“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Speaking of names, this is the time to remind all that Seth calls both Jane and me by male names: Ruburt and Joseph. Why does he speak of Jane as a male — and so as “he” and “him?” In Note 6 for Session 679, in Volume 1, I quoted Seth from the 12th session for January 2, 1964:) Sex, regardless of all your fleshy tales, is a psychic phenomenon, merely certain qualities which you call male and female. The qualities are real, however, and permeate other planes as well as your own. They are opposites which are nevertheless complementary, and which merge into one. When I say as I have that the overall entity [or whole self] is neither male nor female, and yet refer to [some] entities by definite male names such as “Ruburt” and “Joseph,” I merely mean that in the overall essence, the [given] entity identifies itself more with the so-called male characteristics than with the female.

(Nor did Seth agree with Jane’s assessment of her reactions to her Seth voice. He was very outspoken — yet his material came through with a much lighter touch than these printed words alone can indicate:) … Ruburt’s voice sounds rather dreary in this transitional phase, [yet] the one thing that pleases me immensely is the way he can translate at least a few of my humorous remarks and the inflections of my natural speech … As a man’s voice I fear he will sound rather unmelodious. I do not have the voice of an angel by any means, but neither do I sound like an asexual eunuch, which is all I’ve been able to make him sound like all night. And incidentally, Ruburt, you were a good brother at one time. The so-called male aspect of your personality has always been strong, but by this I mean powerful. Without the loyalty that you are learning as a woman, your character had many defects — and there, I said I would not get into anything serious.

(From the 83rd session for August 31, 1964:) Man sees not even half of the whole entity which is himself. It is true that on this journey [with the sessions] discipline, some caution and understanding, and much courage, is demanded. This is as it should be. I am helping you in this … You are both (meaning Jane and me) peculiarly suited for such a pursuit, with a combination of intuitiveness, basic psychic facility, and yet integrated inner identities … I also want to add that I am not a control, as mediums speak of controls. I am not, as I believe I have mentioned, a secondary or split personality of Ruburt’s. For example, I am not a conglomeration of male tendencies that have collected themselves into a subsidiary personality that struggles for recognition or release. I say that I am an energy personality essence, since that is what I am … My name for him is Ruburt,¹⁵ which happens to be a male name simply because it is the closest translation, in your terms, for the name of the whole self or entity of which he is now a self-conscious part.

The voice mechanism, unfortunately, is something that we must work with, and to get my own personality across through the female image and vocal chords, certain adjustments must be made. Beyond this, however, as I have mentioned before in class, it is not out of the inner sense of my invisible heart, but out of the depths of your own psychologies that you make me into a wise old man, and project upon me the authority images that lurk in your own minds. I have always tried to keep you from making this error, and sought to release from within yourselves your own abilities.

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.”

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.

Seth said a lot in that last sentence, of course, but that just means that more questions than usual come to mind. Although Jane and I think his idea for such a book is unique, we haven’t done anything to implement it, nor have we asked him to explain further. Just how would Seth propose to have his “previous personalities speak for themselves….”? Since Seth presumably wouldn’t simply relay such messages, would Jane find herself giving voice for a host of others, male and female, young and old, from many time periods and of the most diverse nationalities? A long project, and one for which she would use her abilities in new ways.