“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I feel no great responsibility for any of your beings. [If I did] then I would be denying you your own power, and therefore seemingly building my own … I am here because I enjoy it. I am a teacher, and because I am a teacher I love to teach. A person who loves to teach needs people who love to learn. That is why I am here and why you are here … My view of reality is different from your own, and that is fine, and so I can teach. A true teacher allows you to learn from yourself. I enjoy the great vitality and exuberance of your reality, and our city will have joy and exuberance. Now joy sounds quite acceptable, but (with amusement) our city will also have fun — which in many spiritual circles is not so acceptable!

(In answer to a question from a student:) A beloved trap is one that you set for yourself. And so our city will be full of them. When you are tired of playing a Catholic priest, for example, you will fall into your own trap — in which your beliefs [as such a one] are suddenly worked out to their logical perfection, and you see what they mean.

Now when children walk down streets, they count the cracks in the sidewalks. And so our city will have its own kind of tricky walks! There will be sidewalks within, and above and below sidewalks. But it is for each individual to decide which one he or she will follow. When Ruburt (as Seth calls Jane) was a young girl he wrote a poem in which he declares:

And so our city will simply have alternate sidewalks, and they will be beloved traps, set by each self.

[...] Our nine-month involvement under those conditions revealed both our naïveté at the time and our stubbornness in trying to learn. But learn we did, if not always as we’d expected to; for besides gaining valuable insights into Seth-Jane’s abilities through our own envelope tests, we discovered much through our dealings with at least some kinds of “authority.” [...]

(Jane stopped holding ESP class on a regular basis early in 1975; the rhythm of those weekly gatherings was broken when we gave up apartment living to move into our own house in March of that year. In spite of our good intentions class in the old sense was never resumed, as we became more and more involved with producing Seth’s and Jane’s books, painting, correspondence, and all of the other events that make up our daily lives. [...]

By then I’d lost many months from my job as a commercial artist, which was work I’d returned to several years earlier to help ease our financial pressures. [...] As the sessions became part of our joint reality, we gradually came to understand that the illness I struggled with was a disguised expression of rebellion for both of us. We were very dissatisfied with our status quo: After years of work, Jane had managed to publish but a few poems and a few pieces of science fantasy (several short stories and two brief novels), and in my own view I wasn’t making it as the kind of artist I wanted to be. [...]

[...] All that work can’t be described here, but we accomplished our main goal: exploring from new angles the relationships involving Jane, Seth, and our physical [camouflage] reality.

When our Wilford dramatically cries out to his mistress: “I am afraid my wife will learn of our affair,” then the symphony playing on another station becomes melodramatic, and the sports program shows that a hero fumbles the football. [...] The crowds then cheer, and our grocer in his soap opera may smile and say: “But it will all work out after all.”

“3. Our experience of the present is enriched by our memory of past perceptions. [...]

[...] The 32 people crowded into  our living room enjoyed rich, active, loud, and even profane exchanges among themselves, with Jane, and with Seth. [...]

Now: Dictation (still whispering). Never as dramatic as our noisy class sessions.

(Even if beta waves, then, seem to be the “official pulses” of our civilization [to use Seth’s phrase from a session that will be quoted in part below], still Jane and I wonder: When aren’t we actually in a state of altered consciousness? [...]

(Our curiosity about such speculations led me to plan this appendix shortly after the 711th session was held, and I asked Jane if Seth could eventually offer some insights about the brain’s electrical reality. [...]

[...] You would follow your own pattern of continuity and understanding, weaving this into the sleep and dream states, forming a “new” pattern that triumphantly combines all, as to some extent this occurs in our sessions.