SESSION 699

(The moods of relaxation that Jane has been experiencing often since early this month seemed to have passed, at least for now. The evening was very warm as we waited for tonight’s session to start. I reminded Jane of the two questions I’d put off from Monday’s abbreviated session, but Seth made only a brief reference to them at the end of tonight’s material.)

(10:50. Jane’s state of dissociation had been excellent, her delivery rather fast around the indicated pauses. She said that Seth’s last remark came about because at the supper table this evening she’d told me, as she has before, that she still hasn’t read this book straight through, and has little idea of its organization. [See the appropriate note at 10:34 in the 694th session.] Then, as we ate, Jane had asked me once again if “Unknown” Reality had any organization — or purpose: “Where’s Seth going with it?” I suggested she forget such worries and let the work come out in its own way, explaining that portions of these notes were concerned with recording the circumstances surrounding just that procedure.

(After the end of break at 11:17, Seth came through with a fairly long block of material on another matter. He closed out the session at 11:43 P.M. with this line about the questions I had waiting for him: “I bid you a fond good evening — and I know when your material will fit.” Since I take this to mean that some time may pass before the questions enter into the scheme of this book, I’ll briefly note their subjects below.

(1. Seth’s reference, after 9:27 in the 697th session, to our race as “a conscious species. “I wanted to get his comments as to how, in our terms at least, we could be in a state other than a “conscious” one. I had trouble visualizing such a situation.⁵

(2. A photograph of Jane and her parents, Marie and Delmer. It was taken in the summer of 1932, when Jane was 3 years old, and as far as we know it’s the only one of the Roberts family in existence. I anticipated hearing what Seth would say about some of the probable paths since taken by the photograph’s three subjects. I’ve had the question in mind ever since Seth discussed separate, childhood snapshots of Jane and me in the same terms during the first session for “Unknown” Reality. [See the 679th session, with the notes relevant to Jane and her family background. In that session, Seth told us that the 12 year old Jane in the photo under discussion was to become probable to the one I eventually met and married.] Beside whatever Seth could tell us about her parents, I was curious to know whether the Jane who was shown at the age of 3 might be — or was destined to become — another probable Jane.⁶)

NOTES: SESSION 699

1. Seth’s evocative material on dream images reminded me of an equally evocative poem about the dreaming self that Jane wrote in 1965, a year and a half or so after the sessions began. I’ve always wanted to see the poem published; I think it very rich in both subject matter and visual content.

2. See Appendix 11 for Session 698.

3. See Note 2 for the 695th session.

4. In Appendix 4 for Session 685, Jane wrote of her attempts while in the dream state to sort out multidimensional, probable data of her own, and of how they collected for processing in sidepools of experience “before flowing into the ‘official pool of consciousness.’” Then, she added a bit later, through bypassing direct neurological activity, and using the “side pockets or pools where data are still unprocessed … you can pick up several other strands of consciousness ‘at once,’ though retention may be difficult.”

And, of course, while writing this note I found that Seth’s material in tonight’s 699th session, as well as Jane’s in the whole of Appendix 4, are very reminiscent of what I call double dreaming. See the 692nd session, with its Note 2.

5. A note added better than five months later: Seth did answer the question — in the 718th session, Section 5, Volume 2.