“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Seth did give much unexpected material about the brain — and about his own reality, incidentally — but the session turned out to be so long and closely interrelated that I found it very difficult to excerpt; most of the portions I picked out were left hanging, or were too incomplete. Naturally, Seth said what he said from his own viewpoint. I ended up choosing the few quotations gathered together here just to indicate the direction of the information, while hoping that the entire session, with others promised on the subject by Seth, will be published some day.

(Sometimes, though, I find it quite a challenge to excerpt a number of sessions to illuminate a particular one. I want the passages chosen to make sense on their own, out of context, and to focus clearly on the subject; at the same time, I don’t want to include too many or too few of my own notes. But in this appendix, at least, I discovered that it wasn’t always possible to achieve both of those goals just as I wanted to — not in connection with each point mentioned. It also became inevitable that at least some elements of Seth’s own “separate-but-connected” reality would have to be considered. In addition to those concerns, on occasion I found myself rearranging the quoted discussions a bit — although really to a minor degree — for even greater brevity and clarity. So here’s how it all worked out:

(I finally decided that the best way to present the variety of material desired, whether from Seth, Jane, or myself, was in chronological order, letting a composite picture emerge as the work progresses. This system automatically makes room for any references in Volume 1. In actuality the chronology begins long before “Unknown” Reality was started, and continues well beyond the date of its ending, in April 1975. Since the excerpts are still more representative than complete, however, due to the accumulated mass of information available, my own choices enter in: ESP class data are quoted a number of times; included is material summarizing Jane’s own theories about the Seth phenomena, as she worked them out in her recently completed Adventures in Consciousness; but reincarnation, while mentioned often, isn’t stressed in terms of particulars — that is, I refer to Seth’s statements that he, Jane and I led closely involved lives in Denmark in the 1600’s, but those lives aren’t studied per se. Within our ordinary context of linear time I think of reincarnation, even though in Seth’s terms it’s really a simultaneous phenomenon, as being further away, or more removed, from us physical creatures than the more “immediate” psychic connections and mechanics I want to show as linking Seth, Jane, and myself. And also because of that sense of removal, Seth Two¹ is hardly mentioned at all.

… and Ruburt did get a rather embarrassing flash from me before the session. I blush to admit the fact, but at one time I did call you Yo-Yo (see the excerpts for the 27th session).

(Now I’ll refer the reader to Chapter 20 of Jane’s The Seth Material. She called the chapter “Personal Evaluations — Who or What is Seth?” In it she made a number of excellent points concerning her relationship with Seth and Seth Two; for example: “If physical life evolves [in ordinary terms], why not consciousness itself?” The questions we had at the time can be found throughout the chapter. Indeed, we still have many of them — or, I should note, we’re still intrigued by the latest versions of those “old” questions, for like consciousness itself they’re endless in their ramifications. But here I want to call attention mainly to the excerpt in Chapter 20 that Jane presented from the 458th session for January 20, 1969. Seth discussed the psychological bridge Jane and he have created between themselves for purposes of communication; yet most of his material came through in response to my question about his availability to us. “We [Rob and I] both know that some sessions seem more ‘immediate’ than others, and now as Seth continued we saw why,” Jane wrote in Chapter 20. Seth, briefly, from the 458th session:)

(Now here’s an excerpt from the 458th session that wasn’t given in Chapter 20. It concerns witnesses asking questions of Seth during a session.)

(From here on I’ll start occasionally presenting excerpts from a few of the sessions Jane has delivered in her ESP class.²⁵ I’ve saved some of this material for a considerable time. More often than not I wasn’t present when Seth produced his material, and in all cases it was recorded by students; Jane meets with them on Tuesday evening, when I’m usually occupied typing Monday night’s private session [or book material, often] from my own notes.

(Seth, then, would be a message from the source self except that in this case the messenger is the message, formed into a richly “worded” psychological structure instead of into dry words on, say, a telegram. Seth in sessions would stand for Jane’s Seth Aspect, who does indeed exist in a different kind of reality than ours. But that “invisible” Seth would send out an actual psychological structure that takes over in place of Jane’s, as her own structure voluntarily steps aside during sessions. Earlier in this appendix, see the excerpts on the psychological bridge from the 242nd session.

(The following excerpt is from an ESP class session that Seth delivered three months after the 711th session [which inspired this appendix] was held on October 9, 1974. As noted much earlier, the chronology for our study of the Jane-Ruburt-Seth relationship “begins long before ‘Unknown’ Reality was started, and continues well beyond the date of its ending in April 1975.” Very soon, then, the quotations to come reach beyond that date: They’re usually short, and are from a mixture of class, regular, and private [or “deleted”] sessions. With an exception or two they contain material that ordinarily might not have been published for several years — if ever. But all of them contribute insights into the subject under consideration.

