“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“The truth is,” Jane said to me the other evening, “I’m alone in this psychic thing. I’m the one who’s got to do it….” We were discussing the material Seth had given after 11:38 in the last [712th] session; he’d talked about some of the strains Jane had experienced while serving “the first portion of her apprenticeship” in the development of her psychic abilities. I’ve heard her say the same thing before, of course; see Note 13 for the 712th session. Basically, her examination of her inner dimensions must be a solitary one. When she began the sessions over 11 years ago, we requested advice and help from a few people,¹ but as we slowly began to understand the very personal nature of her gifts we realized that she’d have to find her own answers as she went along, with whatever help I could learn to offer.

(Those circumstances might have acted as a leavening factor in the early years, perhaps to a mild degree helping determine the direction of some of Jane’s psychic explorations, with and without Seth. Much more important is that she’s always wanted to do her own thing. Besides, how would she ask advice from another about such an individual, intuitive quality as, say, the next step to take in her psychic growth? These notes make her quest appear to be much simpler than it actually was — and is.²

(This afternoon Jane told me that in her sleep last night she’d had bleed-throughs from Seth about the material to come next in his book. She described it to me — and tonight Seth followed that subject matter very closely in the first part of the session. I suggest the reader review the 711th session in connection with this evening’s data to 11:26.)

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

(10:45. “Man,” Jane said after quickly leaving an excellent dissociated state, “is he going to town. There’s just tons of material there, all ready and waiting….” I could tell that this was the case: Her delivery had reached a steady, quiet yet driving level that she seemed capable of maintaining indefinitely.

(Jane commented here on something I’d also become aware of in recent sessions. For whatever reasons since holding the 709th session, she hasn’t had to wait for that certain, more “difficult” kind of trance to develop before launching into Seth’s book material; see the note at 10:55 for that session. In some fashion she can’t describe, Jane is now able to reach the “right” trance state, or to arrive at it, much more easily. For other contrasting examples, in Volume 1 see the notes closing out sessions 688 and 703, as well as related material in Appendix 4, wherein I wrote about the translation challenges she’s often faced since beginning “Unknown” Reality: “— hence her talk before many of these sessions … about attaining that ‘certain clear focus,’ or ‘the one clearest place in consciousness,’ before she began speaking for Seth.”

(“I get the strangest feeling of ‘folded time’ during the sessions,” Jane continued “I’m caught. I can get more on the book or some on me. I don’t know what to do. I know the book stuff is all right there — but it takes time to get it. It’s too bad I can’t get it instantaneously.⁸ I really want both sets of material, so I guess I’ll wait and see what happens….”

(Still in trance, Jane poured herself more beer. As Seth, she’d recited without hesitation all of the difficult, complicated material connected with her own dream.)

(11:26. But in our opinions a lot of what Seth had to say was pretty personal — so much so that only certain parts of it are given below, along with a few bracketed changes I’ve made to help tie it together. These excerpts still furnish characteristic insights into aspects of Jane’s personality, as well as my own, and I might add that the deleted portions are even more meaningful to us. We’re making good use of all of this material.)

He was determined to find the kind of mate that would best suit him and his own unique characteristics. That intent was in his mind. When that challenge was met he used his will and mobilized all of his power to fulfill his abilities, and to bring about conditions in which he hoped Joseph (as Seth calls me) could also fulfill his. The will, again, operates according to the personality’s beliefs about reality, so its desires are sometimes tempered as those beliefs change. In his own way Ruburt always concentrated upon one challenge at a time — boring in, so to speak, and ignoring anything else that might distract him.

One of your beliefs, then, was a strong joint one that you had to protect your energy at all costs, and block out worldly distractions. Ruburt with his practical mind interpreted this more literally than you did, and physical restriction was a part of his natural early environment [because of his mother’s chronic illness], as it was not in yours. But he is amazingly resilient … The power of his will is indeed awesome, and he is just now beginning to feel it. With that awareness, it can be used in a new physically oriented directive. The altered directive is all that is necessary. The rest will unconsciously follow…. The point of power is in the present;¹³ this kind of material and its understanding [by Ruburt and others] is more important than “past” causes.

(End at 12:23 A.M. At the breakfast table some hours later, Jane told me that once again she’d “worked on Seth’s book all night.”

(And added a year later: Seth also discussed the will in a personal session that was held just six months after he’d finished dictating “Unknown” Reality in April 1975. As soon as Jane came through with the material, I thought of adding some of its more generalized portions to this session. Seth:)

1. See the references to the Dr. Instream material (for 1965–67) in Appendix 18 with its Note 18. In chapters 5 and 6 of The Seth Material, Jane described other contacts we made as we sought to understand her psychic growth.

2. A note added six months later: These lines are from a personal session Seth delivered on April 29, 1975, just five days after finishing dictation on “Unknown” Reality (in the 744th session): “Our books, and I am including Ruburt’s, fall into no neat category … In the beginning, particularly, and for that matter now, Ruburt had no accepted credentials. He is not a doctor of anything, for there is no one alive who could give him a degree in his particular line of research, or in yours … He hides behind no credentials, or social system, or dogma….”

3. The 453rd session, for December 4, 1968, is printed in its entirety in the Appendix of The Seth Material. In that session, I think, Seth came through with one of his most evocative conceptions: “You do not understand the dimensions into which your own thoughts drop, for they continue their own existences, and others look up to them and view them like stars. I am telling you that your own dreams and thoughts and mental actions appear to the inhabitants of other systems like the stars and planets within your own; and those inhabitants do not perceive what lies within and behind the stars in their own heavens.”

Seth continued the session by expressing his concern lest this kind of material lead to feelings of insignificance on our parts. (In Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, see Session 681 at 10:00, with Note 2.) However, in a poem she wrote for me a few years later — at Christmastime 1973 — Jane herself dealt equally well with the idea of simultaneous interactions between realities:

6. In Volume 1, see Practice Element 1 (in the 686th session) for Seth’s description of Jane’s projection into a probable past of her own — her “Saratoga experience,” as we call it.

8. Jane has had strong yearnings before to instantaneously receive book material that was “immediately available.” See the closing notes for Appendix 7 in Volume 1, in which are described her feelings of intense frustration at her inability to speak all at once the contents of a potential book, The Way Toward Health.

11. See Seth on Jane, her will, her relationship with me, and her physical symptoms in Session 679 for Volume 1. I discussed her symptoms in Note 8 for that session also, besides referring the reader to appropriate material in Personal Reality.

12. For some material on the kind of relationship my parents did have (one obviously involving their children in the most intimate ways, of course), see the first two sessions in Volume 1: the 679th from 11:37, with Note 9, and the 680th from 9:44, with notes 1–3.