“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(On Monday, November 4, I mailed to Jane’s publisher all of the art due for her Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology: the 16 diagrams I’d just finished, plus two older pieces of work. All are in “line,” or pen-and-ink. I thought it interesting that as I was completing work for Jane’s first book on aspect psychology, she was starting Psychic Politics, the second one in the series. But now I can return to my longer project — the 40 line drawings for Jane’s book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Adventures and Dialogues are to be published by Prentice-Hall in the spring and fall, respectively, of 1975. Other references to both books can be found in Note 1 for Session 714.

(Before what we expected to be our regular session for Monday evening, Jane told me that she’d awakened in the middle of the previous night with insights about two practice elements¹ Seth would discuss — but we didn’t hear from Seth even though she felt him “around” as we prepared for the session.

(Instead a development took place that left us puzzled, intrigued, and more than a little upset. Yet at this writing [immediately following the 718th session], I can note that we’ve been somewhat relieved by subsequent events. Now, in fact, I’m veering toward the idea that Monday night’s session marked a distinct step in the further development of Jane’s abilities. She may also use some of that new material in Politics.²

(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.

(Other reasons must enter in, of course. But for now let’s say that Jane knows of James and his work; she’s read parts of his Varieties, for instance, but seemed rather put off by it, where I reread passages from it frequently.

(The letter from the Jungian psychologist evidently provided the immediate impetus for the fly episode and for Monday evening’s events, though. The author requested additional material from Seth on Jung or his works. I hardly think it accidental now that such an inquiry came just when Jane’s abilities seemed about to ripen in the particular way they did that night.

(We were discussing the letter and half-facetiously wondering whether Seth might respond in any way, when Jane suddenly told me that she was picking up material on the “essence” of William James. Because of his own persistent melancholy, she said, James had been able to understand others with the same kind of disposition. As she continued to give her impressions, though, I wondered: Why James? He wasn’t mentioned in the psychologist’s letter, for instance. Why this picking up on, and identifying with, a famous dead personality? Most likely my own interest in James’s work exerted some kind of influence upon Jane’s newly developing abilities, I thought; but still, that didn’t answer my questions.

(What had happened to Seth? That individual would have to wait. “I was getting just now,” Jane said at 8:58, “that James called his melancholy ‘a cast of soul.’” Her eyes were closed. “Now I’m getting a book. Why, it’s a paperback. I see this printed material, only it’s very small, almost microscopic, and oddly enough the whole thing is printed on grayish-type paper. I see it really small, in my mind.”

(And with that, in an altered state of consciousness, Jane began delivering last Monday evening the material from the book she mentally saw. Before I fully realized what was happening, I was taking her words down verbatim.

(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.”

(Which pointed up our dilemma, I thought at the time. I said little to Jane, but I was most uneasy that she was delivering material supposedly from a member of the famous dead. Actually, we’d always thought that such performances were somehow suspect. Not that mediums, or others, couldn’t communicate with the “dead” — but to us, anyhow, exhibitions involving well-known personages usually seem … psychologically tainted. So our feelings about the night’s affair weren’t of the best at that point.

(The events to come didn’t help matters any, either. No sooner had Jane finished with the lengthy James material than she promptly began to get impressions from “Carl Jung.” This time she was almost apologetic. We decided to go ahead, though Jane didn’t see a book or have any visual data. The words just came to her along with strong emotional feelings that she connected with Jung.

(The material seemed endless. It was a few minutes before midnight when Jane just stopped, saying that she’d more or less “had it” for the evening. The Jung material felt much more animated, she added, with a lot of vitality and energy to it: “‘He really seemed excitable.” Neither of us found the Jung passages as evocative as the James material, however. This is a brief Jungian excerpt:

(Jane said she had the impression of someone very compact, loaded with energy, almost wildly adolescent in a way, going off in too many directions at once.

(We both wondered right then if Jane was going off in too many directions at once. She’d always refused to try to “reach the dead” in this way before. Both of us were more than a little troubled — but as usual, we were intrigued even as we questioned our own reactions. We were also quite aware of the humorous aspects of the situation, since Jane does speak for at least one of the “dead”: Seth. And of course, as we sat for tonight’s session we wondered if Seth would discuss what had happened Monday night.

(I’d just begun typing the “James and Jung” material, so from my original notes I read the rest of it to Jane as we waited for Seth to come through. I also thought she discussed an excellent idea of her own, saying that she believed the James-Jung episode itself was an exercise in making the unknown reality known. She’d already done some writing yesterday, for Psychic Politics, leading toward this view⁵; so whatever we learned through Seth this evening, we already felt reasonably sure that in usual trite terms Jane hadn’t been communicating directly with two such famous personalities. Instead, she was involved in something quite a bit different — and much more believable.)

However, it is quite possible for him to tune in to James’s complete book if he desires to, for that work is indeed a psychic reality, a plan or a model existing in the inward order of activity (as Jane had explained to me in similar terms this afternoon).

(10:52. Jane’s trance had been deep, her delivery for the most part just about as fast as I could write. I told her that Seth’s material was excellent, that it backed up her ideas as to the nature of the James-Jung “communications,” and added more data as well.

(We also discussed the parallels — and differences — revolving around Jane’s perception of the James book this week and her development eight months ago of the outline and chapter headings for the possible book The Way Toward Health. Two months later, in May, she produced the summary for The Wonderworks, which would be a shorter dissertation on her own dreams, Seth, and the dream-formation of the universe as we know it. [See appendixes 7 and 11 in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality.] Jane hasn’t taken the time to concentrate upon either of those projects, interesting as they are, although she would if one — or both — of them “caught fire” for her. Neither Jane nor Seth had delivered their respective world-view ideas when she came through with Health and Wonderworks, so another significant aspect of her abilities has since become conscious. Once more questions arise. For instance: Whose world view was Jane tuning in to for the health book? Her own? In turn, of course, all three potential endeavors — Religious States, Health, and Wonderworks — must have origins that are closely related to the source of information behind the “psychic library” Jane tells of visiting in Politics.

