“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(It seems that a combination of factors led to those oddly disturbing yet challenging events in the 717th session. One is probably just the state of Jane’s recent exceptional psychic receptivity. Another is my own longtime interest in the American psychologist and philosopher, William James [1842–1910]; he wrote the classic The Varieties of Religious Experience.³ A third is a letter received last week from a Jungian psychologist who had been inspired by Seth’s material on the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, Carl Jung [1875–1961], in Chapter 13 of Seth Speaks. And a fourth factor would be a most evocative experience Jane had Monday afternoon, in which she found herself experiencing consciousness as an ordinary housefly⁴: From that minute but enthralling viewpoint she knew “herself” crawling up a giant-sized blade of grass. She was exploring the “world view” of a fly. This adventure was certainly a preparation for developments in the 717th session.

(“There was a procession, a procession of the gods that went before my very eyes. I wondered and watched silently. Each god or goddess had a poet who went in company, and the poets sang that they gave reason voice. They sang gibberish, yet as I listened the gibberish turned into a philosophical dialogue. The words struck at my soul. A strange mirror-image type of action followed, for when I spoke the poets’ words backwards, to my intellect they made perfect sense.”

(At one of our breaks Jane said that she had picked up the title of the James book from which she’d been “reading”: The Varieties of Religious States — with only States differing from Experience in the name of James’s book in our physical reality. She’d also felt Seth around, like a supervisor, perhaps. She added: “I felt as if the James stuff was coming from a person who was very intent about trying to say something.”

(Pause, one of many.) Each world view exists at its own particular “frequency,” and can only be tuned in to by those who are more or less within the same range. However, the frequencies themselves have to be adjusted properly to be brought into focus, and those adjustments necessitate certain intents and sympathies. It is not possible to move in to such a world view if you are basically at odds with it, for example. You simply will not be able to make the proper adjustments.

Ruburt tuned in to that unwritten book. It carried the stamp of James’s own emotional state at that “time,” when he was viewing his earthly experience, in your terms, from the standpoint of one who had died, could look back, and see where he thought his ideas were valid and where they were not. At that point in his existence, there were changes. The plan for the book existed, and still does. In Ruburt’s “present,” he was able to see this world view as expressed within James’s immortal mind.

These “other,” reinterpreted world views form a matrix from which new creativity emerges. The same thing applies in more mundane endeavors in ordinary life. For example: You may be in a predicament that seems beyond solving. It may be highly individual, since it is yours. It is unique, and has happened in no other way before. No one else has viewed your particular dilemma through your eyes, yet others have been in similar situations, solved the challenges involved, and gone on to greater creativity and fulfillment. If you can momentarily abandon your private world view, that focus from which you experience reality, then you can allow the experience of others who have had similar challenges to color your perception. You can tune in to their solutions and apply them to your particular circumstances. You often do this unconsciously. I do not want you to think, then, that such occurrences work only in esoteric terms.

(Emphatically:) There is great energy, however, in those who have persevered enough to become generally known in their time, and the great impetus of that psychic and mental energy does not cease at death, but continues. In their way others may tune in to that continuing world view; and, picking it up, can be convinced that they are in contact with the physical personality who held it.

In Volume I, see Session 680, with notes 1–3. My father, Robert Sr., who died in 1971, was very gifted mechanically. According to Seth, a still-living probable self of Robert Butts, Sr., is “a well-known inventor, who never married but used his mechanically creative abilities to the fullest while avoiding emotional commitment.” Although my father’s “sole intent” was the very challenging one of raising a family in this reality, still he may have often exchanged ideas about automobiles, motorcycles, welding torches, cameras, and so forth, with that other inventor-self.