“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Your mother loved physical reality and took the greatest pleasure in its most minute aspects, for all of her complaints. Your father loved it but never trusted it. Each of your parents had their strongest reality, this time, and in your terms, in a probable system of reality — and here (in this reality) they were offshoots. To them this system always seemed strange.²

In another system of reality your father was — in fact, still is — a well-known inventor, who never married but used his mechanically creative abilities to the fullest while avoiding emotional commitment. He met Stella (my mother). They were going to be married — and in terms of years, the same years are involved, historically. At one time, then, in your father’s past as you think of it, having met Stella, he did not marry her after all. His love was for machinery, the speed of motorcycles, mixing creativity with metal. At that point of intersection, equal desires and intents within him became like twin nuclei. Whole regroupings of energy occurred, psychological and psychic implosions, so that two equally valid personalities were aware in a world in which only one could live at a time.

(Some quick figuring showed us that the 50’s for my mother had encompassed the years 1942–51. From my present viewpoint I had no idea if she’d consciously or unconsciously experienced any influx of energy resulting from the death of a probable self during that decade. In those days the Buttses didn’t think in such terms, for one thing; for another, I was absent from the family home in Sayre for much of that time. In 1947, for example, when my mother was 55 years old, I was 28 and living in New York City. I wasn’t to meet Jane for five years. And even if Stella Butts were still living, I think it would be difficult to question her about an event that would have taken place approximately a quarter of a century ago.

(As we talked, Jane decided to go back into trance; she was getting so many “bleed-throughs” on the material herself that she was beginning to feel consciously confused. But Seth had all the data there, she said, if she had the time to give it. Resume at 10:45.)

(To me again:) Your birth (in 1919) coincided with the birth of your mother’s child in that other reality, hence her stronger feelings toward you. Your birth, and that of your youngest brother (Richard) were highly charged for her — yours for the reasons just given, and your brother’s because it represented the time of your mother’s hysterectomy in that other reality. In this reality, Richard’s birth represented your father’s final attempt to deal with emotional reality. Both of your parents imbued the third son with the strongest emotional qualities of their natures. Your mother had him defiantly, after the usual childbirth age (she was 36) almost reacting against that [probable] hysterectomy. In this world, she could and would have another child.

2. I think that as a child I often sensed my parents’ feelings of strangeness about this reality, although I was quite unable to express myself in those terms. Perhaps I’m reinterpreting old memories in the light of Seth’s material here. Consciously, however, I knew nothing then about probable realities or the power of belief; I was just acutely aware of the unending differences of opinion between my mother and father, and of my unformed questions about the reasons for their behavior; at the same time I saw them struggling to live like others I knew. I don’t think I even discussed my confused feelings with my brothers as we grew older. On several occasions Seth has given very blunt, very perceptive interpretations of the churning relationship involving my parents. That material is too long and complex to excerpt here, but I’d like to treat it separately sometime.

Returning east to Sayre, Pa., he opened his auto-repair and battery shop. (Again, see Note 9 for the 679th session.) Through our early school years Linden and I had part-time “jobs” at our father’s shop, and many chances to watch him work. I think that his exacting mechanical abilities are reflected in Linden’s very realistic models, and are transmuted in the methods I use to solidly “construct” my paintings and to keep the records for the Seth material.

From the 15th session for January 13: “Imagination allows you to enter into these planes … Pretend that you not only understand your cat’s concept of time to some degree, but could also experience his sense of time through the cat [Willy] himself. In doing this you would in no way bother, inhibit, or annoy the cat. He would not be aware of your presence. Nor could this be represented as any sort of invasion.

5. Jane is now working on the final draft of her own theoretical work on psychic matters, Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. She started Adventures in July, 1971, and has stayed with it through all of her other writing projects. It’s first mentioned (as Adventures in Consciousness) in Chapter 21 of Seth Speaks; see the 587th session. In her glossary for Adventures Jane defines the living area as “The ‘paths’ our lives follow from birth to death.”

6. Jane covers our York Beach “dancing episode” in Chapter 2 of The Seth Material, and also quotes information Seth gave us on it in later sessions. The mystifying event took place during our vacation in York Beach, Maine, in August, 1963, a few months before Jane began to speak for Seth. At the time we understood little of what happened; yet the event represented a key episode at the very beginning of our psychic education; for in a crowded, smoky hotel barroom Jane and I unknowingly created physical “personality fragments” of ourselves — then came face to face with them. In the 9th session for December 18, 1963, Seth explained what we had been up to, and called our creations “fragments of our selves, thrown-off materializations of your own negative and aggressive feelings.” (Naturally, the more Seth told us about the human ability to generate such forms, the more questions we had!) In that 9th session Seth also used his term, “probable self,” for the first time.