“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

(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.”

(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.)

I said (in sessions 711 and 716, for instance) that your normal focus of consciousness can be compared to your home station. So far, exercises have been described that will gently lead you away from concentration upon this home base, even while its structure is strengthened at the same time. You can also call this home station or local program your world view, since from it you perceive your reality. To some extent it represents your personal focus, through which you interpret most of your experience. As I mentioned (in Session 715, for instance), when you begin to move away from that particular organization, strange things may start to happen. You may be filled with wonder, excitement, or perplexity. You may be delighted or appalled, according to whether or not your new perceptions agree or disagree with your established world view.

(Slowly:) He was aware, however, of the universe through William James’s world view. Period. As you might dial a program on a television set, Ruburt tuned in to the view of reality now held in the mind of William James. Because that view necessarily involved emotions, Ruburt felt some sense of emotional contact — but only with the validity of the emotions. Each person has such a world view, whether living or dead in your terms, and that “living picture” exists despite time or space. It can be perceived by others.

It is quite possible to tune in to the world view of any person, living or dead in your terms. The world view of any individual, even not yet born from your standpoint, exists nevertheless. Ruburt’s experience simply serves as an example of what is possible.

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.

Many people working with the Ouija board or automatic writing receive messages that seem, or purport, to come from historic personages. Often, however, the material is vastly inferior to that which could have been produced by the person in question during his or her existence. Any comparison with the material received to the written books or accounts already existing would immediately show glaring discrepancies.

(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.

(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.

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.

(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.

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.

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.

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.