expansions of your consciousnesses, and stresses and strains, when you came across portions of your ideas that had not grown along with the rest of you. The sessions, as they exist, exist as they do because of your actions and Ruburt’s.

Now: Ruburt’s rendition of my absentee session last evening was basically correct. When you believe that relaxation means that you are limp, that you can do nothing, that you have let go (with humor), then, of course, you experience it as such. Your body was activated so that it was naturally sedated. To both of you, however, relaxation means somehow to be lax, to shuffle (louder) rather than to be resolute and determined and forever at it; and so then natural relaxation can seem overwhelming, for you are afraid, both of you, that if you relax you will do nothing.

(10:09 PM. “Before the session.” Jane said, “I told Seth I wanted whatever was necessary to help you. I didn’t care what it was. I’d stay out of the way as much as possible. If you were sick of me, or wanted out—anything—I just wanted to know so you’d get better. I know you love me, but maybe you get sick of my running your life or something like that....”

(Jane said more. She was so emphatic and serious that I had to laugh, though in a subdued way, for I still felt lingering effects from my deep relaxation of last night. I was, for instance, a bit slow writing these notes—yet, oddly, I’d been able to keep up with Seth all right during the session itself.