“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“I’m beginning to get a cluster of images. They’re of islands,” Jane said at 9:40. “I don’t know why, but I’ve been doing things that way lately. Then Seth uses what I get in the material … Okay: I guess I’m about ready.” She lit a cigarette.)

(Heartily:) What a transformation! Its volcano, it finds, now gives birth to soil and pollen, its excitement roused in a million different ways. It meets the spirit of the first island that has been living there, and says: “What a change! I would like a still more spectacular display. The flowers are not nearly colorful or wild enough. It is, if you will forgive me, too well-tamed — yet all in all you’ve done wonders. Now, however, I’d like a cultural interchange with others still unknown; and if you don’t mind I wish you’d go home. (Whispering:) This is, after all, me, and my land.”

The spirit of Island One says: “I quite enjoyed my venture, and I’ve learned that the great explosive thrusts of creativity are good — but, oh, I yearn for my own quiet, undisturbed shores; and so if you don’t care I think I’ll return there.” And so it does — to find a land in some ways transformed. The sands still lie glittering, but the fog and mists are gone. The beloved birds have multiplied, and there is in the old familiar sameness a new, muted, but delightful refrain, colon: new species in keeping with the old, but more vigorous. The spirit of Island One realizes that it would find the old conditions quite boring now, and the new alterations fill it with pleasing excitement and challenge. What a delightful interchange. For the spirit is convinced that it definitely improved the condition of Island Two, and there is no doubt that the spirit of the second island improved Island One beyond degree.

(11:04. “I knew we weren’t going to get a break until we finished that goddamn analogy,” Jane laughed after she’d come out of a good trance. “I do think we’re going to lose readers along the way, though — this book’s getting too hard to follow. I also think it’s going to be in two volumes. I haven’t had the guts to see how much material we’ve gotten so far.”