“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“I feel gaps in my consciousness,” Jane said, worried. “I’ll start to do something, then I’ll find myself thinking that I’ve already done it—but that means that I’ve dozed off in the meantime, and didn’t do it at all....”

(She said this, as she has several times lately, after supper tonight. Once again I asked her if she wanted to have a session, or do some dictation on her own. As soon as she finished eating she began to nap in her chair as she sat bundled up at the card table in the living room. The television ran on unheeded.

(At first Jane didn’t know what she wanted to—or could—do. She’s fallen into a regular, very narrow pattern of eating, watching TV, and sleeping, either in her chair or in bed, night and day. She reads a little but writes—or tries to—even less. “I’m scared,” she said again. “That dozing off really worries me....”

(“The only other thing I can think of is the thyroid, that it’s still below par,” Jane said. I agreed that had something to do with it, but also felt other, psychological factors were involved. Mr. Wrigley, the physician’s assistant who had called a couple of weeks ago, also visited today to check upon Jane’s decubiti [which are doing well, by the way], so he was here when Peggy arrived. The four of us talked in the bedroom. Mr. Wrigley said that the ulcer on Jane’s coccyx was filling in with “grainy” flesh, which means it’s on the mend also, if slowly. But the entire afternoon had been an active, tiring one for Jane.

(“I’m just waiting.” Jane said now, smoking a cigarette as I sat with her at the card table. I’d brought the notebook, as she had suggested I do. Her eyes were heavy, but—“I almost feel something.” she said at 7:25. “Anything,” she said, rocking back and forth in her chair, meaning she was trying to stay awake and would accept whatever she could get. And once again, as we waited I thought that I was the one who’d initiated events this evening, whereas I had trouble understanding why Jane didn’t do more of that herself.

(“I do feel him slightly around,” she said at 7:30. “I’ve been telling myself....” Her voice trailed off, and I could see that she was struggling to stay awake. Yet she did manage to let a session happen. She began speaking for Seth with her eyes closed —but her voice was quite strong, comparatively speaking, with a minimum of tremor. Her eyes were quite dark when they finally opened to stare at me.)

Ruburt needs to talk over his fears with you, quite “normal” ones. It will help them fade faster—and if you can, lovingly reassure him rather than act like a fine professor with a stubborn student (with some humor). The fears largely have to do with the medical establishment’s prognosis.

(A case in point: When he visited today, Mr. Wrigley said Jane should wear support stockings or bandages around her feet and legs in the daytime, to help reduce the swelling in her feet and ankles. Otherwise, he said, ulcers could develop there also. This frightened Jane, but she didn’t tell me until some hours later. Her feet are somewhat swollen—edema—but look much better than they did last year, say, and their color is normal. She does wear my elasticized winter stockings, which offer some such protective support. These kinds of dilemmas are what bother us about the medical establishment: We don’t know whether to completely ignore such advice, or to heed it and thus accept medicine’s prognosis. I do personally credit the body with having terrific healing powers—especially if, as I said to Jane recently, the body is left alone to repair itself. But obviously, this leaving alone is often very difficult to achieve in that fashion. It may even be, I’ve often thought, that one cannot really leave the body alone, nor be meant to—for the physical body would be a portion of the reality each individual creates, and so is bound to be intimately involved with individual fears, desires, intents, successes, etc.)

(7:59 PM. Jane leaned back in her chair, coming out of trance even though her eyes were closed. “Very good,” I said, pleased. “I can’t believe it: he offered to come back after a break. Do you remember that?”

(I’d planned to mow grass for a few minutes after the session—it was dusk by now—but I had to wait. So did Jane: “Now that he said that. I’ll have to wait....” I lit a cigarette for her. I told her the session had lasted for 27 minutes, which pleased her, “since I didn’t think I could get two words out of me to begin with.” But I’d known she could do it.

(A very long pause at 8:26. “I lapsed a little,” Jane said. “Courthouses, for example, dealing primarily with the law, already relying upon their courts and legislatures, are another case in point.... You do not have to accept their versions of reality, of course: You can think of them merely as interpretations of events. In any case....”

(“Yeah. I’m glad I did.... I don’t know what I did with that last material. I felt like I could get a lot from Seth, but that was all I could do.”