“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

In the same way, if you are overly concerned about the nature of your own reality, and if you are looking to others to justify your existence, you will not be able to abandon your own world view successfully, for you will feel too threatened. Or, traveling in psychic exercises even slightly away from your own home station, you will still try to take your familiar paraphernalia with you, and interpret even entirely new situations of consciousness in the light of your own world view. You will transpose your own set of assumptions, then, into conditions in which they may not really fit at all.

Quite rightly, he did not interpret the event in conventional terms, and Joseph did not suppose that James himself was communicating in the way usually imagined (but see the opening notes for this session). Joseph did recognize the excellence of the material. James was not aware of the situation. For that matter, James himself is embarked upon other adventures. Ruburt picked up on James’s world view, however, as in your terms at least it “existed” perhaps 10 years ago.⁶ Then, in his mind, James playfully thought of a book that he would write were he “living,” called The Varieties of Religious States — an altered version of a book he wrote in life.

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.

(“What,” I wrote at the time, “would a state other than a conscious one be? I have difficulty conceiving of such a situation — which, perhaps, is more revealing of the way I think than of anything else. But how could the species, or its individual members, not be ‘conscious’? Since I think our collective and individual actions are self-consciously designed for survival, in the best meaning of that word, I’m curious to know in what other state these functions could be performed, for existence’s sake…. There are many ramifications here, as I discovered when I started making notes about this concept, so I’m purposely keeping them short.”

8. Seth’s information here, that scientists and inventors often tune in to the world views of other such individuals, at once reminded me that a similar long-term situation could have existed within the Butts family.

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.