“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(See the attached copies of Jane’s reincarnation and grandfather dreams of March 6, and her nightmarish experience of March 8. All of these are very important, I think, with the experience of March 8 taking precedence, I’d say. They’re all classics. Jane woke me up often during the night while she was having the March 8 experience, and we think it contains many important clues to her hassles. She’s reread all of the experiences several times so far, and has made a few additional notes about the March 8 event in particular.

(We’d thought that Seth might refer to them in the session for last Monday, but none was held because once again Jane was so relaxed on the couch after supper. She was also somewhat blue and discouraged. In fact, I hadn’t expected a session tonight until she called me at 8:40, so relaxed was she. She’s been sleeping much better generally, though, is still taking a nap in the late morning as well as our usual nap break just before supper. She’s also been heading for bed a half hour earlier at night.

(She was very quiet as session time approached, but wasn’t too comfortable in her chair. I was quiet too—we’d been more or less that way all day. “I think it’ll be short,” she finally said.)

Expression itself was considered highly suspect if it traveled outside of the accepted precepts, and particularly of course if it led others to take action against those precepts. To some extent the same type of policy is still reflected in your current societies, though science or the state itself may serve instead of the church as the voice of authority.

In medieval times to be excommunicated was no trivial incident, but an event harkening severance that touched the soul, the body, and all political, religious and economic conditions by which the two were tied together.

Many people’s economic well-being of course was dependent upon the church in one way or another, and in reincarnational terms many millions of people alive today were familiar then with such conditions. The nunneries and monasteries were long-time social and religious institutions, some extremely rigorous, while others were religiously oriented in name only. But there is a long history of the conflicts between creative thought, heresy, excommunication, or worse, death. All of those factors were involved in one way or another in the fabric of Ruburt’s nightmare material.

The church was quite real to Ruburt as a child, through the priests who came [to the house] regularly, through direct contact with the religious [grade] school, and the support offered to the family. Ruburt’s very early poetry offended Father Boyle, who objected to its themes, and who burned his books on the fall of Rome, so he had more than a hypothetical feeling about such issues. Many of those fears originated long before the sessions, of course, and before he realized that there was any alternative at all between, say, conventional religious beliefs and complete disbelief in any nature of divinity.

In the time those fears originated, he shared the belief framework of Christianity, so that he believed that outside of that framework there could indeed be nothing but chaos, or the conventional atheism of science, in which the universe was at the mercy of meaningless mechanistic laws—laws, however, that operated without logic, but more importantly laws that operated without feeling.

He [Ruburt] was afraid that if he went too far he would discover that he had catapulted himself into a realm where both answers and questions were meaningless, and in which no sense was to be found. To do that is one thing, but to take others with you would be, he felt, unforgivable—and in the framework of those fears, as his work became better known he became even more cautious.

Outside of that context, none of those fears make any sense at all (equally important, of course). In a large regard the church through the centuries ruled through the use of fear far more than the use of love. It was precisely in the area of artistic expression, of course, that the inspirations might quickest leap through the applied dogmatic framework. The political nature of inspirational material of any kind was well understood by the church.

By such tactics the church managed to hold on to an entire civilization for centuries. (Long pause.) Ruburt well knew even as a child that such structures had served their time, and his poetry provided a channel through which he could express his own views as he matured. Later the old fears, if they surfaced, were not encountered. They seemed beneath him, unworthy or cowardly—but in any case their validity as feelings was not recognized or understood.

Ruburt did initiate a small religious order in the 16th Century, in France, and he was in love for many years with the man he met in his dream—a cleric. The love was not consummated, but it was passionate and enduring nonetheless on both of their parts.

(Long pause at 9:37.) Ruburt had considerable difficulty with church doctrine even then, and the rules of the order as actually carried out through practice were later considered to hold their own seeds of heresy. Ruburt was forced to leave the order that he had initiated, as an old woman. He left with a few female companions who were also ostracized, and died finally of starvation. It was a time when unconventional patterns of thought, of unconventional expression, could have dire consequences.

The name Normandy comes to mind, and the name Abelard. The dream came to remind Ruburt of those connections, but also to remind him that his life even then was enriched by a long-held love relationship. The two corresponded frequently, met often, and in their ways conspired to alter many of the practices that were abhorrent yet held as proper church policy.

The dream representing his grandfather symbolically allowed him to go back to the past in this life, to a time of severe shock—his grandfather’s death—which occurred when he was beginning to substitute scientific belief for religious belief, wondering if his grandfather’s consciousness then fell back into a mindless state of being, into chaos, as science would certainly seem to suggest.

In the dream his grandfather revives. His grandfather survived in a suit too large, which means that there was still room for him to grow (as I’d suggested to Jane ). He [Ruburt] had a small experience of hearing a voice speak in his mind [yesterday]—a voice of comfort, all he remembered of quite legitimate assistance he received from other personalities connected with the French life, that came as a result of the French dream.

(Bill was still alternately sleeping and preening himself beside me on the couch, as he’d been doing all through the session. His coat is glossy and beautiful. I admired the tender loving care with which he addressed himself to each portion of his body.

(I suggested to Jane that she see what she might be able to pick up on her own about the French life. I mentioned that Normandy province is in the northwestern corner of France, some 20 miles across the channel from England. I’ve read that it’s predominantly rural in character, and thought that it was probably even more so back in the l6th century. It could have been a grim, if beautiful, setting.