“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt provided himself with a background in which a parent (Jane’s mother) was steadily, chronically ill,³² and in which the medical profession with its beliefs was in constant sight. His mother was not medically neglected. His background included far more than sickness and the medical profession, however, but Ruburt knew that the conventional medical framework was not the answer to human ills. As you became more and more incapacitated, the trigger was set to find another solution. Psychic structures interweave, and realities do, one through the other (as Jane had written a few hours before the session).

(Jane was particularly bothered by people’s attitudes about Seth, for they often considered him as a “spirit guide” in conventional spiritualistic terms. Though almost eight years had passed since Seth had first come through, she’d known for some time that she wanted to explore the whole phenomenon more deeply. Jane believed Seth when he told us he was an “energy personality essence, no longer focused in physical reality” — she just wanted to know more about what he meant by that statement. She was certain, she wrote, that far more than Seth’s being a spirit guide was involved, that “in larger terms the abilities of living personality are connected with … other facets of creative consciousness.”

25. Jane held her first ESP class on the evening of September 12, 1967, although she didn’t let Seth come through within that format until the following December, so cautious was she in taking that psychic step. She had no personal experience or other precedent to go by; her How to Develop Your ESP Power had been published in 1966, but she was still experimenting with her own abilities (even as she is now). It could also be said that at issue was the whole question of firsthand public interaction with, and acceptance or rejection of, Seth and his material. Classes were quite small for some time, although they’d grown considerably by the end of 1969. After The Seth Material was published in 1970, class became well known enough to start attracting visitors from various parts of the country. It still does so.

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. I was 44 years old — and, as I recognized after the sessions began, at a point in life where I greatly needed more penetrating insights into the meaning of existence. So did Jane, even though she was almost 10 years younger. 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. We were driven to know more — about art, about writing, about the human condition, about everything. My own need, as well as Jane’s, struck deep responses within her psyche.

The other [Saturday] evening while he was in bed Ruburt had a somewhat surprising experience. He was not dreaming. His body was asleep but his consciousness was drifting. [...] For an instant he was tempted to interpret the power as anger, for in your world when someone is shouting they are usually angry. He realized, however, that something else was involved. [...] In these instances, however, he was the channel through which my voice came. [...]

6. About Seth’s reference to the myths connected with his name: Set, or Seth, was an Egyptian god of evil (with an animal’s head) whose complicated origins could, it’s thought, reach back in antiquity to at least 7500 B.C. In Judaism, of course, Seth was the third son of Adam and Eve, after Cain and Abel (Genesis 4 and 5). [...] Seth also shows up in writings of the ancient occult religious philosophy, the cabala, which was originated by certain Jewish rabbis who sought to interpret the scriptures through numerical values; the soul of Seth is seen as infusing Moses; he was to reappear as the Messiah….

[...] All was recorded, of course. Class lasted from 7 P.M. until after midnight, and by the time it was over everyone involved was, if not exhausted, certainly well exercised emotionally. [...]

[...] Now Ruburt called me originally (last Saturday night) at unconscious levels because he was upset with “earth programming.” [...] I was not speaking to Ruburt personally when he heard me, but addressing myself to the world at large in a program that was indeed picked up by others.

[...] When Ruburt (as Seth calls Jane) was a young girl he wrote a poem in which he declares:

[...] This one is from an even earlier poem, Lorrylo, written when she was but 15 years old:)

[...] It’s called Echo, and Jane wrote it in 1948, when she was 19 years old. [...]

(I started this appendix 13 months after the 711th session was held. [...]

(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. [...]

Beta was not meant to carry the full weight of conscious activity, however, although its accelerating qualities can lead to initiations into “higher” realms of consciousness, where indeed the brain waves quicken. [...]