“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause.) Large numbers of the population do indeed live unsatisfactory lives, with many individuals seeking goals that are nearly unattainable because of the conglomeration of conflicting beliefs that all vie for their attention. They are at cross purposes with themselves.

It is possible, therefore, to improve your health, and to deepen the quality of all of your experience.

In terms of earthly life as you understand it, it is overly optimistic to imagine that eventually all illnesses will be conquered, all relationships be inevitably fulfilling, or to foresee a future in which all people on earth are treated with equality and respect. For one thing, in that larger framework mentioned earlier in this book, illness itself is a part of life’s overall activity. Disease states, so-called, are as necessary to physical life as normal health is, so we are not speaking of a nirvana on earth — but we are saying that it is possible for each reader of this book to quicken his or her private perceptions, and to extend and expand the quality of ordinary consciousness enough so that by contrast to current experience, life could almost be thought of as “heaven on earth.”

(Long pause at 4:28.) This involves a reeducation of the most profound nature. All of the conflicting beliefs that have been mentioned thus far are the end result of what I have called before the “official line of consciousness.” Certainly people experienced disease long before those conflicting beliefs began — but again, that is because of the part that disease states play in the overall health of individuals and of the world.

What we are going to have to do, then, is start over. It is indeed quite possible to do so, for you will be working with material with which you are intimately familiar: your own thoughts, emotions, and beliefs.

You must start from your present position, of course, but there is no person who cannot better his or her position to a considerable degree, if the effort is made to follow through with the kind of new hypotheses that we will here suggest. These ideas are to some extent already present, though they have not predominated in world experience.

(4:35. At break Linda brought in Jane’s aspirin and Darvoset; my wife has still been uncomfortable while lying on her back. At the same time there was a great clangor outside: Three firetrucks and another vehicle, all with sirens, turned the corner just outside our third-story window, evidently heading toward the temporary entrance to the emergency room. Then a moment later there came a “Doctor Blue” emergency summons over the hospital’s loudspeaker system. Resume at 4:44.)

This alternate way of thinking is biologically pertinent, for it should be obvious now that certain beliefs and ideas serve to foster health and vitality, while others impede it.

These ideas are translations of the emotional attitudes of all portions of nature and of life itself. They are better than any medicine, and they promote the expression of value fulfillment of all kinds of life, whatever its form.

(4:47.) A note: This will be the last chapter of the first part of the book — which is to be called “Dilemmas.” The beginning of the next chapter when we start it, will be the first chapter of the second part, to be called “Starting Over.”

I want to remind you both that what I am saying is indeed possible, and more possible than not. Period.

Ruburt can start at his present position, as each person must begin with the situation at hand. The point of power is in the present.

When my father, Robert Sr., photographed Jane and me on our wedding day, December 27, 1954, and then in 1957, did any of us know that his work would be published almost half a century later?

Yes, I think that in our separate ways each one of us chose to create this probable reality out of the many available.

Jane at less than 2 years old; at 7; and at 12 in 1941 — all in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her childhood was difficult.

Over the years I helped Jane while marvelling at her great creativity and trying to understand its source. Why was she doing the sessions? They were her way of contributing to understanding ourselves, and to peer into the great mystery of All That Is.

The same year I painted my self-portrait, I painted Jane as I saw her in my dream of March 10, 1987. She had died in 1984. I knew that in the dream Jane was reassuring me that she still lived.

I painted Seth, that ageless “energy personality essence,” from a vision I had of him five years after Jane began speaking for him in 1963. Their very creative relationship lasted for 21 years.