“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The last session we presented in Mass Events, the 841st, was held on March 14. On the 19th we received from our publisher for checking, the proofs of the index for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, then two days later the proofs for the front matter of Psyche arrived. Going over these two sets of material was routine; nothing had to be returned, and in each case Jane called Tam Mossman at Prentice-Hall to give her approval and to make a few suggestions for changes. She’s worked each day at her third novel on The Adventures of Oversoul Seven, and has heard often from Sue Watkins about Sue’s progress with her book on Jane’s ESP class: Conversations with Seth and with all of her other activities. Jane has held four sessions since the 14th: two personal ones, and two [842-43] on matters other than book dictation.

(Early last Wednesday an ominous development began unfolding at Three Mile Island, the nuclear-power-plant located on an island in the Susquehanna River below Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It seems that through a combination of mechanical failures and human error, unit 2, one of the plant’s two nuclear reactors, overheated and discharged radioactive water into the river, and began releasing small amounts of radioactive gasses into the atmosphere. [The entire plant is idle, since unit 1 had already been shut down for refueling.] By now the situation is much more serious, however: There’s a chance of a catastrophic “meltdown” of the uranium fuel rods in the damaged reactor’s core—the worst possible accident that can occur in such circumstances, short of an explosion, and a kind that proponents of nuclear power have long maintained “almost certainly cannot happen.” If the meltdown takes place, spewing great clouds of radioactive materials into the atmosphere, several hundred thousand people could ultimately become casualties in one form or another.

(Our region is supposed to be outside the danger zone—yet we see conflicting newspaper reports about whether the prevailing wind currents would make us vulnerable to the aftereffects of a meltdown. Even now local civil defense officials monitor the air several times daily with radiological survey meters—equipment similar to Geiger counters. Jonestown was far away, remote in another land, I said to Jane, but the potential mass tragedy of Three Mile Island hovers at the edges of our personal worlds. The whole affair has a sense of unreal immediacy, because there’s nothing to see, and because I don’t think most people really understand the probabilities involved. It would hardly be a coincidence, I added, that the mass events at Jonestown and Three Mile Island took place within less than six months of each other, and that they represented the two poles, or extremes, of mankind’s present main belief systems: religion and science.

(Actually, the session might better be called a Jane/Seth session, in that Jane’s own consciousness was often uppermost, riding upon Seth’s underlying and steadying influence. This rather unusual situation came about because after lunch today she wrote excellent analyses of two dreams I’d had recently. As we sat at the kitchen table discussing her work, Jane felt that she could go into a trance state that was her own for a change, instead of being in “just” a Seth trance. She began delivering the material at a measured pace in her usual voice. As soon as I realized that she wanted to have a session I asked her to wait until I found my pen and notebook. Then Jane proceeded to come through with much evocative material on dreams—our second reason for excerpting the session for Mass Events. Some of the more generalized dream material is presented below; some of the more individualized portions [which, in fact, came at the start of the session] are given in Note 2.

(The movie is The China Syndrome, of course, with Michael Douglas, Jack Lemmon and Jane Fonda, which opened to rave reviews perhaps two weeks or so ago. The short story referred to above was reported on a TV program about Three Mile Island: Jane and I caught a glimpse of, I believe, a local newspaper or magazine in the Harrisburg area that had printed a short story about a nuclear accident at that plant, on the same day that the troubles began at Three Mile Island. We hadn’t heard of the story. If I’m in error and the story was printed in a national magazine, for instance, we still haven’t heard of it. Nor have we heard or read about this amazing “coincidence” since seeing that one mention of it on that TV newscast.

(I might as well use this opportunity to point up what I think is an obvious connection between the nuclear mishaps at Three Mile Island, and the mass suicide at Guyana [Jonestown] earlier this year. It could hardly be a coincidence, I remarked to Jane this noon that both mass events had taken place this year, and represented the two poles, or extremes, of mankind’s present belief systems: religion and science. Then this afternoon Sue Watkins called Jane from Dundee—and proceeded to tell Jane about the “obvious connections” between Guyana and Harrisburg....)

Nuclear power stands for power, plain and simple. Is it good or bad? It stands in man’s dreams as belonging to God: the power of the universe (intently). Man has always considered himself, in your terms, as set apart from nature, so he must feel set apart from nature’s power—and there must be a great division in his dreams between the two.