“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Actually, Jane continued, she found the material on probabilities intellectually stimulating, while wondering about its emotional connotations — the inferences that she was but one of countless billions of creatures, “blinking on and off like lights in all of those probable worlds …” What value was there to the tiny individual? she asked herself.

There was a constant give-and-take between the individual animal and the mass herd consciousness, so we are not speaking of a condition in which the individual animal was controlled.

It is quite possible, for example, for several selves to occupy a body, and were this the norm it would be easily accepted. That implies another kind of multipersonhood, however, one actually allowing for the fulfillment of many abilities of various natures usually left unexpressed. It also implies a freedom and organization of consciousness that is unusual in your system of reality, and was not chosen there.

(“I’ve got a few questions,” I said after she’d rested a bit. “I was going to ask them during the delivery, but I’m afraid to hear the answers — at least to the first two.” I was only half joking. I’d had the first question in mind since Seth had come through with the 679th session two weeks ago:

(Pause, eyes wide, staring at me.) Now for your dream. You are of course making contact with your mother. She is beginning to stir, as you surmised. Ruburt’s (written) comments about the dream are also pertinent, showing your own caution. None of these encounters have been normally emotional ones, for example, but glimpses in which there was no communication in ordinary terms.

You have the assurance that your mother continues to exist. As far as a relationship is concerned, however, you are looking at her from a distance. She is still wondering — that is, she is able to identify with other portions of you than she was during life. She does not want to frighten you, now, with an emotional display, so distance is being used on both of your parts.⁵

(“It sure doesn’t start out like a book to me,” Jane said. “It doesn’t seem to be simple, like the others. Maybe this time he’s going to go ahead and do it his own way … I can honestly say that the title was completely unknown to me.” She smiled at her unwitting pun on “Unknown” Reality. “Are you ready to start a new book, Rob?”

(“If it’s a source book for me, it can be for others, too.” I added that I didn’t care how “tough” or difficult a book it might be — if such was needed to get Seth’s ideas across, then okay. Again, I had to laugh at Jane. It was obvious that she was pleased with this new project, that the successes of Seth Speaks and Personal Reality had given her a strong confidence in Seth’s and her own abilities; yet she was starting right in with questions:

As I write this note, I’m struck by a curious connection I feel but find almost impossible to explain in words, let alone simply — that while Seth’s mention of “another book” in Session 657 may refer to “Unknown” Reality, it’s also echoed in the first question I asked Jane at break in tonight’s session. Yet how can this be, I wonder, since when the 683rd session was held I didn’t have Session 657 in mind; and when the 657th was delivered I had no ordinary way of knowing I’d have the question to ask in the 683rd. I’m unwilling to ascribe the “conventional” notions of precognition or retrocognition to such a tenuous relationship between the two sessions. Such odd connections have arisen before in the Seth material. Usually I simply recognize their existence and my inability to think clearly about them, and go on from there.

5. This “margin of safety” between my mother and me is beautifully illustrated in my dream of two nights ago. And as if to further reassure my conscious mind, I saw my mother with people who were still “living”; this has been the case in other recent dream experiences I’ve had with her. Here’s the relevant portion of the description I wrote for Through My Eyes: “Then I saw my mother [Stella] between my brother Linden and his wife, all separated each from the other a little bit, all walking obliquely toward me across a featureless plain. Everything was in brilliant color. The three figures were cut off at their waists, as though I saw them on a screen. My mother didn’t speak to me or look directly at me; like the others, she faced just past my left shoulder.

“Linden and his wife were close to their present physical ages in the dream, a year or so younger than I am, at 54, but Stella looked to be a few years younger than she should have been [she died at 81]. I know I created my dream image of her to make our communication understandable to me — yet I felt that she was alive, in our terms and in hers. My mother was obviously in control of her faculties, even though she appeared to be a little distraught … The fact that she looked past me speaks of some sort of barrier, or distance, between us even in the dream state. This could be for my own protection, I think….”