“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.

(There’s been a definite acceleration in Jane’s and my own psychic adventures lately. In fact, we’ve had trouble keeping up with our experiences, and little time to study them. I am sure of one thing: I’m in contact with my deceased parents in ways that I certainly didn’t employ while they were physical creatures. Nor did they in relation to me, of course. Yet certainly the use of such inner abilities — or at least an awareness of them — could greatly enhance communication between the members of a “living” family.)

Now: A quiet dictation (but Jane’s pace was almost fast.

(9:34.) Identity itself is composed of pure energy. It takes up no space. It takes up no time. I said that there are invisible particles that can appear in more than one place simultaneously.⁵ So can identity. Atoms and molecules build blocks of matter, in your terms, even while the atoms and molecules remain separate. The table between Joseph and myself (Jane, in trance, sat with her feet upon our long narrow coffee table) does not feel invaded by the invisible particles that compose it. For that matter (amused), if you will forgive me for that old pun, the atoms and molecules that form the table today did not have anything to do with the table five years ago — though the table appeared the same then as now.

(Long pause, eyes closed. Jane’s delivery had slowed considerably.) In somewhat the same way your identity changes constantly, even while you retain your sense of permanence. That sense of permanence rides upon endless changes — it is actually dependent upon those physical, spiritual, and psychic changes. In your terms, for example, if they did not occur constantly your body would die. The cells, again, are not simply minute, handy, unseen particles that happen to compose your organs. They also possess consciousnesses of their own. That [kind of] consciousness unites all physical matter.

(10:37. Jane’s trance had been excellent, her delivery fast for much of the time. “And here I didn’t even know if I could have a session,” she said. “I got most of the mountain thing in images while I was giving it. I think it’s a great concept and analogy. The whole thing comes from your father experience — the Miriam thing.

(“Gee,” Jane said enthusiastically, later, “I’m glad I decided to have a session.” Resume in the same manner at 11:05.)

(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.)

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

(End at 11:45 P.M. “He said that,” Jane told me, laughing, “because I have to get something to eat. I’m starved….”

(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.

1. Jane’s relaxation tonight, while not a profound one, was similar to those effects she described in Note 6 for Appendix 19.

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.

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.

Now last Sunday evening, as I studied that “old” drawing of myself, I thought once more of my father in his last days — then a whole block of information came to me regarding his present nonphysical circumstances and “plans.” I wrote it all down immediately. I called it the “Miriam experience,” and Jane presents it in Chapter 12 of Politics.

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.

8. Strange — but recently I visually approached the idea of interrelated consciousnesses in two pen-and-ink drawings for Jane’s book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time: I incorporated humanoid features on large rocks. Resting in their natural outdoor world, these entities are subject to even the smallest change in their objective weather. But so are we — and might not both rock and human also respond to a uniting psychological weather?

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.

11. In 1959, some four and a half years before she began holding these sessions, Jane wrote a little poem about the arithmetic of her own being. She was 30 years old.

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.