“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“She sees herself supported in a religious sense by conventional figures from the Bible. These personalities will explain the nature of reality to her in vocabulary that will make sense to her. Again, she has solved the problems that she set, and brought forth in her husband compassion and understanding, qualities that greatly help in his own development.

During our break, Rob mentioned several questions that he thought Jon would like answered, or that might come to his mind as he read the session. One had to do with the kind of body Sally had at her disposal. Seth said, “Now the new body is, of course, not a new one at all, but simply a body not physical in your terms, one that you use in astral projections, one that gives the vitality and strength to the physical body that you know.

A few days after this session we were visited by a retired minister and his wife. Rev. Lowe, as I’ll call him, publishes a national newsletter which discusses the psychic elements of Christianity. We had been corresponding for a few years, but had not met. I told him about Jon’s session, and he was very interested in what Seth had to say about Sally’s experience while in coma.

Rev. Lowe and his wife came on a class night, and so of course I invited them to attend. I try to keep classes as informal as possible. Everyone is on a first-name basis, and each of us wears whatever clothing is most comfortable and natural. Men in business suits mix with people in hippie outfits, and we always have wine for those who like it. I admit I wondered what Rev. Lowe would think, and hoped he didn’t expect something like a prayer meeting. In our own way we do use prayer—but in a highly creative, unstructured, unconventional manner. Sometimes we play rock ‘n’ roll music, for instance, while I read a poem—and this I would consider prayer.

Suddenly Seth came through, saying: “And I thought you were on your good behavior because I was here! I will have to learn to be a reverend rock drummer, and I will keep the beat with you.” After this he spoke to various class members, and then invited Rev. Lowe to ask whatever questions came to his mind.

“You. If you are very tired, then you rest. If you are wise, you take time to digest your knowledge and plan your next life, even as a writer plans his next book. If you have too many ties with this reality or if you are too impatient, or if you have not learned sufficiently, then you may return too quickly. It is always up to the individual. There is no predestination. The answers are within yourself then, as the answers are within you now.”

The girls were all intelligent, bright, alert—and wary. They weren’t about to be taken in by any mumbo jumbo. At the same time they were intensely interested in Seth’s ideas that consciousness can be expanded safely and without drugs, using his methods. One girl, Lydia, was the most vocal of the group in her arguments against reincarnation.

As far as we know, this reconciliation of reincarnation and simultaneous time is original with Seth. Most other theories of reincarnation take the time sequence for granted. But what about cause and effect, then? When Seth introduced this idea, this is one of the first questions Rob and I thought of. Seth’s attitude toward cause and effect will become clear enough in his later explanations of the true nature of “time,” but when Rob first asked the question, Seth answered:

“Well, then why doesn’t Frank [not his real name] date and have ordinary relationships with women? He’s manly enough” she said. Then, almost with a touch of defiance she added, “He’s not effeminate.” And in this case, the main problem lay in “past life” troubles:

“He was a woman. His present parents were his brothers in the American Revolutionary period in the same geographical area as now. His brothers were involved as spies. Your Frank, as their sister, disclosed their hiding place in a cellar beneath an old inn. She was captured when she went out for supplies, gave away the location, and could not warn the brothers. She felt she had abandoned and betrayed them.”

Seth went on to say that in this life, Frank chose to return as the son of the two brothers who themselves are now man and wife. “Now he rationalizes his desire not to leave home. The brothers never held him responsible … they knew the girl had been terrified and spoken out of fear with no intent to betray them. There is no punishment involved. He has chosen in this life to be of service to them and to help others. His secrecy [he was very tight-lipped] is the result of these past experiences. Once he feels he spoke too much and betrayed too much. Now he is secretive about matters he considers important.”

Seth emphasized that for his own reasons, Frank did not want a marriage relationship, and ended by telling Doris that she had chosen him for this reason—that she never saw the man as he was, but only the image she had projected upon him. He gave Frank’s name in a past life as Achman incidentally, and much later Doris learned that his present family has an Achman branch.

Seth had previously given us some information about Matt, his publishing company, and his associates. And the next evening, when we were all more comfortable with each other, Seth came through and held an excellent session.

“So we find two lives devoted to the nurture of others. But in both cases the personality was filled with an inner dread, to some extent resenting those he helped. If he were out helping others, then who would mind the store? He was afraid his stock would be gone.

“In two other lives, there was instead the development of inner abilities to the exclusion of others, a closing down of windows and barring of doors. He would not look out, and no one dared look in. He would make horrible funny faces at the window of his soul to frighten others away. Yet through all of this, the inner abilities did grow. He ‘added to his stock.’

“Now he has begun to synthesize these inner and outer conditions. He realizes that the inner self need not be so heavily guarded, that his identity will not escape from him like a dog who leaves the leash. … Now, you see that I am a friendly chap, indeed, like an old dog with a long leash—”

Matt, for instance, was astonished by the character analysis which he said pegged him to a T. More, the crest mentioned by Seth was highly similiar, he told us, to his own private doodle that he sketched while on the phone or in odd moments. Another interesting point: a few years earlier the editor had written two plays—one featuring a monk who lived on the seacoast near Bordeaux, and the other also set in France in the thirteenth century. These facts, of course, were unknown to us.