“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I told her to come over, and Rob came out from his studio to take notes. During the proceedings I felt that I was the deceased woman, reliving an argument she once had with her husband. As the woman, I banged my fist up and down so hard on our table that Rob was afraid I’d break my hand. The argument was a violent one. The other personality took over rather completely, and Rob was actually concerned for my physical safety. I was able to “pull out” without any strained muscles or bruised bones—she was obviously used to a much larger and stronger body than mine—but since then Rob and I have been cautious.

Jim and Ann arrived about 10 P.M. Rob and I liked them at once. They were in their late twenties, intelligent, and, like us, informal. Over wine they told us about their son. “He was exceptionally bright,” Jim said. “He was fantastic, and I’m not just saying that because he was our child. From the start he was way above average, quick in his reactions, so much so that we were almost frightened in a way. And then, overnight, he died of aplastic anemia. No one even knows what causes it.”

What can you say in a situation like that? I wanted to help. I felt their terrific need, but I also realized that it was well-nigh impossible to prove life after death. Suppose I contacted the boy, or thought I had? How would this help? Instead of making them face the facts of his separation, couldn’t such an incident simply make things worse? And my own doubts rose: if subconscious playacting were involved …

That’s the last thing I remember saying as myself. The next moment Seth’s deep booming voice came rushing through me: “The boy was briefly with you for his own reasons. He was to enlighten you, and so he did. You have known him in past lives. At one time, he was his present father’s uncle.

“He did not mean to stay within physical reality. He only came to show you what was possible, and to bring you both to an understanding of inner reality. He chose his illness. It was not thrust upon him. He did not manufacture sufficient blood, for he did not want to be physical beyond the time he had allotted.

“He wanted to give you an impetus, and his effect was far stronger than had he lived, and he knew this. He had a horror of living to young malehood for he did not want to meet a young woman, become attracted, and continue with another physical life.

Now Seth was staring out through my open eyes. My gestures were his. He looked Jim right in the face as he talked. Ann and Rob both took notes. Phil just sat, listening.

“It is not time for you to run willy-nilly, looking for truth in any treetop. The truth is inside yourself. Your son is not a three-year-old any longer. He is an entity older than you, and he has tried to point out the way to you. … He was not a child taken before his promise was achieved, but a personality who left you when his own reincarnations were finished. He will not return, but go on now to another reality in which his abilities can be used to more advantage.”

At one point Seth smiled broadly and said, “Now, I have lived and died many times, and you can sense my vitality. And I tell you that the boy’s vitality exists in as vital terms. It would have been almost a penance for him to have stayed longer. You helped him ‘save his soul’ at one time [in a past life] and he was returning the favor. At one time he was tempted to use his abilities to gain power, and to use the priesthood for gain. On that occasion you stopped him.”

He suggested that Jim stay out of the acting field, because in his case it led to a confusion as to the nature of his own identity. Seth advised him to stay with communications, saying that if he continued in radio there would be another radio job, and then an emergence into another line of work.

More and more I have seen how reincarnation makes sense out of such apparently senseless tragedies, and provides an inner structure to situations that would otherwise seem chaotic and unjust. I was so pleased to be able to help Ann and Jim; and that session and others like it have helped me also by showing me the value of ideas that originally I could not accept. The same thing applies to Seth: I am literally amazed at his capacity to help others, at his psychological understanding, at all the abilities he draws upon and focuses in our sessions.

Another similar case, involving the death of a child, concerned a woman who attended a few of my classes. Her fifteen-year-old adopted son had drowned a few months earlier. Seth said in a session that the boy had been a sailor in several past lives and still regarded death by water as preferable to dying on land. The boy had been related to his foster mother in another life, and also returned to help her gain needed inner development. He died early so that his death would make her question, and search for answers. She had been running from medium to medium, trying to contact the boy. In no uncertain terms, Seth told her to stop this practice and to work for inner development instead.

Here is how this process works in a specific instance. Again, a phone call was involved, this time from a man I’ll call Jon who called me from another part of the country, right after my first book was published two years ago. Jon and his wife were both in their early twenties. I’ll call his wife Sally. After coming down with multiple sclerosis, Sally had been given about a year to live, and Jon wanted to ask Seth if anything could be done for her.

“The husband should follow this exercise three times a day: He should imagine the energy and vitality of the universe filling his wife’s form with health. This should not be a wishful-thinking sort of thing, but a definite effort to understand that her form is composed of this energy, and in this way he can help her use it to advantage. If possible, he should touch her during this exercise, and it should be done morning, evening, and night.

He recommended that Sally’s limbs be rubbed with peanut oil, and that iron be added to her diet. He emphasized that she would be happier in another room and said: “I believe you have a fairly small sunny parlor. This room has beneficial connotations for her. Let her be moved there.” In passing he spoke of several episodes in Sally’s present life, some that Jon corroborated in his next letter, and one in particular that he did not know about until Seth mentioned it. Seth said, for example, that she had worked in a five-and-dime store with a girl friend, and that a visit from this friend would be helpful. Jon didn’t know that Sally had worked in such a place, but her mother remembered.

“The woman was a male, Italian, in a hill village. He lost his wife and was left with a highly neurotic crippled daughter for whom he cared for many years. As a man, Sally was called Nicolo Vanguardi [Rob’s phonetic interpretation] and the daughter was named Rosalina. He resented the girl, and while he cared for her, he did not do so kindly.

“He wanted to remarry, but no one would have him because of the daughter. When she could, she defied him. She was a handsome-looking young woman, crippled but not deformed. When she was in her thirties, she was more youthful appearing than many women much younger who had to work in the fields. They had a small farm, and itinerant help. A widowed man with no children came from a nearby village to help out on the farm. He fell in love with her, and despite her condition, took her to his home village.

“The father [Sally in the past life] was thoroughly embittered. The daughter had left too late; he was too old; no one would have him, and now he had no one even to talk to. He hated his daughter the more and railed that she had forsaken him in his old age, after he had cared for her.”

“This time Sally plays that part, and is completely immersed in it. Jon was the man with whom the daughter left in the past life. Now Sally loves him, and has learned to see the good points of his personality.

“Through the change of roles, Sally now gains insight on past failures, and also helps her present husband to become more contemplative and to seek answers to questions that he would not have asked otherwise. She is adding to his development and also working out serious flaws that existed in her own personality.”

Seth answered, “This is characteristic of that entity, an impatience and yet a daring, because the situation represented such a challenge. All the weak points are intensified, hence the gravity of the physical situation. The entity preferred this, rather than a series of smaller difficulties. In this, Jon subconsciously acquiesced, to learn patience and forbearing—to take what he considered his medicine all in one dose, so to speak.”