“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

To do this, you must have faith in yourself, and in the framework of your known reality. Otherwise you will be too afraid to abandon even briefly the habitual, organized view of the world that is your own.

Even in your life as you understand it, if you are insecure or frightened, you cannot properly see your family or your neighbors. If you are afraid, then your own fear stands between yourself and others. You do not dare take your eyes off yourself for a second. You cannot afford to be friendly, for instance, because you are terrified of being rebuffed.

To do this, Ruburt had to be free enough to accept the view of reality as perceived by someone else. To accomplish this, Ruburt allowed one portion of his consciousness to remain securely anchored in its own reality while letting another portion soak up, so to speak, a reality not its own.

Ruburt has embarked upon his own journeys into the unknown reality. I cannot do that for him. I can only point out the way, as I do for each reader. In his own new book (Politics) Ruburt has his personal way of explaining what he is experiencing, and since he shares the same reality with you, then you will be able to relate — perhaps better, even — to his explanations than to mine.

Such creative “architect’s plans” are often unknowingly picked up by others, altered or changed, ending up as entirely new productions. Most writers do not examine their sources that closely. The same applies, of course, to any field of endeavor. Many quite modern and sophisticated developments have existed in what you think of now as past civilizations. The plans, as models, were picked up by inventors, scientists, and the like, and altered to their own specific directions, so that they emerged in your world not as copies but as something new. Many so-called archaeological discoveries were made when individuals suddenly tuned in to a world view of another person not of your space or time. Before you have the confidence to leave your own particular home station, however, you must be secure within it. You must know it will “be there” when you get back.

(“I felt out of the James thing until you read it to me before the session,” she said, “then a lot of aspects about it came back. We won’t bother doing that book of his, I know, but I could get it — the whole thing. It’s right there in the library….” We talked about what an interesting product The Varieties of Religious States would be, and the many implications involved, without intending to do anything more about such a work.

Now: Ruburt has trained himself to deal with words as a writer. When he picks up a world view that belongs to someone else, he can quite automatically translate it faithfully enough in that idiom of language. Many artists do the same thing, translating inner “models” into paint, lines, and form.

So do scientists and inventors often tune in to the world views of others — living or dead, in your terms — that correlate with their own intents, talents, and purposes.⁸

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.

(Long pause at 11:30.) The most legitimate instances of communication between the living and the dead occur in an intimate personal framework, in which a dead parent makes contact with its offspring⁹: or a husband or wife freshly out of physical reality appears to his or her mate. But very seldom do historic personages make contact, except with their own intimate circles.

You are each as valid as Socrates or Plato. Your influences reach through the entire framework of actuality in ways that you do not understand. Socrates and Plato — and William James (note that I smiled) — specialized in certain fashions. You know these individuals as names of people that existed — but in your terms, and in your terms only, those existences represented the flowering aspects of their personalities. (Louder.) They often dwelled nameless upon the face of the earth, as many of you do, in your terms only, now, before reaching what you think of as those summits.

(Idly now, not intending that Jane do any more work this evening, I read my question aloud. She raised a hand in dismay. “I’m tired,” she said, “but wait a minute — I’ve got the answer. Seth’s all ready. Get me a pack of cigarettes, and I’ll do it….”

Do probable selves actually communicate with each other through their world-view frameworks, then, or can such an interchange of idea or emotion take place more “directly” at times — simply between the probable personalities involved? Either situation can apply, it seems to me, or the two methods may merge at any given “time.” We plan to ask Seth to elaborate.

10. I’d like to dwell a bit upon a point I made in the opening notes for this (718th) session, when I wrote about mediums, or others, contacting the well-known dead. I mean it kindly — but Jane and I have never believed that a living individual could be in contact with a famous dead person; especially through the Ouija board or automatic writing. Although we haven’t scoffed at such instances when we heard of them, we’ve certainly regarded those encounters through very skeptical eyes. The gist of our attitudes is that we find it most difficult to believe that “Socrates” — wherever he is and whatever he may be doing, in our terms — is willing to drop everything to give very garbled information to a well-intentioned, really innocent person living in, say, a small town in Virginia. There must be other things he wants to do! Seth’s world-view concept, and Jane’s own experiences with it, make the accounts of such happenings much more understandable.