4. In the 14th session Seth came through with some very valuable remarks about his concepts of time — “It is therefore still a reality of some kind to me,” for instance. Because I’ve always thought those insights well worth repeating, I quoted them in the Introduction for Volume 1 (and, added later, following Session 724 in Volume 2). Now let me further excerpt Seth from that 14th session: “You mentioned earlier, Joseph, that you had the feeling I could refer back to myself almost as if I could turn a later page of a book to an earlier one, and of course this is the case.” With a smile: “Viewing a historical moment through your marvelous television, you can refer to much that has passed, [but] one minute of such a referral costs you one minute of present time. Also you end up short-changed: You give up your precious moment in the present, but you do not have a complete (my emphasis) moment in the past to show for it … When I refer back to myself, I do not expend an identical moment of time in doing so.”

11. In this appendix, I’m quoting certain portions of the 28th session to make certain points. In Chapter 5 of The Seth Material however, Jane presented much longer excerpts from the same session in order to explain her own views.

17. For many readers Seth’s remarks about the anima and the animus will require a bit of explaining. Carl Jung (1875–1961), the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, postulated that the unconscious of the male contains a female, archetypal (or typical, instinctive) figure called the “anima”; the correlative male form in the unconscious of the female Jung called the “animus.” In Session 119, then, Seth comments on how Jane herself has an animus — the hidden male within — and on how Ruburt, that larger “male” entity of which she is a “self-conscious part,” contains an anima, or hidden female. (See the excerpts in this appendix from the 83rd session.) The contrasts are most interesting. From this information I infer that the entity or whole self of each of us, regardless of our current, individual sexual orientation, contains its own counterbalancing male or female quality, whichever the case may be. Seth hasn’t said so yet — nor have we asked him — but I suspect that an energy gestalt like the entity is much more aware than we can be of its “hidden” opposite-sex form — or forms; for there may be many of them.

Two notes in connection with the excerpts from the 83rd session: 1. The famous professional break between Freud and the younger Jung occurred in 1931: Seth’s material touches upon the divergent psychological paths taken by each of them. 2. The libido is regarded as the sexual urge or instinct — positive, loving, psychic energy that shows itself in changing ways as the individual matures. Seth:

Seth actually initiated his material on the psychological bridge in the last (241st) session. However, I chose to excerpt the 242nd session on the subject because of the information it also contains on the ego and survival personalities in general.

23. The 241st session, mentioned in Note 22, is one of those we hope to publish in full, for in it Seth discussed how the psychological bridge helps Jane “translate” his telepathic material. The information came through in connection with our envelope tests and those for Dr. Instream, both sets of which were in mid-course then, in March 1966. (See the account of Jane’s “year of testing” and the excerpts from sessions 179–80.)

“Egotistically, you make arbitrary designations of necessity, perceiving only portions of any given action: again, the ego attempting to separate itself from overall action, and to see itself as an entirely independent structure.” (See the excerpts from the 242nd session.)

26. Although in that 1971 class Seth stressed his experiences with the human condition through reincarnation, in 1964 he’d had this to say: “To me this [reincarnational and family material] is all so obvious that I almost hesitate to mention it, but this is because I tend to forget what human experience on your plane actually involves.” (See the excerpts from the 27th session in this appendix.) In that early session Seth spoke to me alone; in class he faced a large group. I’d say that from his position or focus as an “energy personality essence” both attitudes are true, rather than contradictory — and that one or the other predominated according to the circumstances and subject matter of the session involved. I don’t think the time gap between the two sessions — seven years — was a factor.

30. In this appendix, see the excerpts from sessions 54 and 58.

33. See Seth in the excerpts from the ESP class session for April 20, 1971: “I have a reservoir of personality banks upon which I can draw….”

34. Since Jane and I equate the “bits” of consciousness mentioned in this excerpt with Seth’s EE (electromagnetic energy) units and his CU’s (units of consciousness), see the references listed in Note 3 for Appendix 12.

35. Seth’s material in this excerpt reminded me strongly of certain passages of his (and mine) in the 702nd session in Volume 1: “As long as you think in terms of [subatomic] particles, you are basically off the track — or even when you think in terms of waves. The idea of interrelated fields comes closer, of course, yet even here you are simply changing one kind of term for one like it, only slightly different. In all of these cases you are ignoring the reality of consciousness, and its gestalt formation and manifestations. Until you perceive the innate consciousness behind any ‘visible’ or ‘invisible’ manifestations, then, you put a definite barrier to your own knowledge.”