“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Fortunately, class member Sue Watkins managed to tape all but the first few paragraphs of the session, but even the sense of those was taken down in longhand by another student while Sue got our recorder going. [I really enjoyed letting someone else do all the work for a change!] Later that week, Sue transcribed Seth’s material, wrote all of the notes for the session, and prepared mimeographed copies for everyone. Only portions of the session are given here, and I’ve rearranged them — and Sue’s notes — a bit for convenience’s sake. From her transcript, then:)

(To Warren:) Now, when you learn to communicate with the gracious ease with which those primitive people communicated, then you can call yourself civilized. You [as a member of the human species] do indeed see yourself as the supreme flower of history so far, yet when you can know what is going on clearly and concisely on the other side of Elmira, and can communicate it also, then you will be as primitive and as civilized as some of those primitive people.

(Loudly:) And that is the worst kind of history of all! It has nothing to do with the people!

Now, I have tried to tell you this before. The experience of the guru⁵ who sits in opulence, bejeweled and begowned, has nothing to do with the peasant who works in the field and whose belly is empty. And so it has been through the centuries.

[...] Given Seth’s concept of simultaneous time, the best connection I’ve made so far between the two soldiers is that as counterparts of mine they explore questions having to do with authority. As I rebel against authority now — a characteristic remarked upon by Seth in the 721st session — so do my Roman selves in their times.

[...] If so, do we do this frequently, so that our private fantasies have an inner coherence with those of our fellow human beings — and connections with them — that quite escapes our usual notice?

[...] So now, what do I make of the considerable similarities between my Jerusalem episode and Peter’s? [...] Just as I do, Peter rebels in his own peaceful ways against conventional authority, preferring to go his individual route in the arts, no matter how dubious his rewards may be.

“What would a Roman soldier be doing up there?, I wondered. [...]

[...] In your terms, you exist in physical life before your children do. Now: In other terms, your own greater personhood exists before you do in the same way. [...]

[...] Well, it’s easier to let Seth do it, so I guess I’ll light a cigarette and go into the session….”)

A person in time, then, can only do so much, and in your terms the great sources of the psyche are barely tapped in a given lifetime. [...]

[...] If you want a “Victorian room,” you do not plank it down in the middle of a Spanish arrangement. [...]