“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane’s delivery was rather slow as the session started.)

The atoms, while behaving properly within the system, and seeming to adhere to its rules and assumptions, nevertheless actually straddle probabilities. Your time structures, then, are intimately connected with probable action and fields of actuality. In your terms, for example, it would seem as if Joseph could not have seen that house for sale until after a given series of events had occurred. It would seem as if all of this was dependent upon earlier events: his mother’s prior meeting with Mr. Markle years ago, when both were young; her daydreams and fantasies in later years; her own death; Mr. Markle’s old age, and his own abandonment of the home.

(10:00.) In your terms it seems that all of that had to happen before the house was put up for sale, so that Joseph, passing by only a few days ago, could see the sign and decide to look at the house. In much more basic terms all events exist at once, even as atoms and molecules appear at once in all probable positions. The body, behaving in time, uses a time structure and acts in it naturally as its “constant” structure endures in time. So in that framework time was experienced — and using that organizational structure, time seems to unite those events.

Give us a moment … Those events then arise into significance³ because of the peculiar kind of organization chosen. Other quite-as-valid events do not seem significant — they do not rise into perception, or reality. They exist, however. In one reality, for example, Joseph’s mother married Mr. Markle. Joseph inherited the home. In that reality Mr. Markle died before Joseph’s mother did, so there was no need for a Joseph, here, to even look for a house; he had one. In that reality Joseph did not marry Ruburt. And in this reality [the one you and Ruburt know] Ruburt instinctively felt apart from that house.

(“Can I ask a question?” I disliked interrupting the flow of material, but this was a good time to mention what had been on my mind since Monday night.)

I made it clear that the decision rested with Joseph and Ruburt. But more than that, the whole question of a house of that kind brought into their own lives questions of values and prerogatives that were of great importance. They needed to encounter their own positions on such issues. Joseph was unconsciously aware of the first house [of the two in Sayre], and could have chosen not to drive down that particular street, for example. Both he and Ruburt have thought relatively little about money or social status. They have lived an apartment life instead, with little care for appearances. Yet there is always pressure in your society toward the acquisition of fashionable homes, and material possessions are often considered the medal of ability.

Give us a moment … Financially, Ruburt and Joseph were beginning to do well. Only then did conventional ideas come to the forefront. Those ideas themselves emotionally attracted certain aspects of Joseph’s mother. Quite simply, in her terms, she wanted her son to do well, and to her that meant possessing an excellent home. Period. On her part it was an innocent enough ambition.

The episode also mirrored his beliefs, for to his way of thinking he would have to relinquish certain freedoms, and this he was not ready to do. The events basically exist at once, though at your level you have to perceive them in time. As your intimate daily reality can be involved with and colored by probabilities, brought into your experience by your own desires and beliefs, so is your mass culture, world history, and species orientation colored by probable events that do not fit into your officially recognized idea of physical reality.

(A one-minute pause.) The greatest scientific discoveries are always “accidents.” They come from intuitional creativity, when suddenly a new kind of significance is seen that was not “earlier” predictable. You accept all data that fit your theories, and ignore clues to the contrary. Yet underneath it all you are significance-making creatures, pattern-formers, immersed in time but basically apart from it, and so new insights come into your awareness and literally change the quality of any given reality at any given time.

(10:34. Jane, in a deep trance, had spoken for over an hour. I told her I thought “Unknown” Reality was excellent. “But I’m out of it on this one,” she said, explaining that she didn’t know it well consciously, had little idea of its structure, and couldn’t particularly say what was to come in it. In contrast, her involvement with Seth’s last book, Personal Reality, had been much more intimate during its production.

(We discussed the general implications of Seth’s material on my mother — that she was not only “alive” after her “death,” but that a portion of her was focused upon Jane and me. Jane had allowed Seth to talk about the whole situation in a more personal way than she usually does; the result is that we already have more data on Stella Butts than on the earlier deaths of Jane’s own parents [in 1971 and 1972], for instance.⁴ We knew that Seth wouldn’t continue describing my mother and her present reality indefinitely; such a study could easily grow into a book by itself. In addition, Jane holds deeply felt convictions about giving material on survival personalities; the information in Appendix 10 has a bearing here. I also think that Seth will be able to say more on the beliefs behind her feelings as this book progresses.

Joseph’s mother is not only alive in another level of reality, but still learning. She is quite aware, therefore, of his decision not to buy the [Markle] house.⁵ In her level of reality, she was aware of the fact that Joseph wanted the house strongly; that one portion of him thought of possessing a large home, even though this would require upkeep and attention that another part of him did not want to provide because he felt it would take too much time from his painting and our work.

(11:00. Book work was over for the evening. Jane paused in trance, then proceeded to deliver a good amount of material on several other matters. The session ended at 11:43 P.M.)

5. A note added 10 months later: There were many house ramifications to come, though, concerning not only Mr. Markle’s place in Sayre but some here in Elmira, where Jane and I live. In ordinary terms, we could hardly have expected such a mass of “house connections” to develop. The events took place while Seth-Jane was producing Section 6 for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, and are described there in some detail; they also provide nearly ideal links between the two volumes.