“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Seth had quite a bit to say! “A fond and exasperated good evening,” he began. “The exasperation comes because your good psychologist almost undermined the confidence I managed to give Ruburt in our session with your friend, Phillip. I tried to build Ruburt’s confidence, and some stranger tore it down. His intentions were of the best, but I suppose that I must now feel obligated—and I do—to go into the matter of mental and emotional stability and any dangers to such stability that might be involved here.

“The slight evidence of telepathy I gave you had a purpose. I wanted to show you that telepathy did exist, and I wanted to show Ruburt that more than his own subconscious as he knows it was involved. … Now Ruburt assembles me or allows me to assemble myself in a way that will be recognizable to you, but regardless of this, I exist in an independent manner.”

Later elaborations on the above statement gave us a pretty fair idea of what inner processes go on so that Seth and I can make contact. This involves the construction of a “psychological bridge” that will be explained later in this book. At this point I’d been speaking as Seth for about forty minutes, and he recommended a rest period, saying: “Sometime between now and twenty-five years of laying your doubts at rest, I would like to go into some other matters that I have been trying to tackle for several sessions. But take your rest, pussies.”

I used to envy Rob his viewpoint of the sessions. He could see and hear me as Seth and I couldn’t. Now during break I questioned him again. I hated to have to depend on someone else to tell me what was going on, but I had learned one thing: I couldn’t be Jane and Seth at once. For Seth to come through I had to stop such mental quibbling—at least temporarily.

After break Seth said, “Again, I am not Ruburt’s subconscious, though I speak through it. It is the atmosphere through which I can come to you, as the air is the atmosphere through which a bird flies. … A certain reassembly of myself is necessary. This is done partially by me and partially by the combined subconscious efforts of you and Ruburt. Will this satisfy you for now?”

Finally, Rob asked Seth if he knew what was wrong. The reply was that Willie’s very acute senses picked up Seth’s presence just before session time. He told us that the cat’s behavior would change as Willie became more accustomed to the situation. A month or so later, Willie became himself again. Now he pays no attention to the sessions, and even occasionally jumps into my lap when I’m in trance.

I’ve devoted some time and space to the early Seth sessions so that the reader could become acquainted with part of the material as it was given to us. Some of it seems so rudimentary to us now that it’s difficult to recall the amazement we felt at the time. It was the continuing sense of discovery and intellectual curiosity that led us on, and that finally resolved my own doubts.