“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After listening to me discuss the second question for a couple of minutes, Jane said she had an answer to it, or at least a partial one. Her material was presumably from Seth, although she would give it. Just as she began speaking she was interrupted by a heavy knocking — first at the door to the public hall that separates the two apartments we occupy on the second floor, then at each of the apartment doors themselves. A feminine voice cried out for Jane. We waited. The persistent racket, penetrating the wind noise, meant just what we thought it would: an end to the evening’s session. When I opened the door I faced a comely but very agitated woman whom I’ll call Barbara. She was probably in her early 40’s. An expensive suitcase sat beside her.

(Neither Jane nor I had expected our unexpected out-of-state visitor, of course. I can note later that Jane dealt more extensively with the whole episode in Chapter 18 of Politics — [and also that it’s interesting to compare our individual accounts of the same event, even though mine is much shorter]. Just let me state here that we found ourselves confronting a well-educated individual who was deeply afraid of her own energy. Because of that fear she had developed certain problems that were severe enough to keep her from working at her profession in the law.

(Barbara insisted that she wanted help, but as in other cases that Jane and I have encountered, her focus upon her distress was so intense that we couldn’t breach it; certainly not in the little time available. Neither could Seth, who eventually came through — a course of action Jane hardly ever allows to happen in that kind of circumstance. Barbara just couldn’t grasp that she was creating her own reality.

(Part of my surprise stemmed from what I’d taken to be my knowledge of Jane’s relationship with her father. Her parents had divorced when she was two years old, and since her mother did not remarry Jane grew up without a father.² Jane and “Del” met again, briefly, when she became 21 years old in 1950. After Jane and I married a few years later we occasionally visited her father in various parts of the country — but still, we hadn’t seen him for several years before his death. Yet now it seemed that even beneath that scattered performance Jane’s psyche had felt stronger ties of some kind — at least with Del, if not with her mother — than either of us had suspected; that at least some part of her had sensed a sort of biological or creature loss upon the death of a blood relative. [...]

(I shouldn’t have been surprised last evening to hear Seth say that such an impetus had triggered Jane’s Sumari abilities, for today, when I reread the 598th session for November 24, 1971, I was reminded that he’d said the same thing then. The death of the student’s father had taken place on Thursday, November 11 of that year; Jane’s father, Delmer, died without forewarning on the following Tuesday, November 16; Jane came through with Sumari in class one week later, on November 23; and the next night, in the 598th session, Seth discussed Sumari for the first time.

[...] Ruburt (Jane) lost a parent also. [...]