“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Today I showed Jane the finished version of my “ghost image” portrait of her as a male in another probability. The painting represented a new approach in art for me, and had caused me a good deal of puzzlement at first. I began it early in February. I won’t take the space to describe the series of mistaken efforts I went through in producing the work, except to say that finally I came to the rather simple conscious understanding that I was trying to paint a probable Jane. All at once, as I watched her delivering the 684th session on February 20, I saw strong resemblances between my painting and certain poses she repeatedly took while in trance.

(Then came Jane’s projection-probability experience involving her home town of Saratoga Springs; she described this episode in her notes preceding the 685th session, in Section 1, and Seth elaborated upon it considerably in the next session. The ghostly qualities in that event fit in with what I was trying to do in the painting: By leaving the thick gray and white underpainting of my “portrait” of “Jane” without color, I realized, I could express not only a probable interpretation of her, but the colorless qualities of the Saratoga experience itself. Once I made those conscious connections I was able to finish the painting very easily. I intend to do more work in this manner.

(A rather humorous note: Jane has decided that she prefers to continue with the scheduled Wednesday sessions, instead of switching them to Thursday night. Television on Wednesday night doesn’t offer that many attractions after all. Besides, she said, tonight she “felt stuff around, about cells and prayer, and things like that”, she announced that she wanted to hold the session.

(Pause at 10:26. I got Jane a beer while she sat waiting in trance.)

(I had to smile. After about 30 seconds Jane, as Seth, was already waiting to continue.)

(10:59. Jane delivered all of this material in a most forceful manner)

(11:50. Jane’s trance had been profound. She was amazed to learn that it had lasted for over two hours; actually, she had run through the whole session without a break. “It’s still a different kind of trance,” she said, “and once you’re in it, it’s better to stay there. But it’s exhilarating in ways that I can’t explain.

(Jane decided to “wait a second” at 11:55, to see if she should resume the session. Then we declared an end to it at 12:05 A.M. Actually, I was the one who was bleary. Jane felt fine; she told me that she could cheerfully continue the session for another two hours. I was tempted, but …)

3. This little note fits in here for two reasons: Jane’s pause, and Seth’s discussion of our kind of time. Here’s what I wrote at 9:55 in the 24th session for February 10, 1964: “Jane reports that when she pauses for Seth during a delivery, she can sense the whole concept of the subject being discussed. Subjectively, it appears to ‘hang over her.’ Since on those occasions it’s too much to handle at once, however, she feels Seth withdrawing it, to release it to her a little at a time in the form of connected words.”

And added later: Also in that session, Seth describes how he must “disentangle concepts” from their patterns in order to relate them through Jane. His material on this will be given in an appendix for Session 711, in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality. In that appendix I assemble from various sessions information on the complex relationships involving Jane-Ruburt-Seth (and also Rob-Joseph).

9. At once Seth’s material reminded me of a novel about dolphins that Jane worked on in 1963. Her first book-length fiction, The Rebellers, had been published (as a paperback) that summer, and she was experimenting with several new ideas. A couple of months before these sessions began in late November of that year, she wrote an outline and five chapters for a novel about the development of communications between mankind and cetaceans, and called it To Hear A Dolphin. We hadn’t realized it at the time, of course, but it embodied some of the ideas Seth was to enlarge upon in his own material. Jane had time to show her manuscript to one publisher — who rejected it — before the Seth material got under way. To Hear A Dolphin was then laid aside, evidently for good. We still talk about it every so often; we still think its basic premises are good ones. Yet were she to do the book now, Jane says, she’d have to rewrite it completely.