“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Tonight Jane was so relaxed¹ that I didn’t expect her to hold a session. But at 8:45 she wanted to try — especially since we hadn’t done anything on Monday. “It might be a short one, though,” she said. “Maybe Seth will talk about our own things instead of giving dictation — your material on your father [which I received this past Sunday evening], or what you got on your mother this afternoon. Or maybe he’ll talk about what I got on your mother the other day, or my strands-of-consciousness stuff for Psychic Politics.”

(Jane’s material on strands of consciousness² had actually developed because of my experience involving my father while I was in an altered state of consciousness. That episode had upset me to some degree, but Jane’s discussion of the subject in Politics, plus a few comments Seth made in ESP class last night, helped me put the affair in a more objective light.

(Long pause at 11:21. Then Jane, speaking for Seth, delivered the following material in a most emphatic manner. It was obvious that she was in a deep trance.)

When you eat, you must eliminate through your bowels. That resulting matter eventually returns to the earth, where it helps form all other living things. The “dead” matter — the residue of a bird, the sloughed-off cells — these things are not then used by other birds (though they may be occasionally), but by men and women. There is no rule that says your discarded cellular material can be used only by your own species. Yet in your terms any identity, no matter how “minute,” retains itself and its identity through many forms and alliances of organizations.

(After giving half a page of material for Jane, Seth closed out the session with this remark.)

(“Thank you, Seth. Good night.”

(Seth’s reference to the members of ESP class concerned the part many of them have begun playing in helping us answer the mail. With three Seth books on the market now, the number of letters Jane receives weekly has increased considerably, and evidently will continue to grow. A couple of months ago she thought of asking interested students to answer certain letters. The idea is working very well. It’s one of those things that seem obvious once conceived.

2. Jane originated the phrase, “strands of consciousness” — which she likes very much — some 10 months ago while describing her sleep-state reception of multidimensional material from Seth. See Appendix 4 for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality.

3. Here Seth referred to his material in the 687th session for Volume 1. After 11:07: “I am saying that the individual self must become consciously aware of far more reality; that it must allow its recognition of identity to expand so that it includes previously unconscious knowledge. To do this you must understand, again, that man must move beyond the concepts of one god, one self, one body, one world, as these ideas are currently understood.”

4. In this (725th) session Seth mentions two of my recent inner experiences and one of Jane’s. Each one had to do with strands of consciousness, although in this note I’ll stress only the very unsettling one I had with my “dead” father last Sunday night, December 11.

The event could have been triggered by my internal perception of just a month ago, the day the 719th session was held. In Note 4 for that session I described how I’d seen myself as a very old man, and made a quick sketch of that vision; I added that the episode had in turn reminded me of observing my father as he lay dying in February 1971, at the age of 81. In the 719th session itself, Seth remarked that the interior view of myself represented “a ‘precognitive’ moment” in my present life that (obviously!) I have yet to encounter.

The material I picked up about my father’s psychic intents was at first very bewildering. Hinted at was such a diffusion of consciousness that at the time individuality seemed to have little meaning. For I glimpsed Robert Butts, Sr. as he decided to disperse “himself” into a series of other personalities in both the past and the near future, so that I wondered how — in that mélange of identities — my father could possibly know himself. Seth’s explanations in ESP class last night and in this evening’s session helped clear my mind considerably, though: According to him, consciousness has no difficulty in making such alliances while maintaining continuity of identity, though its vast abilities are certainly almost impossible for us to grasp.

At 11:35 tonight Seth briefly referred to my second recent psychic experience, and to Jane’s. Both involved more “conventional” ideas, and both involved perception of my deceased mother in her own nonphysical state. (Jane’s happened on Monday afternoon, December 9, while mine took place this afternoon.) Jane’s was especially clear, featuring a communication from Stella Butts — who was seemingly quite “herself.” It isn’t necessary to study those two events in detail here, however.

In class yesterday evening, Seth first came through with some very earthy material that’s presented as Appendix 24. Then Jane read her notes on strands of consciousness, which — I can add later — also found their way into Chapter 12 of Politics. Seth soon returned in class with the following comments; he referred to Jane’s ideas mainly, yet as he talked I began to understand my experience with my father and his after-death situation as I perceived it.

“That is for you to play with!” Seth replied. “To play with as you spook out the universe that spooks you out in return. Think of — my dear friend — the tiny weblike positions of the neurons within your skull. If they want to find you, where do they look? Where do they find your identity as apart from their own? Where do they draw the lines of identity? And where do their ‘thoughts’ break off so that they cannot follow, and yet they follow?

And added over a year later: Note 35 for Appendix 18 contains excerpts from the 775th session. See Seth’s comments on the patterns of identity formed by consciousness, with their “particleized” and “wavelike” characteristics.

5. Seth meant his CU’s, or basic units of consciousness, of course, which he discussed in sessions 682–84 in Volume 1. See the 682nd session after 9:47: “These units can indeed appear in several places at once….”

7. Seth first discussed his blueprints for reality in Session 696 for Volume 1: “Each probability system has its own set of ‘blueprints,’ clearly defining its freedoms and boundaries, and setting forth the most favorable structures capable of fulfillment … As an individual you carry within you such a blueprint … The information is knit into the genes and chromosomes, but it exists apart … In the same fashion the species en masse holds within its vast inner mind such working plans or blueprints.”

9. See Note 3 for the 687th session in Volume 1. In that note Jane’s poem, Illumination, is especially apropos of Seth’s material here.

10. See the references in the 718th session to Jane’s “fly experience” of last month — by myself in the opening notes and Note 4, and by Seth near the end of the session.

12. While reading those passages on identity, the reader might keep in mind the subject matter of Appendix 18: the complicated relationships involving Jane, Ruburt, and Seth.

13. But added a few weeks later: The idea, adopted so enthusiastically by so many class members, didn’t work out after all. Jane and I came to realize that even her students tired of the unending process of writing letters (even about subjects they’re interested in) week after week. “It turned into too much work,” more than one student ruefully admitted. For the flow of letters is constant. Nor, we learned, did some of those who wrote Jane relish receiving a reply from someone else. The result of the experiment was that once more we were thrown back upon our own resources. We do what we can. Our latest attempts to handle the mail are described in the final passages of my Introductory Notes for Volume 1. Seth’s most recent letter to correspondents is presented at the conclusion of those notes.