(11:49. Jane rested a minute or so, still in trance. Her fly experience of last Monday afternoon is mentioned in the opening notes for this session. When Seth returned, he delivered half a page of material for Jane and me, including this passage: “He [Ruburt] has made an extraordinary leap into his [psychic] library, and it is freeing him physically. You have made as vital a leap, and it is freeing you artistically. The library is valid, and in the most legitimate of terms it is far more important, for example, than a physical library….” Seth finished his personal material at 12:10 A.M., and we thought the session was over. Jane was very tired, much more so than she usually is after a session. She wanted only to sleep.

(When Jane first read my question after she’d held the 697th session, she told me that she “didn’t get it” — that perhaps I was drawing inferences from Seth’s material that weren’t intended. I tried to explain the point at issue to her on several different occasions, and discovered each time that it was an oddly elusive one to put into words.

(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….”

(A note added in December 1977: The 718th session on world views proved to be a cornerstone in Jane’s own development, and in Seth’s thematic structure as well. Jane’s The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation, was published earlier this year, and as I type this final manuscript for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality I can add that she’s also completed The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher: The World View of William James. It came out in 1978.

(In a sense, both world-view books were “born” in the 718th session and the odd previous one that took place under Seth’s auspices. I write this although Jane had no idea of producing such works when those two sessions were held [but see my speculations in Note 6]. Nothing has been forthcoming on any additional material concerning Carl Jung, however — nor has Jane tried for this.

(Oddly enough, the original pages of the James material that Jane saw mentally during the 717th session [and later presented in Chapter 6 of Psychic Politics] never appeared in Afterdeath Journal. There were two different James books in her “library,” Jane said. She transcribed only one of them.)

1. Jane remembered part of one of the two practice elements she’d tuned in to Sunday night; perhaps we’ll get them later. She said that Seth had designed them to follow those he’d given in the 716th session. At the moment, even the fragment she recalled is well worth trying: Seth instructed the reader to immerse himself or herself in an old photograph of a person — and then to look out at our current physical reality through that individual’s eyes. An interesting way to gain a fresh perspective on our present time.

2. A note added several months later: I see now that I should enlarge upon Note 2 for the 715th session, in which I wrote that Jane “would initiate the transposition of material from Volume 2 of ‘Unknown’ Reality into Politics, since she was so intimately and enthusiastically involved in producing both books at the same time.” For her to work this way is entirely in keeping with her spontaneous nature; she intuitively seeks to use whatever sources of information — including Seth himself — she has at hand for whatever project she may be engaged in. In the early chapters of Politics especially, then, she both quotes and paraphrases material from Volume 2, beginning with the 714th session, which contains her account of her original inspiration for that work.

However, Jane’s use of material in this manner is quite natural in another way also: for Politics represents her personal exploration of the unknown reality that Seth has been so graphically describing in his own work.

I always indicate in Volume 2 when such a movement of material into Politics has taken place. Yet Jane did no blind copying, and almost always she quoted an excerpt rather than a complete passage from a session, for instance. Jane and Seth each say what they want to say from their unique, respective viewpoints — and it becomes obvious that her book should be read as an adjunct to Seth’s.

For example, Jane began Politics by describing how impatient she was, how “disconnected” she felt, because she hadn’t been inspired since finishing Adventures two months previously. Indeed, she was very upset over this, and quite serious in her feeling, as she later wrote in her new book, of being abandoned by her inner self. In Volume 2, now, the reader can note the many events Jane was actually involved in before she began Politics (on October 23), and see just how objective her perception of her activities was — or see, really, the demanding standards of creativity against which she constantly judges herself

In my own notes, of course, I described those events dealt with by Jane and Seth from my own perspective, as I watched them happen. “In ‘Unknown’ Reality the reader should focus upon the material from Seth’s viewpoint,” Jane said. “Yet it might be fun now and then to look at the daily events in our lives first, as recorded in Rob’s notes — and see the dictation in the sessions as emerging from those humble sources. What I’ve said in Psychic Politics should certainly add a lot of insight there.”

4. The contents of this note flow out of what I wrote in Note 2: Seth mentions Jane’s fly experience in this (718th) session, and Jane discussed it in more detail in Chapter 5 of Politics. Then in Chapter 6 of her book she presented long excerpts from the James-Jung material as it developed in the 717th session.

5. See Jane’s “library’ material at the beginning of Chapter 7 of Politics. And again: For her own purposes she quoted in the same chapter the appropriate Seth material from the 718th session.

6. Since William James died in 1910, this means that in our terms Jane picked up on his world view as it existed some 54 years after his physical death. We could easily ask Seth a dozen questions about the ideas he’s given in just this one paragraph of material. Very lengthy answers could result, leading to more queries. A book on world views could even develop. But the questions always pile up ahead of us; often they’re never voiced, no matter how interesting they may be. Whether Seth will ever deal with this latest batch, implied as they are, is very problematical.

9. Nine months ago, in February 1974, Seth mentioned the few tentative contacts I’d evidently made with my deceased mother through dreams; see the 683rd session after 11:30, then see my account of one such dream in Note 5 for that session. Two months later, in the 693rd session, Seth described how I reacted (on a cellular, or “unconscious” level) to communications from my mother as Jane and I considered buying a certain house in my childhood neighborhood in Sayre, Pennsylvania. So far, Jane has nothing to report about meetings of any kind with her late mother or father. (All of our parents died between February 1971 and November 1973.)

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.