“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(One of the events we’ve been preparing for is the visit tomorrow of Tam Mossman, Jane’s editor at Prentice-Hall, Inc. He plans to attend ESP class tomorrow night, then stay over Wednesday to read and discuss the two works Jane has in progress, Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology, and “Unknown” Reality. Tam will also look at my first rough sketches for Jane’s book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time.¹ Then on Wednesday night he’ll witness the scheduled 706th session. If Seth comes through with material for “Unknown” Reality, Tam will be the first “outsider” to sit in on a session for this work. Almost always Jane dictates book material without witnesses other than myself and uses the framework of ESP class for emotional interactions involving herself, Seth, and others. That rather formal division in her trance activities suits us well; we enjoy doing most of our work by ourselves, no matter what kind it may be.

(The 704th session was held a week ago. In it Seth gave the heading for Section 4, just before finishing his evening’s work with a few minutes of personal information for Jane and me. He’s remarked more than once that he’ll close a session by dictating the heading for the next chapter, or whatever, “so that Ruburt [Jane] knows what I am doing. It gives him confidence.” But I’d say his procedure also helps satisfy Jane’s spontaneous impatience about learning what’s coming next in the material.

(In this case, though, too much time passed between sessions. The regularly scheduled session for last Wednesday night wasn’t held while we made ready for several approaching events, and as the days went by Jane [and I] simply forgot about what was coming up in “Unknown” Reality. I read her the heading for Section 4 now, while we waited for Seth to come through “I haven’t the vaguest idea, even, of what all that means,” she said. Usually a certain kind of serene existence makes the best kind of day-by-day framework for these sessions and our other creative work, even while those days may contain within them points of unusual interest or excitement [such as Jane’s weekly ESP class]. But given that right kind of equanimity, time — our ordinary time — slides by; then, looking back periodically, we discover that we’ve accomplished at least something of what we wanted to do.

(10:02.) Give us a moment … So-called future developments of your species are now dependent upon your ideas and beliefs. This applies genetically in personal terms. For instance, if you believe that you can live to a healthy and happy old age, well into your nineties, then even in Western civilization you will do so. Your emotional intent and your belief will direct the functioning of your cells and (emphatically) bring out in them those properties and inherent abilities that will ensure such a condition. There are groups of people in isolated places who hold such beliefs, and in all such cases the body responds. The same applies to the race — or the species, to be more exact. There is an inexhaustible creativity within the cells themselves, that you are not using as a species because your beliefs lag so far behind your innate biological spirituality and wisdom. Your ideas are beginning to change. But unless you alter your framework you will continue to emphasize medical and technological manipulation. Period. In isolated cases this will show you some of the results possible on a physical basis alone. However, such techniques will not work in mass terms, or allow you, say, to prolong effective, productive life unless you change your beliefs in other areas also, and learn the inner dynamics of the psyche.

[...] The appendix, however kept growing as I worked on it; I found myself adding quotations from other sessions, along with comments derived from my own reading and from conversations Jane and I had on the subject.

(Our beliefs and intents cause us to pick “from an unpredictable group of actions,” or probabilities, those that we want to happen, as Seth tells us in the 681st session in Volume 1; therefore, from my physically oriented probability the considerable work I’ve put into this paper is an examination of evolution in connection with a number of Seth’s concepts. [...]

(Even so, as I worked on this appendix I wondered again and again why I was investing so much time in it. [...]

[...] Instead, he assigned the pain and suffering in the world to the impersonal workings of natural selection and chance variation [or genetic mutation]. [...]